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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54873527394782371732018-06-01T03:41:57.359-04:00Way Out In The MarginViews on heritage, transport, media, politics and more...Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-42527544706506610612017-10-03T20:22:00.003-04:002017-10-04T01:03:06.439-04:00Culture: Petty Into the Great Wide OpenTORONTO, ONTARIO - I'll refrain from trying to match the wonderful tributes to Tom Petty being posted around the world today after his death at the age of just 66. But, I do have to question one thing: Why have none of the audio salutes I've heard ended with--or even featured--Into the Great Wide Open, which seems to me the ultimate encapsulation and closing tribute to his impact on society?Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-91611917785401026092017-03-12T14:07:00.000-04:002017-03-12T20:08:32.851-04:00Media: Thank You Imagination TheatreTORONTO, ONTARIO - This is the one thousandth post to this blog. The looming significance of such a milestone was a significant factor in the decrease in entries to this space--I wanted to find something significant to mark the event. In the end, it was obvious--something else that had reached and surpassed a much more significant one thousand milestone--Jim French's "Imagination Theatre."

Way back in 1990, as the CBS Radio Network once more cancelled the distribution of its "Radio Mystery Theater" series (which had stopped recording new episodes in 1982), KIRO radio in Seattle wanted something to replace the series, which remained very popular in the Pacific Northwest. Management didn't need to look very far. They had on staff as their late morning "Midday" host someone who had been doing radio dramas since 1965, Jim French.

Before long, the "KIRO Mystery Playhouse" was born, producing both new radio dramas and re-playing classic episodes from French's earlier work on KIRO and KVI, including series like "Crisis" and "Dameron." Even early in his career, French had the foresight to retain the rights to these works, so rather than being lost in station archives, he could bring them back for further broadcast at his discretion. As time went on and the radio landscape changed, the show would shift to sister station KNWX in 1999 and away from the then-Entercom cluster to KIXI in 2003. Most importantly, though, it had been picked up in syndication in 1996 by Transmedia as "Imagination Theatre." French felt this was a much more descriptive name, as what the shows were doing was engaging the listener's imaginations, not necessarily solving a mystery. Transmedia and Jim French Productions amicably parted ways in 2006, and Jim French Productions would handle syndication for the remainder of the show's run.

Syndication brought "Imagination Theatre" not only to hundreds of stations and satellite radio across the United States over the years, but to other English-speaking nations, foremost Australia and Canada. Internet distribution would bring it to the entire world. What had once been a Seattle phenomenon perhaps also experienced in places like Alaska where KIRO could be heard at night grew to attract attention from radio enthusiasts all over the planet. French secured the rights to record classic and original "Sherlock Holmes" dramas, and this brought attention from British writers who would contribute to other series airing on "Imagination Theatre." Live tapings, which initially occurred at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle, Washington, moved to the Kirkland Performance Center in Kirkland, Washington in 1999 and continued on an approximately monthly basis.

These radio dramas were one of the reasons I became interested in radio. In my teenage years, I would go out of my way to be at a radio that could receive KIRO 710 AM at 9 pm on weekend evenings. I was able to catch a live taping of the "KIRO Mystery Playhouse" at MOHAI in 1992, and would enjoy an "Imagination Theatre" taping in Kirkland in 2006. The familiar voices from Seattle radio that acted in various dramas created a link to my childhood, never mind the setting of many of the Harry Nile detective stories in a post-World War II Seattle.

While series as diverse as "Kerides, the Thinker" set in ancient Egypt, "Raffles, the Gentlemen Thief" set in Victorian England, and "Kincaid, the Strange Seeker" set in contemporary America appeared regularly on "Imagination Theatre," arguably the most iconic series was "The Adventures of Harry Nile." Regular listeners know the entire history of the character, from his time in Chicago as a policeman and his interracial marriage, to his time in Los Angeles where he would meet his partner Murphy and have many adventures during World War II, to his time in Seattle. Originally started as a KVI series in 1976 with haunting theme music by David Shire, "The Adventures of Harry Nile" featured Phil Harper as Harry Nile and Pat French, Jim's wife, as his partner Murphy. (Murphy's first name, mentioned in only one episode in the entire series, would become a marker of devoted fans--if you knew Murphy's first name, you were in the club.) After Harper's death in 2004, Jim French's right-hand man, Larry Albert, would take over. Mary Anne Dorward would start voicing Murphy in 2011, leading to one of many inside jokes on the show as her first appearance was marked by Harry saying "You sound different." "The Adventures of Harry Nile" was so preeminent in the "Imagination Theatre" world that its web site was promoted as "harrynile.com" rather than "jimfrenchproductions.com".

Pat French's retirement was a warning that all good things do not last forever. Jim French's health began to decline, and it was announced that the January 30th, 2017 taping at the Kirkland Performance Center would be the last live taping. At the taping, it was announced that the last new broadcast would air at the end of February, and Jim French Productions would close for good at the end of March.

The final episode could be nothing other than a final episode of "The Adventures of Harry Nile" and the ending could only be the outcome that some fans had been waiting forty-one years to hear--even longer than the fictional Murphy had been waiting.

So, in this one-thousandth blog entry, I thank Jim French and his many associates for 1,093 official weeks of "Imagination Theatre," and in reality many more hours of quality broadcasting over the years. As E.G. Marshall would say at the end of each "Mystery Theater," may you have "pleasant dreams" forever.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-66094657940979675632016-08-14T15:45:00.000-04:002016-08-14T15:46:36.346-04:00Culture: New Haven is Most Typical? YikesTORONTO, ONTARIO - The number geniuses on Nate Silver's staff at FiveThirtyEight.com have come to the conclusion that New Haven, Connecticut has demographics most like the United States as a whole. While this may come as a relief to those who disagreed with the long-standing contention that "real America" was a rural town with no racial (or any other, save maybe age) diversity, it may be a bit scary for other reasons.

In a strange quirk of assignment, I was assigned a customer just outside of New Haven, Connecticut from mid-2011 to mid-2013, and traveled there quite frequently. While my work trips there have become infrequent, because of friends in the region and the world-renowned restaurants on Wooster Street, I have actually been passing through New Haven fairly regularly for this entire century, through to present day. While I do not have the familiarity of a local resident, I feel like I have a decent sense of the city.

New Haven certainly punches above its weight in education (Yale University being most prominent), in art and museums (the Peabody Museum of Natural History besides Yale-related museums), in Italian food (not just on the aforementioned Wooster Street), and even in soft drinks (Foxon Park beverages is located in nearby North Haven). What it has come to be most known for, however, is its crime rate. Take your pick of surveys, New Haven shows up with a violent crime rate in the highest 5-10% of the country (a fast web search showed this one with a highest 6% ranking).

As a visitor, this was not immediately obvious besides the presence of the large police station between the main train station and downtown, but the reality hit home once when I was trying to get to New Haven on a service call in September 2012. My flight to New Haven's diminutive Tweed Airport had been canceled, and the only way I was going to get there was to take a flight to Hartford, Connecticut and drive. (Canceled flights at Tweed are a common occurrence, to the point that I would eventually take to flying or taking a bus to New York City and taking the train or driving from there.)

On the replacement flight to Hartford, I happened to be seated next to a law student from Yale University. A physically small woman of Latina descent from the central valley of California, she was even more upset with the situation than I was and we had a running conversation that ventured into living in New Haven. She made it very clear that as a short, minority female, she did not feel safe walking around downtown New Haven after dark--and this is someone who described confidently walking around parts of Fresno and Los Angeles that would give me pause. She was strongly looking forward to graduation and vowed that she was unlikely to ever to return to New Haven afterward because of the safety factor.

Considering that one of the purposes of looking at the demographics was to discredit the conservative rhetoric about "real America," holding up New Haven as the actual standard seems to play right into other aspects of their argument. One can just imagine the current Republican presidential nominee go off about "if the country is turning in to New Haven, just think of how unsafe it is going to be." Never mind that it would be a specious correlation--this whole conversation started because of an investigation into a statistically-invalid contention about what constituted "average" or "real" America.

Of course, my mind also went somewhere else in contemplating New Haven as "real America." Does this mean the rest of the nation is going to get better pizza?Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-62264276383625626802014-02-11T23:50:00.000-05:002017-03-20T20:08:57.136-04:00Culture: Shirley Temple Black and a Life LessonTORONTO, ONTARIO - The death of Shirley Temple Black yesterday at the age of 85 reminded me that she played a role in teaching me a life lesson that not everyone has the opportunity to learn, but that everyone should.

As an undergraduate, I was assigned to a dormitory focused on International Relations for my senior year. This assignment meant that I had the opportunity to attend various diplomatic events that occurred on campus if I managed to win a draw amongst my dormmates. In the fall of 1996, I found out that I had been invited to a dinner on campus at which a variety of political dignitaries from around the world would be appearing. I would be seated at a table with German politician Helmut Schmidt.

I knew a lot less about Germany then than I do today--at the time, I had never been to Europe--and while I knew a lot about Helmut Kohl, then the Chancellor, I had only a vague awareness of Schmidt's career and how he left parliament. Being an active and friendly dorm, the group of us that would be dining with Schmidt, mostly actual International Relations (IR) majors, met and discussed what we might talk about. While I figured the IR folks would drive the conversation, after that meeting I at least felt like I wouldn't interject anything embarrassing.

Sometime between that meeting and the day of the event, I had a conversation with a friend who lived elsewhere on campus. She seemed rather amused by the care being taken to debrief people attending the dinner and my trepidations about the event. "All these people are just human beings, you know," she said to me, "They really are no different than you or me. You don't need to be in awe of them."

On the day of the event, we found out that Helmut Schmidt had changed his schedule and would no longer be attending the dinner. Instead, we would be seated with retired diplomat Shirley Temple Black. I knew even less about the one-time child star than I had known about Schmidt, and about all anyone knew was that she had been ambassador to Czechoslovakia as that nation had been breaking up earlier in the decade, leaving that post in 1992. With a packed class schedule that day, I wasn't going to find out much more. I figured I'd just keep quiet at the table and let others that knew more about central Europe talk.

The atmosphere itself in the dining hall lent itself to be intimidating. When the dignitaries entered the room, it just happened that Indiana senator Richard Lugar, then about two decades in to what would prove to be thirty-six years in the Senate, was seated directly in my field of view at an adjacent table. He definitely had a classic politician's larger-than-life presence, and it was a distraction to have this charismatic man I had previously only seen on television never far from my sight.

Meanwhile, what happened at my own table was completely different than I could have ever predicted. Early in the dinner, someone else asked Temple Black what media she consumed. One of the first things she mentioned was listening to talk radio on local station KGO, and she actually asked if anyone else listened to that station. I was the only one at the table that did, and Temple Black and I soon entered into a discussion of our favorite talk show hosts and the validity of some of the political opinions expressed by then-overnight weekend host Bill Wattenburg, including such topics such as the methyl tert-butyl ether additive in gasoline. With my chemistry background, I had more to say about that than any else at the table. I forget which of us turned the conversation back to media in an attempt to draw more people back in to the conversation (likely Temple Black), but then it proved that I was the only regular reader of the Christian Science Monitor at the table and once more it was a one-on-one conversation. I could see the IR majors just watching in wonder at how this guy they rarely talked to was connecting better with a real diplomat than they were managing to do. The whole episode was surreal, and really only ended with the beginning of the keynote speech for the evening.

Normally, when telling this story, I emphasize that according to just about any Myers-Briggs personality source out there, Shirley Temple Black was classified as an "INFJ" personality--the same as me. Since "INFJ"'s are supposedly rare, these sources pretty much always list the same celebrities, so Temple Black is invariably there. This incident could be a classic example of "INFJ"'s bonding, which does seem to happen in life. Undoubtedly, common personality traits did lead to common interests and lifestyle choices that created my near-personal conversation with Temple Black.

Yet, that's not really the life lesson that I took away from the dinner. Instead, it was that my friend was right--famous and public figures are human beings, no less likely to be someone that one can have a meaningful conversation with than a random person on the street. Since meeting Temple Black, I have met all kinds of potentially-intimidating figures from world-renowned scientists to a key figure in the steam railroad preservation movement to a 21-year old CEO. I was able to have a conversation with each of them.

Not everyone is so privileged in life as to have met Shirley Temple Black. Everyone, however, should understand that even famous people are fundamentally human beings. Thanks to my friend and Shirley Temple Black, I learned that lesson.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-1233162229508739892013-07-24T08:55:00.002-04:002013-07-24T08:58:47.716-04:00Radio Pick: Brian Copeland On RaceTORONTO, ONTARIO - In the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict in Florida, KGO-San Francisco's Brian Copeland produced a compelling hour of radio telling personal stories about being a black man in California:

Listen to mp3 of KGO - Brian Copeland on RaceGlitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-34829880367631941072012-04-29T20:18:00.000-04:002012-04-30T00:43:15.043-04:00Media: Facts Declared DeadTORONTO, ONTARIO - Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke has been receiving a lot of publicity from a recent column in the form of an obituary for the concept of facts. Sadly, Huppke has a point.

Once upon a time, the late New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's quote about facts was the last word on the subject. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." Huppke implicitly points out that this is no longer regarded as true; paradoxically, the existence of facts is no longer regarded as a fact, or an empirically-derivable reality. Now, reality is based on beliefs or ideology, and demonstrable truths take a back seat. NPR's piece on the Huppke editorial cites Stephen Colbert's concept of "truthiness" as a replacement for facts, but whatever we call it, it's not the same bedrock for life of my youth.

The truly amazing part of this transition is that, while people all over the political spectrum in the United States are to blame for advancing the deprecation of facts, most of the big blows have come from political conservatives. Once upon a time, I seem to recall conservatives accusing liberals of having a relative world view in which there was no absolute truth. They thought their world view was based on immutable things, while the liberal had no grounding because their beliefs shifted based on circumstances. Granted, it wasn't "facts" but "truths" usually cited by conservatives, implying belief over provability, but in abandoning the concept of demonstrable facts, the conservatives that have made up facts have shown that they are just as relative in their reality as they had accused liberals of being. In fact, they have rather proven the liberals' point that one's perspective on the world is relative--if we can't agree on demonstrable facts, then clearly one's perspective and life experience does matter, which is what the liberals have been saying all along.

Leave it to me to put a personality spin on the whole situation--one of the reasons that facts can be declared dead in the United States is that it's a fundamentally emotional-world society. (I've argued that people in the United States don't care about the truth before.) In a balanced society, the logic of the spiritual world would fight back with a defense of facts. But, the spiritual world is so irrelevant in most contexts in the United States that it has no ability to fight back.

Ironically, the only thing that will bring facts back to their former status in the United States is for a campaign on their behalf to arise. Stephen Colbert has done his part, but until there are a critical mass of people who can sell the concept of facts, Rex Huppke's editorial may continue to ring true, and that's sad.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-44402354350179522422011-12-02T23:40:00.006-05:002012-05-04T01:51:36.289-04:00Media: Goodbye, KGO Newstalk 810TORONTO, ONTARIO - There have been a lot of events in the past year or so since I ceased blogging regularly that should have brought me back to the keyboard for the hour that it normally takes to write a standard entry. Considering that this blog started with the 2008 Federal Election in Canada, it was especially hard to sit out the 2011 election, but my present employment had me in California for virtually the entire campaign, and besides time pressure, I did not wish to be commenting from a distance. There have been plenty of special events that I have attended, not just in my beloved Toronto but around the North American continent that warranted coverage, from a Maritime Festival in Seattle to scientific symposia in Montreal. There have been plenty of developments in United States politics on which I could offer a personality perspective that might be of value. There have been deaths, from Roger Abbott to Steve Jobs to Osama Bin Laden to Andy Rooney that I could have commented on. Yet, in the end, what has driven me back is the end of radio station KGO as we knew it.

It's not like those in the industry, or even observers like me, didn't see this coming. I've written about changes at this iconic radio station multiple times as the handwriting on the wall became more and more indelible, perhaps most strongly back in 2010 when Mickey Luckoff resigned. Yet, just because it isn't a surprise--the recent change in ownership to Cumulus meant it was only a matter of time--doesn't make it any less remarkable. As of Thursday, KGO ceased to be "Newstalk 810". It fired the majority of its talk show hosts (leaving only Ronn Owens on weekdays) and is now heading toward a news-based format with the new slogan, "The Bay Area's News and Information Station."

While it may not have technically been the first all-talk radio station, when KGO adopted a talk format in 1962--yes, that's right, almost 60 years ago--it was a pioneer that would change the industry. It came to not only dominate ratings in its home market of the San Francisco Bay Area, but to be a model for stations across the country, and it had remained a leader, really right up until now. While I had been introduced to the talk format on local stations in Seattle as a youth, it was tuning in KGO at night that caused me to really appreciate the potential of the format to inform and entertain concurrently and really justify radio listening as a background activity while doing other things.

In fact, it's not saying too much to say that KGO, along with other quality stations in the market such as KCBS and KQED, was a big factor in convincing me that I should go to college in the Bay Area, setting me on the life course that I am on now. Any area that could support such a good radio station and have such good callers to talk shows must have a population that was worth living amongst (a logic that I would later apply to Boston and the whole nation of Canada as part of my calculus in later moves as well, something that will never be repeated now).

While since leaving the Bay Area, my KGO listening over the Internet has been reduced to God Talk with Brent Walters and Brian Copeland on Sundays (which, ironically, continue onward--but nobody assumes they will survive the changes for long), there is no question that KGO has been part of my life since I was a youth. The end of KGO as a talk station means the end of what will stand as a significant era in my life, no matter how much longer I live.

Over on my web page about what makes a good radio station, after the 2010 update, KGO was the only talk radio station I felt was worth mentioning anymore. Now, there are none. There is no commercial talk radio station I find generally worth listening to anymore, anywhere in the world. Sure, there are individual programs out there, mostly on public radio, but no station cultivating quality talk programming as part of its identity. The genre of radio that once dominated my listening habits is gone, completely gone.

I will not argue that KGO had not become somewhat stale. It was easy to parody many of the hosts on their schedule (especially John Rothmann's penchant for political connections, Ray Taliaferro's mannerisms, and Dr. Bill Wattenburg's technological fixations). Their ratings had been falling for reasons besides new ratings technology. But, I would contend that the formula for making a great radio station has not changed. I happened to write my essay on the topic in 1998, but it could have been written in 1958, 1978, or now.

Instead, KGO's new owners want to take on market leader KCBS in news. It's folly. As much as I admire the San Francisco market, there's no way any new contender is going to beat out not just KCBS (which is on AM and FM these days) but also KQED, KALW, and KPFA on the public radio spectrum, where more and more people are tuning for news. In particular, they're not going to accomplish it on the limited budget that Cumulus will devote to the process. Making good radio costs money, partially for talent but also for operations, and owners don't want to hear that anymore. Instead, it's a race to reduce costs, leaving no product of any value. Some believe that KGO may fail so badly with an all-news format that its 50,000 watt signal may end up doing brokered foreign-language programming before long.

The argument has been made that what I would consider good radio isn't supported by markets. It is difficult to explain the health of public radio in light of that argument--more and more public radio stations are garnering ratings that would make commercial stations drool, and they find ways to raise money to pay for the programming that is accomplishing that. No, instead what we have is an oddly distorted market in which demand is very elastic and the suppliers can't seem to understand how the quality of their product impacts the demand curve--made all the more complicated by the fact that the customers are advertisers, not the audience immediately served by the product.

The commercial radio industry is broken, like many things in the United States. The end of KGO as a newstalk station demonstrates just how far it has fallen. I believe it is an unnecessary shame, and I will miss Newstalk 810.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-24943055452542878632011-10-18T22:12:00.003-04:002011-12-01T23:35:03.389-05:00Language: End of DayTORONTO, ONTARIO - Once upon a time, I was one of the plethora of readers of William Safire's "On Language" column in the New York Times. Since the end of that column, its place in my ongoing language education has been taken by the Verbal Energy column from Ruth Walker in the Christian Science Monitor, a column cited in this blog before.

Walker has now delved into one of my other favorite things, radio, to create what may be
my favorite Verbal Energy column of all time. I'll sign off now.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-28601307028943164162011-05-21T23:08:00.005-04:002011-05-25T01:14:22.686-04:00Culture: Song of 2011?TORONTO, ONTARIO - Will this stand as the symbolic song of 2011 when we look back upon it? (Yes, we will look back upon it...)

 Rooster Teeth's Doomsday

...and if you don't get the joke, refer to:

 Rebecca Black's Friday

and

 Brent Walters' interview of Harold Camping on KGO's God TalkGlitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-38830124521566784122011-01-15T23:46:00.005-05:002011-01-23T01:51:41.940-05:00Dining: Began's Classic Italian Pizza
Began's Classic Italian Pizza is hidden away in a strip mall in Tempe, Arizona, as observed on 15-January-2011

TEMPE, ARIZONA - While I can get excited about world-renowned pizza restaurants like New Haven, Connecticut's Pepe's and Sally's, I really appreciate trying out lesser-known establishments and finding surprisingly good pizza. When I received a tip that such a pizzeria might exist in suburban Phoenix, Arizona--which some classify as better than Pizzeria Bianco reviewed last year--it made my agenda for my next visit to the Copper State.

Began's Classic Italian Pizza is well-hidden in Tempe, Arizona. If my "brother" cousin had not known where it was, I might have had trouble finding it--while it has a Baseline Road address, it is not visible from that street, nor it is readily seen from the other streets surrounding the strip mall east of Rural Road where it is located. It seems symbolic--you're not going to find out about this place from world pizza guides; knowledge has to come by word-of-mouth.

Unlike Bianco or the New Haven establishments, there is often not much of a wait for tables at Classic Italian Pizza. While we had reservations, we didn't observe people waiting very long for a table, especially if they were willing to sit outside, which even in January is a comfortable prospect in this part of Arizona. That doesn't mean that one doesn't wait, however. After placing our order, it was over ninety minutes before the pizza was served. That might be acceptable for a special social event, but with young children, it was almost intolerable. Frankly, waiting outside where the youngsters could run around was actually a better experience.

Plain cheese, Diavola, and Cappricciosa pizza slices from Began's Classic Italian Pizza were observed on 15-January-2011

Our order included a plain cheese pizza (er, Margherita holding the basil), the classic Diavola with sausage, pepperoni, red peppers, and jalapenos, and a Cappricciosa with ham, salami, mushrooms, tomatoes, black olives, and artichokes amongst other vegetables. The ingredient quality on the toppings was second-to-none, and I was especially impressed with the sauce, which might be the best tomato pizza sauce I've ever experienced in the world. However, the crust, while clearly baked in the wood-fired oven and of far above average quality, did not stack up to the best of the New Haven restaurants, not being remarkable in taste or texture, and soggier than it needed to be at the very center of the pizza.

Still, Began's Classic Italian Pizza is a gem of a restaurant. If you don't mind waiting for a quality pizza, it's a better experience than its more famous downtown Phoenix competitor, and even if it isn't the best pizza in the world, it is clearly top-echelon and the best pizza in Tempe.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-31250787447055807262011-01-14T07:21:00.004-05:002011-01-22T20:52:32.526-05:00Culture: Good Times at the Farm
Students played Ultimate Frisbee at Roble Field on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, California on 9-January-2011

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA - It's not immediately obvious walking around campus on a Sunday afternoon, as I did last weekend, but it's a good time to be on the Stanford University campus, colloquially known as "The Farm." A smaller number of students than I typically remember was playing Ultimate Frisbee on Roble Field, and the path around the former Lake Lagunita was nearly empty, but there was a certain vibe on campus that was undeniable.

The reason was obvious only when heading to the upstairs area in the Stanford Bookstore where athletic gear was sold. The mood had started to become super-enthusiastic when the Stanford women's basketball team defeated the University of Connecticut on 30-December-2010, ending the Huskies' record-setting 90-game winning streak. While the victory was at Maples Pavilion walking distance from here, it wasn't particularly close--71-59, and by all accounts, it felt better than that for the Cardinal. Interestingly, the last UConn loss had been to Stanford as well. Within days, the bookstore here had been stocked with t-shirts proclaiming "All Good Things Must Come to an End."

The biggest reason for the good mood, though, comes from the performance of football team. The Stanford team may have a long history, with its first Rose Bowl appearance in 1902, but for most of my life, it's been at best a mediocre team, overshadowed in the strong Pac-10 conference by contenders for the National Championship like the University of Southern California, the University of Washington, or this year, the University of Oregon. Their last Rose Bowl appearance was under coach Tyrone Willingham in 2000 (a loss); their last season ranked in the top 10 was 1992 under coach Bill Walsh.

This year, under coach Jim Harbaugh, the Cardinal (remember, that's the color) had its best season in terms of win-loss record since 1940, losing only to Oregon. I was amazed to see the team creeping up in the rankings, and ultimately qualifying for a Bowl Championship Series bowl, the Orange Bowl. On my second night back in the Bay Area, the game was played, and after listening on commercial radio for a time, I realized that I really should have been listening on Stanford's own radio station, KZSU at 90.1 FM. By that time, the outcome of the game was not in doubt, and the announcers had become somewhat casual. Stanford would win the Orange Bowl 40-12 over Virginia Tech, its first bowl victory since the 1996 Sun Bowl.

As students were just gathering on the Farm to start winter quarter, this was quite a way to begin a term. I can only imagine the celebrations in the main quad. Of course, it didn't take long for the Stanford bookstore to come up with Orange Bowl champion t-shirts--but by the time I was on campus about a week later, that would be the only tangible evidence of the accomplishment.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-16519784362109716212011-01-12T23:32:00.006-05:002011-01-18T01:26:16.871-05:00Culture: Gatherings at the Cathedral
The Trinity Cathedral in San Jose, California was observed prior to the Gathering at the Cathedral on 9-January-2011

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA - One of the real gems of commercial talk radio in the United States is God Talk, a Sunday morning show on KGO Newstalk 810 in San Francisco, California. Hosted by San Jose State professor Brent Walters, what has been for the past few months a one-hour show at 5 am (after decades of being a three-hour show) presents religious topics in their proper historical context, leading to the kind of insight that one usually only receives in a college lecture.

As a long-time listener to the program through KGO's Internet archive, I have been following the fate of this show as it was almost canceled in the past few months, as reported on this blog. When Walters announced that he would be holding an in-person "Gathering at the Cathedral" while I was planning to be in the Bay Area, I decided to make sure that I could attend.

Somewhere around fifty people gathered at Trinity Cathedral in downtown San Jose last Sunday at 5 pm. The somewhat diminutive 1861 building is simply gorgeous from an architectural perspective, and I probably could have spent time just taking in the stained glass and displays inside.

Brent Walters spoke to the audience at the Gathering at the Cathedral in San Jose's Trinity Cathedral on 9-January-2011

However, we were there for a lecture, and after a brief introduction from the Cathedral's Dean, the Very Reverend David Bird, Brent Walters went right to the topic of the day, the historical context of the Gospel of James. The lecture format worked much better than the radio show for getting complicated material across, as the questions remained relevant, there were no commercial breaks, and the visual slides helped keep focus on the matter at hand.

Furthermore, in a one-hour lecture context, Walters was able to get across material in a way that was much more effective to me. I had no idea of the symbolism of many Biblical names--that the same word was used for both Jacob and James, or for Joshua and Jesus, connecting them. Walters made a compelling case for the Book of James being the oldest Christian document that exists, being written by a brother of Jesus who would lead what was then a Jewish movement when he became an elder at age 40. The context of James considering himself a "slave," meaning that he was repaying the debt of the people, was clearly presented and served as a great case study to the kind of historical analysis that is Walters' bread and butter.

While the content of the evening was why we were there, the real treat for me was getting to see Brent Walters in person and meeting some of the rest of the God Talk audience, most of whom were locals but some of whom were from even farther away in England. Walters was clearly an experienced college lecturer, notable as he walked back and forth in front of the audience, and it was amusing to see his Dr. Pepper bottle next to his Apple computer during the talk. His analogy of Wisdom Literature to using Twitter, while possible to take too far, was something I found quite insightful.

Regardless of the fate of the radio show, the Gatherings at the Cathedral will continue monthly, on the first Sunday of each month. For more information, watch Brent Walters' God Talk web site or contact him directly at the e-mail addresses listed on that page.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-74201381669615432782011-01-10T23:00:00.009-05:002011-01-17T02:37:05.120-05:00Margin Notes: Rainbow Transport Egret
A PCC streetcar pulled onto Market Street near the Ferry Building in San Francisco, California on 3-January-2011

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA - It was like being in transportation mecca when minutes after I arrived in the state of California last week, I stepped off a BART rapid transit train and surfaced at the Embarcadero Station to find myself just steps from a cable car line, the Market Street streetcar line (pictured above), trolley and diesel buses, and the ferries to the north and east bay--and I wasn't far away from the Caltrain commuter rail station (which could have been reached via MUNI light rail). So what did I do? I hopped a bus across the bay to catch an Amtrak train, of course.

 * * * * * *

The other thing that was rather mind-boggling to hear as I surfaced was the news that Jerry Brown was just being sworn in as the 39th governor of the Golden State (he had also been the 34th, from 1975 to 1983. It seems like yesterday (well, 1999-2007) that he was the mayor of Oakland, seemingly at first with no higher aspirations. Then, he was suddenly attorney general, and now a hopefully very mature governor--I agree with Mark Shields that his inaugural speech set a very realistic and constructive tone. The question is whether legislators in Sacramento from both parties will be equally sober in facing the state's incredible problems.

 * * * * * *

Construction on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge was progressing along as viewed from the old bridge on 3-January-2011

Coverage of the Brown inaugural was playing on the radio as the bus crossed the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland. The new cable-stay eastern span is coming along as seen above--the portions of the bridge that are complete appear to have signs posted and lighting fully completed just a few feet from the current end of the structure, which is a bit different to see.

 * * * * * *

A Great White Egret was found in the drainage area outside the W Hotel in Newark, California on 4-January-2011

I had decided to take an Amtrak ride after landing for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that I was not expecting another chance this week. I chose to go as far as Modesto and then return, creating about a 200-mile round trip including scenery through the Delta to Stockton that I had not seen in more than twelve years. The wildlife in that portion was disappointing, but a Great White Egret was noted along San Pablo Bay. I thought that was pretty neat--until I noted a Great White Egret just outside my hotel's parking lot the next morning.

 * * * * * *

That hotel that my new company's travel agent had booked me into was a W Hotel in Newark, California. I don't care what owner Starwood thinks; this new chain is nearly as weird as Virgin America airlines. Techno music plays in the common areas, the lighting is all muted and colored, and the rooms clearly favor form over function. It was rather a relief to move to a Quality Inn.

 * * * * * *

A circular rainbow was noted outside a plane to San Francisco, California on 3-January-2011

I suppose I should have been in a psychedelic mood after seeing a circular rainbow during my flight westward. The above photo shows the double rainbow around what was apparently the shadow of the plane at the center of the rainbow, a rather fun phenomena to observe in the air.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-16976469629634117172011-01-09T23:46:00.006-05:002011-01-16T02:34:13.534-05:00Photos: Holidays in the Pacific Northwest, 2010
One of the many scenes at the Garden d'Lights in Bellevue, Washington was observed on 22-December-2010

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA - This week's update to my photo site features holiday displays from the Pacific Northwest. The Garden d'Lights in Bellevue, Washington was observed on 22-December-2010, and Winterfest at the Center House in Seattle, Washington was visited on 27-December-2010.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-44676805817939222312011-01-02T15:43:00.008-05:002011-01-02T20:29:15.199-05:00Culture: The New Year's Run
The two miniature trains operated by the Toronto Railway Historical Association on New Year's Day were side-by-side near Don Station in Toronto, Ontario on 1-January-2011

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The first real run of the miniature railway in Toronto, Ontario's Roundhouse Park took place on 1-January-2010. With a tradition thus established, the Toronto Railway Historical Association that runs the miniature railway decided to run again on New Year's Day this year.

The "Romulus" miniature steam locomotive pulled some of the passengers from the public past the turntable with full-size equipment at the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre on 1-January-2011

The weather was not so cooperative for the second annual event. It rained most of the day, rather steadily during the entire time the miniature railway was operating from about noon to 3 PM. Still, there were people wandering through the park even on a rainy day, and they were treated, if desired, to a free ride on the half-kilometer loop.

Arno Martens had just thrown the switch in the rain to permit Michael Guy running the "Romulus" steam locomotive to take the appropriate track into Don Station in Toronto, Ontario on 1-January-2011

One of the purposes of the event was to test recent changes to the "Romulus" miniature steam locomotive. The locomotive was found to be in good running order, and carried a number of passengers until a new coal supply was tested and was found to be inadequate for steam locomotive boilers, ending that testing for the day.

It might seem silly in the rain, but steam locomotives need water in their tenders to operate, and Arno Martens handled the topping up of the "Romulus" on 1-January-2011

This was also the first run day for the new trackage at the junction between the wye to the maintenance depot and the station sidings. The new configuration felt much better to me as a rider, and the new flexibility proved itself when the decision was made to back the steam train from the inside station track to the depot, which would not have been possible under the old layout.

Most of the group from the Toronto Railway Historical Association that operated the miniature railway was captured on 1-January-2011

With the successful testing completed, the Toronto Railway Historical Association will return to its restoration work for the balance of the winter; the miniature railway is not expected to operate again until the spring.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-89042725276171920912011-01-01T23:44:00.002-05:002011-01-02T00:37:26.445-05:00Radio Pick: Capitol StepsTORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's radio pick comes from the Capitol Steps. While it gets off to a rather slow start, the quarterly satire show from the Capitol Steps this New Year's is worth sticking out, with a George W. Bush parody of "Feelings," the "Queen Berets," a speech from Joe Biden, a dating service for Al Gore, and of course some new amazing phrases in the Lirty Dies segment leading to a very entertaining 58-minute show.

Listen to MP3 of the Capitol Steps "Politics Takes a Holiday"Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-10207465971872799482011-01-01T23:23:00.004-05:002011-01-02T00:18:07.470-05:00Transport: New Year's On a Train
Wilson Lau, Dan Garcia, Michael Guy, and Arno Martens of the Toronto Railway Historical Association posed in front of the GO Transit locomotive that carried them to Oshawa, Ontario on 31-December-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Yesterday, GO Transit offered free service on its commuter trains after 19:00 to discourage drunk driving on New Year's Eve. A group from the Toronto Railway Historical Association decided to take advantage of the policy to mark the turn of the year on-board a Lakeshore East GO Train.

This wasn't the first time I had celebrated the New Year aboard a train. As 2006 turned to 2007, I was aboard VIA Rail Canada's "Canadian" eastbound across northern Ontario. As the "Canadian" is a first-class train (at least in the sleeper section), that was a real celebration, with champagne served as the train rolled through the darkness of the Canadian Shield.

Last night, our group of five people from the TRHA had to develop our own celebration. A vice president brought spanakopita and various other finger foods, another brought homemade cookies, and there was plenty of chocolate to go around. We caught train #934, departing Union Station at 22:13 for Oshawa, Ontario.

Wilson Lau, Dan Garcia and Michael Guy enjoyed a New Year's Eve aboard a GO Transit train to Oshawa, Ontario on 31-December-2010

On the return trip on board train #939, between Pickering and Rouge Hill, Service Manager Louise gave a countdown to the New Year over the Public Address system (which was accurate according to my GPS receiver). Some fireworks were noted in the distance a few minutes later. It may not have been champagne on the "Canadian," but it was a different way to bring in the New Year.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-87185726910035793362010-12-31T20:30:00.004-05:002011-01-01T20:52:38.784-05:00Culture: Employed LifestyleTORONTO, ONTARIO - Today is not only the last day of calendar 2010, but the last day of my working for my employer of the last two months.

Regular readers of this blog may not even have been aware of the fact that I was working again. I made no announcement on this forum. Careful re-reading of the last two months of entries will reveal only a few very oblique references to e-commerce, but also a lack of references to being unemployed, which were never especially common here in the first place.

It wasn't that I wasn't proud of what I was doing, that I wasn't enjoying the customer service position, or that I was anticipating that I would be switching jobs so rapidly, which wasn't at all obvious to me until well into December. Instead, I had long structured many aspects of my life such that returning to a regular 9-to-5 job, as this one was, would have minimal impact on my activities. Sure, I wouldn't be going railfanning in winter daylight hours, or listening to daytime radio live, but little else needed to change. This blog had for many months generally been written in the late evening intentionally so that my routine would not need to change when I became employed. Sure enough, I started a job, and the impact on my blogging was nearly imperceptible.

One thing that I learned in the past two months is that, indeed, I could have a very comfortable lifestyle in Toronto working a 9-to-5 job. A look at this blog will see that I attended not only events at the CBC (a very short walk from where I was working) but also evening community events around the city. My social life, such as it is, was not suffering as a result of the position. My weekend activities had no need to change whatsoever.

I had long suspected that commuting by subway to downtown, which took me only about 45 minutes each direction, would be far more sustainable than my previous mostly-bus commute into the suburbs, which could take 80 minutes on a bad day. Even when the subway was disrupted, as happened at least three times I remember in the past two months, it never took me much more than an hour to complete the commute. During the winter, especially, it was quite nice to be mostly underground.

Fundamentally, the job that I held for my first two years in Toronto always felt unsustainable, even in the beginning. The hours and the commute were always draining; I slept in significantly on Saturday by necessity. For the last two months, I've instead been getting up earlier on Saturday for volunteer work than on weekdays. There's no way I could have done that before.

I could have kept going in my recent job for a long time; I could easily imagine staying with that employer for years. However, when one is aggressively pursued by an employer in a potentially-growing industry, it's pretty hard to ignore and turn down an attractive offer.

My cushy, predictable lifestyle is over, at least for the foreseeable future. I will now be in field service, with unpredictable travel. I have no idea what this will mean for the publishing schedule of this blog. Yet, I am satisfied that I have demonstrated that blogging can be part of a sustainable lifestyle. It's not inconceivable that I might miss that.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-38714572350668410612010-12-30T23:32:00.005-05:002010-12-30T23:48:24.575-05:00Culture: 20 Years, 59 Million LaterTORONTO, ONTARIO - Twenty years ago, I filed the following Student's Notebook report from Bellevue, Washington:
This year, the US Census Bureau started out with a rather aggressive attempt to make sure everyone was counted. The bureau sent out extensive forms to each permanent residence, requiring the forms to be returned by April 1st, but later extending the deadlines well into June and making radio commercials to prod people into sending in the materials as early returns were pathetic.

Meanwhile, local bureau employees were supposed to take to the streets to count the homeless. Though their attempts were well-documented, urban special interest groups contested the figures almost from the start, claiming the bureau had mis-counted by as much as one-half.

The census takers also had the duty to visit households where forms had not been returned. These visits resulted in rumors that some houses had been counted twice, or that others had sent in two forms and been visited but still hadn't been tallied.

Regardless of the objections, the census bureau has now released its final figures, subject only to appeals. Our population in the United States is now 249,632,692, an increase of 23,086,887 from 1980, meaning that each of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives should have 572,466 constituents.

Here in Washington state, our population has gone from 5,346,818 in 1980 to 6,216,568 now, meaning that our state has earned another seat in the House of Representatives, to be carved out of Rod Chandler's 8th and John Miller's 1st congressional districts.

The states that really will gain in influence, though, are California (7), Florida (4), and Texas (3). Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia also gained seats. New York lost 3, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania 2, and Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey and West Virginia all lost a single seat.

What does this mean in political terms? The gains were primarily made in Republican areas, but in the primarily Democratic Hispanic population. We'll have to wait and see.
Change the exact numbers, to a population of 308,745,538 in the United States and 6,724,540 in Washington state, and the number of seats changing hands (Texas gained four seats, Florida two, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington one, while New York and Ohio each lost two seats and Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania each lost one), and the story looks almost exactly the same in 2010.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-68245761867010091322010-12-29T22:17:00.006-05:002010-12-30T23:31:29.879-05:00Margin Notes: Travel, Fountain, United, Flags
The International Fountain at the Seattle Center puts on impressive shows, though in this 27-December-2010 view it was far from its peak 120-foot height

TORONTO, ONTARIO - As a final follow-up on my recent visit to the Seattle Center, the most interesting scene at the Seattle, Washington tourist attraction is likely the International Fountain. This isn't the fountain I remember from my youth, but a 1995 installation by WET Design that shoots water up to 120 feet in the air in patterns coordinated with music. It may not be the Bellagio in Las Vegas (also a WET installation), but it's worth seeing if you're at the Center--and it even keeps performing in the rain.

 * * * * * *

While rain may be the defining characteristic of the Puget Sound region, militant secularism is another. Thus, perhaps it is not surprising that I think I heard "Merry Christmas" or even "Happy Holidays" uttered less often in public that in any time in my lifetime. People were definitely shopping, celebrating, and giving to the Salvation Army, but they weren't greeting each other much when I was around.

 * * * * * *

The holiday spirit did not seem to be missing at Customs and Immigration. Both entering the United States and returning to Canada were far more straight-forward than usual in the past few years--some of the basic questions weren't even asked, and the US agent was even polite for the first time in recent memory.

 * * * * * *

A United 777 in the new paint scheme prepared to depart Denver, Colorado for Zurich, Switzerland on 22-December-2010

While I also have no complaints about United Airlines for the first time in recent memory (I still had frequent flier miles to use), I encountered a United plane in the post-Continental merger paint scheme for the first time. Frankly, I thought the 777, bound from Denver to Zurich, looked terrible. When the same paint scheme was used by Continental, at least the airline name was in a serif, sophisticated font. The sans serif, all-caps font used by United with the colors looks terrible to me.

 * * * * * *

As a final transportation note that I keep neglecting to make on each trip to the Pacific Northwest, the city of Kirkland, Washington deserves credit for the pedestrian flags it places at crosswalks. A holder on each side of the street is filled with flags that pedestrians can use to signal that they want to cross the street and stop traffic. It seems to work quite well--though I still think that Toronto's directions to simply point at the other side of the street seems to accomplish the same thing without all the infrastructure used by Kirkland.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-69681735804052713742010-12-28T23:40:00.004-05:002010-12-30T00:15:39.340-05:00Culture: Seattle Consensus
An outdoor portion of the Fun Forest in Seattle, Washington near the Space Needle was observed dormant on 27-December-2010; the site will now apparently be split between KEXP studios and a Dale Chihuly glass museum

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I've long stated that Seattle rarely recognizes just how much it was culturally influenced by native peoples. The environmental influence often receives recognition, with Chief Sealth of the Duwamish tribe's famous speech taught in Washington state schools, whether he actually gave it or not. The far greater contribution, in my opinion, is primacy of consensus in decision-making. Building consensus--no matter how much it slows down progress--is more prominent in Seattle politics than anywhere else I've spent time in the United States, sometimes to an almost comical extent. A member of one of the Salish tribes inhabiting the area three hundred years ago might well recognize the process.

A case in point has surrounded the Fun Forest at the Seattle Center. Seattle Center itself was created for the 1962 "Century 21" World's Fair, and its various infrastructure largely re-purposed afterward. The Fun Forest has been a set of indoor and outdoor amusement rides that have existed outside the Center House for my entire lifetime. As the years have gone on, revenues at the Fun Forest have declined, and it was announced in 2009 that the Fun Forest would close before the end of the year.

Instead, the Fun Forest was still open earlier this week (though it will close within days) as debates have gone on within the city of Seattle about what would take its place. In the end, two alternatives emerged--new studios for world-famous alternative radio station KEXP 90.3 FM and a new Dale Chihuly glass museum. Exactly why Seattle needs a Chihuly museum when the Museum of Glass exists in nearby Tacoma has never been clear, and parodies of the proposal included the well-publicized Sir Mix-A-Lot proposal.

So what was the Seattle solution, after nearly a year of talks? Earlier this month, Seattle mayor Mike McGinn announced that the city would build both, along with a kid's playground as a partial replacement for the Fun Forest. If every problem could be solved this way, Seattle would do it. If it could build a replacement Alaskan Way viaduct, a tunnel, and a surface solution all at the same time, it would. When the city really has to make a choice, it takes even longer than when it does a grand compromise as with the Fun Forest site.

Somewhere, I think Chief Sealth and his peers are smiling.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-4967894122458386732010-12-27T17:21:00.008-05:002010-12-29T20:33:02.962-05:00Holiday: Winterfest
A model train passed a scene including a school yard at the Winterfest display at the Seattle Center House on 27-December-2010

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - For as long as I can remember, there have been two significant model railroad displays around Seattle, Washington during the holidays. One is in a store window at the Bon Marche (now Macy's), where one puts a hand on a designated spot on the window to make a train move, and the other has been in the Center House at the Seattle Center.

People gathered around the Winter Train and Village display at the Center House in Seattle, Washington on 27-December-2010

Much has changed in the Center House over the years. The Bubbleator, left over from the 1962 World's Fair, has been gone since the 1980's. Shops on the lower level have given way to the Children's Museum. Yet, there's still a Pizza Haven (see photo above) near the walkway to the Monorail (another World's Fair holdover, this year decorated for the Harry Potter exhibit at the Pacific Science Center), and the "G gauge" setup of the Winter Village still appears during Winterfest.

A train based on a Colorado narrow gauge prototype passed exited a tunnel at the Winterfest display in Seattle, Washington on 27-December-2010

Winterfest itself has varied over the years. The ice skating rink (in recent years in the Fisher Pavilion) and Winter Village train display have been staples, but there have been various other activities over the years. Back when KING television was a sponsor instead of KOMO, there was a "Holiday Sleigh Ride" in which local television personalities would introduce you riding Santa's Sleigh--easily my favorite VHS tape of my family.

A model of Seattle's King Street Station was where the controls of the Winter Train display were located on 27-December-2010

The train display itself has been interactive in recent years. For a $2 donation, one can become an engineer for a few minutes of one of two trains that run through the display. The trains aren't the only things that move, either, as a hot air balloon regularly takes off from the village for a trip through the sky, and ice skaters rotate through the center of the well-detailed town, amongst other scenes.

Both of the model trains operating at the Winterfest display in Seattle, Washington passed the Engine House on 27-December-2010

Winterfest continues through 31-December-2010 at the Seattle Center, with ice skating extended through 2-January-2011; see the web site for details.Glitchhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-78740052122393905972010-12-26T23:59:00.002-05:002010-12-29T16:39:57.095-05:00Photos: Holidays in Toronto, Part II
A portion of the Toronto, Ontario Christmas Market was found in an alley of the Distillery District on 9-December-2010

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - This week's update to my photo site features more coverage of the holidays in Toronto, Ontario. The German-style Toronto Christmas Market, the Trail of Lights in Downsview Park, making mulled wine, store windows, and more scenes taken between 3-December and 20-December-2010 are shown.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-64921221114116613742010-12-26T22:59:00.002-05:002010-12-29T11:41:36.068-05:00Culture: Pole Position II
Gunnar Stenseth continued a holiday tradition of playing Pole Position II in Bellevue, Washington on 26-December-2010

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - It's hard to claim anything other than a spoiled childhood when there was a full-size arcade video game in your room. Granted, my mother won it in an Atari contest in 1983, but it's still not normal to have such an expensive and physically large toy completely at one's disposal.

When she won the contest, there was a choice of three games--one was a Star Wars game of some kind and I don't recall the third, and I remember going to a local video game parlor to try them out. There wasn't much question that Pole Position II was going to be the choice. Not only did both my father and I prefer racing games, but it was pretty clear that there was a timelessness to a driving game, while the other games would be somewhat dated.

Fortunately, I do not know how many hours of my life have been spent playing the game, because the number would be scary. It rains in the Puget Sound region, and many a rainy summer day was spent driving the four virtual race courses--Fuji (from the original Pole Position game, with a mountain in the background), Test (a basic oval), Seaside (with an amusement park background), and Suzuka (in many ways the most twisting, challenging track). After many years of trying, I would earn the Pole Position on all four courses in qualifying, and would earn over 64,000 points on each course after the four-lap race.

While driving might be a universal game theme, some of the details of Pole Position are quite strange. In what kind of real race are all the other cars so slow that you pass them going more than twice their speed? How can be that all the sets of cars on the course take on the same lane configurations, so that if one remembers what the last set of cars looked like, the ones around the next corner can be anticipated? And how is it that when driving the Suzuka course, which crosses over itself, there is no sign of this crossing in the scenery at all? Never mind the fact that one immediately receives a new car in the same track position after having a catastrophic, explosive wreck with another car or a roadside sign, at least until time expires!

Three complete races led the leaderboard on the Pole Position Fuji racetrack on 26-December-2010

Over the years, the game has fallen largely into disuse, and it has spent many years with its accelerator pedal in disrepair. Today, though, the game proved to be in mint condition when younger members of the family decided to give it a try. When it was idle for a moment, I decided to jump on, and was shocked to manage a 60,000-point race on Fuji in my first attempt. A couple races later, I not only had driven from the Pole Position on Fuji, but I had broken 63,000 points, which would have been respectable even in my prime gaming days. At the other end of the score board, a five-year old "nephew" had a score well under 10,000. If the game lasts, he might be beating me someday.

A quarter-century later, Pole Position II is still providing the same entertainment it did on day one.Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487352739478237173.post-24148985263714540812010-12-25T23:32:00.000-05:002010-12-27T15:36:20.625-05:00Radio Pick: Monetarily Assured DestructionAs much as I'd like to cite a holiday program this week, the clear stand-out program was a podcast from Open Source at the Watson Institute, Christopher Lydon's interview of political economist Mark Blyth. Blyth presents the concept of "Monetarily Assured Destruction" amongst other reasons why the coming year may not be economically inspiring, but won't be nearly as bad as it theoretically could be in this wide-ranging 27-minute interview.

Listen to MP3 of Open Source "Mark Blyth on 2011"Glitchhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Updated: 2010/1/26 10:21:00
Textile machinery pageant, ITMA ASIA + CITME 2010, received overwhelming support from textile machinery makers despite slow recovery of global economy. With five months still to go before the second combined show, all exhibition space has already been sold.
To-date, applications grossing over 95,000 square meters have been received from over 1,000 exhibitors. Chinese manufacturers make up the biggest country group, booking almost 50 per cent of the space, withEuropean and Japanese manufacturers taking more than 35 percent.
In terms of sectors, spinning machinery forms the largest, constituting around 30 per cent of the exhibit space, followed by finishing (25 per cent), knitting, garment making and textile processing (20 per cent) and weaving (15 per cent).
The enthusiastic response for the second combined exhibition comes at a time when business sentiments are becoming more optimistic, especially in the Asian markets. The United Nations has predicted that the world economy will bounce back in 2010 with a global growth rate of 2.4 per cent. It has also highlighted that economic growth in 2010 will be strongest in developing countries, particularly in China and India, which are expected to grow at 8.8 and 6.5 per cent respectively.
Mr. Edward Roberts, President of CEMATEX, the European Committee of Textile Machinery Manufacturers, stated: "Both China and India are major textile manufacturing centers and their positive economic growth is extremely good news for the industry.
"We are delighted with the response to our exhibition. It proves that there is great need for an industry-leading platform in Asia where established textile machinery manufacturers can promote their products and services and network with their customers."
Mr. Gao Yong, President of CTMA (China Textile Machinery Association), agreed: "The combined show is an excellent platform to reach Asian buyers. Even though economic conditions may be difficult at the moment, textile makers recognize that it is even more critical for them to invest in better technological solutions and to upgrade their facilities.
"In fact, the Chinese textile industry has shown resilience despite the financial crisis, due to its policy to accelerate the pace of adoption of technology, increase worker productivity, and implement quality management standards."
According to the China National Textile & Apparel Council, China has made an investment of 241.8 billion RMB in the textile industry, between January and December 2009. This is an increase of 7.9 per cent over the same period last year. New projects registered by the textile industry totaled 6,395, up 21.7 per cent from that of the January to October 2008 period.
With applications for space still streaming in for the combined show, there is now very little left in the nine halls, which offer a total of 100,000 square meters of exhibition space, and the show is expected to be sold out before the end of 2009.
ITMA ASIA + CITME will be held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, from 22 to 26 June 2010.
Source:China Textile Leader
Authority in Charge: China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC)
Sponsor :China Textile Information Center (CTIC)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
There are times in life when nothing beats a good, gripping thriller. November has been one of those times for me and I have distracted myself out of my funk with a few mindless, yet highly entertaining reads. The value of these types of books are that they are engaging without being too taxing. This is a huge plus when one's brain is already overloaded with other things. This is clearly not such a good thing if you are the author of The Kindly Ones which is waiting patiently, book-marked at page 250, for the clouds to clear and reading to resume!!
Two thrillers which kept me occupied briefly were:
Face of Betrayal, Lisa Wiehl
The 7th Victim, Alan Jacobson
I enjoyed Jacobson's book so much (in part because it was a Kindle freebie!) that I am now reading another of his tales called Crush (also free on Kindle).


text:
SHAWNEE, Kan. -- Police in Shawnee are asking for the public's help to locate a missing 35-year-old man.
Police say Dawit T. Tesfaye was last seen Thursday, March 2, 2017, at his apartment near 75th and Quivira Road. His family told police they have not heard from him since.
Tesfaye is described as a black male, who stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall, and weighs about 154 pounds.
Police are not sure what Tesfaye was wearing when he disappeared. They say there has been no cell phone or bank activity since March 2, 2017.
The 35-year-old recently quit his job. Police said he has no vehicle and no roommates.
A flier posted in Starbucks along Main Street says a $5,000 reward is being offered for information regarding his disappearance.
Police are asking anyone with information to call the Shawnee Police Department at (913) 631-2150 or the TIPS hotline, (816) 474-TIPS.


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Whoa, that was loud! So today is quotes! I love quotes… I used to write them down, and still do! Most of the quotes I got out of my old quote book!
- A dream is a wish your heart makes
- Love is the closest thing we have to magic
- The things we are scared of most, are usually the most worthwhile
- True love comes when you least expect it
- Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things – G.K Chesterton
- It's not where you're from, it's where you're at – Step Up 2
- If you can't get someone out of your head, then maybe they are suppose to be there
- Beauty is not so much what you see as what you dream – Walloon Proverb
- We are meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us? – Benjamin Button
These are just a few quotes that mean a lot to me… I know some of them are silly, but I find them pretty and I was a bit infatuated today… =]
Do you have any quotes you love??
Now for day 3 and 4 of my journal pages!!
Day 3 was name 3 things you love about you! =]
Day 4: Describe your inner superhero!
Apparently there is already a Mini Mew [Google] and I only found it out after I did the page. I choose Mini Mew, because my one BFF always call me MewMewPowers and I love it!I had fun with this page!
Have a lovely day/night/whatever!
PS! As you have noticed [or not] I divided my blogroll into categories.. If you are on there and feel you are in the wrong category, please let me know and I will shift you!


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November 7, 2007
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,v.LUIS CARRION-SOTO, DEFENDANT.
The opinion of the court was delivered by: Simandle, District Judge
On June 22, 2006, law enforcement officers from the Sheriff's Office in Florence County, South Carolina, conducted a search of a vehicle in which the defendant, Luis Carrion-Soto, was traveling as a passenger. Among the evidence that the officers uncovered during the search were two packages, one of which contained 100 grams of heroin and another that contained one kilogram of cocaine. In a three-count superseding indictment filed on August 21, 2007, Mr. Carrion-Soto was charged with participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy and with possessing with the intent to distribute cocaine and heroin [Docket Item 17].
Mr. Carrion-Soto has moved the Court to suppress various statements that he made to law enforcement officers on the day of his arrest and on subsequent days, claiming that the statements were obtained illegally in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights [Docket Item 30]. In addition, Mr. Carrion-Soto has moved to suppress various pieces of evidence seized during the search of the vehicle on June 22, 2006, arguing that the search that produced the evidence was illegal under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution [Docket Item 31]. The Government opposes the defendant's motions and argues that the evidence was obtained legally [Docket Items 24, 32, 33]. The Court conducted hearings on October 16, 22 and 25, hearing testimony from law enforcement witnesses and from Defendant himself. For the following reasons, the Court denies the defendant's motions and finds all of the challenged evidence admissible.
The Court first summarizes the relevant facts that gave rise to the evidence that Mr. Carrion-Soto seeks to suppress.
A. Law Enforcement Officers' Testimony
1. June 22, 2006 Traffic Stop and Automobile Search
At the suppression hearing before the Court on October 16, 2007, Corporal Wayne Drummond testified that on the morning of June 22, 2006, he was patrolling Interstate 95 in Florence County, South Carolina in an unmarked police vehicle when he observed a blue Lexus automobile driving south on the Interstate in excess of the speed limit. (Tr. 148.) Corporal Drummond activated his siren and "blue lights"*fn1 and followed the Lexus until it pulled over and stopped in the emergency lane on the side of the road. (Id. at 148-49.) Corporal Drummond, who was armed and wearing a Sheriff's uniform, approached the Lexus on the passenger's side, where he observed two people in the vehicle - Vergen Guzman in the driver's seat and Mr. Carrion-Soto in the passenger seat. (Id. at 149-50.) Mr. Carrion-Soto appeared to be asleep when Corporal Drummond approached the car. (Id. at 150.)
Corporal Drummond testified that he asked Ms. Guzman for her driver's license and vehicle registration. (Id.) When Ms. Guzman opened the glove compartment to obtain the registration information, Corporal Drummond observed a four-inch stack of United States currency in six individually bound substacks, with the large stack bound together by rubber bands. (Id.) According to Corporal Drummond, the quantity and packaging of the currency aroused his suspicion that the occupants of the Lexus were involved in unlawful activity, and he asked Ms. Guzman to exit the vehicle in order to question her separately from Mr. Carrion-Soto, who was by then awake.*fn2 (Id. at 151-52.) Standing at the back of the Lexus, Corporal Drummond asked Ms. Guzman a series of questions about her travel plans and her relationship with the defendant. (Id. at 53, 70, 152.) Ms. Guzman informed Corporal Drummond that she and Mr. Carrion-Soto had come from Pennsylvania and were driving to Florida, although she did not know where in Florida they were going, and stated that they planned to return from Florida two days later. (Id. at 153-55.) Ms. Guzman also informed Corporal Drummond that she and Mr. Carrion-Soto had been in a romantic relationship for one year. (Id. at 152.) Corporal Drummond testified that he then spoke separately with Mr. Carrion-Soto, asking him the same questions he had posed to Ms. Guzman. (Id. at 155.) Mr. Carrion-Soto informed Corporal Drummond that they were driving to Daytona, Florida to visit his uncle, that they had recently stopped at a roadside complex called "South of the Border," and that he had been dating Ms. Guzman for one-and-a-half months. (Id. at 155-57.)
According to Corporal Drummond, the combination of the following factors led him to suspect that the car's occupants were involved in criminal activity: the stack of currency; the inconsistency between Ms. Guzman's and Mr. Carrion-Soto's answers; the fact that Ms. Guzman did not know their ultimate destination; the brevity of the couple's trip; the destination of Daytona, which Corporal Drummond understood to be a "source" city for narcotics; the couple's visit to South of the Border, which Corporal Drummond believed to be a meeting place for drug traffickers; and the "Patrolman's Benevolent Association" decal on the dashboard of the Lexus, which Corporal Drummond knew to be of the sort frequently utilized by drug traffickers to discourage law enforcement officers from investigating their vehicles. (Id. at 154-57.) After he posed his initial questions to Ms. Guzman and Mr. Carrion-Soto, Corporal Drummond entered the information about the traffic stop in the "mobile data" unit computer in his car to verify the ownership of the Lexus. (Id. at 158.)
Corporal Drummond testified that he sought and received permission from Ms. Guzman to search the Lexus. (Id. at 158-59.) In response to questioning from Corporal Drummond, Ms. Guzman stated that there were no guns or illegal substances in the car. (Id. at 159.) According to Corporal Drummond, he posed the same questions to the defendant, who likewise stated that the car contained no drugs or illegal substances. (Id.) Corporal Drummond testified that he asked Mr. Carrion-Soto for permission to search the car, and Mr. Carrion-Soto consented. (Id.) Sergeant Brown testified that he heard Corporal Drummond ask Ms. Guzman and Mr. Carrion-Soto for permission to search the Lexus in a non-threatening tone of voice and witnessed both parties consent to the search.*fn3 (Id. at 76, 84-85.) According to Sergeant Brown, Ms. Guzman gave her consent between fifteen and twenty minutes after her car had been stopped, and Mr. Carrion-Soto consented about five minutes later. (Id. at 85.)
According to Sergeant Brown's testimony, Ms. Guzman and Mr. Carrion-Soto were asked to stand outside the car while Corporals Drummond, Jackson, Spell, and Weaver searched the car. (Id. at 87-88.) Corporal Drummond searched the trunk of the car and found a duffel bag and a blue suitcase, which he then held up to Ms. Guzman and Mr. Carrion-Soto. (Id. at 88-89.) Corporal Drummond then asked who the luggage belonged to, and Ms. Guzman said that the duffel bag was hers, while Mr. Carrion-Soto claimed the suitcase; the officers did not seek Ms. Guzman's or Mr. Carrion-Soto's consent to open the luggage. (Id. at 89-90, 194.) Corporal Drummond opened the duffel bag first and found no contraband. (Id. at 89.) He next opened the suitcase, which was not locked, and removed from the suitcase a cylinder that was wrapped in black tape. (Id. at 90.) Subsequent testing revealed that the cylinder contained more than 100 grams of heroin.
Believing that the cylinder contained narcotics, the officers placed Ms. Guzman and Mr. Carrion-Soto in handcuffs and advised them that they were not under arrest but were being placed in investigative detention. (Id. at 91.) At Sergeant Brown's suggestion, Corporal Drummond read to detained suspects the Miranda warnings from a "Miranda card" that Sergeant Brown had handed to him. (Id. at 91-93.) Corporal Drummond read these warnings approximately forty minutes after the Lexus had first been stopped. (Id. at 94.) According to Sergeant Brown, Corporal Drummond's tone was non-threatening, and, apart from the application of handcuffs, the officers had not made a show of force or otherwise intimidated the suspects.*fn4 (Id. at 93.) According to the officers' testimony, Mr. Carrion-Soto stated that he understood his rights and was willing to answer the officers' questions. (Id. at 94.) Mr. Carrion-Soto stated that he did not know what the cylinder contained, and when Sergeant Brown told him that he believed the cylinder contained heroin, Mr. Carrion-Soto stated that he thought that it contained a steroid for dogs. (Id. at 95-96.)
Twenty-seven minutes after Ms. Guzman and Mr. Carrion-Soto had been placed in investigative detention and had been warned of their Miranda rights, Corporal Spell discovered a rectangular object wrapped in black tape under the rear passenger-side seat of the Lexus. (Id. at 104-05.) Subsequent testing revealed that the rectangular object was one kilogram of cocaine. According to Sergeant Brown, shortly after the cocaine was discovered, Mr. Carrion-Soto told Corporal Jackson that he wished to speak with Sergeant Brown, and, in the conversation that ensued, Mr. Carrion-Soto said that the kilogram of cocaine was his but denied ownership of the heroin. (Id. at 107.) Soon after making this admission to Sergeant Brown, Mr. Carrion-Soto made a similar confession to Corporal Drummond; this latter confession was captured on the video recording of the traffic stop by the camera in Corporal Drummond's vehicle. (Id. at 110; Ex. 10T.)
Sergeant Brown testified that after the heroin and cocaine were discovered, he examined the exterior of the car and the luggage with his patrol dog, Treez, a Belgian Malinois with substantial training in narcotics detection.*fn5 (Tr. 112.) According to Sergeant Brown, Treez "alerted" to the presence of narcotics near the trunk of the car, where the heroin had been found. (Id.) The officers also conducted a "luggage lineup" on the side of the road by placing the pieces of luggage between five and ten feet apart, and Treez "alerted" to the presence of narcotics next to the blue suitcase where the heroin had been found. (Id. at 113.)
At the October 16, 2007 hearing, United States Drug Enforcement Administration ("DEA") Task Force Officer Joseph M. Koenig ("TFO Koenig") testified that his office was contacted on the morning of the June 22, 2006 traffic stop because of the drugs that were discovered and because Mr. Carrion-Soto was reportedly interested in cooperating with the government. (Id. at 202-03.) TFO Koenig testified that he arrived at the scene on Interstate 95 at approximately 10:00 a.m. on the morning of June 22. (Id. at 203.) When he arrived on the scene, TFO Koenig spoke with Sergeant Brown and Corporal Drummond about the stop and resulting search of the Lexus. (Id. at 204.) According to TFO Koenig's testimony, the officers only informed him that Ms. Guzman had consented to the search of the car; they made no mention of Mr. Carrion-Soto's consent. (Id. at 206.)
After speaking with Sergeant Brown and Corporal Drummond, TFO Koenig had a brief conversation with Mr. Carrion-Soto. When TFO Koenig asked the defendant if he had been read his Miranda warnings, the defendant confirmed that one of the deputies read him his rights from a yellow card and that he understood his Miranda rights and wanted to cooperate. (Id. at 207-08.) According to TFO Koenig, Mr. Carrion-Soto stated that the cocaine was his but that the heroin had been placed in his suitcase by someone else without his permission. (Id. at 209.) Mr. Carrion-Soto reiterated his interest in cooperating with the government, and TFO Koenig informed him that the DEA would make the Court aware of any cooperation he provided. (Id. at 209-210.)
2. DEA Interview
After this brief conversation with the defendant at the scene of the traffic stop, TFO Koenig placed Mr. Carrion-Soto in the front seat of his car to transport him to the DEA offices for a full interview. (Id. at 211.) TFO Koenig and Mr. Carrion-Soto were the only people in the car when TFO Koenig transported him to the DEA office, and the defendant remained handcuffed during this ten- to fifteen-minute drive. (Id. at 211-12.) TFO Koenig testified that while he was being transported to the DEA office, Mr. Carrion-Soto expressed agitation over the fact that someone placed heroin in his luggage. (Id. at 212.) TFO Koenig also testified that he made no threats or promises to the defendant during this time. (Id.)
At the DEA office, Mr. Carrion-Soto was taken to an interrogation room, where his handcuffs were removed. (Id. at 212-13.) TFO Koenig testified that he did not re-read the defendant his Miranda warnings because they had not taken an extended break. (Id. at 214.) Over the course of a one-and-a-half- to two-hour interview at which two other DEA employees were present, Mr. Carrion-Soto described his New Jersey-based drug dealing in significant detail, accounting for sales of approximately eighty kilograms of cocaine. (Id. at 214-18.) TFO Koenig testified that the defendant was not permitted to accept calls on his cellular telephone during the interview, but that he made three calls at the direction of law enforcement officers and he permitted the officers to monitor those calls. (Id. at 219.) According to TFO Koenig, during the interview, the law enforcement officers did not threaten Mr. Carrion-Soto or make promises regarding the effect of his cooperation. (Id.)
TFO Koenig testified that, after interviewing Mr. Carrion-Soto, the DEA officers determined that his cooperation would be most helpful to the New Jersey office of the DEA, since the officers there were already aware of him and his drug-related activities. (Id. at 219-20.) Accordingly, it was determined that the defendant would be returned to the custody of the Florence County Sheriff's Office pending his appearance before a Florence County magistrate judge. (Id. at 220.) Mr. Carrion-Soto was instructed to contact DEA Special Agent Timothy Beach ("SA Beach") upon his return to New Jersey, and was provided SA Beach's telephone number. (Id.) TFO Koenig admitted under cross-examination that at the end of the interview, he stated to the defendant regarding his cooperation, "If you f*** me on this, you'll regret it for the rest of your life." (Id. at 226.)
After the DEA interview, Mr. Carrion-Soto was charged with violating South Carolina controlled substances laws and incarcerated before appearing before the magistrate judge. On June 23, 2006, the defendant appeared before the magistrate and was released on a personal recognizance bond in order to return to New Jersey.
3. Statements to SA Beach
At the October 22, 2007 hearing, SA Beach testified that at 11:00 p.m. on June 23, 2006, he received a telephone call from Mr. Carrion-Soto. (Tr. 8.) By this time Mr. Carrion-Soto had been released on bail and had returned to New Jersey on his own recognizance. During the call, which lasted five minutes, Mr. Carrion-Soto reiterated his interest in cooperating with the government and provided SA Beach with detailed information regarding other drug traffickers with whom he had dealings in Cumberland County, New Jersey. (Id. at 9-10.) SA Beach testified that he did not read the defendant his Miranda warnings or otherwise discuss the defendant's constitutional rights during this call because he was not in custody or under arrest. (Id. at 9.) SA Beach further testified that during the telephone call, he made no threats, promises, or predictions to the defendant regarding his cooperation and employed no tricks or deception. (Id. at 11.) SA Beach informed the defendant that he would be contacted early the following week to arrange a meeting with DEA investigators. (Id. at 12.)
On June 27, 2007, SA Beach telephoned the defendant and instructed him to meet the DEA officers in the parking lot behind the Wal-Mart in Hamilton, New Jersey. (Id. at 13.) Mr. Carrion-Soto arrived at the parking lot in the blue Lexus, where SA Beach and two other law enforcement officers were waiting. (Id. at 14.) SA Beach testified that when the defendant saw the three officers waiting, he "put his head down" and stated that he recognized Detective Gami Cruz, but when asked by SA Beach whether he was still interested in speaking with the officers, he answered affirmatively. (Id. at 15.) Mr. Carrion-Soto was asked to follow SA Beach's car to the DEA office, and the three law enforcement officers and the defendant each drove separately to the office in Northfield, New Jersey, which was located approximately thirty minutes from Hamilton. (Id. at 16.) At the DEA office, Mr. Carrion-Soto was patted down to ensure that he was unarmed, and was taken to a conference room for the interview. (Id. at 17, 33.)
SA Beach testified that the interview at the Northfield office lasted for two hours. (Id. at 18.) The interview was attended by SA Beach, four additional law enforcement officers, and Assistant United States Attorney Diana Carrig, who informed the defendant that she was an attorney but otherwise did not speak during the interview. (Id. at 17, 35.) At the beginning of the interview, the defendant started to cry, stating that he was upset because of the risk that his cooperation posed to his children. (Id. at 18.) According to SA Beach's testimony, the officers offered Mr. Carrion-Soto water and excused themselves from the room in order to give him the opportunity to collect himself, and a few minutes later, the defendant informed the officers that he was prepared to continue the interview. (Id. at 18-19.) During the interview, the defendant provided detailed information about his drug trafficking activities in New Jersey. (Id. at 19.) Mr. Carrion-Soto was not handcuffed during the interview, and, according to SA Beach's testimony, he was "free to leave at any time." (Id. at 20-21.) SA Beach testified that no one spoke with Mr. Carrion-Soto about his constitutional rights because, according to SA Beach, he was not in custody or under arrest. (Id. at 17.) At the end of the two-hour interview, Mr. Carrion-Soto was photographed and fingerprinted. (Id. at 42-45.) This information was taken, according to SA Beach, in order for the DEA to process the defendant's "confidential source establishment package." (Id. at 43.) Although the defendant had subsequent dealings with SA Beach and other DEA agents, the Government does not seek to introduce any statements made by the after the June 27, 2006 interview.
B. Mr. Carrion-Soto's Testimony
Mr. Carrion-Soto testified about his recollection of the events in question, and his account differed in several respects from those of the Government's witnesses. First, the defendant's testimony about the June 22, 2006 traffic stop is at odds with the accounts of Corporal Drummond Sergeant Brown with regard to several facts. According to Mr. Carrion-Soto's recollection, after the Lexus stopped on the side of Interstate 95, Corporal Drummond asked Ms. Guzman to exit the Lexus before asking for her license and vehicle registration. (Id. at 93.) He asked the defendant to find the vehicle registration information after Ms. Guzman had exited the vehicle, and once Mr. Carrion-Soto opened the glove compartment, Corporal Drummond observed the stack of United States currency and asked Mr. Carrion-Soto to exit the vehicle. (Id. at 93.) With both Ms. Guzman and Mr. Carrion-Soto out of the vehicle, and without seeking Mr. Carrion-Soto's consent, Corporal Drummond began searching the vehicle. (Id. at 94-95.) He discovered the suitcase in the trunk within two to three minutes, and without asking for the defendant's consent, opened the suitcase and ...
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- I think I'm going to try the Holy Nova glyph. Although the PoH one
delivers better HPS, I just don't know if I use that spell enough to
make it worthwhile.
I won the Robes of Mutation last night, a nice upgrade from the
Spellweave Robe. Unbuffed I'm at 25% crit, so now it's time to start
looking for some more haste. I'm hoping for some new pants as the one
Khaeli wears now are abysmal.
I had a really great conversation with our guild leader last night
about being Discipline. He agreed that there are still folks who don't
understand how Discipline works but assured me I shouldn't worry.
I wasn't last on the healing meters last night. Hooray for gear
upgrades. Boo for slacker healers that get beaten by a Disc Priest.
I am still working on overcoming my reluctance to use Pain Suppression
on the tanks. I did cast it more last night — during Loatheb and
during the insect swarm on Anub'Rekhan.
Continued lag, latency, and disconnect issues are frustrating. Nonethless, I
actually lived through the Heigan fight last night despite wretched FPS.
- Kaleyen respecced back to DW with the fix to Howling Blast. Seeing his name on the top of the DPS charts makes me proud.


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The Times of India | Somdatta Basu | TNN | Mar 14, 2017 |
KOLKATA: If you thought the saffron landslide in the recent assembly polls will prompt Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to mend her relations with the Centre, think again. Mamata sticks to her "state first" policy and allows her officers to attend meetings in Delhi on a case-to-case basis, the bottomline being Bengal's interests. For instance, she has allowed state higher education secretary Vivek Kumar to attend an MHRD meeting in Delhi on Tuesday and oppose the Centre's proposal to introduce a single national-level entry test for engineering courses from 2018 on the lines of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical entrance. Earlier, she also allowed state tourism secretary Ajit Ranjan Bardhan to take up tourism project plans worth Rs 90 crore with his Union counterpart Vinod Zutshi. On the contrary, state officials kept mum during a video conference with railway minister Suresh Prabhu earlier this month on railway security. "This has nothing to do with polls. Our CM doesn't budge on issues where she feels the Centre is intruding upon the state's jurisdiction," a Nabanna official said.
The reason behind sending Kumar is to oppose the "one nation, one test" proposal because the state feels such a policy doesn't go well with the Constitution's "unity in diversity" model. "We will strongly oppose the proposal since we believe it will be detrimental to the future of our students and expansion policy. There needs to be many more rounds of discussions and the Centre can't arbitrarily impose their decision on us. We have entrusted Vivek Kumar to put forward our concern and demands," said higher education minister Partha Chatterjee. Bengal wants to retain West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination -entry exam for the engineering and technology colleges in the state -against the MHRD proposal. The Centre has plans to conduct a similar test for admission to courses in architecture and hotel management as well. The state higher education secretary may flag the dissent with reference to the disparity in science curriculum between the states, the reservation for students from Bengal and also the language problem often faced by state candidates in case the national level test is held in any language other than Bengali. "Education is in the Concurrent List. The Centre can't impose its views on states. Instead, the MHRD should consult educationists and take their views into account before arriving at a conclusion," the minister said. The state is also reportedly reluctant to accept the proposal of single engineering admission test because it is only recently that the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination Board was revamped and full term appointments to the post of chairman was made. A legislation was also brought in the assembly to give an entity to the WBJEEB. However, back home, the government wants state universities to follow a common syllabus in undergraduate and postgraduate programme when the academia wants universities to have the elbow room to decide on the syllabus.- Courtesy


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Trash Treasures of New York City
If you've seen, read or heard of "Mommie Dearest," you know Joan Crawford is infamous for physically and verbally abusing her four adopted children. It's a bit of a chilling story. So when I went on a Park Avenue garbage removal job and found (what I think are) 1966 signed head shots and a news clipping documenting her daughter's wedding, in which she was the matron of honor, I was a pretty fascinated.
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Ice IX Malware is an offspring of the notorious Zeus malware. It is like a tweaked version of it. This Trojan malware is being used by cybercriminals to steal personal and financial information. It largely targets your identity information, email passwords and your online bank accounts. Ice IX can take hold of displayed information , subject matter or content in a browser that is being used for online banking websites. These planted web forms are used to extricate banking information and other sensitive security identity documentation. One notable improvement of this malware ,is that it has defense mechanism. This defense mechanism dodges tracker sites.. In other words it would be difficult to catch these cybercriminals.
Once the fake form is submitted, the malware sends the important information to the authors using instant messaging protocol. Once this procedure is finished, it becomes a done deal. The cybercriminals can do what they wish. This new variation can trick anyone to reveal their credit card details. They can target your login and passwords on social media networking. What they want really to acquire are your telephone numbers.. This is more important to them because if they get your phone numbers they can divert and redirect transaction from the bank.
Things are very different now because these cybercriminals are using the automation process. This makes it so easy for them to fool anyone so that they can give up their phone numbers. The banks may have all kinds of sophisticated machines to detect fraud but it becomes useless. It really boils down to phone numbers because once the bank calls, all the hacker has to do is say ok and the transaction is done.The reason for this is that banks do not give much attention by validating users through call centers or other phone channels that may be useful to them. Call centers are better because they can validate the customers by asking a lot of pertinent questions.