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Despite the prevalence of vocal mimicry in animals, few functions for this behaviour have been shown. I propose a novel hypothesis that false mimicked alarm calls could be used deceptively to scare other species and steal their food. Studies have previously suggested that animals use their own species-specific alarm calls to steal food. However none have shown conclusively that these false alarms are deceptive, or that mimicked alarm calls are used in this manner. Here, I show that wild fork-tailed drongos (Dicrurus adsimilis) make both drongo-specific and mimicked false alarm calls when watching target species handling food, in response to which targets flee to cover abandoning their food. The drongo-specific and mimicked calls made in false alarms were structurally indistinguishable from calls made during true alarms at predators by drongos and other species. Furthermore, I demonstrate by playback experiments that two of these species, meerkats (Suricata suricatta) and pied babblers (Turdoides bicolor), are deceived by both drongo-specific and mimicked false alarm calls. These results provide the first conclusive evidence that false alarm calls are deceptive and demonstrate a novel function for vocal mimicry. This work also provides valuable insight into the benefits of deploying variable mimetic signals in deceptive communication.
1. Introduction
Many animals mimic the vocalizations of other species [1,2], yet there is little evidence of a function for this behaviour [3,4]. Hypotheses suggest that vocal mimicry may be used in interspecific communication to manipulate the behaviour of other species to the advantage of the vocal mimic (reviewed by [4]). In support of this, studies have found that phainopeplas (Phainopepla nitens) recruit other bird species to mob predators by mimicking calls [5], and that racket-tailed drongos (Dicrurus paradiseus) form foraging partnerships with species attracted by their mimetic vocalizations [6]. Perhaps the best evidence of a function for vocal mimicry indicates that it is used deceptively by cuckoos whose chicks mimic the begging calls of host species, thus allowing them to evade rejection by host parents [7]. One novel possibility is that false mimicked alarm calls may be used deceptively as part of a repertoire of alarm calls to scare and then steal food from (or kleptoparasitize) other species. Mimicry could be particularly advantageous in this system, since deceptive signals typically become ineffective when made too frequently relative to honest signals [8] and by changing their false alarm calls, a species could maintain deception.
Several studies have suggested that species use their own species-specific false alarm calls to steal food [9–12]. However, none have conclusively demonstrated that the calls are deceptive, or that mimicked calls are used. In a classic study, Munn [9] suggested that false alarm calls were used deceptively by two kleptoparasitic bird species, white-winged shrike tanagers (Lanio versicolor) and bluish-slate antshrikes (Thamnomanes scistogynus), when attacking individuals to steal their food. However, it was recently suggested that calls given during these attacks could be interpreted as aggressive signals rather than alarm signals [12]. Wheeler [11] suggested that alarm calls were used deceptively by tufted capuchins (Cebus apella nigritus) to steal food, but the proposed alarm call type made in false alarms was also a call type made in social dominance interactions, while other alarm-specific vocalizations were not made in false contexts. Furthermore, this study did not test whether the intended targets showed a similar alarm response to true and false calls, which would indicate that the alarms were deceptive [13]. It therefore remains to be shown that false alarms are used deceptively or that mimicked alarm calls are deployed in this context.
To conclusively demonstrate that false alarm calls (both species-specific and mimicked) are deceptive, it must be shown that: (i) false alarms are specific to deceptive contexts and are rarely if ever made in direct physical attacks on targets; (ii) the type of calls made in true alarms at predators are the same as the types of calls made in false alarms to scare target species and steal their food; and (iii) that the target species react with a similar alarm response to playbacks of alarm calls originally recorded in a true or false context.
Fork-tailed drongos are medium-small passerines (50 g) that principally forage alone, hawking insects from a perch or flying to the ground to catch larger food such as lizards and crickets [14,15]. However, they also follow other species, including pied babblers and meerkats, catching food that the species flush as they forage, and occasionally kleptoparasitize food directly from them [14,16]. Previous studies of interactions between pied babblers and fork-tailed drongos have also suggested that drongos make alarm calls during kleptoparasitism [17]. Drongo species, including fork-tailed drongos, are renowned vocal mimics and the racket-tailed drongo is known to mimic alarm calls [18,19], a behaviour which has also been anecdotally reported for the fork-tailed drongo [18]. In this study, I therefore investigate whether fork-tailed drongos employ their own and mimicked false alarm calls in kleptoparasitism and test the three predictions outlined above to determine whether these false alarm calls are deceptive.
2. Methods
(a) Study site and population
I collected data during two field seasons from March 2008 to July 2008, and April 2009 to September 2009 on a wild population of fork-tailed drongos located in an area of xeric savannah in the South African Kalahari Desert (26°58′ S, 21°49′ E). Details of the habitat and climate have been published elsewhere [20]. The study population consisted of 50 drongos habituated to close observation (less than 5 m), that had been captured and given individually unique colour rings. The drongo study populations' range overlapped with the territories of 11 meerkat and 10 pied babbler groups, with which the drongos associated during the study period. Meerkat groups ranged in size from 5 to 27 individuals and pied babbler groups from 3 to 14 individuals. The meerkats and babblers at the study site are both the subject of ongoing scientific studies. Consequently, they were habituated to close observation (less than 2 m) and were individually recognizable by unique dye marks on their fur or unique colour rings, respectively. Drongos were also observed interacting with 18 other bird species. To avoid disturbing behavioural interactions with these unhabituated species, observations were made at a distance of approximately 30 m with binoculars. The species drongos targeted foraged in the open on the ground and it was therefore possible to see the behaviour of both the drongo under observation and the species that they interacted with at all times.
(b) Drongo kleptoparasitic foraging strategies
To determine what strategies drongos used in kleptoparasitism and what proportion of their food they obtained from kleptoparasitism, I conducted 294 approximately 1 h focal observations (55 ± 1 min; mean ± 1 s.e.) on 25 specific drongo individuals. A minimum of six focals were collected per drongo (mean total observation time per drongo: 10.47 h, range: 4.02–20.10) between March 2008 and July 2008. During focal observations I recorded the time drongos spent foraging when alone and when following target species, defined as watching the species at a distance of less than 20 m. I also recorded all foraging attempts; whether the drongo was foraging alone or attempting to kleptoparasitize a food item found by a target individual of another species; and what strategy drongos employed in kleptoparasitism. Drongos used two strategies to kleptoparasitize food: (i) attack, the drongo flew directly at a target that was handling a food item and chased or attacked it; and (ii) call from perch, the drongo called from a perch while watching a target that was handling a food item, in response to which the target commonly fled to cover abandoning the food. In all cases, I recorded whether the foraging attempt was successful. Food items were categorized by size relative to drongo bill length; the corresponding wet mass of items of these sizes has been previously established [21] which enabled the calculation of food mass intake per hour for each focal observation.
(c) Defining true and false alarms
During focal observations I recorded all calls made by the focal drongos, other ringed drongos associating with them, and the species that focal drongos were following, from a distance of 2–30 m using a Sennheiser ME67 shotgun microphone coupled to a Marantz PMD660 digital recorder (sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and 16 bit resolution). When a drongo or other species made a call I recorded its behaviour. On 190 occasions drongos fled to cover in a tree or to a high perch while calling. When they did so, I interpreted these calls as true alarms, and observed an approaching predator (raptors, owls, foxes and mongoose species) on 98/190 occasions. On 258 occasions drongos made calls in 'call from perch' type kleptoparasitism; the drongos never fled to cover or to a high perch, and I never saw a predator, I interpreted these calls as false alarms. On 128 occasions an individual of another species (17 species) made a call when a known predatory species came into view, and the alarming species additionally fled to cover and/or watched the predator from a high perch. I interpreted these as true alarms by these species. When drongos made true and false alarm calls while following target species I recorded whether the majority (more than 50%) of individuals of the target species fled to cover while the drongo was making alarm calls. I measured the duration of all drongo alarms from the first to the last call given by the alarming individual from recordings displayed in Cool Edit Pro (v. 2.0). Finally, I calculated the frequency of true alarm calls given per focal individual when foraging alone and the frequency of both true and false alarms given when following other species.
(d) Comparison of true and false alarm calls
(i) Drongo-specific alarm calls
Direct attacks during kleptoparasitism were typically accompanied by 'kerrr' mob calls (95 ± 2% of attacks per drongo, n = 23 drongos). Kerrr mob calls were also made in 27 ± 6% of 'call from perch' kleptoparasitism attempts per drongo (n = 27), but since this call type is given frequently during attacks it could be interpreted as an aggressive signal rather than an alarm signal, consequently these were not considered to be false alarms and were excluded from analyses (see electronic supplementary material, S1 for sonograms of kerrr mob calls). All other alarm call types were very rarely made in kleptoparasitism involving direct attacks (mean 4 ± 1%, range 0–12% attacks per drongo, n = 17). Drongos made a wide variety of alarm call types during both true and false alarms [22]. Of these, six were considered drongo-specific alarm calls since they were recorded from at least 20 of 25 focal drongos, were the call types most likely to be made in both true and false alarms, and were never recorded from other species.
To determine whether drongo-specific alarm calls were the same when made in true and false alarms, I compared structural components of one of the drongo-specific alarm calls, the 'chink' call, when made by the same drongo in true and false alarms (figure 1a–c). The chink alarm call type was chosen because sufficient recordings were available for this call when made in both a true and false alarm by the same drongo. It is also one of the most commonly made calls in both true (25 ± 5%, n = 26 drongos) and false alarms (11 ± 3%, n = 27 drongos); and is rarely made in attacks (4 ± 2%, n = 23 drongos). All true chink alarm calls were made in response to flying raptors (pale chanting goshawk (Melierax canurus), gabar goshawk (Melierax gabar) and black shouldered kite (Elanus axillaris)), and all false chink alarm calls were made in 'call from perch' kleptoparasitism attempts. Only high quality calls were used, defined as having high amplitude relative to background noise and no overlap with other sounds. True and false chink calls were available for 12 individual drongos. Calls were displayed in spectrograms using the program Avisoft SASLab Pro (v. 4.53) (see electronic supplementary material, S1 for details). Measurements were made on five parameters: (i) duration (ms); (ii) call frequency range, calculated as the maximum peak frequency measurement from the entire call minus the minimum peak frequency measurement (Hz); (iii) peak frequency (Hz); (iv) Wiener entropy (at peak frequency), which is a measure of the randomness of sounds where 1 = random noise and 0 = pure tone; and (v) frequency change, calculated as peak frequency at the end of a call minus peak frequency at the start of the call (Hz). Chink calls were composed of two syllables and measurements were taken from both. The first syllable was harmonic and measurements were made on the fifth harmonic since this was the location of the peak frequency in all calls. Data were analysed in a paired MANOVA.
(ii) Mimicked alarm calls
In addition to drongo-specific alarm calls, drongos made a number of alarm calls that appeared to be mimicry of true alarm calls made in response to predators by other species, including glossy starlings (Lamprotornis nitens), crowned plovers (Vanellus coronatus) and pied babblers (figure 1d–f). To determine whether drongos made mimicked alarm calls in false contexts, I compared the structural components of one of the suspected false mimic alarm calls made by drongos with true alarm calls of that model species. The mimicked alarm calls of glossy starlings were selected because sufficient high quality recordings of true alarms by glossy starlings were available. They are also the most frequently mimicked call per drongo in false alarms (9 ± 4%, n = 27); and are rarely made in attacks per drongo (1 ± 1%, n = 23). The 10 highest quality false mimicked alarm calls of glossy starlings made by different drongos were selected for comparison with 10 true alarm calls made by glossy starlings in response to raptor species. To reduce the likelihood that the glossy starling true alarm calls were from the same individual, recordings were made at locations at least 800 m apart (location was recorded using a Garmin Etrex GPS). Calls were displayed in spectrograms and measurements were taken from them for the same five parameters previously defined in the drongo-specific call analysis. Data were analysed in a MANOVA.
(e) Experimental playback of true and false alarm calls
(i) Drongo-specific alarm calls
Playback experiments were undertaken to determine whether the species that drongos steal food from respond to drongo-specific alarm calls, and whether they distinguish between drongo-specific true and false alarms. I created 11 exemplars each comprising three different calls made by the same drongo to avoid pseudoreplication of my playback stimulus [23]. Details of how exemplars were made can be found in the electronic supplementary material, S1. The three calls were: (i) a true chink alarm call, (ii) a false chink alarm call, and (iii) a non-alarm call, and the order in which these were played was randomized in a block structure. The non-alarm calls were made in the absence of predators and appeared to function as territorial calls, since the same call was repeatedly made at approximately 20 s intervals from a perch and drongos on neighbouring territories typically responded by matching these calls (see electronic supplementary material, S1 for sonograms of non-alarm calls). I played each call, with a 20 minute interval between calls, to a specific meerkat or pied babbler that I had provisioned with a food item and recorded its response. Meerkats were provisioned with a live scorpion (of genus Opistophthalamus) collected at the field site and handled with tongs; meerkats commonly eat scorpions. Pied babblers were presented with three mealworms impaled on a thorn to increase handling time since the babbler had to remove them before eating. When the individual meerkat or pied babbler contacted the food item, the playback of a call was begun using a Marantz PMD 660 solid state recorder coupled to a Pignose 7–100 speaker placed on a tripod (1.2 m high), and concealed by a tree or bush 5 m from the meerkat or pied babbler. Playback amplitude was standardized at 80.3 db at 3 m, which was the mean amplitude of alarm calls given in response to a hawk glider model (see electronic supplementary material, S1 for details). Playbacks were undertaken only when group members were engaged in foraging, and at least 5 min after any natural alarm or group disturbance. The duration of the alarm response (seconds), timed from when the meerkat or pied babbler stopped handling the food item (scanned area or fled to cover) to when it resumed foraging, was recorded using a stopwatch. I also recorded whether the meerkat or pied babbler abandoned the food item, defined as dropping the food and moving greater than 1 m towards cover (a bolt hole, or thick vegetation, respectively). Drongos are able to steal food even if it is dropped only for an instant and directly next to the target individual (T. Flower 2008, personal observations), so these are conservative conditions that would enable them to steal a food item from a target. Playbacks were made to 22 meerkats in 11 groups, and 20 pied babblers in 10 groups (two individuals per group) and there was a two-week break between experimentation on the first and second individual at a group. Each exemplar was used twice, but never at the same group and no call type was played in the same order position twice at the same group.
(ii) Mimicked alarm calls
Playback experiments were undertaken to determine whether the species targeted by drongos respond to false mimicked alarm calls made by drongos and whether they differentiate between the drongos' false mimicked alarm calls and the true alarm calls of the species mimicked. I created 10 exemplars comprising four different calls: (i) a drongo false mimicked alarm call of a glossy starling, (ii) a true alarm call of a glossy starling, (iii) a drongo non-alarm call, and (iv) a glossy starling non-alarm call. Drongo non-alarm calls were recorded in the same context as for the drongo-specific alarm call playbacks; glossy non-alarm calls were recorded from individual glossy starlings in the absence of predators as they foraged, at locations at least 800 m apart (see electronic supplementary material, S1 for sonograms of non-alarm calls). The four calls were played at 20 min intervals to a meerkat or pied babbler that had been provisioned with a food item and the duration of alarm response and whether the food item was abandoned were recorded. Experimental playback techniques were identical to those outlined in the drongo-specific alarm call playback experiment with the exception of the preparation of the exemplars used in playbacks (see electronic supplementary material, S1 for details). Playbacks were undertaken to 20 meerkats in 10 groups and 20 pied babblers in 10 groups.
(f) Statistical analyses
Multifactorial analyses involved repeated sampling of individuals or exemplars. Therefore, to determine what factors affect the response time of meerkats and pied babblers to calls and whether or not a target individual abandoned a food item, linear mixed models (LMMs) and generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) were undertaken, respectively (see electronic supplementary material, S1 for further details). Shapiro–Wilk tests were used to determine if data were distributed normally and Levene's tests were used to ensure the homogeneity of variances of the data. When appropriate, non-parametric statistics were used. For Fisher's tests, Wilcoxon signed rank tests and t-tests, two-tailed p-values are quoted. All analyses were undertaken using Genstat 10.0 (Lawes Agricultural Trust, Rothamsted, Harpenden, UK), except Levene's tests which were undertaken in Minitab 15.0 (Minitab Ltd. Coventry, UK).
3. Results
(a) False alarm call use in kleptoparasitism and the response of target species
Drongos (n = 25) spent 27 ± 3% of their foraging time following target species including pied babblers (mean 15% following time, range 0–68%) and less frequently, meerkats (mean 1% following time, range 0–7%). When following target species, drongos kleptoparasitized food items from them including insect larvae, reptiles, scorpions and crickets, contributing an average 22 ± 4% to biomass intake per focal drongo. Sometimes drongos stole food by attacking targets (52 ± 8% of kleptoparasitisms). However, in 48 ± 8% of kleptoparasitisms drongos made false alarm calls from a perch when a target was handling a food item. In 31 ± 5% of these false alarms drongos exclusively made drongo-specific alarm calls; in 42 ± 6% drongos exclusively made suspected mimicked alarm calls; and in 27 ± 6% drongos made a combination of both drongo-specific and suspected mimicked alarm calls. Target individuals fled to cover in response to false alarm calls in 211/258 (82%) cases, leaving their food behind on 140/258 (54%) occasions, enabling the drongo to fly down and steal it. These false alarms not only influenced the target, but also other group members, which also fled to cover in 110/183 (60%) cases where their response was recorded. This was similar to their response to true alarms made by drongos when following target species (79/104 cases, 75%). Although group members were less likely to respond to drongo false alarms than drongo true alarms (Fisher's test: p = 0.005), there are several probable explanations for this. Firstly, some target individuals may only respond to sustained alarms and the mean duration of false alarms (4.12 ± 1.33 s) was shorter than true alarms (27.09 ± 5.34 s) (Wilcoxon test: W21 = 26, p < 0.001, n = 22), since drongos ceased calling when food was obtained; and secondly, target species sometimes scan the area in response to alarm calls [15] and may only continue to flee to cover if a predator is seen.
False alarm calls were unlikely to be accidental alarm calls given coincidentally when target species found food, since drongos gave more alarms when following target species than when they foraged alone (paired t-test: T24 = −10.16, p < 0.001, n = 25 drongos). This was a consequence of the false alarms made in kleptoparasitism; more false alarms (3.48 ± 0.28 alarms per hour) were made than true alarms by drongos (1.04 ± 0.14 alarms per hour) when following target species (paired t-test: T24 = 5.77, p < 0.001, n = 25 drongos), while there was no change in the frequency of true alarms made when following compared with when foraging alone (1.31 ± 0.11 alarms per hour) (paired t-test: T24 = 1.79, p = 0.086, n = 25 drongos).
(b) Structural comparison of true and false alarm calls
Structural comparison of drongo-specific chink alarm calls revealed that they were not significantly different when recorded in true and false alarms made by the same individual (paired MANOVA: F2,10 = 0.92, p = 0.627, n = 12). Furthermore, the structure of mimicked glossy starling alarm calls made by drongos in false alarms was not significantly different from that of true alarm calls made by glossy starlings in response to predators (MANOVA: F5,14 = 2.01, p = 0.140, n = 20). Drongos therefore appear to make both drongo-specific and mimicked alarm calls in false alarms.
(c) Experimental playback of true and false alarm calls
In the drongo-specific alarm call playback experiment, the response time of meerkats and pied babblers to true or false alarm calls did not significantly differ, but were significantly longer than to non-alarm calls (figure 2a,c); further statistics for analyses of playback experiments are located in figures 1 and 2, and see electronic supplementary material, S2. Meerkats were not more likely to abandon food in response to either true or false alarm calls, but were more likely to do so than in response to non-alarm calls (figure 2b). A similar pattern was observed for pied babblers, but there were no significant differences in the likelihood that food was abandoned between calls (figure 2d). In the mimicked alarm call playback experiment the response time of meerkats and pied babblers to either true glossy starling or false drongo-mimic alarm calls did not differ, but both were significantly longer than in response to non-alarm calls (figure 3a,c). Furthermore, meerkats and pied babblers did not differ in the likelihood they abandoned food in response to the true glossy starling and false drongo-mimic alarm calls, but were more likely to do so in response to these calls than to non-alarm calls (figure 3b,d). It therefore appears that both meerkats and pied babblers are deceived by drongo-specific and mimicked false alarm calls.
4. Discussion
These results support the three criteria outlined in this study; firstly, drongo false alarm calls were specifically made in kleptoparasitism and rarely made in non-alarm contexts; secondly, the drongo-specific and mimicked calls made by drongos in false alarms were the same as those made in true alarms by drongos and other species; thirdly, target species alarmed in response to both true and false drongo-specific and mimicked alarm calls, which caused them to abandon their food. Previous studies have indicated that false alarm calls are used to steal food, but have not disentangled the function of the supposed false alarm calls made in kleptoparasitism or demonstrated that targets respond similarly to true and false alarm calls [11,12]. Consequently, this is the first study to show that false alarms are functionally deceptive and also demonstrates a novel function for vocal mimicry.
Animals commonly eavesdrop on the alarm calls of other species in their environment [6,24,25] and drongos appear to exploit this behaviour by using deceptive alarm calls to steal food from target species [16]. These deceptive alarm calls are likely to work because the cost to target species of ignoring drongo true alarms is greater than the cost of responding to false alarms [9,26]. However, deceptive signals typically become ineffective when made too frequently relative to their honest counterpart [8,27]. This could explain why pied babblers did not abandon their food in response to playbacks of drongo-specific chink alarms, one of the most frequently made false alarm calls. Conversely, they did abandon food in response to playback of mimicked glossy starling alarms. Vocal mimicry could therefore have large adaptive benefits in this system as drongos could change their alarm call type when their own drongo-specific calls become ineffective.
A fascinating study by Sheppard [28] revealed that frequencies of visually mimetic butterfly species in the natural environment correlated with those of distasteful model species. By analogy, we may expect drongos to reach an equilibrium point where the frequency with which they vocally mimic the alarm calls of other species reflects the natural occurrence of the model alarm call. However, alarms may vary in their reliability, drongos are likely to differ in their call repertoires and individuals may strategically adjust their alarms to match target species, or even make some call types infrequently to maintain their efficacy. Further investigation of drongo call use could therefore provide valuable insights into the strategies employed by signallers in deceptive communication.
Fork-tailed drongos appear to use a comparatively sophisticated deceptive trick, since they strategically make alarms in both honest and dishonest contexts. However, while drongo false alarms are functionally deceptive [29,30] this behaviour is likely to result from trial and error or social learning mechanisms, rather than from an understanding of how to manipulate the mental states of others, termed tactical deception [31,32]. Juvenile drongos commonly accompanied adults that were stealing food using false alarms and subsequently made false alarms themselves. Furthermore, the racket-tailed drongo is known to learn the alarm calls of other species, employing these in true alarm contexts [19], and fork-tailed drongos also appear to do this (Flower in preparation). Further investigation of deceptive signal use by animals could improve our understanding of the evolution of cognitive processes that underlie such apparently complex behaviour.
Access to the study site and meerkats was kindly provided by the Kalahari Research Trust, T. Clutton-Brock and M. Manser. A. Ridley greatly helped in the establishment of the drongo study population and provided access to the pied babblers. The Department of Environment and Conservation for Northern Province, SA provided authorization for my work (FAUNA 270/2008) and the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute, University of Cape Town provided ethical permission (2010/V20/TF). I thank N. Davies for supervision and M. Nelson-Flower, E. Goodale, M. Bell, A. Thornton, M. Gribble and A. Radford for their help and advice. R. Magrath kindly provided experimental glider designs and I am very grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments. My work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.
- Received September 8, 2010.
- Accepted October 13, 2010.
- This Journal is © 2010 The Royal Society


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subset: commoncrawl


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Small Space Home Office Inspiration from Room & Board
Last week home furnishings retailer, Room & Board, invited us to their massive Culver City showroom to preview their Fall accessories line, showcasing a mix of classic and modern timeless designs. We were there specifically to check out what was available for small space dwellers looking to maximize their home office space, and surprisingly, there was plenty to browse and inspire for anyone looking to create a workspace in unexpected spaces...
Believe it or not, some of the best small space home office/desk solutions were discovered in the children's section of the showroom. Desks like the compact and customizable Moda.
If you're really strapped for space and use a laptop, a leaning desk unit could be a practical choice, thanks to a small footprint and usable vertical storage. The Pisa 92h Leaning Desk offers just enough room for a standard 15" laptop and a compact task light, with a few shelves overhead for storage. Place one of these alongside unused wall space, like in the bedroom, kitchen or even a hallway.
Task lighting galore, including the highly adjustable Peter Stathis designed, Link LED light. Other LED task lights available include the Brazo, Lim and sculptural Yves Behar Herman Miller Leaf (our favorite).
Oh, how we love Tivoli Audio. A whole spectrum of Tivoli Model One radios are available starting at a reasonable $150...an easy way to add both tech and splash of colorful design into the home office space without actually taking up much room. Now if they only would add Airplay compatibility to these compact units!
We're predicting some of you might be balking at the price of many of these pieces. But it's worth noting the vast majority of Minneapolis based Room & Board's products are made in the USA; 90% of their products are made in right here, and they told us they're aiming for 95% soon. That's impressive in a market where most retailers are lucky to be offering 25% domestically constructed furnishings, and thus the price reflects this philosophy of better for a little more, something we wholeheartedly endorse.


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Local professionals set 2014 goals
As we enter the new year, the Wapakoneta Daily News sought out several community leaders and asked them about their hopes and/or goals for 2014.
Allen Solomon, Auglaize County Sheriff "Work on the heroin issue that is combating the county through utilizing all the resources that we have available and through counseling." "We're starting a new sheriff's citizen's law enforcement academy that we hope will be held in January and will be held annually after that. The academy will have various instructors talk to citizens about what the sheriff's office does so that they can be educated. The hope is those people will educate others about what we do."
Steve Henderson, Wapakoneta City Council President "My goal for the city council going forward is that we work together as a cohesive team and do what's best for the citizens of Wapakoneta." "We have one new councilor, Rachel Barber, and I look forward to working with her and the rest of the council to do what's best for Wapakoneta."
Don Regula, Auglaize County Commissioner "We've got a couple projects that we started lasted year that we'd like to finish up." "We expect to have an open house for the dog kennel in late January, early February." "We're continuing to make improvements at the airport---we're planning to build a new terminal out there and a maintenance garage, as well as other improvements." "We bought a property east of the courthouse last year, and we want to get rid of that house and expand the parking lot there." "We started a salary survey for all county employees, and we hope that it will last for the next 10 years."
John Bergman, Auglaize County Commissioner "We're working with the city of Wapak to put a generator at the fairgrounds that will be used for an emergency shelter."
For the full story, see the Saturday, Jan. 4 edition of the Wapakoneta Daily News.


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Heart It Or Hate It: Britney Spears "Work Bitch!" Leaks!!
Nigel Campbell | September 15, 2013
Get out your headphones or find a club that's open because Britney's "Work Bitch!" has leaked and it's a club banger!
Who knows how long this link will work so listen while you can--though we have a feeling the track's going to be all over the radio today. Listen!
We're curious though--how many times can you say "bitch" on the radio on a Sunday??
What do you think of Britney's latest, Instincters?


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Faced with mounting criticism, Microsoft today quickly reversed course on some of the more draconian aspects of its coming Xbox One entertainment console. The firm will no longer require an always-on Internet connection and using and sharing games will work just as it does today on the Xbox 360.
Obviously, it pays to complain. These two changes were among the suggestions I made just days ago in How Microsoft Can Fix Xbox One. The question, of course, is whether this will silence the critics.
"Since unveiling our plans for Xbox One, my team and I have heard directly from many of you, read your comments and listened to your feedback," Don Mattrick, the president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business wrote in a new post to the Xbox Wire blog. "I would like to take the opportunity today to thank you for your assistance in helping us to reshape the future of Xbox One."
Here's what's changing.
Always-on Internet connection no longer required. Whileyou will need to be online during the initial set up of the Xbox One, you then can play any disc-based game without ever connecting online again. "There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360," the post notes. This suggests that those with always-on broadband connections will still be able to silently download updates in the background while the console is "off," and that those who purchase games electronically will need to connect online at least some of the time.
Game trade-ins, lending, reselling, gifting, and renting. Those who purchase disc-based games will be able to trade them in, lend them, resell them, gift them to others, or rent them just as they do today with Xbox 360 games. "There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360," Mattrick notes.
Electronic game purchases. If you choose to purchase games electronically,you will be able to play them offline just like you do today (after the game is fully downloaded). But downloaded game titles cannot be shared or resold.
Disc-based games. Those who purchase disc-based games will need to keep that game disc the tray, as is the case today with Xbox 360.
No region locking. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console, Microsoft says. There will be no regional restrictions.
These are some major changes. Personally, I preferred the original approach, but Microsoft was right to meet customers in the middle and provide a more well-rounded strategy that meets all needs.
What have they missed? (I mean, besides a $100 price decrease of course.)


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We all rely on electronic data that we expect to be secure from compromise. But developments in technology are occurring faster than we can articulate acceptable norms for conduct and ethical organizational and individual behavior. Who owns data? How can we verify accuracy of data and verify that data are authentic? What can you do when data about you are incorrect or misappropriated? What values for privacy, data sharing and ethical responsibility will we need? How can you protect your organization and its information? These are among the concerns of the 1997 ASIS Mid-Year Meeting.
Though changes in the program schedule continue to be made, the following highlights are current as this issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science is being prepared. For up-to-date information, session descriptions, schedule, registration information and more, please see the ASIS Web site at http://www.asis.org/midyear-97/ or contact ASIS directly.
Special and Plenary Sessions
Monday, June 2
Online Privacy and Free Speech: The Munitions Laws & You -- What's Happening with Personal
Information and Communications in the Digital Age?
Janlori Goldman, Deputy Director/co-founder, Center for Democracy and Technology
Internet Security -- The Good the Bad and the Ugly
Jeffrey I. Schiller is the Internet Engineering Steering group's (IESG) Area Director for Security and oversees security related Working Groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Online Property Rights
Lance Rose, Attorney; contributor to Wired
Update on the World Intellectual Property Organization
Tuesday, June 3
Emerging Legal and Public Policy Issues in Developing the National Health Information
Kathleen A. Frawley, director of the Washington, DC, office of the American Health Information Management Association
Wednesday, June 4
Information Security, Privacy and Data Integrity
Bob Frankston, co-creator of Visicalc, advanced technology projects in the next generation of software at Microsoft
Michael Lesk, Computer Science Research Department, Bellcore
Technical Program Sessions
Continuing Education/Professional Development
Saturday, May 31
Copyright and Intellectual Property in an Electronic World (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Mickie A. Voges,
Chicago Kent School of Law
Preparing for the Explosion of JAVA on the World Wide Web (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Micah Beck and Terry Moore, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Sunday, June 1
Harnessing New Technologies for Collaboration (1 p.m. to 5 p.m.), Micah Beck and Terry
Moore, University of. Tennessee-Knoxville
Introduction to Image Databases (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Howard Besser, University of Michigan
Building the Virtual "Intranet" Knowledge Center (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Howard McQueen, McQueen Associates
From Boolean/Thesaurus to Non-Boolean/ Free-Text Searching: An Information Survey in Historical Perspective (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Ev Brenner
Introduction to Computer and Network Security (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Michael R. Leach, Harvard University Applied Physics Library, and Geoffrey W. McKim, McKim Group
Data Communications: Understanding the Basics (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), James E. Rush, Palinet
ASIS Leadership Development Program: Meeting Facilitation (10 a.m. - Noon), Bonnie Carroll, Information International Associates
Friday, May 30
Sedona & Oak Creek Canyon
Saturday, May 31
Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West
The Heard Museum
Scottsdale Shopping
Sunday, June 1
Biosphere 2
Scottsdale Shopping
Tuesday, June 3
An Evening in the Old West - Rawhide
ASIS Conference Headquarters
The Radisson Resort Scottsdale is the location for all ASIS Mid-Year Meeting program sessions. This incredible facility boasts elegant appointments both inside and out. ASIS has arranged for a limited number of rooms to be available at extremely desirable rates for the Mid-Year Meeting. Make your reservations by May 5, 1997, and pay only $85 per room, single or double occupancy. For reservations, call 602/991-3800 or 1-800/333-3333; or write Radisson Resort Scottsdale, 7171 North Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85253-3696.
Governance Activities
In addition to the full schedule of technical and social events associated with the ASIS Mid-Year Meeting, the ASIS Board of Directors, numerous committees and several other governing bodies will meet during the Mid-Year Meeting. All ASIS members are invited and encouraged to attend any of the governance sessions and to let the leaders know if they would like to participate formally in any of the groups.
Governance Activities
Sunday, June 1
9 a.m. - Noon ASIS Board of Directors
10 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. Leadership Development Program
3:15 p.m. ASIS Officers Reports
3:30 p.m. Chapter/SIG Officer Workshop
4:30 p.m. SIG Cabinet
5:15 p.m. Chapter Assembly
Committee Meetings
Monday, June 2
12:30 p.m. Leadership
Continuing Education
6:30 p.m. Membership
Tuesday, June 3
12:30 p.m. Awards
Constitution and Bylaws
Wednesday, June 4
2:00 p.m. ASIS Board of Directors
Program Committee
The Technical Program Committee responsible for assembling the program for the 1997 ASIS Mid-Year Meeting is chaired by Gregory B. Newby, University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign, and Mark Needleman, University of California. Members of the committee are Karla Petersen, Loyola University, Chicago, and Ellen Sleeter, Morris Automated Information Network, Morristown, New Jersey.
For a quick look at the daily schedule for the upcoming Mid-Year Meeting, please turn to pages 6-8 of this issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science. For additional information about the meeting, please check the ASIS Mid-Year Meeting Web site at http://www.asis.org or contact ASIS at 8720 Georgia Avenue, Suite 501, Silver Spring, MD 20910; 301/495-0900.
Applicants Sought for Information Science Abstracts Research Grant
Documentation Abstracts, Inc. (DAI), owner/sponsor of the monthly abstracting and indexing publication, Information Science Abstracts (ISA), has announced the schedule for the awarding of the 1997 Information Science Abstracts (ISA) Research Grant of $1500. This grant is awarded annually by DAI to one or more information professionals to conduct a research project oriented toward the study of the primary or secondary literature of information science.
Applicants must submit a completed application package by August 31, 1997, outlining the scope and nature of the proposed project, providing evidence of an established methodology and a viable research design. Examples of possible topics for research include the use of information resources, comparison of tools, quality of the literature and bibliometric analysis. Recipients of previous ISA grants have researched such topics as ISA and ARIST: Linkages to Enhance Literature Searching; A Model for Quantitative and Qualitative Database Evaluation Using the ISA Database; and Selecting Literature on Bibliometrics through Bradford's Law. The goal of the research must be to produce a publishable paper.
All applicants for the ISA Research Grant must be information professionals and hold a graduate degree in library or information science. No individuals who are associated with ISA are eligible. This includes members of the Board of Directors of DAI, employees of Plenum Publishing Corporation, SilverPlatter, and KRI/Dialog.
Half the amount of the $1500 grant will be paid upon announcement of the award and the balance will be paid upon successful completion of the research project. In addition to the cash award, access to ISA CD-ROM will be provided for the length of the grant. Announcement of the award will be made December 1, 1997.
For further information and for application instructions, contact Judith E. Watson, CAS, PO Box 3012, Columbus, OH 43210; 614/447-3662; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com; or fax: 614/461-7158.
News from ASIS Chapters
The March meeting of the Los Angeles Chapter of ASIS (LACASIS) featured a special program on The Getty Vocabularies: Organizational Tools for a Chaotic World. The meeting was held at the new Getty Center. Vivian Hay, systems project manager, and Murtha Baca, Senior Editor, discussed traditional and innovative applications of several structured vocabularies developed at the Getty. The presentation was based on familiar tools, such as the Art & Architecture Thesaurus and the Union List of Artist Names, that have long supported research in the humanities and demonstrate how they are being used to support improved information retrieval in large databases on the World Wide Web.
For April, LACASIS plans to discuss career skills for information professionals in the years ahead in a session entitled, Librarian, Cybrarian, Internaut or Knowledge Navigator, featuring several speakers who have placed information professionals in jobs and will look at trends and patterns that they have observed.
The New Jersey ASIS (NJASIS) Chapter presented a dinner meeting focused on digital libraries for its March meeting, featuring a presentation by Krishna Pendyala of Carnegie Mellon University on Intelligent Access to Video Information: CMU's Informedia Digital Video Library. As a result of the Informedia project, Carnegie Mellon University is developing new technologies for data storage, search and retrieval and is embedding them in a video library system. The new digital video library technology will allow more independent, self-motivated access to information for self-teaching and exploration, which can bring about a revolutionary improvement in the way education and training are delivered.
The Metropolitan New York Chapter of ASIS, in conjunction with the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, is sponsoring a Graduate Research Forum in May. Faculty in all information disciplines have been asked to select and sponsor suitable papers by graduate students for inclusion in the forum. A committee will then review the papers for relevance, originality, clarity of expression and appropriateness of methodology and select the papers and authors that will be invited to participate.
The Pacific Northwest Chapter of ASIS was a co-sponsor with Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility of the sixth DIAC (Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing) conference held in Seattle in March. Community Space & Cyberspace: What's the Connection? featured discussions on economics, education, high-technology social mediation and other topics related to areas in which citizens can make new technology more responsive to citizen needs.
The Potomac Valley Chapter (PVC) of ASIS held its annual mid-winter workshop in March with a look at Power Searching on the World Wide Web, a course designed for information professionals who want to gain proficiency in using Web resources. Among the topics included were a systematic examination of the range of research material available on the Web; the various kinds of search engines; and traditional online databases available on the Web. Randolph E. Hock, a consultant specializing in the design and marketing of Web-based research services, was the instructor.
And following its mid-winter workshop, the Potomac Valley Chapter (PVC) of ASIS held its 1997 Joint Spring Workshop in April with a program entitled Desk Set 1997: Partnering with Information Systems, tackling the challenge of what happens when library and systems departments forge new relationships. Sponsors of the joint workshop, in addition to ASIS, were the Washington chapter of Special Libraries Association, CAPCON Library Network, District of Columbia Library Association, Federal Library and Information Center Committee and Law Librarians Society of Washington, DC.
For its March meeting, the Minnesota Chapter of ASIS offered a look at Sun's JAVA technology and the computing revolution some say it is creating. Ian Griffith of Sun Microsystems presented a brief history of JAVA and an overview of the latest developments associated with it. Dan McCreary of Integrity Solutions offered a demonstration of Web-based JAVA applets.
The Northern Ohio ASIS (NORASIS) Chapter joined forces with the Cleveland Chapter of the Special Libraries Association to present a March dinner meeting on Intranets. Presentations at the meeting looked at the benefits of having corporate intranets and the multiple skills that librarians and information professionals need to coordinate intranets.
And in another part of the state, the Southern Ohio ASIS (SOASIS) Chapter presented Managing Web Servers: The Technical, Fiscal and Personnel Issues as its March meeting. The full-day session covered such topics as server basics (types of server software, platform and operating systems, and directory/file issues); server tools (document/format converters, link managers, log/statistics modules, interactive map and graphics editors, and Java wizards); personnel issues; fiscal issues; and policy issues. The speaker and facilitator for the event was Michael Leach, head librarian of the Physics Research Library at Harvard University.
The March meeting of the Wisconsin Chapter of ASIS took a look at Computer Ergonomics: What You Can Do to Prevent Computer-related Injuries. Among the speakers was Rose Trupiano, computer reference librarian at Marquette University Memorial Library; Rich Marklin, assistant professor in mechanical and industrial engineering, and Guy Simoneau, assistant professor in physical therapy, Marquette; Janet Palmatier, physical therapist; and Joy and Scott Joslin, Scott Ergonomics Systems, Inc.
The Delaware Valley Chapter (DVC) of ASIS held its Annual Chinese Banquet and Award Dinner in mid-March. The DVC Achievement Award was given to Barbara Flood for her contributions to the information industry and the Delaware Valley information community. Barbara has served on numerous ASIS committees and task forces, and she was the program chair for the 1984 ASIS Annual Meeting held in Philadelphia. She is also the 1987 recipient of the Watson Davis Award, given to members for outstanding contributions and dedicated service to the Society.
The Pittsburgh Chapter of ASIS is the co-sponsor with the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences of a seminar on Studying the Value of Library and Information Services: Establishing a Theoretical Framework, and Methodology and Taxonomy. Tefko Saracevic, former ASIS president and professor in the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University, will talk about research on that topic that he has conducted with Paul Kantor.
News from ASIS Special Interest Groups
Plans are well underway for the 8th ASIS SIG/Classification Research (CR) Workshop to be held in conjunction with the ASIS 60th Annual Meeting, November 1-6, in Washington, DC. The annual CR Workshop is designed to promote the exchange of ideas among active researchers with interests in classification creation, development, management, representation, display, comparison, compatibility, theory and application. This year's workshop is chaired by Efthimis N. Efthimiadis, assistant professor in the Department of Library and Information Science, University of California at Los Angeles.
News about ASIS Members
F. Wilfrid Lancaster, professor emeritus of library and information science at the University of Illinois, has published a new book, Technology and Management in Library and Information Services. The book, authored jointly with Beth Sandore, is issued by the Publications Office of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Four of Lancaster's earlier books have received ASIS awards.
Ching-chih Chen, professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, has been appointed to President Clinton's 20-member Advisory Committee on High-Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology and the Next Generation Internet. The committee will provide guidance and advice on all related areas with a focus on interagency programs and broad issues of federal technology investment. Earlier this year, Chen as chosen as the first ALISE/Pratt-Severn National Faculty Award recipient.
Paul Solomon, assistant professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been selected as a Fulbright scholar to lecture and conduct research in Finland during the 1997-98 academic year.
Toni Carbo, former ASIS president and dean of the School of Library and Information Science, University of Pittsburgh, was a featured speaker at the NFAIS Annual Conference, where she delivered her Miles Conrad Memorial lecture on Just-for-You Services.
Clifford Lynch, director of library automation for the University of California and ASIS past president, also spoke at the NFAIS Annual Conference, where he delivered a wrap-up speech with an on-the-spot review of the conference.
Mary Summerfield, coordinator of the Mellon Online Project at Columbia University, discussed Potential Marketplace Arrangements for Online Scholarly Books at a symposium in New York sponsored by the Eastern New York and Greater Metropolitan Area chapters of the Association of College and Research Libraries.
Elizabeth Aversa, dean of the School of Library and Information Science at Catholic University, was one of several speakers presenting a U.S. perspective on the topic International Dimensions of the Information Profession at a recent meeting sponsored by the Special Libraries Association at the World Bank.
Joan S. Mitchell, editor of Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), is co-editor of Dewey Decimal Classification: Edition 21 and International Perspectives, a compilation of papers from a workshop presented at the 1996 general conference of IFLA in Beijing, China. Among the contributors to the volume, in addition to Mitchell, is Julianne Beall, assistant editor of DDC.
Charles R. McClure, distinguished professor in the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, and J. Timothy Sprehe, president of Sprehe Information Management Associates, Inc., Washington, DC, are principal investigators for a research project entitled Analysis and Development of Model Quality Guidelines for Electronic Records Management on State and Federal Websites. The project is funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Chandra Prabha, research scientist at OCLC, is co-editor of "Resource Sharing in a Changing Environment," the winter 1997 issue of Library Trends. Among the contributors and their articles are Clifford A. Lynch, University of California, Building the Infrastructure of Resource Sharing: Union Catalogs, Distributed Search and Cross Database Linkage; Jennifer A. Younger, Ohio State University, Resource Description in the Digital Age; Bruce R. Kingma, State University of New York at Albany, Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing: The Economics of the SUNY Express Consortium; and Prabha, co-authoring with Elizabeth C. Marsh, Commercial Document Suppliers: How Many of the ILL/DD Periodical Requests Can They Fulfill?
Marjorie Hlava, president of Access Innovations and former ASIS president, is featured in an article in the March 8 issue of Science News. "Vaulting the Language Barrier" describes developments in machine translation and focuses in part on the work that Hlava and her company are doing with Russian scientists at VINITI.
James G. Neal, director of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University, has been elected vice president/president-elect of the Association of Research Libraries. He will assume the organization's presidency in October.
Marilyn Domas White, University of Maryland, College Park, and Peiling Wang, University of Tennessee, are co-authors of a new technical report entitled Document Selection and Relevance Assessments During a Research Project, released by the College of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, College Park.
Julia Blixrud, formerly director of training and education at the CAPCON Library Network, is the new senior program officer at the Association of Research Libraries. She has responsibilities in the statistics and measurement program and in communications.
James M. Matarazzo, dean and professor in the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science, is one of two scheduled speakers at the 22nd Betty Burrows Memorial Seminar, sponsored by the Cleveland chapter of the Special Libraries Association. Matarazzo is to speak on Evaluating the Special Library.
Herman H. Fussler
Dr. Herman H. Fussler, long-time ASIS member, died recently in Raleigh, North Carolina. Among other ASIS activities, he was an associate editor of American Documentation (predecessor to the Journal of the American Society for Information Science) during its first two years of publication. The following obituary was provided by the University of Chicago.
Dr. Herman H. Fussler, a pioneering librarian who helped make the University of Chicago Libraries a leading international resource for scholars, died March 2 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was 82.
Fussler, who retired from the University in 1983, was the director of the University of Chicago Libraries for 23 years. The University's Joseph Regenstein Library, built under his direction, became a model research library for the humanities and social sciences. He was a leader in applying computers to library applications, developing in the 1960s a plan to convert the library's bibliographic data into computerized form.
On the completion of the Regenstein Library in 1971, he joined the faculty of the Graduate Library School on a full-time basis. He was named the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in 1974.
"I remember him as an inspiring teacher and a formidable intellect," said Martin Runkle, the current director of the University of Chicago Libraries and a former student of Fussler's. "He was greatly admired throughout the library and academic community."
Fussler began his library career in 1936 when he arrived at the University of Chicago to establish and direct its pioneering Department of Photographic Reproduction. While there, he developed processes that helped establish the use of microfilm in research libraries. Concurrently, he became Science Librarian in 1943. In 1947 he was promoted to assistant director and then associate director of the library. He was named director in 1948.
Fussler also served the Manhattan Project as the assistant director of the information division and librarian of the Metallurgical Laboratory from 1942 to 1945.
He received presidential appointments to the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine (1963) and the National Advisory Committee on Libraries (1966). He received the Melvil Dewey Medal from the American Library Association in 1954, the Distinguished Career Citation from the Association of College and Research Librarians (1989) and the Ralph R. Shaw Award for library literature in 1976. Fussler was a member of the advisory committee to the Librarian of Congress on the study of automation in the Library of Congress. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and honored as a distinguished alumnus of the University of North Carolina in 1983.
Fussler was born in Philadelphia, but later moved with his family to Chapel Hill, NC, where he attended the University of North Carolina, receiving a B.A. in mathematics in 1935 and a B.A. in library science in 1936. He received his M.A. in 1941 and his Ph.D. in 1948 from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.
He is survived by daughter, Lynn Padgett, her husband Thomas J. Padgett and granddaughter, Ellen Elizabeth Boyd of Raleigh, and sister Julia Lunsford of Medford, Oregon. His wife, Gladys Otten, died in 1991.
Jennifer Vanasco
University of Chicago
Mary Herner
Mary Herner, who served as treasurer of ASIS in the late 60s and early 70s, passed away on March 9 in Fairfax, Virginia.
With her husband Saul, in 1958 she founded Herner and Company, a specialized business in the fields of information systems, clearinghouses and databases. She retired as president of Herner in 1996. Over the years she supervised the company's abstracting, indexing and database projects and became an authority on nuclear medicine.
Born in Scotland, Mrs. Herner was a physics honors graduate and was proficient in French, German, Spanish, Russian and Japanese and studied Latin and ancient Greek. She was the author of 15 works published in technical journals.
News from Institutional Members
UMI has announced the development of ProQuest Digital Dissertations, a new digital library of doctoral dissertations and masters' theses that will make these academic publications available on the World Wide Web. The new library will be created from electronically submitted material as well as from UMI's conversion of traditional paper-based dissertations into digital format. Currently, UMI's dissertation database, amassed over 60 years, totals nearly 1.4 million titles, beginning with the first U.S. dissertation accepted by a university (Yale) in 1861.


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8 Apr 2018Maratona di Roma 2018
- -- Tage : -- Stunden : -- Minuten : -- Sekunden
Global athletic leader New Balance announced today the signing of a multi-year sponsorship deal with the IAAF Gold Label Maratona di Roma. The company will serve as the official athletic footwear and apparel sponsor starting with the 20th anniversary Maratona di Roma, which will be held on Sunday March 23rd 2014. The race is one of the most magnificent marathon courses in the world with the grandeur of its classical landmarks offering a glorious sense of classical history.
"New Balance is thrilled to become the official footwear and apparel sponsor of the Maratona di Roma, Italy's leading marathon with global appeal and status," said Alan Hed, executive vice president international at New Balance. "New Balance stands as one of the fastest growing global athletic brands and this celebrated marathon will allow us to continue expanding our international presence in running and highlight our innovative footwear and apparel as we look to support athletes of all abilities".
As the official footwear and apparel sponsor of the Maratona di Roma, New Balance will showcase their performance running collection at the Marathon Sport Expo and as the exclusive merchandiser of the race New Balance will be offering a new line of Maratona di Roma official running gear. Race officials and volunteer staff will be outfitted in New Balance products and the company will coordinate regional retail promotions and advertising activities around the race. The new line Maratona di Roma official New Balance gear will be available on-site at the Marathon Sport Expo, at retail and on-line.
"We are thrilled to welcome New Balance as a sponsor. It is a unique match: one of the world's most enduring running brands associated with the Eternal City." Observed Enrico Castrucci, President of the Maratona di Roma.
About New Balance:
New Balance, headquartered in Boston, MA has the following mission: Demonstrating responsible leadership, we build global brands that athletes are proud to wear, associates are proud to create and communities are proud to host. New Balance is currently the only athletic shoe company that manufactures footwear in the U.S. with 25% of our U.S. footwear shipments produced at five New England facilities. The company also operates a manufacturing facility in Flimby, U.K. New Balance employs more than 4000 associates around the globe, and in 2012 reported worldwide sales of $2.4 billion. To learn more about how New Balance Makes Excellent Happen, please visit http://www.newbalance.com.


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Suffolk University offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in more than 70 areas of study through its College of Arts and Sciences, Sawyer Business School, and Law School. The University and its entities are accredited by the following accrediting commission:
The New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE)
NECHE is one of eight accrediting commissions in the United States that provide institutional accreditation on a regional basis. Accreditation is voluntary and applies to the institution as a whole. NECHE, which is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, accredits 224 institutions in the six-state New England region. (See NECHE disclosure.)
Other Accrediting Commissions and Agencies
- The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business - AACSB International (AACSB)
- AACSB for Accounting and Taxation
- American Bar Association (ABA)
- American Bar Association approved paralegal education program
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- American Psychological Association (APA)
- Comunidad de Madrid - Suffolk University Madrid Campus Accreditation (Madrid)
- Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA)
- Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, Inc. (ABET)
- The International Association of Counseling Centers (IACS)
- Joint Review Committee on Education in Radiologic Technology (JRCERT)
- National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA)
- National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD)
- State Department of Education for inclusion in the reciprocity privileges of the Interstate Certification Compact
Membership Associations
- Association of American Law Schools (AALS)


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A 33-year-old woman was arrested Monday morning in the strangling of her mother in Port Orange, police said.
PORT ORANGE -- A 33-year-old woman showed no sign of remorse Monday when she told a detective "she did not believe her mother had a soul, therefore she did not believe it was wrong to kill (her)," an arrest report states.
Jennifer Huntington told detectives she came up behind Fabian Huntington while nude and carrying a scarf as her mother watched television lying in bed. The daughter then strangled her mother for 50 minutes, telling her "momma, don't fight it, don't fight it," according to the arrest report.
Port Orange police arrested Jennifer Huntington at Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach on Monday morning and charged her with first-degree murder.
The arrest came after an autopsy ruled Fabiana Huntington's death a homicide.
During a Saturday afternoon interview at the hospital's psychiatric ward, police said Jennifer Huntington voluntarily admitted to strangling her 62-year-old mother with a scarf Thursday night. Police talked to the daughter shortly after Fabian Huntington's body was found in the bedroom of her Rampart Drive manufactured home.
A family friend found Fabian Huntington on Saturday morning after the bus that usually picks her up did not arrive, Lt. David Meyer said.
"(The friend) entered the house and found the body and called law enforcement," Meyer said.
During her interview with investigators, Jennifer Huntington told Detective Michael Wallace she had consumed "a lot of Gabapentin (pain killers), like 80" pills in an attempt to kill herself. Then she decided to strangle her mother with a black polyester scarf printed with half-moons and pentacles, the report states.
"I inquired as to why Jennifer Huntington had strangled Fabian Huntington, Jennifer Huntington advised, 'I thought God would make it all OK,' " Wallace wrote in the report.
In describing the act, Wallace said Jennifer Huntington told him she was nude when came up behind Fabian Huntington while she was on her bed about 9:11 p.m. Thursday. "I wrapped (the scarf) around her neck and strangled her," the report states. "She went peacefully, but it took a while."
Wallace said the suspect told him she continued to strangle her mother for almost 50 minutes before the older woman succumbed, confirming the time by looking at the cable box adjacent to the television.
The daughter knew her mother was dead when she "stopped making sounds and her face turned all kinds of red,' " Wallace's report states.
"Jennifer Huntington stated that she told Fabian Huntington, 'momma, don't fight it, don't fight it,' when she began to strangle her," the report shows, adding her mother has cerebral palsy and could not resist.
Wallace said Jennifer Huntington, who has been living with her mother for the past 13 months after moving to Port Orange from Massachusetts, had been watching television in the living room of the blue manufactured home in the Laurel Wood Estate's over-55 community when she began to think about killing her mother.
"It's like a game," she told the detective, describing how she "earns points for doing good or bad things," the report states. Jennifer Huntington also continuously heard a voice telling her to kill herself, according to the report.
After strangling her mother, Jennifer Huntington said she checked her mother's pulse to make sure she would not wake up and call police, the report shows. She also described how she placed the body on the bed's white sheets and undressed the victim to "cover her up so she could rest peacefully."
After strangling her mother, Jennifer Huntington wrapped herself in a white towel and walked down the street, saying she wanted to hitch a ride home (to Cape Cod, Mass.), according to the report. While walking along Madeline Avenue, she saw a "sign" from God and decided to ring the doorbell of the residence of John Shaw and his wife, Teri, about 11 p.m.
Police said Shaw told officers Jennifer Huntington broke down and began to cry. He said he "prayed with her" in an effort to calm her.
Shaw called police, who responded. Jennifer Huntington asked the officers to drive her to Cape Cod.
An ambulance that also responded to Shaw's house took Jennifer Huntington to Halifax Health Medical Center where she voluntarily admitted herself into the psychiatric ward. While there she made spontaneous utterances she had killed her mother, the report said.
Lt. Meyer said Jennifer Huntington did not mention her mother's death when talking with officers at the Shaw residence Thursday night and a check of the Rampart Drive residence showed no evidence of foul play from the outside.
While at the hospital, Jennifer Huntington told police she had been hospitalized three times in the past for mental health issues and had previously been diagnosed "schizo-effective," but she could not tell officers when or where those incidents occurred, the report indicated.
In addition, Jennifer Huntington said her father had abused her during her childhood and that abuse was the cause of what happened at her mother's house.
Huntington's next-door neighbors declined to talk with reporters Monday afternoon. Property Appraiser records show Fabian Huntington bought her home in the Laurel Wood Estates community in 2010.
Across the street, Norm Grant, 70, said Sunday's invasion of police cars into the neighborhood was about the most excitement he recalled in the neighborhood in the 30 years he had lived there.
"It's really pretty quiet," he said.
Another neighbor across the street, Olive Edmands, said she was not concerned about the killing because the suspect was the daughter rather than some stranger coming into the neighborhood.
Both Grant and Edmands said Fabian Huntington generally kept to herself.


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We're not just Glendale business plan writers. We're not just business plan writers. We are business consultants, copy writers, business analysts and business strategists with more than 35 years of experience. We can and will help you to define your goals, strategies and competitive edge, fine tune your unique selling proposition, identify and quantify your target markets, and analyze your proposed business model. We can assist you or advice you with many aspects of starting, expanding or improving your business. Everything as is needed. Rest assured, we do not believe in mass production of low-cost guess-the-numbers business plans that potential lenders or investors may discard within 2 minutes. We want them to be dazzled.
We're also financial plan experts. You can view our business plan pages for details on our various financial models, several available as software. So if you only need a financial plan, you can hire us for just that.
After an initial chat, we will be able to tell you the estimated price and time needed for work requested. Upon receipt of your payment and mutually accepted agreement, we will dig in to all details of your project and collect all the information needed to start. If any research or reports are required, we will initiate to obtain what is needed.
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Once all required information has been gathered, the writing process begins. The business plan writing team will use your information and additionally acquired data (if needed) to produce a professional business plan including all the necessary financial data, charts and ratios. In addition, you'll have lots of expertise at your disposal our experts can provide if needed.
While writing the business plan and projecting the financials, we actively search for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis). After all, you want your proposal to be as good as it can be and offer a sound business opportunity.
What is a business plan without market data? Exactly! We can do any necessary market research for you, if needed, or you can purchase the report(s) you need from any of these or other sources.
The business plan can be in a DOC(X), PDF or even in a popular graphics program format using a chosen theme. The financial plan will be made in XLS and you'll receive a nice-looking PDF in commercial printing quality. The investor pitch (if ordered) will be in a PowerPoint PPT(X) format.
We keep a timesheet so you can monitor the time spent on your project. All files created will be available for download on our site in a secure client area. Any additional files -- such as market data, helpful guides, and so forth -- gathered for your project will also be available there.
Upon completion the result will be a business plan ready to be presented to financiers, investment banks, banks, angel investors, venture capitalists, Canadian PNP, USA E2, and other immigration plans. You will have a clear roadmap for your business and depending on package complete financial projections. And you can rest assured that many pitfalls and obstacles you may find on your way, have been properly identified. You'll be well-prepared!
If you need help with getting funded, we can pitch your project to potential investors such as investment banks, banks, angel investors, venture capitalists, equity funds, and other channels we are familiar with. We usually provide this service on a no cure no pay basis, so if we can't get you the funding, we don't get paid. If we do get you the investor you need, we receive a commission on the amount.
We can also setup a crowdfunding campaign for you. Which channel to use depends on the type of business and funding. This is not on a no cure no pay basis though.
Because we have extensive experience in some industries, we can offer you the best business plan and financial plan service for these industries.
We are especially adept with the following: resort, hotel, B&B, medical clinic, hospital, school, property rental, retail, construction, warehousing and non profit.
Browse our business plan template page to see the business types we are most familiar with. If your type of business is not in this list, do not worry, we can write a professional business plan for most businesses.Browse
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The Phoenix Park Hotel's elegantly appointed conference rooms provide the perfect venue for business conferences, special events or a stunning wedding in Washington DC. We provide guests with hearty Irish breakfasts, gourmet-style lunches, and savory dinners. The Phoenix Park Hotel, one of Capitol Hill's most popular meeting places, offers a total of 5,000 square feet of distinctive banquet and meeting space.
The Phoenix Park Hotel Washington sets the scene for some of the city's most memorable social events with four truly spectacular and original meeting spaces located on the lobby level and second floor of the Hotel. This elegant hotel in Washington D.C. is a wonderful place to host a wedding reception.
300 thread-count Egyptian Cotton Linens
Oversized bath sheets
Irish cotton bath robes
Award winning Galanta Irish amenities
Iron and ironing board
Bedside radio/alarm clock
Two- speed hair dryer / 1600 watts
2 telephones/ 2 direct lines with voicemail
Coffee maker
Fully stocked refreshment center
32" Flat Screen TV with Cable and Pay-Per-View movies
Same day laundry service
24 hour business office
Fax and copy services
Safety deposit at front desk
Ice machine
Room service from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. provided by Dubliner
Valet parking
Take Interstate 95 North to Interstate 395 across the Potomac River (14th Street Bridge). Once over bridge, continue traveling on 14th Street to a right turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Proceed toward the U.S. Capitol on Pennsylvania until you pass the Canadian Embassy on your left and the National Gallery of Art on your right. At this point, turn left (not sharp) onto Louisiana Avenue-Union Station which will be directly in front of you. Proceed two blocks until you reach North Capitol Street. Turn left. The Phoenix Park Hotel is a large brown brick building with a green canopy on your left at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue.
|Map Legend
|Phoenix Park Hotel
520 North Capitol Street, NW, Washington, Washington, D.C.
|Metro and Train Station
|0.1 mile
|Shopping Mall and Restaurants
|0.1 mile
|July - December 2007
|1 adult


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The sleepy village of Middleville perks up considerably during the agricultural fair in mid-September. It was during those golden days that Gwen Ely, an old neighbour of mine, invited me up to view her converted church. I was suitably impressed.
A native of Middleville, which is about 25 kilometres southwest of Almonte, she thought it would be a good idea to have a summer place and retirement home in the country because, as she says, peace and quiet grow on you. And so, when opportunity knocked, she answered the door.
This energetic, funny lady of a certain age has had a fascinating life. She lived in Venezuela, Libya, Jakarta and Singapore before purchasing her first house in downtown Ottawa. She has very wisely continued to create an investment strategy in property acquisition that would be the envy of many financial advisers.
Gillian: I always like to know what makes a person buy a particular piece of property. It may be the history, the architecture, the challenge, the price or the landscape. But I can see by that impish twinkle in your eye that it really wasn't any of those things.
Gwen: Oh, probably not, although there is an ancestral connection. This old Baptist church is situated on land that my ancestors originally sold to the church about 1856. The congregation built a few versions of the church; this one dates to 1886.
I owned the house on the south side (of the property) when the church came up for sale. There was no smart reason to buy it; I made a vague bid on a whim with no idea what I was doing. Someone told me to bid $20,000 so I said $10,005 and it was mine. I guess you could say the devil made me do it.
It was all rotten underneath and everyone said I was throwing money down a hole; that's when I really lost my nerve. First off, it had to be moved about 25 feet to have a septic system installed. It was much too close to the manse on the north side anyway - you could see what they were having for breakfast.
Moving it seemed like an insurmountable problem, so the abandoned church served as a large storage shed for a couple of years. Billy Yuill of R & B Construction out of Constance Bay actually lived here, in the church, once construction began and has been irreplaceable during the whole restoration process. When approval was finally granted by the committee of adjustment and all appropriate bylaws were satisfied (for all the required work), I sold my house and used the money to make this place work.
Gillian: The fabulous S-shaped metal staircase is really the focal point of the house and just speaks to the graceful artistry and mischievous innovation that went into the creation of this wonderful home. I love the loft and raised circular dining platform, the staggered levels define each area quite perfectly. There are so many interesting nooks and crannies and surprises at every turn. The dramatic black-tiled bathroom in the steeple is quite a treat, a real sanctuary.
Gwen: Billy and I didn't have a well-conceived plan at first, just kind of went with what felt right and made a few faux pas along the way. Eventually, I relied on the great advice I got from designer Brent McCalister of Kanata, who helped us maintain a respectful atmosphere and make sure that parts of the church were preserved or, at least, reinvented.
The exterior profile has not been altered and the new doors and windows are in keeping with the originals. The vaulted ceiling was one masterpiece that was definitely worth reclaiming. It's 21 feet high at the top and each length of wood was originally soaked in troughs of hot water to make that beautiful arched curve.
The stairs are my pride and joy, designed and constructed by V-Steel on Larch Street in Little Italy. The whole concept works so flawlessly, an amazing piece of engineering. As for interesting bits of memorabilia, we found the initials WS carved into the wall at the back. The oldest fellow in the village with the best memory thought it was probably Wes Stoker, the minister's son.
I think I've managed to create a lovely oasis here. I've installed a geothermal heat unit - a great retirement investment - maybe I'll try solar or wind, the work isn't finished yet. I have fresh, clean air and magnificent starlit nights; it's cheap and comfortable and just right for me.
Gillian: For a young lady from the depths of Lanark County, you came a long way to get back here.
Gwen: Well, as they say, it's the journey, not the destination.
Does your home have a story to tell? You can reach Gillian Magnan at firstname.lastname@example.com


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Thank you for your interest in volunteering with EquiVenture Therapeutic Riding. We provide therapeutic riding classes weekly from May through September and there are special events throughout the summer such as the fair, various demos and horse shows. Classes vary from 20 to 45 minutes in length and there are up to 5 riders in a class. The average volunteer commitment is 4 hours per week.
The minimum age for volunteers to lead or sidewalk is 14 years.
There are some opportunities for 12 to 13 year olds with horse experience to help in the barn.
There are also fences to be painted, barn and farm maintence. Come help us out!
Class TimesClasses are at the EquiVenture barn.Thursdays set-up is usually 1 hour before the riders get started. On Thursdays set up is at 3:00 pm and classes start at 4:00pm. We put-away the horses and feed around 7:45-8:00 pm. Setup includes getting the horses in the barn, grooming, saddling and various other duties.
RequirementsBasic requirements are a comfort level around horses and the desire to help riders with a disability get the most out of each lesson. Volunteers also need to be able to walk for 45 minutes (with some stops along the way) in an indoor arena or outside.
We offer Orientation Training at the EquiVenture barn for you to see the facility and learn about our program. Orientation is required by our national standards through NARHA. Let us know if you are interested and we will set up training for you.
Training is conducted in May at EquiVenture. Please contact us at: email@example.com for exact dates.
Our location is: 6086 West County Road, 250 South; Russiaville, Indiana (just west of Western Schools) Map
The training sessions are held in the activity room and then we will move to the barn arena for hands on demonstrations.
Please make sure you fill out the volunteer forms and be sure to wear clothing and footwear suitable for being around horses and in the dust.


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Pittenweem PotteryMembers
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Shoulder Tendonitis/Bursitis
Pittenweem Pottery replied to ThisIsMelissa's topic in Studio Operations and Making WorkHi Melissa, I'm glad I saw this post. You have a lot of ideas here too being thrown at you - so there is only one thing you can do - Evaluate the suggestions and make a plan. I have the same pain in my shoulder, radiating down to my elbow and wrist. I was sure what was causing it. My Doc says the rotator cuff joint is loose and may be trapping a nerve. I felt at times as if it were coming out of the socket. The very fact that you have gone onto the web to write about this tells me you have the same habits as myself, which may indicate that you have poor posture at the PC - or, the chair/desk and monitor is not set up for you. I also play flamenco and at times it is impossible. So I have at least three things that could be causing the injury / pain. One member has suggested "Stretching" and this was prescribed to me also and it helps - but I still have the pain. On Cortisone, the facts are that it may or may not work for you. sometimes the body cannot repair itself - get rid of the inflammation and it needs a helping hand (Cortisone) and you could have Cortisone three times before it works properly. And the sad fact is, that if it doesn't work after three shots (sessions) the doc may give up on it ever helping you. Posture will be the number one thing you need to be aware of from now and stretching. Animals stretch naturally - everyday. We should do it. Also, gentle movements. Part of the therapy can be done with someone assisting your arm to elevate and rotate. That way, you leave them to do all the work. But theses are not jerky movements, but slow and gentle. The point is to get your arm into a position it hasn't been used to. Pain is a warning and we should heed it to a point. There is no point in taking pain killers that are so powerful that they kill the pain and then you work like crazy causing more damage. We take painkillers and respect the injury. I'm finding I can't sleep because of the pain, so I use a pillow to support my right arm. This helps. So, all though you are sure it's your wheel that has caused the problem it could be RSI as a result of your daily activities including throwing pots. Tendons are almost sure to be a big part of the pain. Tendonitis/bursitis can be checked out, but my experience is that these don't really heal, they just behave better if you give them more respect. Some things that we do in life cause tendons to shorten, so we need to try and lengthen them by stretches. On my youtube site you'll see a series of videos called "Exercises for Drummers/Guitarist" and you'll find these helpful. In fact, that just reminded me that I also played the drums when the pain first got bad, but I've not played drums for over a year and the pain is still with me. (not as bad though) http://www.youtube.com/user/FusionMusic1000?feature=mhee Thanks for the post and I hope you can get relief somehow and perhaps report back. Kind Regards - Steve


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Opinion > Movies
Alfred Hitchcock: Mistaken Identities
The Times Literary Supplement just ran two reviews of recent books about Alfred Hitchcock, the iconic filmmaker whose morbid Catholicism bled into the edges of such classics as Vertigo, I Confess, and Shadow of a Doubt. His movies—popular entertainments in their own time, snubbed by critics and award-givers—have since become the subject… READ MORE >
Reviews > Movies
Gonzo Suicide
Gonzo should have been subtitled "The Life and Work and Death of Hunter S. Thompson," because the writer's suicide three years ago was the flare-out of a fading star, a premeditated decision that shrouded his last moments in existential uncertainty. Did the Lion in Winter flip a final bird to established conventions, rebel… READ MORE >
Reviews > Movies
Rated G for Glorious
"…In the Jungle of Nool something foreign lands on a piece of clover. It's not a spaceship but an entire alien world: the nearly infinitesimal planet of Who-ville. Horton the elephant, his large ears giving him the most acute hearing, detects cries from the clover speck. He can't see the little Whos, but he deduces, believes, knows that sentient creatures are in there; and his caring instinct tells him that they must be protected. He builds a rapport with the tiny planet's resident scientist, Dr. Hoovey, who is having just as much trouble convincing his villagers that there's a giant outside force, unseen but benevolent, that will determine their future." READ MORE >
News > Movies
Apocalypse Now?
"On a recent Saturday night, I went to the movies. Walking past the theater showing 'I Am Legend' (plague kills most of humanity), I opted to watch 'Cloverfield' (inexplicably angry alien destroys Manhattan) instead. After sitting through back-to-back previews for 'Hellboy II: The Golden Army' (ancient truce between Hell and Earth is revoked, resulting in mass destruction) and 'Doomsday' (lethal virus ravages England, a disease-ridden cinematic cousin to '28 Days Later' and 'Children of Men'), I found myself disturbed. The End of Days suddenly seemed imminent. Should I cancel my post-movie dinner reservation? What's with all this apocalyptic entertainment, I wondered, and what does it say about those of us who are filling the theater seats?" READ MORE >
Reviews > Movies
Board Game: Gus Van Sant's latest experiment works
"The book is linear and psychological and even invokes Dostoyevsky—Notes From the Underground… and, by implication, Crime and Punishment. Van Sant dumps Dostoyevsky and ruptures the story line; his narrator, Alex, apologizes for screwing up the order of events… Alienation, guilt—it's all free-floating, as if Camus had reworked Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart."' READ MORE >
Reviews > Movies
Penn's 'Into the Wild' Is Beautiful, Stirring, Complex
"…too-muchness is the essence of the story—a hero's gallant, possibly mad and inevitably doomed attempt to channel too much experience and too many ideas through one young life that can't possibly hold it all… Moviegoers will argue the question of whether the young man's quest succeeds or fails: Is he a pilgrim who finds the transcendence he sought, or a wounded bird flying blind on lofty ambitions, or both? There's no arguing, however, that 'Into the Wild' is a new experience, even though some of its countercultural themes and tropes may seem familiar. It's a mainstream movie of ideas that lives in a world of fateful action." READ MORE >
Reviews > Movies
California Burning
"A strange and enthralling evocation of frontier capitalism and manifest destiny set at the dawn of the 20th century… There's hardly a dull moment. Digs collapse, gushers burst into flame, God metes out punishment and so does man. Revelations overturn the narrative: The last 20 minutes are as shocking in their way as the plague that rains from the sky in Magnolia's finale. By the time the closing words "There Will Be Blood" appear (with a burst of Brahms) inscribed in heavy gothic letters on the screen, Anderson's movie has come to seem an Old Testament story of cosmic comeuppance and filicidal madness—American history glimpsed through the smoke and fire that the lightning left behind." READ MORE >
Reviews > Movies
Another 'Pro-Life" Movie?
"...after the movie ended I wondered what all the fuss was about... I wonder how much of the adulation of reviewers (and the judges at Cannes) stemmed from what they may have perceived as the 'message' of the movie: i.e., illegal abortions are bad, so legal ones must be good. For me, the movie was a litany of the horrors of any abortion, and as much a 'pro-life' movie as 'Juno,' which I had seen the day before. How can observing a lifeless fetus make one anything but pro-life?" READ MORE >
Opinion > Movies
Good Movies, Bad Religion
In the past week I had the privilege of seeing two amazing films: There Will Be Blood (bit on the long side) and the uncut version of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (a whopping five-plus hours that fly by). Interestingly, coincidentally, both stories are set about a 100 years ago and both feature a very dark religious figure—a money-hungry… READ MORE >
News > Movies
Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing
""The study's premise strikes me as somewhat goofy,' said Melissa Henson, senior director of programs at the Parents Television Council, a media watchdog... 'I'd hate for people to walk away with the message that, 'Oh, I ought to send my son to watch violent movies so they won't go out and drink or do drugs and commit violent crime...'" READ MORE >
Reviews > Movies
A Chronicler of Alienated Europeans in a Flimsy New World
"Mr. Antonioni's fashionableness shouldn't distract us from his accomplishment. He was a visionary whose portrayal of the failure of Eros in a hypereroticized climate addressed the modern world and its discontents in a new, intensely poetic cinematic language. Here was depicted for the first time on screen a world in which attention… READ MORE >


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Players of the same class can now team up to level and get items with the new mentor system. Mentors receive free items and novices will learn how and when to use their skills under their mentor's guidance. You can join a friend who already plays Allods Online and train to match their level quickly, or take advantage of the automated matchmaking system to make new friends in the game.
In addition, Tep's Curse has been permanently removed. Death no longer results in a cursed item, and the Holy Charms needed to remove curses have been banished from the game. On top of that, questing has been smoothed out with the addition of special indicators on the map, quest log, and quest items to make organizing quest objectives a snap.


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LONDON (AP) — A sketchy agreement on how to create a single European banking supervisor combined with a run of disappointing U.S. corporate earnings to hit markets Friday at the end of what's been a fairly upbeat week.
The bout of pessimism began Thursday when Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) surprised investors by publishing by mistake its worse-than-expected earnings ahead of schedule.
Microsoft also disappointed with its latest update, contributing to a broad retreat in technology stocks, as did McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) and General Electric (NYSE:GE).
"After what had started to look like a relatively upbeat season, investors are now looking a little more wary," said Fawad Razaqzada, market strategist at GFT Markets.
By the time markets closed in Europe, Germany's DAX was down 0.8 percent at 7,380 while the CAC-40 in France fell 0.9 percent to 3,504. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.3 percent lower at 5,896.
U.S. stocks were down, too, with the Dow Jones industrial average 1.3 percent lower at 13,320 and the broader S&P 500 index 1.4 percent lower at 1,437.
An agreement early Friday by the leaders of the 17 euro countries to push ahead with a single banking supervisory body failed to support markets. The leaders remained vague on key details, such as when the supervisor will be up and running.
Some investors and analysts worry that Europe's politicians may have lost the incentive to fix things quickly now that market turmoil has subsided. The borrowing costs of countries like Spain have eased since the European Central Bank unveiled in September a new bond-buying program.
"It seems investors are becoming frustrated with the continuous proposals outlined by EU policy makers to resolve the debt crisis but failing to provide investors with specific information regarding how the fund will operate, the time scale involved and perhaps more crucially, how much funds will be needed," said Shavaz Dhalla, a financial trader at Spreadex.
The unconvincing result of the EU summit left the euro trading 0.3 percent lower on the day at $1.3029.
Earlier, Asian stock markets plodded through a mostly mixed session.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 0.2 percent to finish at 9,002.68. South Korea's Kospi lost 0.8 percent to 1,943.84. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.2 percent to 21,551.76.
In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.2 percent to 2,128.30 and the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index shed 0.2 percent to 877.29. Markets in Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, and India also fell.
Oil markets edged lower after a brief spike on news that a key pipeline transporting crude from Canada to the U.S. Midwest was shut down for repairs. The price of benchmark New York crude was down $1.17 in midafternoon trading at $90.93 a barrel.
The Motley Fool owns shares of General Electric Company, Google, and McDonald's. Motley Fool newsletter services recommend Google and McDonald's. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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MEA-MFT Faculty Member of the Year Grant Mitman recommends the following resources on workplace bullying, from a special session at this year's NEA Representative Assembly.
"The session covered definitions of bullying and how to effectively deal with bullies," Mitman says. "The presentation was useful, and I do recommend that you take a spin through both of these resources."
Two resources are available: A PDF of the PowerPoint slides used at the presentation and supplemental handouts. The handouts provide a nice summary of the presentation's highlights.
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