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NOMINATIONS: for Moment of the Week 2/20/13 *Spoilers*
Hey you! Reader! Want to be a part of the GREATEST COMIC BOOK AND GEEK COMMUNITY on the web?! Well, they're not accepting new members, but we'll take anyone here, so why not sign up for a free acount? It's fast and it's easy, like your mom! Sign up today! Membership spots are limited!*
*Membership spots not really limited!
Hey you! Reader! Want to be a part of the GREATEST COMIC BOOK AND GEEK COMMUNITY on the web?! Well, they're not accepting new members, but we'll take anyone here, so why not sign up for a free acount? It's fast and it's easy, like your mom! Sign up today! Membership spots are limited!*
*Membership spots not really limited!
by Zechs » Thu Feb 21, 2013 1:39 am
YOUR WINNER for 2/13/13:
The Joker opens the dinner platters, and inside are the faces of each member of Bat family. - Batman #17
This thread will contain SPOILERS!!! And lots of them. If you haven't read this week's comics yet, go read them before continuing into this thread, or risk being spoiled!
PLEASE NOTE!!!!!! Remember to include the title and issue number of the comic you are nominating. Otherwise I will be forced to disqualify your nomination, and nobody wants that!
The Rules:
1. Each nomination must be a moment in a comic released the week of the thread. This does not include weekly previews, trade paperbacks, or back issue digests.
2. Everyone can make ONE nomination. You can either nominate a moment yourself or second/third/fourth/fifth an already existing nomination. However, second/third/fourth/fifth will not count per nominating and thus earn entry above in Top Nominations. You want in that list you must nominate something.
3. It must be an actual moment involving the actions or statements of a comic character in an issue. No "This writer returns to the series", "this artist draws this character", "the book is better", etc.
4. If you want to change your nomination, there are a few factors involved:
---> A) No one can have seconded your nom.
---> B) If it is clear for you to change your nom, you must edit your original post or the new post will be disqualified as being a double nomination.
---> C) You can change your second, third, etc. by editing your original post before the nomination period ends.
Moments on the poll do not have to be seconded. If there is room in the poll, moments that were nominated but not seconded will be added based on the order they were nominated.
6. Again, please be specific on the comic title, issue number and moment. Also be clear that you are actually nominating or seconding something ... statements such as "Yeah, that was a cool moment" aren't clear. You must nominate a single moment in the comic and can't nominate the whole issue. Once more, if you don't include the issue and number the moment will not be included.
7. The thread for nominations will go up on Wednesday (new comic day) at 11:00 PM (Central) or when Zechs arrives later that night and posts in the previous week thread announcing voting is closed. The nominations will go until 2:00 PM (Central Time) Sunday Afternoon, or whenever Zechs arrives and will post in the thread stating, "It's over." and will start the poll. If a new comic day falls on a holiday week in American, then the thread will be made for that day (be it Tuesday or Thursday). Regardless, nominations will STILL conclude on Saturday deadline.
8. Please be civil when commenting on other people's nominations. But feel free to discuss them in this thread.
9. In case there is debate on WHEN exactly a title came out, http://www.midtowncomics.com " or the official websites of said publishers (be it Marvel, DC, Darkhorse, etc.) will be the final word on the quarrel.
10. Any nominations not following the above rules will be disqualified. Unless of course if Zechs, who is feeling sad for the person who missed the rule and might give them time to provide the correction. Then he will pester bk into putting the nomination in the poll. Of course this wouldn't be a problem if Zechs wasn't granted the glorious powers of a moderator, which one day such power will be Zechs, oh yes they will his.
11. If at five nominations are not made, Zechs will choose some, but they will all count as one nomination, not multiple thus making sure balance is preserved.
12. AKA the Rulk rule. If several moments are tied past the deadline of 11:00 PM (Central Time) Wednesday (or holiday date when new comics arrive in the US) or when Zechs arrives that night, then voting will continue on in sudden death for eight more hours, until one is decided. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. If one isn't still decided, then Zechs will provide the deciding vote regardless if he has voted already.
13. AKA the Hobgoblin rule. Roderick Kingsley Hobgoblin moments when winning for three days straight automatically win the poll. No last day or second voting changes it to troll the ruler of this thread.
14. Any moments from Batgirl volume 4 lose by default.
Only ONE can rule as the Moment of the Week!
Top Ten Nominators of All Time...
1.) GLX- (225 Nominations)
2.) Zechs- (219 Nominations)
3.) e_galston- (147 Nominations)
4.) Stephen Day- (119 Nominations)
5.) rdrsfn82- (102 Nominations)
6.) Porcelain38- (90 Nominations)
7.) Starlord- (81 Nominations)
8.) fieldy RICHARDS- (80 Nominations)
9.) God-Man (62 Nominations)
10.) BubbaKanoosh- (57 Nominations)
Honorable Mentions
Greg- (52 Nominations)
Johnny Smith (44 Nominations)
doombug - (43 Nominations)
Knuckles McSmasher- (43 Nominations)
IvCNuB4 - (43 Nominations)
48THRiLLS- (40 Nominations)
SilverPhoenix (33 Nominations)
Kravis (30 Nominations)
Chap22- (28 Nominations)
Mr. Batman- (27 Nominations)
Dragavon- (27 Nominations)
VinnyPic- (25 Nominations)
guitarsmashley (24 Nominations)
Agent Panic (18 Nominations)
Punchy- (16 Nominations)
habitual- (16 Nominations)
capjr (12 Nominations)
ThatRomanGuy (12 Nominations)
GOFM - (10 Nominations)
Duck Punch (10 Nominations)
Flynn the Pirate (10 Nominations)
Peter Parker (10 Nominations)
MistaT- (10 Nominations)
Octacon (8 Nominations)
alaska1125 (8 Nominations)
HNutz (8 Nominations)
TimDrake'sDumbWings (8 Nominations)
eypcrew2- (7 Nominations)
CammyKnoxville (7 Nominations)
Skyrider (7 Nominations)
Eli Katz (7 Nominations)
MrBlack (6 Nominations)
pat (6 Nominations)
nietoperz (6 Nominations)
Kid Impulse- (5 Nominations)
XtremeX- (5 Nominations)
Mammon, Fool Breaker (5 Nominations)
C-Matty- (4 Nominations)
Dum Dum Dugan- (4 Nominations)
AMS (4 Nominations)
Dalarsco- (4 Nominations)
TheSecondLex (4 Nominations)
Sakie (4 Nominations)
Ben- (3 Nominations)
McKeagan- (3 Nominations)
carl999- (3 Nominations)
Alex Delarge- (3 Nominations)
MrWadeWilsonHimself (3 Nominations)
pat (3 Nominations)
Amoebas (3 Nominations)
GHERU (3 Nominations)
blastmaster (3 Nominations)
GratefulFred- (2 Nominations)
statnut- (2 Nominations)
Dooz - (2 Nominations)
Jack Burton- (2 Nominations)
Zenguru- (2 Nominations)
God Impulse2k1 (2 Nominations)
skywatcher (2 Nominations)
thefourthman (2 why does this feel very wrong? WHERE ARE YOU ON MY DAMN LIST?!)
GOSD- (2 Nominations)
avengingtitan (2 Nominations)
Rebis (2 Nominations)
Justin M. Campbell (2 Nominations)
PhoenixEquinox (2 Nominations)
Timbales (2 Nominations)
dairydead (2 Nominations)
Glacier16 (2 Nominations)
Lord Solaris (2 Nominations)
Aeon Flux (2 Nominations)
Guderian- (1 Nomination)
Black Kryptonite- (1 Nomination)
Colonel Angus- (1 Nomination)
barrylincoln - (1 Nomination)
Dooz Ex Machina- (1 Nomination)
Thrillhouse- (1 Nomination)
Chesscub- (1 Nomination)
TheyShouldBeTheBats- (1 Nomination)
The Bass (1 Nomination)
GOD Impulse- (1 Nomination)
Deadfett (1 Nomination)
amalah6 (1 Nomination)
Miracloman (1 Nomination)
Alex Delarge (1 Nomination)
blastmaster (1 Nomination)
Jonathan (1 Nomination)
NeverReady ( 1 Nomination)
DOOP SPEAK (1 Nomination)
Stalzer2002 (1 Nomination)
BlueStreak (1 Nomination)
mrorangesoda - (1 Nomination)
BAMJoe (1 Nomination)
False Prophet (1 Nomination)
xaraan (1 Nomination)
Holland Oats (1 Nomination)
Ntikrst (1 Nomination)
bkthomson (1 Nomination)
hatmasta (1 Nomination)
TheSecondLex (1 Nomination)
PinkDaddy (1 Nomination)
Hall of Shame
-2.) sdsichero (-1 Nomination)
-1.) John Lewis Hawk (-11 Nominations)
by TimDrake'sDumbWings » Thu Feb 21, 2013 8:31 amFoggy Nelson has cancer - Daredevil 23
I swear, Waid has been working fucking miracles with this comic every God damn month. Truly amazing stuff.
by TimDrake'sDumbWings » Thu Feb 21, 2013 8:31 amDOUBLE POST.
by Johnny Smith » Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:44 amShipwreck asks Duke if he can change his code name to Badass - GI Joe #1
by e_galston » Thu Feb 21, 2013 11:47 amSam Alexander wakes up in a hospital bed with Rocket Racoon and Gamora standing in front of him. - Nova 1
by GLX » Thu Feb 21, 2013 1:44 pm"One day, Darkseid's going to come back....for his daughter." - Justice League of America's Vibe #1.
by Zechs » Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:12 pm
Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin is back. - Superior Spider-Man #4
by PinkDaddy » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:58 pmWonder Woman shows Supergirl who's boss! Supergirl #17
by HNutz » Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:14 pm"I AM YOUR KING!" - Aquaman #17
by TheSecondLex » Fri Feb 22, 2013 6:51 pm
THIS! A thousand times this!
by IvCNuB4 » Sat Feb 23, 2013 1:24 pm
Both of these are really good noms
by Zechs » Sun Feb 24, 2013 5:39 pmAnd we're done.
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subset: commoncrawl


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WAOA Arena
Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 . . . 233 NEXT
Welcome to the We are Our Avatars arena thread!
The purpose of this thread is to allow for testing of characters in an enviroment where what happens doesn't matter as much what happens. This is an exellent enviroment to check if your character is OP, or UP. However! If you are more intrested in interacting or testing a characters personality, you'll probably want to head over to the Pub thread. This thread idea is shamelessly ripped off from them, but with a combat focus.
The premise is simple.
Be Warned. Doesn't Detail Everything That Happened in Previous WAOA threads, so feel free to edit that bitch.
We have a chat group. Pseudo chat RPing ahoy!
I am not joking about the pseudo RPing Anyhow, this is where we... I don't even remember what we use it for anymore.
You have to contribute to the plot in some way.
You control your character ONLY.
No Over-Powered Characters
Arena and appearance details
No excessive posts
Spoiler Tags
This RP is probably going to contain at least minor spoilers from character universes, like references to who can live or die in Mass Effect or what happens in the most recent Bourne book or film. Please don't react negatively: it might affect the character in a big way, and you could end up confused as to why the character is acting 'out of character' from your perspective.
Things you should know
The Meta found himself in a pitch-black room, and growled threateningly as he tried to find an exit.
OoC: Any characters will find themselves in a small, pitch-black room.
A man in armour made from candy wrappers (Most of them some sort of chocolate) Along with a candy wrapper hat walked in this place. He was an old man, probably to old to fight but that didn't seem to stop him for some odd reason. His hair was white and he had beard that was cut in a sort of triangle shape. He had a huge backpack on, a walking stick and a dragon about the size of a dog following him "I don't remember being here. Why isn't there the smell of radioactivity and dragon fire... This doesn't have any rivers of chocolate so this can't be heaven. Hey Sparky make a small lighting breath to light up this place" The dragon did so
A short beep was heard, then a robotic voice cleared it's throat and talked.
"I'm not sure I should trust something owned by a man named Evilington" He said walking towards the door
OoC: ...kinda quiet. You guys mind if I hop in?
OOC: @Gear Yeah you can jump in. This is pretty much Pseudo RP so nobody cares
"Lord Evilington has been dead for many centuries. He founded the Evilington corporation."
"Does the Evilington corporation run the evil labs and the evil tech along with helping in evil magic and friends" The man saw a room with vast numbers of weapons, armour and freeze dried food. He also saw a small stable for dragons in the back but the center piece of the room was the vast never ending chocolate fountain which combined several types of chocolate together into one glorious chocolate cream of deliciousness. Another small detail was that he had a plaque that read "Incredibly sane Steve's bed"
"That is the classic Evilington trade. However, in recent years have TV shows been shown to be far more economical. Please, follow the lights in the floor."
Oops, double post.
Steve was far to busy drinking from the chocolate fountain to want to go. His dragon was drinking from it too "Can't we spend a little more time in here first"
"Please, the Arena is waiting. The next fight is about to start, and I've heard the other contestant looks vicious. After the match you will be free to stay in your suite."
"Am... I fighting... For a good cause" He said in between long slurps from the fountain
OoC: ...oh fuck, is that me? I apologise, I was waiting to see if someone else would turn up before I jumped in. I'll enter now. Still in the pitch-black room?
"Personal wealth and the enjoyment of the masses must be the best cause, don't you think?"
"Greetings and welcome to the Evilington interdimensional arena. Please, enjoy your stay."
"That's barbaric. Fighting for other people's amusement. Unless of course it is a friendly competition of jousting" He continued to drink heavily from the chocolate fountain
OoC: Ok, coming in. Forgive me if I'm not doing this character too well, I've never played the seires he's from.
Mael Radec sat up sluggishly, the eyes of his helmet growing firey orange in the dark. He stodd, drawing his combat knife almost on instinct, and looked around.
"We have state of the art recreation, and any injury or death that may occour is guaranteed to be healed within a week."
Knife ready to strike, Radec advanced, going through the doorway.
"That's highly immoral... Bringing people back from the dead... God didn't make us to do that" It's going to take quite a few men to get him away from that fountain now
The hallway beyond was empty, and a series of lights showed the way to what seemed like Radec's dream hotel suite.
Steve got his hand stuck between the wall while he was holding on to the fountain "No! Come back here chocolate! What will I ever do without you" He said ignoring the voice far to preoccupied mourning over his lost loved one
Radec looked around. The room was looked like like a palace. The walls and floor were made of red, grey and black marble decorated with paintings and weaponry, there was an ebony table with a war planner and a chessboard, one side was high arched-shaped windows framed by red drapes with gold trim that looked out onto a cyberpunk city, and there was a king-sized, red and black bed.
OoC: I'm just going from what I can glean of Helghast arcitecture here. Killzone fans, tell me if I'm doing something wrong.
"If you wish to keep your suite, then please participate in the arena fight that is about to commence."
Radec looked around. "A fight you say?" He began twirling the knife idly in his figers. "I accept the challenge." He headed out a door, to the locker room.
OoC: I presume there's a guide leading to the lockers?
"Excellent! You will find the equipment you have been granted in locker one."
"Fine but I am only doing this for chocolate! And to improve my skills" He said starting to leave before noticing that his hand was still caught "A little help please"
The wall panel opened slightly, releasing the man.
Radec sheated the knife, and opened the locker. It contained a vast arsenal of heavy, futuristic gus and cannons. Radec stood for a while, carefully picking out what he would use.
OoC: For the record, I'm bassically trying to play Radec as the evil-universe Laguna. Radec has the instant gun switch in PSASBR like Laguna does in Dissidia, so I'm thinking of using that system. If not, I'll just have him with some grenades, a rifle and something that goes boom. He always has his handgun and his knife, and there's a cloak and a teleport built into his suit.
"I am Sir Steven of Hisera. But most people just call me Crazy Steve and my dragon is Sparky Von Drakenheim" He said going to look in the locker
"Thank you gentlemen. Please, head out into the arena when you are ready."
OOC: @Kirk Would it be in the same condition as the stuff he uses
OoC: @Demonjazz: You can decide that.
Radec loaded up on weapons, all of which seemingly vanished into nothingness when he picked them. He drew his rifle out of thin air, gave it a look, and nodded satisfied, holstering it as it vanished. He looked over at the wrapper coated knight who eneterd the room, assesing him.
|Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 . . . 233 NEXT


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It has recently been suggested that the mechanism for lifting liquid from a bowl into the oral cavity during lapping is fundamentally different in cats and dogs: cats use adhesion of liquid to the tongue tip while dogs 'scoop' with their backwardly curled tongue. High-speed light videos and X-ray videos show that on the contrary, both cats and dogs use the mechanism of adhesion. Liquid is transported through the oral cavity to the oesophagus, against gravity, on the surface of the tongue as it is drawn upwards, then a tight contact between the tongue surface and palatal rugae traps liquid and prevents its falling out as the tongue is protruded. At least three cycles are needed for intraoral transport of liquid in the dog.
1. Introduction
Reis et al. [1] convincingly demonstrate that, at the beginning of a lapping sequence in cats, the tongue tip curls backwards as the tongue extends downwards until the dorsal surface of the tongue comes to rest on, but does not penetrate the liquid surface. They demonstrate that when a cat lifts the tongue, liquid adhering to the dorsal side of the tip is drawn upward, forming a column part of which is captured within the oral cavity as the jaw closes. Consequently, liquid enters the mouth on the dorsal surface of the tongue.
A high-speed video published online by Discovery Networks [2] and viewed by P. Reis and R. Stocker 2010 (personal communication) led them to conclude that dogs also curl the tongue backward, but the tongue tip penetrates the liquid, which then fills a spoon-shaped depression in the ventral surface of the tongue. Liquid appears literally to be scooped into the mouth between the ventral surface of the tongue and the floor of the mouth as the tongue is rapidly withdrawn. However, it is not clear how dogs, lacking cheeks, could transfer liquid scooped into this region of the oral cavity onto the dorsal surface of the tongue where it needs to be for transport to the pharynx and subsequent swallowing [3,4]. Given the overall similarity of the oral region in dogs and cats, a fundamental difference in the mechanism of lapping would not be expected.
2. Material and methods
High-speed video recordings were made of a single domestic dog lapping broth, using a Casio EX-F1 camera at 300 f s–1 (see the electronic supplementary material, video S1). The same dog was recorded with high-speed (500 f s–1) X-ray video (electronic supplementary material, video S2) as it lapped a milk–barium mixture. The videofluoroscopy equipment, located at the X-ray facility at the Concord Field Station of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, consists of a C-arm fluoroscope (OEC model 9400) retrofitted with a 30 cm diameter image intensifier TH9432HX (Dunlee Inc., Aurora, IL, USA) and high-speed Photron Fastcam 1024PCI camera.
Video recordings (300 f s–1) were also made of a single domestic cat lapping milk.
3. Results
Figure 1 is based upon selected frames from a video (electronic supplementary material, video S1) recorded at 300 f s–1 of a single lapping cycle of a dog. Outline drawings of the frames highlight significant features. Figure 1a, arbitrarily designated the beginning of the cycle, therefore labelled as time 0 ms, shows the liquid filling the spoon-shaped ventral surface of the tongue tip as the tongue begins to withdraw from the liquid surface. As the tongue is withdrawn (figure 1b,c) liquid falls out of the 'spoon'. A small amount of this may join the column of liquid adhering to the dorsal surface of the tongue tip as it is carried into the oral cavity (figure 1d,e). The jaw closes, trapping the upper column of liquid and the remainder of the column falls away (figure 1e,f). The primary agent for moving liquid into the mouth is the adhesion of liquid to the tongue rather than 'scooping' by the tongue.
High-speed X-ray video recorded at 500 f s–1 (electronic supplementary material, video S2) confirms the mechanism described above for transporting liquid to the mouth, but in addition shows how liquid is transported against gravity through the oral cavity. Figure 2a shows a single frame from this video and points out the significant features of the oral cavity visible in video frames. The remainder of figure 2 consists of line drawings based upon selected frames of this video. The tongue appears in light grey, the liquid in black and where liquid overlays the tongue in dark grey. It takes three lapping cycles to transfer an aliquot of liquid from a bowl to the posterior region of the oral cavity. In figure 2b, arbitrarily designated as the beginning of the lapping cycle and therefore time 0, the tip of the tongue emerges from a slightly opened jaw. The dorsum of the tongue presses against hard palate and traps the liquid ingested in the previous cycle, the second aliquot (figure 2b, no. 2), in the hollows of the rugae. Aliquot no. 1, having entered the mouth during the penultimate cycle, has moved to the posterior region of the oral cavity below the soft palate. The proximity between the dorsal surface of the tongue and the palate traps both these aliquots (nos 1 and 2) and prevents them from being carried forward with the tongue as it moves forward to begin the next lapping cycle. As the jaw continues to open, the tongue protrudes and the tongue tip curls backward to penetrate the liquid surface. Figure 2c shows the tongue tip's withdrawal from the liquid surface. A column of liquid adheres to the broad downward-facing dorsal surface of the tongue tip, and fills the spoon-shaped depression on the dorsal surface. As the jaw opens, the tongue rapidly withdraws while liquid in the ventral surface falls out. In figure 2c, aliquot no. 1 is in the process of being swallowed and aliquot no. 2 is carried backwards on the tongue surface. As maximum gape is reached in figure 2d, the tongue starts to drop away from the rugae and completely withdraws into the oral cavity. Aliquot no. 3, in the form of a long liquid column, adheres to the tongue tip still forming a right angle bend relative to the remainder of the tongue body (see also figure 2a). As the jaw begins to close (figure 2e) the tongue surface straightens out and drops further away from both hard and soft palate as it continues to withdraw. Aliquot no. 3 still adheres to the tongue tip and aliquot no. 2 is transported backwards on the tongue surface. As the jaw continues to close (figure 2f), the dorsal surface of the tongue establishes contact with the palate between aliquots nos 3 and 2. The column of liquid outside the mouth drops away. Between figure 2f and the beginning of the next cycle, represented in figure 2b, the tongue elevates and protrudes to trap aliquot no. 3 between the tongue surface and rugae and a new cycle begins. The length of a lapping cycle is 342 ms.
Our high-speed video of cat lapping demonstrated that on many occasions the backwardly curled tongue tip briefly penetrated the liquid surface and picked up liquid in its spoon-shaped ventral surface. As in the dog, this spilled out as the tongue withdrew.
4. Discussion
We conclude that cats and dogs share the same basic mechanism for lifting liquid from a bowl into the oral cavity and transporting it through the oral cavity: liquid adheres to the dorsal surface of the backwardly curled tongue tip. X-ray videos of dog lapping reveal the dexterity with which their tongues trap previously lapped aliquots between the rugae on the roof of their mouths and the dorsal surface of the protruding tongue, in order to access the next aliquot without losing the previously ingested one [4].
The fact that the dog's tongue tip penetrates more deeply into the liquid than in cats, and consequently sprays more liquid around as the tongue rapidly withdraws, may give the impression that dogs drink by spooning liquids into their mouths. Discovery Network's online video [2] shows a dog lapping clear liquid (water), which is difficult to see adhering to the dorsal surface of the tongue. Dark broth (see the electronic supplementary material, video S1) can be seen more clearly.
We wish to acknowledge the help of Pedro M. Reis and Roman Stocker in the preparation of this letter.
- Received March 24, 2011.
- Accepted May 4, 2011.
- This journal is © 2011 The Royal Society


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U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission
Indianapolis Bar Fired Bartender/Server Because She Was Pregnant, Federal Agency Charged
INDIANAPOLIS – The Wild Beaver Saloon in Indianapolis will pay $45,000 and furnish other relief to settle a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.
According to the EEOC's lawsuit, EEOC v. WBS Broad Ripple, Inc., d/b/a Wild Beaver Saloon, Civil Action No. 1:11-cv-00373-TWP-DML, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division, the bar fired a bartender/server because she was pregnant.
Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The EEOC filed suit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.
The company agreed to pay $45,000, mainly in compensatory and punitive damages, to the former employee. The EEOC also charged that the company failed to post the required EEO poster on its premises. To settle that allegation the company agreed to pay a fine of $100 to the federal government.
"We are satisfied, based on the amount of the settlement, that the Wild Beaver Saloon recognizes that it violated the law by terminating an employee solely because she was pregnant," said Laurie A. Young, regional attorney of the Indianapolis District Office. "We are confident that this company will not make this mistake again."
EEOC enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Further information about the EEOC is available on its web site at www.eeoc.gov.


text:
it's been a few months now and i'm finally feeling like i'm settling into a routine at our new studio space. this morning we had our first writing class with laurie wagner and i feel like i experienced a little bit of church and returned to myself after weeks of feeling flurried. it dawned on me how this is all really happening. how after so many years of risk-taking, sacrifice and preserving my dreams to live full-time as an artist; that right now all my dreams are coalescing and being realized. and i'm so happy that we have a space to share with other artists, dreamers and explorers.
we took a leap of faith with this studio space and it has been awesome to see how people have responded and how organically and right everything feels. it has also been a tremendous amount of hard work getting it together and essentially starting a new business while being full-time artists!
we have hosted several parties, a benefit for a sweet kitty, craft nights, a bike mechanic class and several incredible weekend classes. we now have a gallery page with our classes with flora + tracey and regular bits of our studio life taken by my studio-mate stef. we have some really amazing ones coming up! i'm truly excited about all of them and hope they are all a go... we need folks to sign up for them! i really want alena hennessy's to happen because i've been a long time admirer of her work. so sign up folks, if you're on the fence, so we don't have to cancel them due to low enrollment pretty please!
here are some shots of our space i took today after a long hiatus with my camera (and blog!). the teaset and omg! pillow were gifts from my sweet hugh from his trip to england last week. and the coffee table i found on the street that i have BIG plans for ;)
here is the view from my painting desk. isn't it nice and airy?


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Statistical Approaches to Automatic Text Summarization
Victoria McCargar is Senior Editor, Library Projects, in the Los Angeles Times Editorial Library, 202 West First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012; 213-237-7129; e-mail: email@example.com
An IBM software expert observed not long ago that we are producing more data every three years than humankind has in its entire history. Now, data doesn't necessarily correspond to information, let alone knowledge, but what is certain is that every day, information consumers are bombarded with more facts from more sources than they are capable of taking in.
Information can be made more digestible in a number of ways. It can be compressed into a briefer format to enable the user to absorb the information quickly. It can merely point the user to a fuller account if he or she is interested. It can tip the user to whether a piece of information will be worthwhile. Or, it can pull similar or related sources together into a single summation. Whether the approach is informative, indicative, critical or aggregative, respectively, some reductive process has to happen. To have human beings doing the reducing is time-consuming and expensive, so after many dormant years the more than 40-year-old quest to summarize text automatically has been getting a lot of renewed attention.
There are two fundamental approaches to automatic text summarization that represent the endpoints of a continuum. Both result in the compression of text, but one is relatively shallow, while the other is deep and complex. While this analysis will focus primarily on the former, it is worthwhile to understand the issues of both.
Two Approaches
On the least-complex end is summarization through text extraction, the creation of summaries using terms, phrases and sentences pulled directly from the source text using statistical analysis at a surface level. Occurrences of words or sentences are counted and analyzed according to their frequency and where they appear and reappear in the source text. This is sometimes referred to as "knowledge-poor" processing and is rooted in the term-weighting algorithms of information retrieval (IR).
The other, more complex and "knowledge-rich" endpoint is summarization through abstracting. The aim here is to turn a computer-generated analysis and synthesis of the source material into a completely new, shorter text that is still cohesive and intelligible, one that reads, in other words, as though a human had written it, and at the same time fulfills the specific information need of the user. This process is sometimes known as machine understanding, a multidisciplinary endeavor involving information retrieval, linguistics and artificial intelligence. An information-seeker's query is posted against an array of tools based on domain knowledge, comprising sets of predetermined and preprogrammed information about an area of inquiry. These include, but are not limited to, ontologies, vocabularies, thesauri and a thorough understanding of how text is characteristically structured within that domain. In simplest terms, automatic abstracting is fact extraction, compared to mere text extraction performed by statistical methods. The difficulties of fact extraction will become clearer as we investigate examples of automatic summarization.
In "Automatic Summarizing: Factors and Directions," a 1999 position paper on the state of the art, Karen Sparck Jones drew a critical distinction between text extraction and fact extraction. In the former, she wrote, "what you see is what you get," because part or parts of source text are extracted verbatim with no prior determination of what might actually be important. It is thus an "open" approach that determines "importance" mechanically and, she notes, not especially well. The extracted text may well be incoherent if pronouns, synonyms or other ambiguous terms aren't sufficiently resolved.
Fact extraction, on the other hand, is "closed" insofar as the process requires pre-established, domain-determined parameters for machine processing. A significant amount of preprocessing of both source material and potential queries must occur to point to the kind of information that will be sought for example, patterns of names, locations and activities that suggest terrorism. Sparck Jones points out, "What you see is what you know," because the system assembles facts based on these requirements and may altogether ignore what the authors of the source material felt was important.
The up-front development of ontologies, controlled vocabularies, thesauri and other agents of understanding are what make this automated abstracting so challenging and what will keep researchers engaged for many years to come. But the need to deal with information overload is immediate, which is why the text extraction model is being so actively pursued. For one thing, because it does not require creation of an entirely new text, expectations for it are quite a bit lower. Without the need for thesauri, an understanding of text structure or narrative form (known as discourse analysis), linguistic research and complex ontologies, text extraction is a less expensive pursuit. Moreover, the IR methods behind text extraction lend themselves better to collections of diverse, loosely structured documents, like big news databases or the World Wide Web.
Foundational Research
The first serious look at automatic summarization using statistics was undertaken in 1958 by H. P. Luhn, who used an IBM 704 data processor to analyze word occurrences in a scientific article. His algorithm removed stop words, clustered similar words and counted word frequencies. From this he derived "significant" words and their distance from other significant words, and used the results to mark certain complete sentences for extraction into a printed abstract.
Assigning certain words a weight based on how frequently they show up in a text is a key component of statistical text extraction, and subsequent research built on that concept. In the late 1960s H. P. Edmundson developed the use of text features to assign weights and to extract summary information. Not only did he look for statistically significant words (called keywords), he noted their location in a text, taking advantage of certain text structures common to the documents in his source material chemistry papers of various lengths. Words appearing in the title or a subhead or located in the first two paragraphs were good pointers to useful sentences, as were what he called cue words phrases like "in conclusion" or "in this paper," which tended to be parts of summary statements. He also took into account bonus words like "significant" or "noteworthy" and stigma words like "impossible" or "unimportant."
Edmundson also made the effort to improve his algorithm by comparing his extracted summaries with human-created abstracts and using the results to refine the algorithm. These tuning constants were an early form of system "learning," which more recent researchers have tried to integrate into extraction systems. They have included training algorithms that learn from pairs tuples of documents and their manually produced abstracts how to classify sentences for inclusion or exclusion from a summary.
Key Approaches to Statistical Processing
Text summarization research slowed considerably in the late 1970s and 1980s, as researchers moved on to more readily solvable problems; for example, that period saw quite a bit of investigation into the field of automatic indexing. But the advent of the Web and their relative ease of implementation gave IR methods a new cachet in the 1990s.
In addition to term-proximity research building on Edmundson, other currently promising avenues include statistical analysis of term clustering, statistically based analysis of text structure, or discourse analysis, and training algorithms that use human-generated abstracts to determine probabilities that certain source-text sentences would appear in an automated summary. Each of these approaches represents a point on the continuum drawing nearer to full-text understanding.
The following examples of recent initiatives illustrate some of the key approaches to statistical processing.
From Automatic Indexing to "On-the-Fly" Summarization. Automatic indexing research by Gerard Salton of Cornell University and others in the 1970s and 1980s evolved into statistical processing methods based on tf.idf weighting, which applies significance to a term by counting the number of times it appears in a document (tf, the term frequency) and multiplying the result by the term's inverse document frequency (idf) a logarithmic calculation of the total number of documents in the collection, divided by the number of documents containing the target term. In the 1990s, Salton used tf.idf weights and other measures derived from indexing research to identify closely related segments within a document and then to compare those relationships with those of other documents, generating automatic hyperlinks when the similarities were close.
Building on that, the analysis of similarities among various combinations of paragraphs within a document can reveal relatedness where a topic is reinforced elsewhere in the document or unrelatedness, suggesting the beginning of a new topic or angle. Added together, these intra-document results are able to suggest an overall text structure without the need for the complex linguistic theory often associated with discourse analysis. Even more interesting, these internal links can be compared to a query and an extracted summary constructed at retrieval time: summarization on the fly, tailored to the user's particular information need. In 1997 Salton evaluated automatic text construction against human-constructed abstracts and found that measuring the amount of overlap between source document and abstract, the two were nearly identical. However, it should be noted that he used IR graduate students, not professional abstract writers, to produce the summaries.
Machine "Learning" from Bayesian Statistics. In the area of machine training, Julian Kupiec and others (1995) employed an analysis technique that allows for a recalculation of probabilities as "learning" progresses known as Bayesian statistics. The probabilities in question were the likelihood that a given sentence in a source text should be included in a summary, based on the frequency of text features. The analysis also provided various categories of matches between the source text and summary, including a direct match, where summary sentence and source sentence are identical, and direct join, where two source sentences are combined into a single summary sentence. In tests of the Bayesian algorithm, 84 percent of the machine summaries overlapped with sentences in the manual summaries at a 25 percent compression of the source text, which was double the overlap that Edmundson cited at the same rate of compression. The optimal set of features for Kupiec turned out to be a combination of location, cue phrase and sentence length. Follow-on experiments with Korean texts indicated that the Bayesian approach was language-independent.
Topic-Rich Keywords Point to Useful Sentences. Eduard Hovy and Chin-Yew Lin (1999) worked on discovering the best locations for picking out abstract-worthy sentences, using an existing concept thesaurus to provide rudimentary interpretation of sentences selected through a topic-identification routine. They used tf.idf weightings and other tools to develop topic-rich keywords from a training collection of 13,000 newspaper articles covering technology industry announcements, and from that they developed ranked lists of sentences that contained topical terms. Unlike other document types, news stories have a fairly predictable structure, with the important information typically at the beginning of the article, but this can vary according to editing practices at different publications.
In the collection of technology stories, the title (headline) was the optimal place for locating usable terms, followed by the first sentence of the second paragraph. A second test of 30,000 general-interest Wall Street Journal articles revealed that the title was optimal, followed by the first paragraph. In the case of the technology stories, journalists tended to "tease" a new product announcement in the initial sentences with abstract language, reserving the facts for the second paragraph. In the Wall Street Journal, different editing standards resulted in the salient facts being included in the first paragraph.
Issues and Problems with the Statistical Approach
For all the promise of these methods, the problems associated with automatic summarization based on text extraction are still significant, 30 years after Edmundson noted them. The following are among the problems.
The Need for Human Intervention. Extracted sentences often need at least some human editing to smooth the language. Salton did research with statistically generated "transitions" useful phrases or sentences from the source text that act to smooth a shift in topics in a summary but results were spotty. Better, more satisfactory approaches to smoothing and revising the text require some understanding of discourse structure and domain knowledge.
Ambiguous References. The twin problems of unresolved anaphors (such as pronouns, which refer back to words earlier in the text) and cataphors (ambiguous words signaling a term that shows up later in the text) are especially thorny. A common solution appears to be simply to delete the dangling references from the summary, or, failing that, to pick up the preceding or subsequent sentence from the source text and hope that the anaphor or cataphor is resolved. A more reliable solution would require linguistic analysis well beyond the scope of a pure IR approach.
Misapplied Rhetoric. Resolving rhetorical devices in text is a similar problem. Cue phrases like "on the other hand" or "on the contrary" may creep into a summary and set up an opposing statement that does not exist in the source text. Again, inserting the preceding or subsequent sentence from the source text into the summary may resolve the reference, but it is an uncertain solution at best.
Synonyms and Other Context-Dependent Terms. Disambiguating collection-wide term lists without a degree of domain knowledge, including thesauri and established vocabularies, is a difficult proposition. Synonyms like truck-lorry or elevator-lift require thesauri and query expansion, whereas the polysemy problem multiple meanings for words like "lead" or "book" requires that the system understand the context of the term, which may follow not only from the source text but ultimately from the user's information need. Susan Feldman has pointed out that queries to the Web about war will turn up a lot of sports articles, given the writers' tendency to describe the playing field in terms of battles, routs and crushing defeats.
Interpreting Non-Text Objects. Content that stretches the definition of "text" is problematic for automated extraction, including tables, itemized lists, equations, diagrams, and so on. If a source title reads, "The Candidate's Top Four Proposals." the extraction algorithm would have to be intelligent enough to pick out all four from the following text or fail as a summarization tool.
The Need for Adequate Test Material. It is often difficult to find a suitable body of texts with which to develop learning algorithms and conduct trials. Collections of documents with human-produced abstracts are important for evaluating the machine-generated versions but aren't always available. Even when they are, researchers must try to control for variations in quality; author-supplied abstracts, for example, are frequently less systematic or structured than those written by professional abstractors. (Abstracts developed by the researchers' own graduate students, with their insiders' knowledge, add another interesting variable.) Regardless of the source, proper evaluation demands some kind of "ideal" abstract with which to make comparison but does ideal mean merely that it overlaps the source text to a satisfactory level, or does it mean that it actually meets a user's information need? If so, did the user need a quick summary, a pointer to additional resources, a critique of a resource or what, exactly?
Solving these problems requires some level of linguistic analysis and domain knowledge, and thus they present the threshold where information retrieval methods and statistical processing alone begin to falter. The breakpoint between an extract and an abstract is how successfully an idea has been conveyed in a summary: The summary is not created from mere words and phrases picked out of the source text, but from a generalization of those terms into coherently compressed text. The "knowledge-poor" approach, then, is stuck with the mechanical components of text, and it takes ontologies and thesauri, and deep understanding of text structure, to advance into semantic, syntactic or discourse-level understanding. While it is an improvement over the "bag of words" of mere indexing, a program to produce a statistically generated summary, as Eduard Hovy pointed out, will scarcely understand "that the sequence enter + order + wait + eat + pay + leave can be summarized as restaurant visit."
Breaking New Ground
For the near term, though, most summarization techniques will rely on IR and statistical processing, and there is plenty of groundwork still to be done. Text extraction is the focus of a number of interesting research areas, including the following:
In spite of the numerous drawbacks described here, statistically based text extraction is an important strategy in the creation of automated summaries. Research is directed at improving relevance and coherence, as well as gaining a better understanding of discourse structure.
The direction of research is increasingly at the interface between statistical analysis and linguistic analysis, both still fairly young technologies. Collection-based training and link analysis of documents are both statistical methods of arriving at a reasonable model of discourse structure a basic requirement for turning an extract into an abstract. Meanwhile, a growing body of domain knowledge from many disciplines is gradually entering the mix.
Still, there are many questions to answer before the relative ease and flexibility of text extraction combines with the informational power of fact extraction to produce summaries that meet the needs of any user. Hovy and Lin gave voice to the excitement in this newly rediscovered field. "It is so difficult that interesting headway can be made for many years to come," they wrote in 1999. "We are still excited about the possibilities offered by the combination of semantic and statistical techniques in what is surely one of the most complex tasks in all of natural language processing."
And while researchers continue to sort out the complexities of automated abstracting, text extraction still holds a lot of promise. Karen Sparck Jones pointed out that the ability simply to scan a less-than-coherent summary may be enough for certain patient searchers, those "tolerant but rational users with loosely defined tasks" especially those with information overload.
For Further Reading
Feldman, S. (1999, May). NLP meets the jabberwocky: Natural language processing in information retrieval. Online, 23, 62-72.
Hahn, U, & Mani, I. (2000, November). The challenges of automatic summarization." Computer 33, 29-37.
Hovy, E., & Lin, C. -Y. (1999). Automated text summarization in Summarist. In I. Mani and M. Maybury (Eds.), Advances in automatic text summarization (pp. 81-94). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kupiec, J., Pedersen, J. & Chen, F. (1995). A trainable document summarizer. Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 68-73). New York: ACM Press.
Mueller, E. T. (1999). Prospects for in-depth story understanding by computer. Project Xenia, Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved February 3, 2004, from http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~mueller/papers/storyund.html.
Pinto, M. & Galvez, C. (1999). Paradigms for abstracting systems. Journal of Information Science 25, 365-380.
Salton, G., Singhal, A., Mitra, M., & Buckley, C. (1997). Automatic text structuring and summarization. Information Processing and Management 33, 193-207.
Sparck Jones, K. (1999). Automatic summarizing: Factors and directions. In I. Mani and M. Maybury (Eds.), Advances in automatic text summarization (pp. 2-12). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Information Science and Technology


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Jersey Shore Events, Coupons, Reviews!
Oct. 1st - Nov. 30th
The Original Harlem Globetrotters are known for their amazing feats of basketball, humor, and acts of goodwill on and off the court. And they have always been about the fans, but this year, everything they do will bring fans closer to the action more than ever before. Join them as they celebrate fans during the all-new Fan Powered World Tour! There will be over 20 occasions before, during and after the game where you have the opportunity to directly interact with Globetrotters stars. Don't miss out - get your tickets today and save 25% off with promo code FUNFAM
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Give the gift of AquaMermaid this holiday season.
Give a mermaid tail for a great gift under the tree and a mermaid swimming class to learn how to swim in the tail! Gift cards are also available.
Head to www.aquamermaid.com for more info.


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January 23, 2013
Palmerton, PA
William H. Douthart, Jr., 93, of Lehigh Avenue, Palmerton, died late Wednesday evening, January 23, 2013, at Mahoning Valley Nursing & Rehab Ctr., Lehighton. He was the husband of Lillian B. (Booz) Douthart. Born in Philadelphia, he was a son of the late William H., Sr. and Edna Anna (Happ) Douthart.
William worked as a mechanical design drafter and industrial contractor for RCA Corp., and US Naval Air Engineering Center, Lake Hurst, NJ, for over 40 years. He was a member of St. John's Episcopal Church, Palmerton, volunteering as chalice bearer, and usher. He attended Lafayette College, and was a member of Delta Upsilon in the Asiatic-Pacific Theatre 3 Battle Stars, Philippine Liberation 2 Battle Stars, member Order of the Purple Heart, and Korean Service Medal, he achieved rank of Captain. William was a 32nd Degree Mason, over 65-year member of Wm. L. Elkins Lodge No. 271, F.& A.M., Philadelphia, and member of Scottish Rite, Valley of Trenton, NJ. He was an avid hunter, fisherman, coin collector, and family man, with high moral values. He will be greatly missed.
Survivors include his wife, Lillian; daughter, Linda L. Douthart of Middletown, NY; son, William H., III and wife, Denise of Lehighton, PA; six grandchildren: Wm. H. IV, Brittany, Emily, Chas, Eric, and Frank; six great-grandchildren: Star, Izzy, Alyssa, Gavin, Lucis, and Charlette. He was predeceased by brother, Duane "Duke" E. Douthart.
Memorial Services are to be announced.
Arrangements are by the Campton Funeral Home, Palmerton. Online condolences: www.SCHISLERFUNERALHOMES.com
Contributions may be made to St. John's Episcopal Church, 365 Lafayette Avenue, Palmerton, PA 18071.


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Forget all those reports released by the Labor Department, Commerce Department and USDA combined.
"You'll learn a lot more about the state of the nation from Conagra's decision to buyRalcorp for $5 billion," said Jim Cramer on Wednesday's Mad Money. Read More: Cramer: ConAgra's $5 Billion Bet, Will It Pay?
Already a company with a slew of well-known household brands such as Healthy Choice, Orville Redenbacher, Slim Jim and many more – the massive acquisition will transform ConAgra into the top U.S. producer of store-branded foods, as well.
Although the deal will put even more ConAgra products on shelves, it also illustrates a subtle yet important trend that's well underway across America, explained Cramer.


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With the downturn in the housing market, it has become harder for agents to finalize sales and earn their subsequent commissions.
What once was a decent part-time job 10 years ago requires a lot more commitment just to make sure a sale goes through.
When the housing market was booming, people could work part time as a real estate agent, helping friends and family members buy and sell homes. Houses sold in two to three weeks, said Patti Kremser, the managing broker at Century 21 Roberts & Andrews.
"Today, we're back to basic salesmanship," Kremser said. "We're not only networking with everyone we know, but we're involved in every community activity, every community group, business network organizations, and we are working every aspect of the job harder."
Kremser said she even now wears a Century 21 tank top at the gym.
"If I'm wearing my Century 21 tank and getting all sweaty in that, they'll go 'oh, she's in real estate,' " Kremser said. "It's all about branding."
Kremser also belongs to church organizations and networking groups to help gain referrals.
Don Prigge is a branch manager for Baird & Warner in Crystal Lake.
"The skill level of the Realtors has changed dramatically over the past three to four years," Prigge said. "As well as the pay. If we're paid in direct proportion to the sale price of the house, and the houses have dropped [in value] arguably 30 percent in the last three years, you've got to do a lot more business to maintain your income. That's our problem."
"It takes an agent who is skilled in pricing" to sell in this market, Prigge added.
More than ever, agents and brokers have to know how to work with short sales and foreclosures. Agents need to be intuitive about possible problems that may come in a deal, such as issues with a house, and how much the house will appraise for, said Sharon Glau-Greenlee, a real estate agent for Prudential First Realty in Crystal Lake.
"You have to be immersed in the business to give clients exactly what they need," Glau said. "You can't just pop into the business."
Some people, however, are able to make being a part-time broker work for them.
Bruce Treadway of Woodstock has been a part-time broker for Caldwell Banker Primus for about a year. He is the president and owner of Caring Transitions, a company that helps people downsize homes.
"Many people are downsizing because of an inability to pay their mortgage," Treadway said.
The other half of his clients are older folks who want a smaller home with less maintenance to worry about, or who don't want to shovel snow.
He is able to partner his business with his real estate gig.
But people who are getting into the real-estate business can't just sit in the office. People aren't buying second homes as they were in the 1990s or the early part of last decade.
"You have to be looking for business," Treadway said. "It's not going to be walking in the door like it was five years ago."
Linda Bykowski, a broker who works for Century 21 who also manages properties, said brokers need to be able to recognize what kind of repair work needs to be done to a house, help prospective buyers figure out how much to offer after figuring in new appliances or electrical work, and recommend different contractors who can do work to the house.
Sometimes, people rip out copper piping, appliances and cabinets from a foreclosed house, and that would need to be repaired or replaced before the house is habitable, Bykowski said.
Over the past few years, she has learned about the inner workings of a short sale and foreclosures.
"It's still a learning process. You can't just do that overnight," Bykowski said. "You never know, you're working with different attorneys, different things, and all the rules and regulations."
Kremser said brokers need to be available at a moment's notice to show a house and must constantly get their names out to drum up business.
"What service are you doing for your clients if an inquiry about a particular property [comes in] and you're not available to take that call?" she said. "You need to be available to answer every call that comes in on your properties."


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Welcome to Harford Community College. Our distinguished faculty, administrators and staff are dedicated to providing our students with the power to achieve their educational and career goals.
The Office of Academic Affairs oversees the review and approval of all academic programs, the College Library, instructional procedures, and instructional faculty and staff. We are dedicated to new and continued partnerships with local and neighboring colleges and universities and Harford County Public Schools. We also support the growth and innovation of programs and services designed to encourage academic and community enhancement.
We are proud of the opportunities and resources the College provides both locally and statewide. From preparing our students for jobs with a global emphasis to broadening the life experiences of our Continuing Education students, Harford Community College strives to uphold its commitments to the community.
With seven academic divisions, Harford Community College offers a spectrum of educational backgrounds and academic opportunities.
Harford Community College continues to serve its community with programs, courses and events that encourage lifelong learning.
HCC offers four different associate's degrees in 65 programs of study, as well as several certificates.
eLearning supports online models for credit course delivery, giving students the opportunity to take classes from anywhere at any time.
The Harford Community College Honors Program offers an enriched academic experience with courses that include greater intellectual and experiential opportunities and challenges.
The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) serves as a center for collaboration, communication and coordination of teaching and learning activities and innovative instruction to promote lifelong learning and student success.
The Learning Assessment Committee is a standing committee of the Faculty Council.
The Library contributes to excellence in teaching and learning by supporting and expanding classroom instruction by providing easy and comprehensive access to information and instruction in various formats.
Global Education and Engagement is dedicated to increasing awareness of and respect for different cultures locally and around the world by providing students and staff with valuable Travel Study opportunities and sponsoring educational seminars, workshops, forums, presentations on international issues and events.
HCC has developed several articulation agreements with four-year colleges and other higher education institutions to facilitate the seamless transfer of programs and courses.
Through its university partners, the University Center, Northeastern Maryland offers 30 programs of study, convenient course offerings and opportunities for accelerated learning.
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Did you read today's front page stories & breaking news?
From the Wires
Crawford Names David Repinski CEO of U.S. Property & Casualty
By: PR Newswire
Jan. 2, 2013 03:00 PM
ATLANTA, Jan. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- David J. Repinski, a highly experienced insurance executive with the proven ability to drive significant performance improvements in claims management organizations, has joined Crawford & Company (NYSE: CRDA; CRDB), the world's largest independent provider of claims management solutions, to lead its U.S. Property & Casualty business.
As CEO of U.S. Property & Casualty, Repinski is responsible for the business unit's operations, ongoing services diversification; technology innovation and growth initiatives; maintaining and growing its core property and casualty claims adjusting operations, and its industry-leading Contractor Connection(SM) managed repair unit. He will also drive the further expansion of Crawford's large and complex claims unit, GTS®, in the United States.
Repinski reports to Kevin B. Frawley, chief executive officer, Property & Casualty – Americas, and is based in Atlanta. "David has spent more than 20 years in the insurance claims industry in a wide range of operational, sales, marketing and executive roles," Frawley said. "He has compiled an excellent track record of diagnosing problems, identifying solutions and executing on plans to meet serious business challenges. I am certain he will make a significant contribution to our organization as we continue the growth and service expansion of our core U.S. Property & Casualty business."
Repinski spent most of his career at a major worldwide claims management organization, where he last served as executive vice president for global corporate development. He also was president and chief executive officer of the company's U.S. operation, achieving double-digit year-over-year revenue growth and significantly improving profit margins during his six-year tenure. Previously, he held positions as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the U.S. operation and senior vice president of both field adjusting services and sales and marketing for that same division.
Repinski began his claims adjusting career at Crawford & Company in 1991 as a multi-line field claims adjuster for three years. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Georgia State University in Atlanta and is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), a global network of business leaders.
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SOURCE Crawford & Company
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Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik both directs and stars in Perfumed Nightmare. After a lifetime in his somewhat backward hometown, Tahimik travels to Paris. His trip is motivated by his fascination with American technology (why he doesn't go to America is typical of the will o' the wisp nature of the storyline). Once in the City of Light, Tahimik is both fascinated by and disillusioned with the wonders of the modern world. The film has a delightfully spontaneous home-movie quality--literally so, since it was lensed in Super 8mm on a budget of less than $10,000. Truly a one-of-a-kind experience, Perfumed Nightmare was the winner of the Berlin Film Festival International Critics Award in 1983 (six years after its completion, and six years before its general distribution).~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The Perfumed Nightmare (Mababangong Bangugot) is not showing in any theaters in the area.


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MSI N550GTX Ti 1GB Review
Today is the official launch of NVIDIA's 550GTX series, which is essentially the replacement for its previous 450GTX series. Of course, these cards aren't the powerhouse of graphic processing like you can find in the high-end video cards. For the price, however, you can expect a lot of bang-for-your-buck when it comes to the highly important price to performance ratio. MSI states that, in this generation of GPU, the PhysX performance is twice that of older cards, which is an impressive feat! This is due to a technology called "GigaThread scheduler", which is said to allow for up to ten times faster switching between graphics and physics processing. One big thing that MSI has begun to bring out is its cooling design. The "Cyclone" cooler, which is provided on this card retail, is said to allow for 23 °C cooler temperatures over the reference design. Another direction that MSI is heading is the use of solid, aluminum core capacitors and solid-state chokes, which boast silent operation and ultra long lifetime. The MSI N550GTX Ti is also provided in a pre-overclocked version, which I will be testing in this review.
Closer Look:
The MSI packaging is easy to pick out amongst a group of other manufacturers — the flagship black, blue, and silver make it an easy target to spot. A picture of the Cyclone II cooler is the main centerpiece of the front cover, with the N550GTX-Ti text beneath it. There is a small sticker at the top that states it is the OC edition, which is to the left of the other icons that show certain features. Some of these features include PhysX, SLI, CUDA, and others. The front of the box flips open to display more about the card, specifically mentioning the solid capacitors and chokes, MSI Afterburner overclocking software on the bottom of the flap, and again, highlighting the Cyclone II design on the front of the box beneath the flap. There is a small window on the front of the box that allows you to see a dim outline of the card, which is safely wrapped in an anti-static bag.
The card is secured between a layer of stiff, styrofoam packaging and is shielded in an anti-static bag underneath a sheet of plastic. Removing this styrofoam will reveal a compartment that contains the accessories, which includes the user's guide, a manual, a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter, a DVI to VGA adapter, and a molex to a 12v 6-pin adapter, which the card requires. Overall, this is an effective packaging method and certainly worked to keep the MSI N550GTX out of harm's way! The next page will feature a closer look of the card, including a complete disassembly of the card and a close-up look of the MSI Cyclone II cooler.


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Adrian - 10th grade
Ashton - 8th grade
Malia - 7th grade
Jalen - 4th grade
Jordan - 4th grade
Shana's senior pictures aren't quite finished yet, but we will definitely post those when they are ready!
We are a family from the Midwest that pursued God's calling to adopt two children from Ethiopia. What started out as a blog to chronicle our adoption journey has morphed into our family scrapbook. Feel free to follow along as we we live our normal everyday lives, trying to serve Jesus and follow His plans for us.


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Rick Adelman 1 win shy of 1,000 for his career
MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota Timberwolves coach Rick Adelman is one victory away from joining an exclusive club.
Adelman has 999 career victories. Only seven coaches in NBA history have won 1,000 games in their careers. He's reached this point with his own understated style, through stops in Portland, Golden State, Sacramento, Houston and now Minnesota.
Achieving it this season would hold a little something special for Adelman. He missed 11 games to be with his wife while she was treated for seizures and watched a litany of injuries sabotage a team that had playoff aspirations.
The Timberwolves host the Toronto Raptors on Friday night with a chance to get Adelman the milestone. He would join Don Nelson, Lenny Wilkens, Pat Riley, Jerry Sloan, Phil Jackson, Larry Brown and George Karl on the list.


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The world's most popular open source database
If the MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard detects an existing configuration file, you have the option of either reconfiguring your existing server, or removing the server instance by deleting the configuration file and stopping and removing the MySQL service.
To reconfigure an existing server, choose the Re-configure Instance option and click the Next button. Any existing configuration file is not overwritten, but renamed (within the same directory) using a timestamp (Windows) or sequential number (Linux). To remove the existing server instance, choose the Remove Instance option and click the Next button.
If you choose the Remove Instance
option, you advance to a confirmation window. Click the
Execute button. The MySQL Server
Configuration Wizard stops and removes the MySQL service, and
then deletes the configuration file. The server installation
and its
data folder are not removed.
If you choose the Re-configure Instance option, you advance to the Configuration Type dialog where you can choose the type of installation that you wish to configure.


text: BTW, if you want to measure max. request thoughput, write a client which issues N search requests (using async API) upon the root DSE and then for each resultDone return, issue another request. Set N to 100 or so. Kurt At 04:49 PM 4/6/01 -0400, Eric T. Blue wrote: >I've been working with Dmitry over the last couple months in trying to fine >tune back-sql. One avenue I'm looking at is implementing a backend >connection pool for the RDBMS, and possibly porting the ODBC code to Oracle >specific OCI. I've done a good bit of benchmarking so far with the ldbm >backend, as well as back-sql. The other day I decided to start looking at >the performance of the OpenLDAP server as a whole, eliminating the backend, >just to see what type of numbers I could expect. Here are some numbers >benchmarked on a SUN E220 2/450Mhz procs w/ 2GB RAM: > >This is done via an in-house tool I wrote, but the numbers are almost >identical to those reported from Mindcraft's DirectoryMark. >non-threaded single client: > >BerkleyDB backend: 217 queries / second >BACK-SQL backend: 6 queries / second > >Now, I first tried to make a dummy backend myself which just defined the >initialize routine from backend.c. In the init code, I assigned 0 to all >fcns except for the search fcn. In the search fcn all I did was either >return an LDAP_SUCCESS message, or an LDAP_OTHER with some text to see what >was going on. The result was about 300 q / s. Now, to give a more accurate >stress test, I ran 20 clients in parallel which did a bind, search, and >unbind for every operation. Combining the results of all 20 clients >increases the number to show about 570 q /s with no backend. I also tried >returning the LDAP_SUCCESS directly from search.c in servers/slapd. This >number seems low to me, and I was wondering if there is anything I can do to >increase performance? For some reason, I made an assumption that the >"slowness" in throughput was due to disk or protocol IO for the backend >processing... maybe not. My ultimate goal, which may be unrealistic at this >point, is to achieve a MAX number of 1,000 q / s while using OCI. What I'd >like to do is establish a connection pool of x number of persistent OCI >connections to Oracle on DB startup and assign each LDAP handle to a >particular OCI handle for the connection. I'd appreciate any insight >anybody can offer. You guys have been very helpful so far. Thanks! > >-----Original Message----- >From: firstname.lastname@example.com [mailto:email@example.com]On Behalf Of >Dmitry Kovalev >Sent: Friday, April 06, 2001 5:55 AM >To: Eric T. Blue >Subject: Re: back-sql / oc question > > >Hello Eric! > >"Eric T. Blue" wrote: > >> Dmitry, >> I haven't had a chance to profile it yet, but I may have some >dissapointing >> news. Up till now, I've assumed the a great deal of processing is spent >on >> the backend (regardless if it is ldbm, or back-sql). So, I decided to >make >> dummy backend that really does nothing... just inits function pointers to >0. >> I've also changed search.c in the servers/slapd directory to give an >> LDAP_SUCCESS message and return instantly. If I do this and then give a >> stress test to the server (ie. 10 clients connecting simultaneously with >> 1,000 searches each) I only can achieve 300 queries per second. If this >is >> the case, then obviously I can never expect to achieve a number greater >than >> this(or even 25% of this assuming that an OCI backend is put in place). >> This number is very surprising to me, and I can't believe that the core >> OpenLDAP code is this sluggish.. what do you think? >> > >Well, this is too strange (all it have to do is choose a working thread, >parse the >request, and send OK), but after all - I have no knowledge of slapd >frontend - I just >plugged in my backend, thats all... > > >There are a number of tunings that can be done - worker thread pool size >etc., of >which I don't know much... > >We should contact somebody from the real core - because my core membership >is limited >to back-sql support - I don't have much time even for this nowadays :( > >Namely, Kurt D. Zeilenga appears to be the chief architect - we could >forward this to >him, with questions regarding slapd frontend... > >WBW, Dmitry


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Hello Textkitters,
I must please ask that everyone refrain from posting images in their posts and signatures, including using hotlinks IF the image is not your own.
Textkit recently concluded a legal dispute with Getty Images where we were accused of copyright violations. At issue was an image which was hot-linked by a Textkit forum member and this image was a copyright protected Getty image. The forum has over 100K pages and it's impossible for us to see what's going on. Nevertheless, Getty images has a web crawler at work and this crawler found the image.
Fortunately for us, my wife is a patent attorney and she was able to secure pro bono legal help from a Cleveland patent law firm. We got the issue resolved, but this took several months and several hours of time from my wife and the law firm. Getty wanted Textkit to pay an incredible high bill for 'damages' from a single image.
Again, if it is not YOUR image, don't post it. I understand how harmless it may seem to post an image already found on the Interent, but it can and did cause some unwanted headaches for us.
thank you for your understanding.


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March 2014
March 27, 2014
The U.S. Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today the launch of Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive!, a collaborative effort with federal partners to encourage developmental and behavioral screening for children to support the families and providers who care for them.
March 21, 2014
The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released today the first comprehensive look at civil rights data from every public school in the country in nearly 15 years.
The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) from the 2011-12 school year was announced by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at J.O. Wilson Elementary School in Washington, D.C.
March 20, 2014U.S. Department of Education Announces Resolution of South Carolina Virtual Charter Schools Civil Rights Investigation
The U.S. Department of Education announced today that its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has entered into an agreement with South Carolina Charter School District to ensure compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1972 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act for students with disabilities in the District.
March 19, 2014
Today the U.S. Department of Education released the year three Race to the Top state progress reports for the District of Columbia and the 11 states that received grants in the first two rounds of the program: Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Tennessee. These reports capture the highlights and obstacles that the states saw over the course of the 2012-13 school year.
March 18, 2014
The U.S. Department of Education announced the start of the $134 million 2014 Investing in Innovation (i3) grant competition on March 14th, 2014 with the release of the program's invitation for pre-applications for the i3 "Development" grants (up to $3,000,000 each). In its fifth round of competition, the i3 program continues to develop and expand practices that accelerate student achievement and prepare every student to succeed in college and in their careers.
March 14, 2014Obama Administration Takes Action to Protect Americans from Predatory, Poor-Performing Career Colleges
The Obama Administration announced today new steps to address growing concerns about burdensome student loan debt by requiring career colleges to do a better job of preparing students for gainful employmentor risk losing access to taxpayer-funded federal student aid.
March 13, 2014U.S. Department of Education Announces Awards to 10 States to Continue Efforts to Turn Around Lowest-Performing Schools
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced that 10 states will receive more than $95 million to continue efforts to turn around their persistently lowest-achieving schools through awards from the Department's School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. The following states are receiving awards: Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon and Texas.
March 12, 2014Statement by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on James H. Shelton III being confirmed by the Senate as the Deputy Secretary of Education
"Jim Shelton has dedicated his life to finding new and better ways to level the playing field for every studentno matter his or her zip code," Duncan said. "He's a champion for children, and a trusted partner and friend. I'm thrilled he's been confirmed as a key member of the Department's leadership team."
March 6, 2014Secretary Duncan Appoints Member to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced the sixth and final appointment to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI).
The committee's new member, appointed to a six-year term, is:
March 4, 2014Obama Administration 2015 Budget Prioritizes Key Education Investments to Provide Opportunities for All Americans
The Obama administration continued to prioritize education in the 2015 budget released today by proposing key investments in education that would create opportunity for every child.


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Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE ReviewSamsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE
- 30-pin USB cable
- Wall Charger
- Quick Reference Guide
- Product Safety & Warranty Guide
The dock connector is on the bottom
The microSIM and microSD card slots are on the left
The 3.5mm jack is on the top
The power button and volume rocker are on the right
12 Comments
1. tward291 (Posts: 559; Member since: 14 Feb 2012)
nice dame verizon
2. kshell1 (Posts: 1143; Member since: 05 Oct 2011)
there goes phone arena putting down the camera on A TABLET
3. itiswhatitis (Posts: 423; Member since: 23 Jan 2012)
I could have make exception for camera but c'mon sluggish performance?
HELL NOoooo!!!
4. Muhannad (Posts: 455; Member since: 20 Sep 2011)
It's "sluggish" because of Honeycomb regardless of Exynos inside it.
8. KingKurogiii (Posts: 5713; Member since: 23 Oct 2011)
yes, he's absolutely right.
7. ph00ny (Posts: 1840; Member since: 26 May 2011)
It's really not that bad. Initial action on the ui may start sluggish but once it's moving, it's pretty smooth.
Can't wait for ICS
5. TKFox007 (Posts: 303; Member since: 02 Nov 2010)
The day I went to get a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 from Verizon is the day this came out. And because this came out Verizon had send all the 10.1s back to their distribution center because it's been labeled as end of life. So I had 4 tablets to choose from the Droid Xyboard 10.1 and 8.9, an iPad and this POS.
So I played with this, and it is no where near worth the $500 price tag. The screen feels smaller than the very first Galaxy Tab 7 inch. It is incredibly slow and sluggish even when swiping between different screens, even after a shut down and restart. The Xyboards were whomping this thing into the pavement in performance.
So for $30 extra I got the Xyboard 10.1.
If they put a $200 price tag on this piece of junk, it would be worth it then.
6. imkyle (Posts: 1104; Member since: 18 Nov 2010)
This is a little sluggish considering the hardware. Ice Cream Sandwich needs to be on the Galaxy Tab's to show its true potential.
9. KingKurogiii (Posts: 5713; Member since: 23 Oct 2011)
i'd be seriously eyeing a Wi-Fi variant myself. o:
10. Twiknight (Posts: 2; Member since: 13 Mar 2012)
Do you know when will the ICS update come?
14. racheted69 (Posts: 1; Member since: 17 Mar 2013)
It is already out and I could not update do to a processor problem. I am sending my into the factory and having a new one sent back out wit ics on it. You need to take it in to a store see if they can help you with the update.
11. greyhulk (Posts: 175; Member since: 30 Jun 2010)
Why do they always mention sluggish performance with a live wallpaper on? It's true of every Android device and competing devices don't even have the option of a live wallpaper, so it seems moot.
The price point is kind of retarded, given you can get the new iPad for the same price without a contract and no data contract. Why do they keep doing this to Android devices?
|7.7 inches, 1280 x 800 pixels (196 ppi) Super AMOLED Plus
|3.2 megapixels
Dual-core, 1400 MHz
|7.74 x 5.24 x 0.31 inches
(197 x 133 x 8 mm)
12.00 oz (340 g)


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† Excluded Feature
2882 HIGHWAY 51 ., Enterprise, AL, 36330 is a Single Family Home for sale at $149,900 with 1,654 sqft and a lot size of 204x200. 2882 HIGHWAY 51 . has 3 bedrooms, 2.0 baths, and was built in 1965. The property's zip code is 36330 which is in Enterprise, AL
Based on 20.00 % down and a 4.13 % financing rate
Includes Mortage, Insurance, and Tax payments
Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
The data relating to real estate for sale on this web site comes in part from the IDX Program of the Multiple Listing Service, Inc. of Montgomery Area Association of REALTORS®. Real estate listings held by brokerage firms other than Weichert Realtors are governed by MLS Rules and Regulations and detailed information about them includes the name of the listing companies.
The information being provided is for consumers' personal, non-commercial use and will not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be
interested in purchasing.
Listing information copyright 2018 Multiple Listing Service, Inc. of Montgomery Area Association of REALTORS®, Inc.
Information herein is believed to be accurate and timely, but no warranty as such is expressed or implied.
Data is updated as of 11/21/2018.
Financial calculator disclaimer:
Default based on a 30-year fixed rate of 4.125% with 20% down. The estimated payment is offered for convenience and is not an offer of credit. Due to market fluctuations, interest rates are subject to change at any time and without notice. Your individual rate may vary. Rates may differ for FHA, VA or jumbo loans.


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Leah & Matt's Enviable Rooftop Oasis
I loved every square inch of Leah & Matt's home that I photographed not too long ago for a house tour (coming up soon!). Though three floors sounds like a lot, their home in South Austin is a tall and narrow condo with simple interiors and a lovely, fresh style.
But I just about lost it when we stepped onto their rooftop patio. Though admittedly they've got a great space to work with (there's even a view of downtown Austin!), I were really blown away by Leah's imagination and ability to transform a plain gray space into an outdoor hangout zone bursting with greens, bold colors, comfy seating and edible foods.
Whether you've got your own rooftop patio or a tiny apartment balcony, we asked Leah to share some of her tips and ideas about outdoor spaces, as well as some of the resources they found for their happy space, to inspire:
What's your outdoor space style? Life outdoors. That's two sided for me. It's the standard idea of outdoor living spaces — eating, entertaining, and lounging outside. But it's also the idea of watching life outdoors. There's a part of me that wants a pristine, manicured garden, but that'll never happen. I really enjoy watching the life plants bring. I'll have holes in leaves because I love to watch caterpillars. I'll have plants that look nearly dead because I've let them go to seed and I'm waiting to collect them. I'll have volunteer plants in random pots and cracks in the floor because I can't bear to pull something that worked so hard to be alive.
Your outdoor space inspiration?
I've always connected with the idea of a "garden party" — this is like an ongoing version.
Special problems that you had to overcome in your outside space? This is a rooftop deck, which means that it gets a lot of wind. That can be a good thing when the breeze cools the summer heat, but it puts a lot of stress on the plants. I've worked to create wind breaks and have to water more than a typical patio. I've also had to work on furniture and pot placement. The row of boxwoods helps keep the couch from moving during particularly rough weather.
Plants in the area:
Lots! Veggies/herbs/flowers change seasonally and I'm currently dealing with a succulent addiction. The dominant permanent ones are:
• Green tower boxwoods as hedge
• Trumpet vine on the light trellis
• Passion vine and wisteria on one railing
• Star jasmine on the other
• Yews flanking the door
Furniture resources:
• Sectional: I stalked this from a number of places, but got the best deal from an ebay dealer.
• Pillows: Mix from West Elm, Target, Pier One and Home Depot
• Rug: Chilewich
• Custom veggie planters: Michael Blair at The Urban Owl
• Pottery/containers/plants: The Great Outdoors, The Natural Gardener, Ikea
• Wood trellis: Lattice Stix
• Iron oblesiks: The Great Outdoors, The Natural Gardener, and Round Top Antique Festival
• Metal benches: Ace Mart Restaurant Supply
• Table & chairs: DWR
• Dirt from Geo Growers
How much time did it take to put this together? The space was blank 2 years ago. Now I marvel at the idea that a grasshopper made it up to the fourth floor.
Plans for the future? Now that I've gotten the placement of everything down, I'm ready to have a professional come in to install a drip irrigation system.
(Images: Adrienne Breaux)


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You have until Feb 01, 2019 to return or exchange items bought after Nov 01, 2018. All other standard return policy conditions apply.
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The Interlink VP4550 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer is a simple yet powerful presentation tool for all levels of users. It is designed with five intuitive presentation control buttons, a unique scroll wheel for long document maneuvers and a built-in laser pointer. The VP4550 presenter features up to 70 feet of wireless freedom for effortless presentation delivery.
With an on/off switch to conserve power and integrated storage for its receiver dongle, the device is travel-friendly. Designed for plug-and-play, the VP4550 works instantly with any Windows and Mac computers without the need to install software.


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Skin Cancer Come Back In The Same Place?
Dear OncoLink "Ask The Experts,"
Does skin cancer come back in the same place?
Christopher Miller, MD, Assistant Professor in Dermatology and Director of the Moh's Surgery Program at Penn Medicine, responds:
Skin cancer can grow back in the same place, if the original surgery failed to remove it all. The risk that the original surgery will fail to remove the cancer is greatest when the edges of the cancer are hard to determine with certainty using the naked eye, or if there are many sun damaged areas around the skin cancer. For those ill-defined skin cancers, Mohs surgery offer the highest cure rates. Mohs surgery allows examination of 100% of the surgical edge to make sure that nothing is left behind. If your cancer is in a cosmetically important area or the edges are ill-defiined, see a fellowship-trained Mohs surgeon.
This question and answer was part of the OncoLink Brown Bag Chat Series: Sun Safety and Skin Cancer Prevention Webchat. View the entire transcript on Sun Safety.


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Pain Center Admission Forms
For your convenience and in order to expedite the admission process, we ask that you download the forms listed below, fill them out completely, and bring with you on your first appointment date.
Interventional Pain Management
If your assigned physician includes:
Dr. Laura Audell, Dr. Jana Baumgarten, Dr. Azita Far, Dr. Viliam Furdik, Dr. Leticia Lau, Dr. Yong-Jian Lin, Dr. Cynthia Mathis, Dr. Kenith Paresa, Dr. Gary Rosengarten, Dr. Howard Rosner, Dr. David Scott, or Dr. Christopher Zarembinski
Please complete and bring the following forms with you.
Headache, Orofacial Pain and Sleep Apnea Program
If your assigned physician is either Dr. Steven Graff-Radford, Dr. Alan Newman or Dr. Katayoun Omrani, please complete and bring the following forms with you.
The forms below should be substituted for the Head and Neck Evaluation Form if you are being seen for either of the following conditions:
- If you are experiencing sleeping problems, please complete the Sleep Evaluation Form
- If you are experiencing numbness, please complete the Numbness Evaluation Form.
If you are scheduled for a procedure, you may download instructions preparing you for sedation by clicking on the icon below. This material should be read a minimum of six days prior to your procedure. You may also call (310) 423-9857 for an automated message outlining the same information. Procedures, Medicines and Instructions.


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PCI 3.0, Part 4: Documenting Your Compliance
Jun 3, 2014 5:00 AM PT
PCI 3.0, Part 3: Validating Your Cardholder Data Environment
Summer is almost here, and that means many of you probably have made significant headway laying the groundwork for your 2015 PCI audit. However, one important aspect of 3.0 preparations that doesn't always get the attention it should is documentation.
If you've tackled PCI compliance in the past, this is probably an area where you'll have a few questions. Previous iterations of the PCI DSS requested documentation but weren't always clear about the type and depth needed. For instance, while organizations knew they needed to document the log review process, they weren't always sure how granular that documentation should be.
That kind of ambiguity inspired plenty of questions across all 12 standards and subsections -- and auditors, security professionals, e-commerce merchants and the QSA community frequently went back to PCI asking for additional detail.
If this sounds familiar, here's some good news: PCI 3.0 includes additional guidance right in the revised standards. Instead of simply advising to "develop appropriate documentation," PCI has articulated what needs to be documented and how.
The Where, Why and How of Documentation
Data Flows
Defining your cardholder data environment, or CDE, is a critical part of transitioning to 3.0, and so is documenting the fruit of your work. Mapping the flow of cardholder data through your environment isn't enough; you'll also need to create network diagrams that outline connections and the path of the data.
If you're using network segmentation to isolate cardholder data and reduce your compliance scope, you'll need to document those boundaries to prove your segmentation methodology is working effectively. You must prove your data is in the right systems and nowhere else -- and that means accurate diagrams of your cardholder data, or CHD, flows.
Pen Testing
One of the best ways to ensure your new controls are working is by running pen tests. Yes, this is something else that needs to be documented -- but be aware that 3.0 requirements have specific guidelines on the type of pen-testing methodology you should use, such as one with both public-facing and administrative applications.
This applies both to internal methodologies and to those conducted by an outside vendor.
One of the first tasks in getting ready for PCI 3.0 is identifying all people, processes and technology involved in your CDE. You'll need to include all security services and segmentation systems, as well as virtualization and network components and server types. You'll also need to account for all internal and external applications. Of course, it's not just equipment; processes can shift, and staff with access to cryptographic keys and CHD can leave or change responsibilities.
Keep in mind that your inventory must be kept current and reflect all of these factors at any given moment. Furthermore, PCI's actual standard states that the inventory must "include a description of function/use for each" -- meaning you not only must list your components, but also describe their role in your environment.
Policies and Procedures
This is a part of documentation that often gets overlooked. Every workplace has policies and procedures, after all, but it's important to understand their context in PCI compliance. In this instance, your compliance policies are high-level statements about a particular area, while your compliance procedures are practices that a particular department develops to implement those policies.
In all likelihood, the procedures will differ from department to department, and that's fine, as long as they all comply with the policy. The role of this documentation? To demonstrate that you understand the intent of PCI controls and have created procedures that successfully implement those controls within your environment.
Risk Assessments
Many organizations fail to conduct good risk assessments, which is unfortunate, as they can strengthen your security posture while creating much of the evidence PCI wants you to provide. To conduct yours, you should start by documenting how your organization creates, accesses and stores cardholder data, and then identify the risks you face.
After you've detailed every kind of threat -- including natural disasters, malicious human attacks and environmental threats -- you'll need to assign risk levels to each by assessing the likelihood of those threats occurring and the potential severity of their impact.
Consider all aspects of the potential damage, including the number of people impacted, the financial cost of the impact, and, of course, the impact to your reputation. Finally, you'll need to create and implement risk mitigation strategies.
Stronger Security
PCI documentation may seem fairly simple, but it is an important part of achieving compliance.
Like most tasks you'll undertake for PCI 3.0, documentation isn't merely an obligation to be met -- it's also a helpful step toward clarifying and improving your own security program.
Stay tuned for PCI 3.0, Part 5.


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Discover a place that CNN ranked as a top ten world destination for 2012.
Call the Orange County Special Needs Registration line at (407) 836-9319 for registration forms and instructions. Be sure to keep your information current.
Any Orange County resident who meets the established eligibility criteria may register. Registration can be obtained by calling or visiting one of the following:
Information collected during the registration process is confidential by law and will only be given to specific emergency personnel.
Orange County has three designated Special Needs Shelter sites.
Orange County welcomes family and certified guide or companion animals. Please call Animal Services at (407) 352-4390.
Hospitals don't provide shelter; instead you should go to the designated Red Cross or Special Needs Shelter.
Emergency Medical Services Office
2002-A East Michigan Street
Orlando, Florida 32806
Phone: (407) 836-8960
Fax: (407) 836-7625