text: Here are my votes: 1. unspecified value, three options: A. leave as in r5rs: set!, set-car!, etc., return unspecified value B. require return of new void value C. require return of zero values Vote: B 2. add (void) constructor if we choose option B on Vote 1 Vote: yes 3. add #!void syntax if we choose option B on Vote 1 Vote: no 4. add (begin) expression (begin) => unspecified value [or Vote 1 replacement] Vote: no 5. add (define x) syntax (define x) => (define x <void>) if we choose option B on Vote 1 (define x) => (define x <unspecified>) otherwise Vote: yes 6. extend case to use member in place of memv Vote: yes 7. add graph printing: #n= marks datum, #n# references Vote: yes 8. write uses graph printing when cycles are detected if we choose yes on Vote 7. Vote: yes 9. add mechanism for causing write to use graph printing if we choose yes on Vote 7. Vote: yes 10. add when and unless forms: (when e0 e1 e2 ...) => (if e0 (begin e1 e2 ...) <unspecified value>) (unless e0 e1 e2 ...) => (if e0 <unspecified value> (begin e1 e2 ...)) Vote: yes 11. relegate one-armed if to r5rs-compatibility library Vote: yes 12. add call/cc as an "official" abbreviation for call-with-current-continuation Vote: yes 13. add rec form: (rec id e) => (letrec ([id e]) id) Vote: yes 14. add #n( vector prefix: Examples: #5(0 1 2 3 4) equiv. #(0 1 2 3 4) #8(0 1 2 3 4) equiv. #(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7) #1000(#f) equiv. #(#f #f ... #f) [ 1000 #f's ] Vote: yes 15. require write to use #n( prefix Vote: no 16. allow write to use #n( prefix Vote: yes 17. add gensyms (gensym) => gensym (gensym? x) => #t iff x is a gensym gensyms have both a pretty name and a globally unique name. (symbol->string (gensym)) => pretty name (symbol->unique-string (gensym)) => unique name syntax for gensyms to be decided. Vote: yes 18. add case-lambda (case-lambda [<formals> body1 body2 ...] ...) where <formals> is just like a lambda <formals>, and the first clause for which the actuals correctly map to <formals> is chosen. Vote: yes 19. add andmap (define andmap (lambda (f ls . more) (let andmap ([ls ls] [more more] [a #t]) (if (null? ls) a (let ([a (apply f (car ls) (map car more))]) (and a (andmap (cdr ls) (map cdr more) a))))))) Vote: yes 20. add ormap (define ormap (lambda (f ls . more) (let ormap ([f f] [ls ls] [more more]) (and (not (null? ls)) (or (apply f (car ls) (map car more)) (ormap f (cdr ls) (map cdr more))))))) Vote: yes 21. specify that append does not copy first argument when second is '() Vote: yes 22. modify quasiquote to support Alan Bawden's PEPM '99 nested quasiquote extensions Vote: yes 23. mvbinding construct names, three options: A. let-values and let*-values B. let-values and let-values* C. mvlet and mvlet* Vote: C 24. add #!eof as external representation for eof-object Vote: yes 25. add support for formatted output Vote: no 26. add cond-expand (SRFI 0) Vote: no 27. add homogeneous numeric vectors Vote: no 28. make () self-evaluating Vote: yes 29. add support for weak pointers Vote: yes 30. #t and #f must be followed by a delimiter Vote: yes 31. characters must be followed by a delimiter Vote: yes 32. add support for regular expressions Vote: no 33. call the new void value, if we choose option B on Vote 1: A. "unspecific value" B. "void value" Vote: B [If we choose A, I presume we would use (unspecific) rather than (void) if we choose yes on Vote 2 and #!unspecific rather than #!void if we choose yes on Vote 3.] 34. Should the character comparison predicates be required to be: A. n-ary B. binary Vote: A 35. flush sealed clause in records Vote: yes 36. As with quoted constants, an implementation is allowed to create a new type each time the same define-record-type form is evaluated or to treat the type as a constant value, so that, for example: (let ((f (lambda (x) (define-record-type r ---) (if x r? (make-r ---))))) ((f #t) (f #f))) may return either #t or #f. Should we: A. leave it like it is B. require the descriptor to be recreated each time C. require the descriptor to treated as a constant Vote: A 37. allow record? to be true of built-in types Vote: yes 38. The specification of make-record-type-descriptor has this: If parent is not #f, and uid is not #f, and the parent is generative (i.e. its uid is #f), an error is signalled. Should this restriction be lifted? Vote: yes 39. pin down the dynamic environment in the before and after thunks of dynamic-wind Vote: yes 40. flush named let if we choose "yes" on Vote 13 Vote: no


text:
Exclusive new images of the LG Chocolate Touch VX8575
This article contains unofficial information.
Thanks to a friend for the pics and info!
LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 Preliminary Specifications
If you have some interesting info that you'd like to share with us, feel free to Tip Us!
36 Comments
1. Wifey_Ma (Posts: 15; Member since: 13 Aug 2009)
That looks awesome!!
2. EraserXIV (Posts: 38; Member since: 16 Jul 2009)
how is that better than the BL40? it looks like a toy.
6. VZWfangirl (Posts: 71; Member since: 25 Jul 2009)
The majority rules is what happened. Most people liked the look of the phone but felt it was to long. Which I do agree on for functional purposes, so they changed the entire look of the phone, what they should have did was just make it a bit shorter and left it alone. Now it's just a restyled Dare 2. It's just another example of the HTC Hero UK version vs. Sprint.
17. PapaJay224 (Posts: 866; Member since: 08 Feb 2009)
I respect your opinion as a consumer, but I also respectively disagree...the design is great, far more advanced, and very futureistic looking. I would probably say this is more like a Dare 2 more than a Chocolate 4 though, if its tru what they say about pricing and new releases we have "weened out" the Cocolate phone completely, and the Dare phone just dropped in price. I know its un official but I wouldnt be suprised if this was a sequal to the Dare, repectivley.
25. crd22 (Posts: 77; Member since: 15 Apr 2008)
I agree that the whole look should NOT have been scrapped. Even though the original Chocolate Touch was a little long, it was still unique (unlike this new one). They shoulda just made it a little shorter cus now it's plain ugly and looks like the Dare1.5, which is not a compliment.
35. mikeaud44 (Posts: 30; Member since: 05 Dec 2008)
It looks alright, but is it really an improvement over the Dare? The reason I got the Dare when it came out was because it had a slew of new and improved features. If the only improvement is a higher resolution screen, then it's not worth getting for me. Maybe if they also bumped up the camera to a 5.0 megapixel, added wi-fi, document viewer for .doc, .xls, .pdf, etc... Otherwise, looks like i'll be waiting for the Storm 2...
3. bng (Posts: 107; Member since: 12 Feb 2009)
wow looks like a really cool phone. i hope it dosnt requier an extra $10 like the Rogue im keeping my fingers cross for this phone! :) so i guess im going to wait for this phone i was thinkng of geting the Versa or the Rogue next week. i also hope it hase different home screens like the Versa
9. kvenderley (Posts: 31; Member since: 09 Aug 2009)
It will, for any high level "dumb phone" ei the rogue, this and others that come with html browser and email feature will require you to get a connect plan or some sort of MB package.
18. PapaJay224 (Posts: 866; Member since: 08 Feb 2009)
It will most likely require then plan. BNG what do you plan to use it for if NOT for Data related material?
26. crd22 (Posts: 77; Member since: 15 Apr 2008)
It's not strange that people want a phone to make calls and sends text messages. Regardless of how "advanced" phones are, many people don't want or are not able to pay an extra $15-$30 a month for data that they never use.
29. bng (Posts: 107; Member since: 12 Feb 2009)
I only plan on using this phone for call and text. i don't need to use the internet i rather yous it on my lap top which is much fast than a phones browser. but any way if you look it has the Bing search so it probably will require an extra date plane because the Rogue had a my space widget and it turned out to need an extra date plane for that phone.
4. mr. anderson (Posts: 92; Member since: 16 Apr 2009)
wow, what an ugly phone. theyve murdered some phones in the past, but going on looks alone right now this one takes the cake. doesnt look like any elements of the bl40 made its way into this. again, vzw customers cant have nice things...
10. kvenderley (Posts: 31; Member since: 09 Aug 2009)
the BL40 is WAY TO SKINNY!!! like i like the 4 inches wide part of it and the thinness of the phone, but you cant do anything in portrait mode with that phone. This phone is more stylish and the screen is wider so you can do more with it in portrait mode. true, it might not be 4 inches wide in landscape mode, but i just hope its bigger than 3.2 inches. as long as this phone is thin still, im getting this or the rogue for sure. VERIZON, RELEASE IT ALREADY!!!
13. tanders04 (Posts: 71; Member since: 12 Feb 2009)
Ugh... Much like wide screen movies people continue to confuse "skinny" with wide. The phone is no "skinnier" width wise than most current phones. The difference is marginal. .1 in "skinnier" than the G1. What the phone is (again like movies) is wider which give you more room. LG put out a great and truly innovative phone with the BL40 then VZW users get shit on with this POS because some "focus group" thinks it looks better.
19. PapaJay224 (Posts: 866; Member since: 08 Feb 2009)
Mr. Anderson you are probably mentally challenged if you really think this phone is ugly..What phone do you have? What would you like to see? Is it because Phone Arena set the wrong expectation with their "so called BL leak". PA posted CRAP information about this phone fromthe beginning the Model Number they've been using isnt even assosiated with Verizons LG model numbers "BL40?" VZW has always used "VX" never "BL"...that should have been your first clue...so dont bash Verizon, this phone is Hot and will sell, maybe not to a poor schmuck like you though...take it upo with LG and PA then go buy a razr!
21. kjack628 (Posts: 49; Member since: 19 Jul 2009)
aww kvenderley you gave up on the omnia II? i think i will to for the imagio, but i am going to wait till both come out to compare the two
33. mr. anderson (Posts: 92; Member since: 16 Apr 2009)
ive got the pre and hero. i dont care what the name is, this phone is an abortion of design. beyond the abysmal styling, that menu is so bland and boring. it appears this will be another touch phone from vzw that makes little to no use of the touchscreen, but by golly they can market it as "touchscreen!"
5. kjack628 (Posts: 49; Member since: 19 Jul 2009)
Where's the omnia II pics? that phone been out way longer and you guys can't get a pic of it. You can get any other phone's pic but not the o2...I want to see some pics of it with the vzw logo!!
7. panacea224 (Posts: 19; Member since: 20 Dec 2008)
This was preferred over the BL40 in focus groups? What's with the hard keys? They look like a 2yr old's attempt to draw rectangles. I just hope they kept the capacitive display and 5 megapixel S.K. lens.
8. skylox (Posts: 6; Member since: 24 Aug 2009)
played with the phone last week.....kinda crappy if you ask me....works well but like VZWFANGIRL said they should have renamed it Dare 2.....Also played with the new omnia 2....a little disappointed if you ask me...its much wider then the original which makes it weird to hold.....screen is nice but i thought i was gonna be blown away...not so much....the cube menu is cool though....anyways, got my touch pro 2 and unless the new diamond 2 is that much better, then im sticking with my phone.
12. ace1122 (Posts: 237; Member since: 23 Mar 2009)
they should call it the Double Dare. ha and i think the screen could be larger. much larger.
20. kjack628 (Posts: 49; Member since: 19 Jul 2009)
what is dissapointing about the phone? should i get the htc imagio instead?..sorry about the questions i just want pics of the omnia II
11. pathmarkpolice (Posts: 102; Member since: 05 Feb 2009)
Looks underwhelming. Lg boasts about it's S-class user interface so much, but it really isn't all that great. Also, I've always had problems with LG phones regarding battery life, automatic restarts, text messaging not working, and this is with their high and low end devices alike.
14. artz1986 (Posts: 453; Member since: 11 Mar 2009)
same old same old... Why does the US have such boring taste? I mean, this is pretty much the same thing as any other feature touch screen phone, what's the point? The camera is 3.2..so what. There is nothing special about this phone, it's a joke and a waste of material.
15. vzw fanman (Posts: 1976; Member since: 11 Dec 2008)
it's cool looking. and it's on the verizon network :-).
23. artz1986 (Posts: 453; Member since: 11 Mar 2009)
cool looking...not so much. It looks like a design done by a person or team trying to get out of a slump; it looks forced.
28. vzw fanman (Posts: 1976; Member since: 11 Dec 2008)
well at least the design of the chocolates are changing. unlike the gay iphone, it's so blah looking.
16. mthoren68 (Posts: 66; Member since: 21 Sep 2009)
So we are not getting the BL40. This thing looks great for teenage girls and gives no indication of anything innovative. The Rogue is thick. So now we wait and see how the Omnia 2, Sholes and Storm 2 will disappoint and pick from the best of a not-as-good-as-they-should-have-been lot.
24. artz1986 (Posts: 453; Member since: 11 Mar 2009)
I dunno, I think the Storm 2 will be pretty decent. Yes, the Sholes might be a disappointment, unless they fix the design, but I'm guessing it'll look something like the CLIQ. The Omnia 2 might be a decent handset as well. But this Choco Touch is laughable...
36. rhomaion (Posts: 187; Member since: 23 Sep 2009)
I have seen far worst and it has a decent design. Just because it's different doesn't make it laughable...

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The average person feels a little jagged around the edges as a result of a sleepless night or even a night when the quality of sleep was less than optimal. However, a recent study conducted by the Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley has revealed that "people who are highly anxious may actually be more vulnerable" to serious anxiety issues in the aftermath of a sleepless night.
The University of California, Berkeley study scanned the brains of 18 adults (who were all in good health) on two different occasions. One was after an ordinary night's worth of sleep and the other after a night where they were deprived of sleep. During each session, subjects were exposed to a period of prolonged anticipation of a potentially negative experience. Those who experienced sleep deprivation the night before had reactions that were significantly stronger than those who had enjoyed a more restful sleep on the previous evening. In some cases, primarily for those predisposed to anxiety, the reaction was amplified by as much as 60 percent.
Which Comes First, Anxiety or Sleep Issues?
Once upon a time it was well understood that chronic anxiety can do a real number on your ability to sleep. For a long time, it was believed that sleep problems were simply side effects of anxiety disorder. However, new research indicates that sleep deprivation can actually be the cause of an anxiety disorder. Research also indicates that patients suffering from almost any psychiatric disorder also suffer from some form of sleep disorder. People who suffer from chronic insomnia are at a much greater risk of developing some type of anxiety disorder.


text:
CEPS is now the College of Education and is located here: https://www.eiu.edu/coe/
Why Choose CEPS?
Welcome to the EIU College of Education & Professional Studies. We have a proud history of inspiring students to dream bigger and acquire the knowledge and skills to help individuals meet their fitness goals, enjoy their leisure time, lead schools, and help individuals and groups in crisis. Through our focus on field-based experiences, our students learn from our partners – P-12 schools, business, and industry to blend classroom theory with the challenges of real-life situations. No longer do we see classrooms with blackboards; students now use SmartBoard technologies every day. The Internet has become a source of information, a major communication tool, and an important component in the teaching and learning environment. Study abroad/study away experiences and service to professional organizations are opportunities that we provide our students to broaden their understanding of their professions - and the world. Through these opportunities, students build a college career that takes them where they've only dreamed before – to a career where touching others' lives is an everyday occurrence.
We believe in everything our program has to offer, but let's narrow it down to a few key reasons you should check us out.
Please feel free to contact us for additional information about our outstanding programs.
Douglas J. Bower, Ph.D.
Interim Dean, College of Education & Professional Studies
Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) Call for Third-Party Comments


text:
Yesterday, we arose at 5 a.m. to fly to my husband's Florida hometown for our first extended vacation in a year. I realize that many people never get away. We, ourselves, have lately put off travel because of the expense and because it's so excruciating to get anywhere with three young children. But after a bitter winter and so many months without a change of scenery, finding sunnier climes was becoming a mental health issue for our family. And so my husband charged his credit card for five spring break tickets to Vero Beach.
Fantasizing about this vacation became our twin 6-year-olds' favorite pastime. "Let's talk about Florida," they would say. We'd describe the sand we'd squish between our toes, the water we'd feel on our backs, the parks we'd visit, the ice cream we'd relish. And finally the day of the trip arrived.
"I wanna relax," Jane, 2, said with a purr from her car seat on our way to the airport at 6:33 a.m.
"We all want to relax," my husband said.
"Do we have everything?" Griffin asked.
By "everything" he meant two oversize duffle bags, one roller suitcase, three kids' carry-on bags, my backpack, my husband's backpack, my purse, a stroller, two booster seats, a car seat, and my cowboy hat.
"Did you bring my Hello Kitty Build-A-Bear?" Jane queried. "Did you bring my bathing suits and my skirts?"
"What are we going to do when we get there?"
"I don't know, Griffin," my husband said. "That's about 12 hours from now."
"What's a chameleon?" Jane asked.
"A little lizard," Griffin answered.
"They're actually skunks," Jane said.
"You mean 'skinks,'" Griffin retorted.
"Georgia, catch your cough," Jeff said.
"Are we at Florida?" Jane asked, as we pulled into the long-term parking lot at 6:47 a.m.
We curb-checked our large bags, and after shedding our shoes and sweatshirts, removing our cell phones and laptops from our backpacks, and shoving the stroller, the carry-ons and the children through security, we arrived at Gate E9 by 7:33 a.m. Our flight didn't leave for more than two hours.
Our twins wrestled on the soiled carpet with a classmate we bumped into.
"Stop touching the garbage can!" I told Jane.
"Is it time yet?" Georgia asked.
I suggested my husband take our children to the bathroom.
While they were gone, an announcement piped over the loudspeaker. "The flight to West Palm is oversold. If you could volunteer to give up your seat, we could put you on a flight tomorrow and compensate you $300, plus the price you paid for your ticket." I was turning toward the counter when Jeff headed me off with the kids.
People were pushing and shoving Southwest Airlines' style as we queued to enter the plane. Jeff kept telling me to go first with Jane, and I rejoined that I couldn't because they would give me a hard time since, while the rest of our family had "A" boarding passes, our 2-year-old had somehow wound up in the "C" group. "Stop fighting!" Georgia cried. By the time we reached two empty rows near the rear, Jane refused to sit in her $400 spot. "Get in your seat, or you're not going to Florida," Jeff, sandwiched between the twins in front of us, commanded.
As I deflected Jane's snack demands and tried to read about Katy Perry and John Mayer's "love gone bad" in "People" magazine, over the shoulder of the woman sitting across from me, the pilot told us that air traffic control was expecting some "lengthy" delays. "They're saying they'll get back to us in 50, that's 5-0, minutes," he announced to a chorus of groans.
"Is it going to be OK?" Griffin cried.
We felt the engines shut down.
"This is unbelievable," Jeff muttered through the gap in the seats.
"Other planes are going," Griffin wailed. "Why can't we?"
"Look at that girl!" Jane exclaimed as the toddler behind us yanked on my seat and pulled herself up for a view.
Georgia hacked away in front of us. I passed Jeff her inhaler. "Put Vaseline inside your nose!" a nearby anxious mother commanded her son. "Put it in your nose! That way you won't get germs!"
The temperature steadily rose, as did our children's complaints. My sneakers started to feel snug. Someone within our proximity farted.
"That happened to me at Victoria's Secret!" a lady several rows in front of us shouted into her cell phone, for the benefit of the entire plane. Jane flung out her marker sideways and tagged the elbow of the fellow imprisoned next to us by the window. As I was apologizing, the toddler behind clambered down from her seat and up the aisle, barefoot. "I want to go!" Georgia groused.
Then the engines powered up again. "Ladies and gentlemen," the flight attendant sang out, "we have been cleared for departure!" We cheered what we soon realized was just a false alarm.
"I do apologize," the pilot came back on and said. "We should be taking off in about 10 minutes. The only explanation we got was 'spring break traffic.'"
'And the sequester and incompetence,' I told myself.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," the pilot confessed again over the loudspeaker. "But they're telling us there's congestion in Florida, and we're 17th in line for take off. The problem is that we don't have enough fuel, so we're taxiing back to the gate to gas up."
"If I ran my business like this, I'd be out of business," the woman across from me said.
"Are we at Florida?" Jane asked when we parked back at the gate. A baby howled. One of the stewardesses gave a confusing speech about how we could quickly disembark to go to the bathroom, as long as we immediately returned so we could pull out and get back in line on the tarmac. "Don't let anybody off!" someone yelled from the back of the plane. Nonetheless, it soon emptied by dribs and drabs. I sent Jeff off again with the kids.
"It kills me that they're not going to even give us lunch," the woman across from me said.
"Not even a waffle," remarked her husband.
Travelers trickled back into the plane, carrying reeking McDonald's bags and packages of Twizzlers.
"Someone said Obama and Air Force One were causing the delay," one man reported.
"I thought Obama was in Israel," someone else said.
"Yeah, he's in Israel," called a woman from behind.
"If you have an empty seat next to you, push your call button!" the flight attendant started barking. "Get your butts in a seat so we can go!"
We had been scheduled to depart at 9:40 a.m. I glanced at my watch. It read 12:17 p.m. Minutes before we finally lifted off, the stewardess sang out, "Enjoy your flight!"—taking great liberties, I thought, with the phrase.
When the plane touched down in West Palm Beach two-and-a-half hours later, the same flight attendant reported that unbeknownst to us, we'd had a "special" traveler in our midst throughout the ordeal. "He's 95, and he's my dad—and it's his first time flying."
'And probably,' I thought, 'his last.'
Views: 16


text:
Former Denny Hamlin crew chief Mike Ford has joined BK Racing as its competition director, a team spokesman confirmed Wednesday.
Ford, who guided Hamlin to a runnerup finish in the 2010 Sprint Cup Series standings, was released from his duties at Joe Gibbs Racing after the 2011 season. He spent part of 2012 with Richard Petty Motorsports with brief stints as crew chief for Aric Almirola and then Marcos Ambrose.
With 21 career victories as a crew chief, Ford takes over as competition director at BK Racing, which just completed its first year after its owners purchased cars from the now-defunct Red Bull Racing.
BK Racing is owned by Ron Devine, a Burger King franchise owner, and carries Burger King logos on its cars. Driver Travis Kvapil finished 27th in the Cup standings in 2012 while teammate Landon Cassill was 31st.
The team has not announced its driver/crew chief lineup yet for 2013.


text:
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The New England Revolution has acquired two-time MLS All-Star midfielder Juan Toja (pronounced TOE-ha) through Major League Soccer's Allocation Process. The Colombian will be officially added to the Revolution's roster upon the receipt of his International Transfer Certificate and his U.S. P-1 Visa. Once he is added to the roster, he will count as an international player.
Toja, 27, who spent the 2007 season and the first half of the 2008 season playing with FC Dallas, signed with MLS on August 23, and as a former league player who was sold to a foreign club, was available to teams through the Allocation Process. The Revolution was ranked first in the current order, which is based on recent performance.
Toja, a left-footed attacker, is naturally an attacking midfielder, but can also play deeper centrally or on the left wing.
"We're pleased to add a player of Juan's skill and experience through the Allocation Process, and we're looking forward to getting Juan in with the team as soon as possible," General Manager Michael Burns said. "He's not only played in MLS and is familiar with the league, but he's also been very successful in MLS. We believe he'll be a valuable player for us."
Toja originally entered MLS in February 2007 on loan to FC Dallas from Colombia's Independiente de Santa Fe after he played the 2006 season on loan with Argentine power River Plate. Toja began his professional career with Independiente de Santa Fe in early 2004 after a stint with the club's Under-19 team. He made 25 appearances in two seasons with Santa Fe's senior team and became a regular on the Colombian Under-20 team. He was a key member of the team that won the 2005 South American Youth Championship and participated in the 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship in Holland.
With Dallas, Toja made 43 regular-season appearances between 2007 and 2008, scoring eight goals and adding three assists. In 2007, he made 27 appearances, scoring six goals and recording two assists while earning MLS All-Star honors midseason, in addition to FC Dallas' most valuable player award at season's end. Following the season, Dallas bought Toja to make his move to MLS permanent. In 2008, Toja made 16 appearances and scored two goals and added two assists en route to his second MLS All-Star nod, before transferring to Romania's Steaua Bucuresti on August 1, 2008, ahead of the 2008-09 European season.
Toja spent 18 months in Romania with Steaua Bucuresti, making 51 appearances while scoring three goals and adding five assists.
Upon arriving in Romania, he helped Steaua Bucuresti earn a spot in the 2008-09 UEFA Champions League group stage. Steaua Bucuresti was drawn into a group with Germany's Bayern Munich, France's Lyon and Italy's Fiorentina, and went 0-5-1 to bow out of the tournament as Toja made five total appearances in those matches.
He also made eight total appearances for Steaua Bucuresti in the 2009-10 UEFA Europa League, scoring one goal, as the club advanced to the group stage with Turkey's Fenerbahce, France's Twente and Moldova's Sheriff Tiraspol before being knocked out with an 0-2-4 record.
In the summer of 2010, Toja was transferred from Steaua Bucuresti to Greece's Aris Thessaloniki, where he made 37 appearances and scored one goal before departing the club this summer. He also made 11 total appearances in the 2010-11 UEFA Europa League with Aris, helping the team advance to the knock-out rounds. After winning two qualification rounds, Aris finished second in its group – which also included Germany's Bayer Leverkusen, Spain's Atletico Madrid and Norway's Rosenborg – with a 3-2-1 record. Aris dropped its round-of-32 match-up against Ukraine's Dynamo Kyiv.
After a successful run with Colombia's youth national teams, Toja has also earned two caps with the Colombia National Team, both coming in 2008. He made his senior team debut on Oct. 15, 2008, against Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in a World Cup Qualifier match – a 0-0 draw – and was later capped against Nigeria on Nov. 20, 2008.
For up-to-the-minute information on the Revolution, visit the team's official web site at revolutionsoccer.net, or follow the team on Twitter at @NERevolution, or on Facebook at facebook.com/NERevolution. For more information about Revolution tickets, including 2013 season tickets, special packages and promotions, call 1-877-GET-REVS or visit revolutionsoccer.net.
TRANSACTION: New England Revolution (MLS) – Acquired M Juan Toja through the Allocation Process
Full Name: Juan Carlos Toja Vega
Pronunciation: TOE-ha
Position: Midfield
DOB: May 24, 1985 (Bogota, Colombia)
Hometown: Bogota, Colombia
Height: 6-1
Weight: 175 lbs.
Previous Club: Aris Thessaloniki (GRE)
Nationality: Colombia
Status: International
Jersey Number: TBA


text:
The career of a professional athlete on the field doesn't last forever. The shrewd ones know that, and for those who want their money to work for them beyond age 40, having a solid plan B is of paramount importance. So they start thinking about ways to invest their money wisely to make it last a lifetime.
Often, athletes will put their money back into sports. After hanging up his jersey, Michael Jordan invested his money in the Charlotte Bobcats basketball team, and although LeBron James is still very much an active part of the Miami Heat, he's already become a minority stakeholder in the Premier League football club Liverpool F.C.
Some athletes, however, have invested their money in endeavors that have nothing to do with sports. By now, most people have gotten the memo that there's money to be made in technology, so some athletes have chosen the tech sector as the place to invest in.
Read ahead to see the athletes who have chosen the tech sector as their next arena of competition.
By Daniel Bukszpan
Posted 16 May 2012


text:
• • About • Contact • Blue Heron Real Estate
Blue Heron Homes offers custom floor plans to fit your needs! We understand your family is unique and you have specific ideas waiting to be heard. We also understand the need for a starting point in the journey for your custom new home. We provide links to our home plan vendors so you can explore many different homes and styles which will help you better understand your options. After you find a home design that you love or have an idea of the type of home you want to enjoy, we will talk about modifications, improvements, and finishes that will make it the perfect home, unique for your family.
Whether you choose from our collection or we custom build from your plans, our attention to detail and architecturally correct construction practices will make your home stand out from the rest.
Buying new is the best investment. For what used homes cost in the current market, and the unknown cost of "what's behind the wall," buying a used home can be risky move. Remember, this is the most money most people will spend on a single purchase in their lifetime; when you build new, you know what's behind the wall, and you have warranty. We have some suggestions when it's time to purchase your new home, lagniappe - a little something extra to make your decision easier.
At Blue Heron Homes, our people make the difference. We have designed a custom home program that makes the entire process easy and fun. We include services such as plan design, lot development and clearing, interior and selection design, financial management, and consulting for bank financing.
Do you have a project that requires a qualified, professional construction company? We welcome your ideas.


text:
Blues ease past Wild
St. Paul, MN – Jaden Schwartz and Andy McDonald each had a goal and an assist as the St. Louis Blues took down the Minnesota Wild, 4-1, on Monday.
Barret Jackman and Kevin Shattenkirk also lit the lamp for the Blues, who snapped a three-game skid and moved one point ahead of the Oilers Blue Jackets for the eighth spot in the Western Conference.
Jaroslav Halak made five saves before suffering a lower-body injury in the final seconds of the first period. Brian Elliott stopped 19-of-20 shots in relief.
"It's part of the job description, you have to be ready to go all the time," said Elliott. "You never want to see a guy go down, but I just wanted to be able to help the team as much as I could."
Dany Heatley scored the lone goal for the Wild, who are tied with Vancouver atop the Northwest Division with 44 points.
"I think this game gives us a reminder of what we need to do to be successful," said Minnesota head coach Mike Yeo. "That's basically it in a nutshell. Unfortunately we couldn't buy a goal there when we made a push late in the game, but we didn't come out good and that's what happens."
Niklas Backstrom turned aside 20-of-24 shots for Minnesota, which has lost two of three. His personal eight-game winning streak came to an end.
The Blues drew first blood at the 12:32 mark of the first period. After stopping the Wild from clearing the puck out of their own zone, Schwartz made his way to the right hash and fired a shot past Backstrom.
St. Louis was forced to make a change in net with just seconds left in the opening frame. Halak hurt himself while stretching out to stop a shot, and Elliott took over in net.
Heatley lit the lamp at the 6:59 mark of the middle stanza to make it 1-1. Elliott stopped Jonas Brodin's initial shot from the point, but Heatley jammed the rebound past the St. Louis goaltender.
The Blues took the lead back on McDonald's goal at the 12:17 mark.
Shattenkirk's slap shot from the right point got past Backstrom at the 14:07 mark, making it a 3-1 contest.
Jackman's shot from the left point with 50.3 seconds left in the third accounted for the final margin.
Game Notes
The Blues are 2-0 against the Wild this season ... St. Louis acquired defenseman Jay Bouwmeester from Calgary in exchange for defenseman Mark Cundari, the rights to goaltender Reto Berra and a conditional first round pick in 2013 ... Defenseman Jordan Leopold made his Blues debut ... The Wild had a four-game home winning streak snapped ... St. Louis center T.J. Oshie (lower body) missed the game.


text:
Days Inn Monmouth Junction properties are provided below. Search for cheap and discount Days Inn hotel rooms in Monmouth Junction, NJ for your upcoming meeting or individual travels. We list the best Days Inn Monmouth Junction venues so you can review the Monmouth Junction Days Inn hotel list below to find the perfect place.
Our page will list Monmouth Junction, NJ lodging that have similar star rating to Days Inn.Need 5+ Rooms? Get group bids from hotels in Monmouth Junction NJ
How should we direct your call?


text:
Template #38448
- type:
- Joomla 2.5 Template
- author:
- Delta
- downloads:
- 2
- sources available:
- software required:
- Adobe Photoshop CS+, Adobe Dreamweaver 8+ (or any php-editor), For uncompressing a template ZIP package:
WinZip 9+ (Windows);
Stuffit Expander 10+ (Mac), Joomla! 2.5.1
- regular price:
- $66
- unique price:
- $3900
Real Size Screenshot
Joomla Main Page preview
Joomla Modules Positions
Support for Your Template
online help center
The online help center contains lots of useful information and tutorials
download sample template
Try your skills before the purchase. Download a sample template
frequently asked questions
Please review this selection to find an answer to your question before asking a support operator
100% satisfaction guarantee
Learn how we back our product and ensure that our customers are protected
- related categories:
- Web design
- related keywords:
- portfolio art artists web creative studio design webpage gallery painters development internet personal painting webmasters designers www sites creobox


text:
Quality: VHSRip
Year: 1970s
Country: USA
Cast: Long Dong Silver, Johnny Keyes, Red Baron, Seka, Kitty Shane
Description: The true monsters of the unbelievable 1970's take center stage in this collection of nothing but massive black dicks poking tender white meat! The legendary "sex freak" Long Dong Silver has a dick that hangs past his knees, and even porn icon Seka can't get over the size! Hard - bodied muscle stud Johnny Keyes sees if a pretty young blonde can handle his chocolate love. An enormous black body builder tries to find a hole deep enough to take his shaft in 14 Inch Root. Also includes Stud Service, Long Black Cock, Cum Party, Salt and Pepper and more films of squealing sluts desperate to "take the whole thing"!


text:
Rusk Elementary School, a school in Houston's East End that has been adopted by the Houston Dynamo, saw the latest addition to its library arrive on Wednesday.
Last year, the Houston Dynamo donated the funds to upgrade the nook in the library as part of the Building a Better Mind program, presented by BBVA Compass.
On Wednesday, the nook saw the addition of a new area rug. The rug was donated by The Oriental Rug Gallery and Room ReDo Interior Design.
The Houston Dynamo would like to thank all of our partners as we continue to help the youth in our community and build a better Houston.


text:
Mental Health
Deal with natural emotions like stress, sadness, anger and denial before they lead to depression.
Visit ADA's Mental Health Provider Directory.
Featured book: Diabetes Burnout: What to Do When You Can't Take It Anymore is an interactive book that addresses the emotional issues that contribute to poor glycemic control and provides guidance to overcoming the barriers to good self-care.
Diabetes is the perfect breeding ground for anger.
Denial is that voice inside repeating: "Not me." Most people go through this when first diagnosed.
Studies show that people with diabetes have a greater risk of depression than people without diabetes.


text:
By DAVID GREEN
I know what you want, but that doesn't mean I'll give it to you. Maybe I'll just stumble along as I have over the years.
I've been reading about newspapers lately, and it's always entertaining to find out what the Big Guys do and what we're all supposed to be doing and how I probably fail so miserably.
In a report about readership issues, I saw people mentioned with titles such as "readership editor." Another person served as readership editor for a year and then she was promoted to "director of innovations."
So many titles; so few people to assign the chores.
The challenge for these titled people is to come up with the answer to the old question: What makes people read newspapers?
Newspaper circulation is dropping nationwide and publishers are worried. Not all publishers. I'm not worried. The Observer's circulation fluctuates from year to year, but there's no significant change. We're doing OK.
A national newspaper group really looked into the challenges of readership. They surveyed 37,000 readers who responded to 450 questions. Can you imagine that? Spending the time to answer 450 questions? What kind of a person would put up with all of that? This casts a shadow of doubt on the survey.
POURING through the data (21 million pieces of data), researchers came up with eight solutions to address shrinking readership, such as:
• Customer service. In a summary report, mention was made of a paper in Florida that has people answering the phone who could take an ad, deal with a missed paper, take a report on the birth of a child, etc. And, even more flabbergasting, this same person could be found at the front desk when a reader walked into the newspaper office.
We already have a couple of those people on staff, so we're doing OK there.
• Content. They measured 30 news topics and readers put the most importance on news about the community and ordinary people. At some papers, news means bad news, but crime reporting was way down on the list, just ahead of sports.
Higher up on the list are stories about science. That's good news to me. Science stories are my favorite, and better yet, readers said it's OK if they're long. It's a complicated science topic, after all.
• Brand. I've always been somewhat confused about this word. I think of cattle in the old west. I think of steers screaming in pain as a hot iron is applied to a buttock. So how does that transfer to a newspaper?
Apparently, it has something to do with readers' perceptions of your newspaper. Do readers see your paper as dull? As negative? As a little stupid? Or, as the example in the study points out, intelligent, successful and experienced?
I'm not sure that I want to ask the question. It's easier to just keep on doing what I'm doing.
• Culture. They're talking about the newspaper's culture and how it might need to be reformed. Editors and writers get these ideas in their heads about what a newspaper should contain and it becomes the culture of the newsroom. I don't take pictures of people passing checks or shaking hands over a plaque. I try to avoid photos of people in the firing squad position staring at the camera. I know there are people out there who want check passing photos, but it's not part of my culture.
In response to the study, several papers are adding more of what is known as "chicken-dinner news": weddings, obituaries, stories about ordinary people. In other words, they're adding what we Little Guys have done for years.
I'll take additional obituaries, too, but I'm not going to go out of my way to create them. I'll always remember the reader survey at a Hillsdale County paper: Give us more obituaries.
From what I've read, it appears that, overall, publishers have responded to the readership study by scheduling a lot more staff meetings. That sounds like an important first step toward keeping things just the same.– Dec. 10, 2003


text:
There is no athlete more mythologized than Wilt Chamberlain is in his hometown. He could palm a 16-pound bowling ball. He could grab money off of the top of a backboard.
Here's a fact: He was and still is the greatest statistical athlete in the history of any team sport in North American history.
Here's another one: He is not better than Michael Jordan. Not in this era, that era or any other era yet to come.
Philadelphia 76ers coach Doug Collins made this abundantly clear to me last week on the 50th anniversary of Chamberlain scoring 100 points.
Asked if that would happen today, Collins, a huge Chamberlain fan, said, "Back then there was no sophistication in your defense. It was like, 'you've got him and you've got him.' There was no double-teaming and scheming. Defenses are too sophisticated. They are going to run at you, trap you and get the ball out of your hands. A coach is not going to let you just run wild like that anymore."
Looking at the grainy footage from that era, I can't argue with him.
And while defenders of the legend rebut this saying entire teams collapsed around Goliath to stop him, would this not leave open jump shots for his teammates all over the floor?
Whenever someone who witnessed him play in that era spins it, their story doesn't jibe with Collins'. It usually suggests that entire teams eschewed whatever defensive strategy they might have had and collapsed around Chamberlain, who once led the league in assists.
But if this were the absolute truth then wouldn't there have been open jumpers available for anyone who wanted one? It would appear to be a coach's paradise and a formula for a championship (a few, in fact, but we'll talk about this later).
Nostalgia's seduction and yearning for the good ole' days seems to skew people's relationship with reality.
The lane was indeed widened for Wilt and hence the suggestion that they changed the rules because of him. But who among us is delusional l enough to suggest that with the evolution of the athlete – he and she are bigger, stronger and faster than ever before – the lane wouldn't have inevitably widened with or without Wilt?
Wilt's foil, the great Bill Russell, was a 6-9, 215-pound center. That's an inch shorter and 15 pounds lighter than waifish 76er Craig Brackins, just back from the D-League. In today's game, Russell is built along the lines of a small forward. His assignment had he played in today's game might have been, say, Kevin Durant, but that's a story for another day.
For me, thought, it's not so much the blind ignorance of Wilt's supporters and their inability to acknowledge the evolutionary metamorphosis of the athlete over the year as it was Wilt's inability to win the whole damn thing more than twice.
No one can diminish his two championship teams – the 1967 Sixers and the 1972 Lakers – for they are among the greatest in the league history.
But what about his 1964 Warriors team? That team included 6-11 Nate Thurmond, in 1996 named one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history, and Temple legend Guy Rodgers – ask Sonny Hill how great he was - yet the Celtics dispatched them 4-1.
And what of the 1968-69 Lakers? Chamberlain, at the peak of his powers, had as teammates Jerry West and Elgin Baylor – I've seen top 10 all-time lists with all three of their names listed – yet the Celtics defeated them on their home court in Game 7 to win the NBA title.
And when Lew Alcindor arrived on the scene as a rookie with the Milwaukee, Alcindor and the Bucks vaporized the Lakers and the then 34-year-old Chamberlain 4-1 in the Western Conference finals. The rookie from UCLA was far and away the best player on the court, and the Bucks won their four games by an average of 20 points.
Jordan doesn't have the statistical cache Chamberlain does. Again, no one does. But if would have been interesting to see him posting up in that joke of a lane back then, would it not?
But what is more revelatory in this discussion is winning. Had Chamberlain been able to milk more than two titles – like the four that Shaquille O'Neal has – then calling him the greatest ever would be little easier for people to swallow.
The Jordan monarchy denied hall of fame players such as Patrick Ewing, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Dominique Wilkins and Charles Barkley from ever winning a championship.
Barkley will tell you right now had Jordan not had his brief dalliance with baseball that the Chicago Bulls would have won eight straight championships, which means Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler – like Barkley, Ewing, Stockton and Malone all on the NBA's 1996 list – wouldn't have had their two titles either, unless they were traded to Chicago.
The debate will rage on in various precincts for years.
But not in this one. It's over.


text:
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Former Gov. Mark Sanford does not shy away from the scandal that consumed the end of his second term in his first television ad for the 1st District congressional race.
Sanford starts the 30-second advertisement pointing out he fought to cut government spending and reduce debt. He then says he recently learned that no one goes through life without mistakes. He thanks what he calls "a God of second chances" for making him a better person. He ends by saying he "humbly" asks for votes.
In the middle of his second term, Sanford headed to Argentina to see his mistress without telling anyone in government. It led to his divorce.
Sanford is 1 of 16 candidates vying for the Republican nomination for the open seat.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
On Saturday 31st January 2009 at around 14:40 UTC something "historical" happened. Google virtually stopped working. It might as well died. Every single search result was marked with "This site may harm your computer.". And it redirected you to a warning page. Of course this was probably because of some bug in their harmful content detection software or a failed upgrade or something similar. I doubt it was a virus. It doesn't really matter why but for an hour I was forced to use Live search. Yahoo was just too much typing in the address bar. :) ...
posted @ Saturday, January 31, 2009 5:40 PM | Feedback (6) |
Comparing result sets
There are times, although not often that you have to compare 2 result sets. This usually happens when you're analyzing data for whatever reason or unit testing a database.
Usual methods include
- using the UNION of both queries because it filters duplicate data and checking if the row counts are the same
- using the EXCEPT if you have SQL Server 2005+
- using NOT EXISTS which is very ugly and not worth it
- using a FULL OUTER JOIN and looking at nulls or some other method I haven't mentioned
- returning result sets to client and comparing...
posted @ Monday, January 05, 2009 2:50 PM | Feedback (7) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
Powered by:
Copyright © Mladen Prajdić


text:
His face is pasty and pale, a sharp contrast to his greasy coal-black hair. His dark eyes are sunken under a low forehead and thick eyebrows; he frequently jabs, mashes, and grinds his eyes with the balls of his thumbs. When he speaks, he rarely makes eye contact. Even while sitting on the couch in his mother's living room -- and even after 15 months of freedom -- Aaron George looks like he is still in prison. And in a way, as a bipolar schizophrenic, he is: still in the prison of his own mind.
In a monotone, George recounts his recent incarceration in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system, and he talks fatalistically about the real possibility that he'll return to the special hell that a growing number of mentally impaired inmates inhabit.
"If I have to go back, I'll either let them kill me or I'll kill myself," he says. His voice is flat, emotionless; he is resigned to his fate.
It's May, and George is waiting to be retried for the 1992 shaking death of his 7-week-old son. In 1996, a jury in Montgomery County in East Texas found George guilty of murder and sentenced him to 60 years in prison. In January 1998, a state appeals court overturned the conviction. Four months later, he was released to await a second trial.
George, a slightly built man, looks younger than his 25 years. During his time in prison, he says, he was raped twice and repeatedly left unprotected from predator inmates. Additionally, he says, he was denied the psychiatric medications prescribed to him by his free-world psychiatrist -- new, relatively expensive drugs that help George and other schizophrenics deal with the voices and signs that only they can detect.
Of course, accusations of barbarous conditions within Texas prisons are nothing new. In 1972, several Texas inmates filed a landmark federal lawsuit that became known as Ruiz vs. Estelle. The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of almost every aspect of the state's prison operation, from the size of a cell to the use of solitary confinement and employing prisoners as guards. Following the trial in 1978 and 1979, U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice mandated sweeping reforms within the Texas prison system. Included in Justice's ruling was an order for TDCJ to overhaul its physical and mental health-care systems.
In 1995, Judge Justice released TDCJ from parts of the order, but ruled that its health-care system was still not sufficient. This March, he updated his opinion, ruling that the system's health care is now up to the standards of the U.S. Constitution.
But the judge still has great reservations about the quality of Texas prisons' health care. Even as he writes that TDCJ's treatment of the mentally impaired has improved enough to be "constitutional," he notes that the system is greatly lacking in compassion.
"Simply stated," writes the judge, "large numbers of inmates throughout the TDCJ system are not receiving adequate [mental] health care."
He continues, writing that in light of recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, "the standard for evaluating the constitutionality of medical care in prisons is...unduly low.
"As the law stands today, the standards permit inhumane treatment of inmates. In this court's opinion, inhumane treatment should be found to be unconstitutional treatment."
Unfortunately, a growing number of mentally challenged prisoners are possibly subject to such treatment. In 1972, when the Ruiz federal suit was filed, Texas prisons held approximately 25,000 inmates. Today that number stands at more than 140,000. Mental-health organizations estimate that as many as 17 percent of Texas prisoners suffer from some form of cognitive disability -- that is, as many as 23,800 inmates. But TDCJ designates fewer than 4,600 beds specifically for the mentally impaired.
And it seems ever more likely that a mentally ill person will end up in prison. Over the past 10 years, according to the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, the number of state-funded non-prison beds for the mentally ill and mentally retarded has dropped from almost 8,000 to fewer than 5,500. Among all the states in the nation, Texas ranks a lowly 46th in mental-health funding.
To Sharron Dishongh, the former head of a TDCJ psychiatric unit, the numbers point to the obvious -- and they make her question the state's strategy for dealing with the people whom few others want.
"The people that used to be in state [mental] hospitals are now here in prison," Dishongh says. "But is this the best place for them?"
In third grade, Aaron George was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and began taking Ritalin. When he was 13, full-blown schizophrenia was added to the diagnosis.
"He found it difficult to accept criticism," says Beverly George, George's mother and protector. "He took everything very personally. You could just ask him to take his foot off of the table and, if it was the wrong time for him, he would just be devastated. He was afraid to go into a store for fear he would make a mistake."
Often he would sit in front of the television for days without moving, talking, or eating. He grew increasingly paranoid and defensive. He suffered panic attacks. He heard voices. He became delusional. The television spoke directly to him. There were messages in numbers. Everything meant something, and it was all bad. He was convinced there was a conspiracy to kill him, or, as he says, "to cross me out."
George's deterioration sent Beverly George into her own panic. A divorced mother of two, she marshaled her limited resources and put her son under the care of psychiatrist Gary Miller. Miller diagnosed George as "schizoaffected," suffering from both schizophrenia and mood disorders. To combat the problem, the doctor placed him on two "new generation" medications: clozapine, an antipsychotic; and sertralline, an antidepressant.
For the first time in years, George's mental health improved. He still heard the voices, but he didn't hear them as often, and their messages weren't quite so ominous. The panic attacks were shorter. He became more sociable. He even met and married Jennifer Phillips, who had received treatment for her own psychological problems.
By the time he was 18 and she was 17, they had two children and lived outside Magnolia, north of Houston. To help make ends meet, George worked occasionally at his dad's remodeling shop. But mostly he collected his Social Security disability check. Jennifer waited tables at a Golden Corral.
On August 15, 1992, while Jennifer dealt with the steakhouse's lunch crowd, George tended to their two sons, 15-month-old Daniel and 7-week-old Alexander. About noon, George called his mother, Beverly. He was hysterical. He told her that the baby wasn't breathing.
Beverly's first thought was that her son was having another panic attack, but she didn't take any chances. She and a friend immediately drove to George's home. She says it took less than five minutes to get there, but by the time she arrived, the baby was blue.
While her friend performed CPR on Alexander, Beverly called 911. An ambulance carried the baby to a local hospital, where he was declared brain-dead. Even so, several hours later, the baby was flown by helicopter to John Sealy Hospital in Galveston. There, Alexander underwent a battery of tests and treatments -- or at least, says Beverly, that's what the family was told. Now she suspects that the transfer had less to do with saving her grandson's life than it did with giving investigators time to build a criminal case against her son.
"They tell us that the baby's not going to make it," says Beverly, "and then -- boom -- they separate us into different rooms to question us. There's a uniformed officer at the door. And I'm thinking, 'Should we be doing this?'"
Aaron George told detectives from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office that in an effort to revive Alexander he had shaken the baby.
On August 18, three days after Alexander was first rushed to the hospital, he was pronounced dead. Two days later, George was arrested for injury to a child; he was later charged with murder as well. On March 25, 1996, a Montgomery County jury found him guilty of both and sentenced him to 60 years in prison.
But his troubles were only beginning. After spending about a month in the Montgomery County jail, George was transferred to TDCJ's Diagnostic Unit in Huntsville. There, inmates are tested and screened before assignment to one of the more than 100 prisons across the state. While being evaluated, George told the prison doctors about his history of mental illness and the medication prescribed by Miller. And on April 29, 1996, Miller -- who served as commissioner of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation from 1982 to 1988 -- wrote TDCJ officials, urging them to keep Aaron George on the drugs he had prescribed.
"These medications were beneficial to Mr. George," wrote Miller, "and I consider them medically necessary."
Medically necessary or not, George was instead placed on Mellaril and Haldol, two so-called "old generation" medicines.
Since old-generation drugs are less expensive than new-generation drugs, they are obviously more financially attractive to the two TDCJ health-care providers, HMOs run by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the Texas Tech University Health Science Center. The problem, say critics, is that the old-generation drugs are also less effective and have more adverse side effects.
"When I complained," George says, "I was told that if I didn't take the medication they prescribed, then I wouldn't get any treatment at all. So I had no choice." For much of the next two and a half years, George was basically out of his mind. The voices, the signs, the paranoia -- his old nemeses began to return.
At first, while still in the Diagnostic Unit, George took the old-generation meds. But he says the medicine caused his neck to lock up and bend backward and sideways. Prison medical records obtained by his mother show that it took injections of another drug just to counteract the side effects.
After that episode, George was transferred to the Connelly Unit in Kenedy, Texas, near San Antonio. There, he says, doctors took him off psychotropic medications altogether. His psychosis soon deepened, and he ran afoul of other prisoners.
Once, during Bible study, he refused to share a cup of water with another inmate. George says that not long after that incident, his cellmate -- whose name he either can't or won't remember -- warned that there was a "hit" out on him. The next thing George knew, it was 12 hours later, and he sensed that something was wrong. His ribs were bruised, and he had severe rectal pain.
"I didn't want to believe that I had been raped," he says, "but I finally started putting the pieces together."
Those pieces, he says, came in flashbacks -- flashbacks of people standing around him; flashbacks of being held down and kicked; flashbacks of being sexually assaulted.
He theorizes that he was drugged and points out that prisons are hardly drug-free zones. George believes that someone slipped something like Rohypnol -- the date-rape drug -- into his food or water.
Of course, these are the claims of a man who admits to being delusional and who acknowledges that he was out of his mind while in prison. Still, in October 1996, prison officials believed his allegations enough to place him in protective custody for a month, then transfer him to another unit. After a month in the Ferguson Unit, George was sent to Skyview, the psychiatric unit. He says he was told he'd be placed in a private cell, but instead was housed in the unit's dormitory area. He again feared he would be assaulted.
"I stayed awake at night," he says. "I heard people talking about plans to get me. I tried to stay awake, but they kept watching me. I stayed awake for days, but I finally fell asleep."
When he awoke, George says, he once again felt rectal pain. He requested a physical examination to determine if he had been raped.
"And they said that if I got tested and it didn't happen, that [TDCJ] Internal Affairs would rain thunder on my ass," George says. "So I told them to forget about it."
Beverly George is a woman obsessed. Throughout her son's incarceration she made calls to wardens, to prison officials and administrators. She contacted her state senator, and she contacted the media. And she told anyone who would listen that she was certain of three things: that her son did not murder his child; that Aaron George did not receive a fair trial in Montgomery County; and that he was not receiving proper mental health care in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. She built a Web page about her son's dilemma (www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge\8616/aaronvsmoco.html), and she networked with other families across the state with similar problems. She also invested what was left of her hope and resources in getting George a second trial.
To Beverly it was clear that, though her son admitted he had shaken Alexander, his actions had been those of a panic-stricken mentally challenged teenager. Even if George was responsible for the baby's death -- and she wasn't sure that he was -- at worst the death was a terrible accident, not murder.
But George's attorney, Dexter Patterson of Conroe, was unable to block the prosecution from presenting evidence showing that the baby had suffered rib damage sometime before the shaking incident. Although the prosecution could not prove who had damaged the baby's ribs and how, the evidence did not help his case. In January 1998, a state appeals court ruled that state District Judge Fred Edwards had erred in allowing the jury to hear the evidence about the rib injuries, and ordered a new trial.
To handle the second trial, Beverly found Houston attorney John Osborne. To prepare for the trial, Osborne -- who took the case pro bono -- wanted to meet his client. Their first encounter was hardly the typical attorney-client conference.
The meeting took place at the Powledge Unit near Palestine, Texas, where George had been transferred. Before Osborne drove there, Beverly George warned the attorney that her son was sick; that he was a schizophrenic whose condition had deteriorated in prison; that he now believed computer chips had been placed in his head; and that even she was part of the conspiracy against him.
Osborne didn't put much credence in this woman from the sticks of rural Montgomery County. He was a big-city lawyer from Houston, and he knew that clients are prone to exaggeration.
But he was completely unprepared for what he saw. In a visitation area at the prison, Osborne sat waiting for his client to be escorted out of his cell. George emerged shackled by chains around his arms, waist, and legs. Three guards surrounded him, each carrying a Plexiglas riot shield pressed against the prisoner.
"They marched him into a cage and locked the door," recalls Osborne. "Then, I swear to God, they suspended the cage an inch or two above the ground. And I'm sitting there trying to talk to this guy who thinks he's being controlled by computer chips." Osborne thought of The Silence of the Lambs, with Aaron George in the role of Hannibal Lecter.
The conversation proved useless to Aaron George's defense. But Osborne left the prison with the sense that George was hardly the only mentally impaired prisoner being treated in a questionable manner. He was right. Though hard numbers are difficult to come by, there exists striking anecdotal evidence that TDCJ often falls short when caring for the mentally impaired. For example:
··· Joann Jones, 51, is a soft-spoken woman with mesmerizing green eyes. When she was 18, doctors diagnosed her as schizophrenic, and she became dependent on the care of her parents in Chicago. When they died in 1979, Jones decided to move to Houston -- for the weather.
"There's no snow in Houston," she says without a trace of a smile.
But without someone to make sure she took her medicine, Jones soon found herself living on the fringes of reality and in trouble with the law. She began to act strangely, conversing aloud with the voices in her head. Taunted by two co-workers at the construction clean-up company where she worked, she attacked them with a knife. The men didn't die, but Jones was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to 10 years in prison. At the time, prisoners in Texas routinely served no more than a third of their sentences. Jones, however, did nine of her 10. She failed to accrue much "good time," she admits, because she was a disciplinary problem. And she was a disciplinary problem, she says, because prison doctors ignored her schizophrenia.
"They never paid any attention to my psychiatric background," Jones says. "They just punished me. I was sick and they knew I was sick because I told them. And they medicated me with their fists and boots."
As a result, Jones says, she spent almost her entire time in the Gatesville Unit in what is known as the administrative segregation strip cell. No sheets or pillow. No radio. No reading material. No personal articles of any kind. Just her, her mattress, and her hallucinations.
These days, Jones lives at a halfway house in Temple, Texas. She rides a small motorcycle, makes extra money by cleaning toilets, and stays on her anti-psychotic medicines.
"The only reason I made it through prison is that I never gave up on me," Jones says. "I just had the will to live."
··· At 6 a.m. on July 26, 1995, 46 mentally ill TDCJ prisoners were loaded onto an unair-conditioned bus at the Jester-4 psychiatric unit in Fort Bend County in East Texas for the long drive to the Montford Unit, a TDCJ psychiatric facility near Lubbock. Also on board were three guards and 10 gallons of drinking water. In Mineral Wells, west of Fort Worth, the guard stopped at a truck stop to change drivers and refuel. Unfortunately, one of the guards inadvertently pumped unleaded gas rather than diesel. The guards called a mechanic who said that he could get the fuel out of the tank, but that it would take him about an hour to get there.
That was around 2 p.m., when the temperature in Mineral Wells was 107 degrees. According to a lawsuit filed against the prison system, despite the heat and the fact that all the drinking water had been consumed, the guards did not remove the prisoners from the bus, which had basically become a large oven. Additionally, although employees of the truck stop offered to take the prisoners water, the guards would not permit them to do so. It wasn't until 3 p.m., after the guards had sent a radio request for backup and three local law officers arrived, that the prisoners finally received more water.
Two hours after leaving the truck stop, one of the prisoners, Wallace Britton Jr., began pacing, wringing his hands, and acting agitated -- classic signs of a heat stroke. Attorneys for the Britton family say prison doctors at Jester-4 had placed Britton on psychotropic drugs that make it hard for the body to regulate its heat.
According to the lawsuit, when Britton arrived at a local hospital, his body temperature was 108 degrees. He died two days later. The hospital listed the cause of death as heat stroke, although an autopsy report maintains that Britton committed suicide -- a contention the dead man's family's attorneys say is absurd.
"Obviously TDCJ hasn't heard of global warming," says attorney Charles R. Houssiere III, who is representing Britton's survivors in their wrongful-death suit against TDCJ. "If TDCJ can't even transport somebody across the state of Texas and understand that the drugs they are taking could cause a heat stroke in the middle of summer, how can they handle the serious problem of mental-health therapy?"
The Britton family's lawsuit against TDCJ is expected to go to trial later this year in Fort Bend County.
In the aftermath of Britton's death, a TDCJ spokesperson commented that the prison system hoped to learn from the tragedy. It apparently didn't. On June 29, 1998, during one of the worst heat waves in the state's history, 48-year-old inmate Archie White, another psychiatric patient, died after a two-hour ride from the Montford Unit to the Robertson Unit in Abilene.
··· In 1995, a jury in Randall County in the Panhandle sentenced 16-year-old Rodney Hulin to eight years in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a neighbor's house. Although Hulin had previously been treated in a mental institution, when he entered prison, he was classified as mentally sound and was taken off his antidepressants. Hulin complained about depression but was told by prison officials that he was just hot. A month later, Hulin reported that he had been raped. No rape test was performed. Afterward, Hulin claimed that he was raped twice more and made three requests to be placed in protective custody. The requests were denied. On January 22, 1996, Hulin was found hanging in his cell. On April 26 of this year, the state of Texas settled with the Hulin family for $215,000.
··· On April 17, Reginald Lavergne died, ostensibly from pneumonia, at the Michael Unit near Palestine; an autopsy was conducted at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. According to the Houston Chronicle, although there is no evidence that Lavergne suffered from mental illness before entering prison, the initial autopsy report stated that he had been acting strangely prior to collapsing while taking a shower. According to the report, for approximately a month before his death, Lavergne had been displaying bizarre behavior, including coprophagia, or eating feces -- something that would seem to be a strong indication that he'd suffered some kind of breakdown after coming to prison. But even so, he was not given mental-health treatment.
··· Keith Ard, 30, a pudgy guy who talks in a whisper, says he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 13 or 14, after being sent to a boys home in Houston. He doesn't remember the name of the home or exactly why he was sent there. "I think I busted up this dude real bad when I robbed a store, or something like that," he says.
Ard makes his comments in the visitation room of the TDCJ's Retrieve Unit near Angleton, in Brazoria County, where he is serving a 25-year sentence for stealing stainless steel oil drums. According to one prison official, Ard's file "has psycho all over it." Unlike in Jones' case, prison doctors prescribe anti-psychotic drugs -- albeit old-generation ones -- for Ard. His problem is that he doesn't want to take them. He says the old-generation drugs make him feel sleepy and slow-moving, leaving him unable to defend himself. He says he has been assaulted in prison but hedges on the question of rape.
"You don't know the half of it," is all he will say. "These people just don't care what happens to you. But I'm going to have to get me some help."
How or from where, he doesn't know.
This past spring, Judge Justice held hearings to determine whether parts of the Texas prison system should be released from the Ruiz order. National mental-health experts testified to a host of problems: lack of access to psychiatric assessment, over-diagnosis of malingering, a restrictive medication list, lack of monitoring to make sure that inmates take their medicines, inexperienced guards, failure to protect heat-sensitive inmates using psychotropic drugs from exposure to the sun, and an overall failure to identify and treat inmates with mental illness. One expert called the psychiatric staffing level "wholly inadequate," noting that one psychiatrist covers the approximately 7,000 general-population inmates housed at the Michael, Terrell, and Powledge Units.
TDCJ executive director Wayne Scott did not respond to a written request for an interview.
In 1993, the Texas Legislature created the Correctional Managed Health Care Advisory Committee. In an effort to control the health-care costs of the state's rapidly expanding prison population, the committee contracted with two state medical schools -- UTMB and the Texas Tech University Health Science Center -- to provide health care for Texas prison inmates. UTMB covers the eastern half of the state, where more than 70 percent of all Texas prison inmates are housed. UTMB officials did not make a spokesperson available even after promising to do so.
Texas Tech media relations officials referred questions to Dr. Ronnie Owens, who until last August was regional director of psychiatric services for the school's HMO contract with TDCJ. Owens, now an assistant professor of psychiatry at Tech, acknowledges that the prison health-care system is far from perfect, but he also defends it, especially when it comes to costs. For example, he points out that new-generation medicines cost around $2.50 per pill. Old-generation medicines cost about 8 cents per dosage. "If you have something on the order of 30,000 or 40,000 people taking medications and the difference is around $2 a dose, times 365 days a year, you see the difference pretty quickly," Owens says. He acknowledges that the older medicines have side effects, but says that inmates on those medications are given drugs to counteract those symptoms and are also excused from work details.
Critics of the system point out, however, that because of the inherent boredom of prison, work is often a privilege.
Owens also says that if the older medicines are found to be ineffective on a particular prisoner, prison doctors have the authority to order the newer drugs. Nevertheless, he says, sometimes people forget that the first priority of a prison system is security, not health care.
During her testimony before Judge Justice earlier this year, Dr. Suzanne Ducate, director of mental-health services for UTMB/TDCJ Correctional Managed Health, rejected the criticism of understaffing. She says that by the practice of tele-psychology -- the use of closed-circuit television to interview patients at multiple locations -- doctors are able to assess inmates across the state. She also estimated that "based on the job description of the psychiatrists in our system, a caseload of up to 700 patients could easily be cared for by one psychiatrist...
"So these individuals," testified Ducate, "I don't think, had a clear picture of just how extensive our inpatient services are, because I don't understand how they could state that we are not caring for patients with the state-of-the-art facilities we have, with the extensive programming that we have, with the inpatient facilities, the special shelter housing programs, the stepdown units, the extensive development we have done of specializing programs like the psychiatric inpatient program."
The Skyview and Hodge Units are located next door to each other atop a hill in Rusk, Texas, with a view of the oldest state-funded mental hospital in Texas. It's one of those places your parents used to threaten to banish you to if you didn't behave.
Both Skyview and Hodge are relatively new facilities. With a capacity of 528, Skyview houses mentally ill inmates of both genders, mostly in a dormitory setting. Hodge has room for 989 mentally retarded male inmates; they live in more traditional security units, behind solid steel doors with a small window and a slot for their food trays. Both facilities include segregation cells.
Some inmates come to Skyview and Hodge for extended care, but most are short-timers. They check in for 20, 30, or 60 days before being judged mentally fit enough to return to one of the general-population prison units across the state.
Last May, Warden Sharron Dishongh provided a tour of the two units. She seemed shocked when asked about claims that some inmates had been taken off their psychotropic medications upon entering prison.
"I mean, that's the opposite of what we would want," Dishongh said. "We don't want to take them off of their meds, because if we do, their mental illness is going to pop back up."
In one of the wards, one inmate refused to remove his arm from the slot. Dishongh jokingly asked the inmate whether he had "taken the slot hostage." The wisecrack displeased the prisoner.
"I'm mad at everybody!" shouted the inmate, upset because he had broken the light fixture in his cell. He said he broke it because the guards would never turn it off.
"We could gas him," said Dishongh, only half seriously, "but we don't want to do that." Instead, she squatted next to the slot trying to talk with the prisoner, promising that she would have the light replaced. The slot remained his captive.
No one would mistake either Skyview or Hodge for something like a school or daycare center; razor wire runs along the tops of the perimeter cyclone fences. But even at first glance, something about the two facilities broadcasts that they are different from most other prisons.
Flowers appear in rows and clusters along the fences and in the yards. A crew of prisoners armed with lawn mowers keeps the yards trim. Other inmates tend gardens of tomatoes, peas, and peppers -- all of which are used in the units' kitchens. Still other inmates work in the prison greenhouse or attend the in-house landscape design school. There's also occupational therapy such as barbering. There's animal-assisted therapy, during which, for a few hours a month, volunteers share the affection of their pets with inmates. And there is training in life skills such as cooking. "Some of these guys can't boil water when they first come here," says Dishongh.
Too, the atmosphere here is somehow looser than that of many prisons. The standard armed-guard towers are positioned strategically around the prisons, of course, and violence occasionally breaks out. (During the tour, an inmate attacked a guard, who needed several stitches to close the wound to his head.) But even so, both guards and prisoners seem more relaxed than their counterparts at other prisons. Dishongh says it's that way by design. In addition to meeting the regular requirements to be certified as a peace officer, guards at Skyview-Hodge must take 32 hours of special training on dealing with the mentally impaired, as well as yearly refresher courses. Additionally, Dishongh says, not all TDCJ guards are cut out for her prison; she's choosy about who comes to work for her. She adds that there is also an internal culling process: not all TDCJ guards want to come to Skyview-Hodge.
But inmates certainly do -- at least to Skyview, that is. Like the other three TDCJ psychiatric units where patients receive psychotropic drugs, Skyview is air-conditioned. Regular units are not. Because of that amenity, Dishongh says, her staff has to screen out prisoners who don't need to be there.
"Do we weed them all out?" she asks. "No. And do we sometimes weed out someone we shouldn't? Yes. But all in all, I think we do a very good job."
But she also admits that that job is getting tougher.
Before coming here six years ago, for six years Dishongh, who retired in May, oversaw the TDCJ headquarters for psychiatric services, in Huntsville. Prior to that she worked at the Rusk State Hospital just down the hill. Only half joking, she says she basically followed her clientele here because as the state reduced the funding for MHMR beds, the mentally ill have found their way to prison.
"Our nation, not just our state, has not done a real good job in determining how to manage the mentally ill," she says. "And so what are they going to do when they leave here? They are going to get into trouble. Because the services in Texas are not there for the mentally ill or the mentally retarded."
On that point, former Skyview psychologist Jeri Houchin agrees with Dishongh. But she does not concur with the warden's assessment of the overall treatment provided to the mentally impaired in TDCJ. It's not that Houchin doesn't want disabled inmates to do their time. She just believes they have a right to the reasonable accommodations and care guaranteed to them by law.
In 1995, Houchin formed Back to Life, a company that conducts seminars for the mentally impaired and the people involved with them. The seminars cover the criminal justice system -- how to avoid getting in trouble, and if you do, what your rights are. She is also a board member of the Texas Planning Council for Developmental Disabilities.
In 1988, Houchin was sitting in a coffee shop in Jacksonville, Texas, just down the road from the Skyview Unit, where she worked as a psychologist. As she sat there, a man walked to her table and asked whether she'd mind if he joined her. She politely told him that she was sorry, but that she didn't have lunch with men she didn't know. The man introduced himself as Gov. Bill Clements. After talking with Houchin, he asked whether she'd mind if he appointed her to the disabilities council. She didn't, and he did.
Although Judge Justice has removed TDCJ health and mental-health divisions from the Ruiz order, Houchin believes the high patient-to-doctor ratio will send them back to federal court. "Psychiatric services in TDCJ is pretty much like a meat market," she charges. "People just get processed through. There is very little therapy whatsoever. I talked to a [prison] psychiatrist the other day who was just going round and round with them because they just wanted him to go ahead and renew medications without seeing the inmate individually. And he just refused to do it. It's a horrible caseload they have there now, and the prisoners are just not getting the mental-health services they need. Once the bulk of the Ruiz order got lifted in 1995, they started going back to their old ways. It's just a matter of time before it gets back to being as bad as it used to be."
Houchin also says that despite TDCJ denials, the mentally impaired are indeed often taken off their medications upon entering the prison system. She chalks it up to misdiagnosis by low-quality psychiatrists who often can't get work anywhere else.
"Some have had some fraudulent stuff with Medicare, or they've had problems with medication themselves," she says. "While I was there, we even had one guy working as a psychologist who was a business major, and he was an idiot."
Indeed, in January 1997, The Dallas Morning News identified eight doctors who had practiced in the state prison system the previous year after having been publicly disciplined by medical review boards.
Houchin adds that even if inmates get back on their feet at units such as Skyview, there is not enough oversight in general-population prisons to make sure inmates stay on their medications. She also maintains that many inmates are chronically ill, and so sick that they have no business being placed back into the general population. Once these people go back to regular prisons, she says, they are going to either assault someone or be assaulted.
"The reason I left TDCJ," she says, "was a 15-year-old mentally retarded Hispanic kid who, by the time he got to me, had been gang-banged so much, he was also mentally ill because of the trauma."
For the past two decades, Al Slaton, a 67-year-old convicted murderer, has done what he could to keep the mentally impaired off the streets. In 1975, after spending 22 years off and on behind bars, Slaton found employment in several state and veterans hospitals. In 1980, he opened the Rose Garden, a generous name for a dozen or so dilapidated little houses several blocks east of downtown Temple.
Slaton says he takes people whom other halfway houses don't want. The unfortunates who live at the Rose Garden consider him their guardian angel. If not for Slaton, they say, they would have nothing and nowhere to go.
But for almost all of the Rose Garden's existence, Slaton has been engaged in battles with numerous state agencies over the halfway house's operation. According to a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Human Services, Slaton is illegally operating a personal-care home and dispensing medicine without a license. She adds that TDHS agents have previously found deplorable living conditions at the Rose Garden; that they have found residents living in trailers with dirt floors, and rotting food in a tractor trailer used by the Rose Garden as a pantry. The department complains that Slaton keeps inadequate records of his expenditures of residents' Social Security funds.
Slaton acknowledges that he doesn't have a license to operate a personal-care home, but maintains he doesn't need one. He does, however, admit to dispensing drugs.
"One of their arguments is that I'm giving these people medication," he says. "Well, it's true. Through the years I have given medication because no one else would give it to them." He claims he gets the medicine through local doctors and MHMR. He also volunteers that some of the Rose Garden's houses are coed, and that no one stops the residents from having sex or drinking beer.
On several occasions state agencies have raided the compound and relocated residents to other facilities. The most recent raid occurred last month, when agents from the Texas Department of Human Services again removed several residents from the Rose Garden. Among them was 37-year-old Janice Hankins, a schizophrenic. The cheery, rotund redhead died not long after being forced to leave. Slaton says she committed suicide. (Bell County Justice of the Peace Eddie Lang has yet to rule on the cause of her death.)
But even as state authorities move to shut down the Rose Garden, resident Roger Pirkle, a sort of lawyer without portfolio, plots Slaton's own legal move to have the former residents returned to the halfway house. While serving time for murder, Pirkle became one of the original writ writers in the Ruiz lawsuit and may be better at filing legal action than some attorneys. In a filthy room at the Rose Garden, he sits surrounded by stacks of legal briefs and newspaper clippings. His hair is slicked back; his frame is lanky. He listens simultaneously to a police scanner and boom box playing the Righteous Brothers.
For both Pirkle and Slaton, Hankins' death is all too reminiscent of a similar raid in 1989, when the state revoked a contract Slaton won two years before and removed several residents. Among them was 47-year-old Mildred Weaver, a schizophrenic.
Two years later, Slaton filed a lawsuit in which Weaver was the lead plaintiff. The lawsuit challenged the Texas parole system's treatment of the mentally disabled. Specifically, the suit contended that TDCJ's parole division did not have an adequate number of officers trained to deal with the special needs of the mentally impaired. As a result, the suit claimed that an inordinately high number of mentally ill and mentally retarded parolees were returned to prison. After the suit was settled, the parole division more than doubled the number of officers with expertise in working with the mentally handicapped.
Slaton now blames the Rose Garden's troubles on the suit, saying that the state resented his victory. The suit didn't seem to do much for Weaver, either: Following her eviction from the Rose Garden and relocation to another halfway house, she found her way back to prison. Weaver committed suicide.
Rose Garden resident Joann Jones did time with Weaver. Like the rest of the parolees and mental patients who remain at the halfway house, Jones remains devoted to Slaton.
"I have a freedom here that I wouldn't have somewhere else," says Jones, whose private garage apartment is neatly kept. "Al doesn't give up on me. He has never turned his back on me. He has never thrown me away. And believe me, I know what it's like to be thrown away."
Thirty or so years ago, mental patients were mostly corralled into a few large hospitals. But the civil liberty laws of the mid-'60s granted the mentally impaired the right to expect treatment in their own communities. At the beginning of the movement toward de-institutionalization, government funding was supposed to follow the patients back to the individual communities. But according to a spokesperson for the Mental Health Association in Texas, it didn't turn out that way.
"That was really a myth," says Melanie Gantt. "The money did not follow the patients. And so, as they were de-institutionalized, these people became homeless. And as new people came into the system, the number of beds had been reduced, so there was no longer the capacity in the institutional setting to serve them. Nor have community services been augmented to the point to be able to take on the new capacity. And so, in Texas, our prisons have become our largest mental-health institutions."
If this past session of the Texas Legislature is any indication, lawmakers do not seem inclined to change that situation or approve bills that would improve the lives of mentally impaired offenders.
During the recently ended session, state Rep. Glen Maxey sponsored a bill that would have created a pilot program under which mentally impaired inmates would receive the new-generation psychotropic medications. The bill would have also allowed paroled inmates to continue receiving the new medications through MHMR facilities.
"Ultimately, UTMB opposition was pretty much the reason we couldn't do it," says Robin Chandler, Maxey's legislative aid. "They would have had to administer it, and they said they didn't have the money or the capability. They were just totally and completely unwilling to do it. It was very unfortunate. We didn't feel like it would have cost a lot of money."
A bill by Houston state Sen. Rodney Ellis to ban the execution of mentally retarded capital murderers met the same fate as Maxey's bill. The legislation would have outlawed the death penalty for any defendant with an IQ of 65 or less. The bill made it out of the Senate, but ultimately died. Legislative sources say it was crushed by the governor's office.
Ellis' bill would not have helped 41-year-old death row inmate Larry Robison, who suffers from schizophrenia, not mental retardation. Still, Lois Robison feels that the system failed her son.
In the summer of 1982, she tried desperately to have her son placed in a mental hospital because of his increasingly strange behavior. He thought people were trying to kill him. He thought he was receiving messages from aliens and having out-of-body experiences -- psychotic episodes intensified by his use of speed and LSD. Each time, she says, doctors and administrators told her that they couldn't help her until Robison actually did something violent. But when he finally did, it was too late.
In August 1982, Larry Robison fatally stabbed and shot five people in two cottages on Lake Worth, west of Fort Worth. He decapitated and sexually mutilated one of his victims, claiming he was acting on orders from the Bible.
"We were so naive," says Lois, "that after he was arrested, we thought he would go to a mental hospital."
Instead, Robison was convicted of capital murder. He's scheduled to be executed next month. Despite a campaign by his family and anti-death-penalty groups such as Capacity for Justice, Larry Robison says he's ready for the end.
"I believe there is something better waiting for me in the next life, and I look forward to it," he says. "I know my mother probably doesn't agree. She's very attached to me. But I'm trying to help her with that."
If you like this story, consider signing up for our email newsletters.
You have successfully signed up for your selected newsletter(s) - please keep an eye on your mailbox, we're movin' in!
Aaron George's mother, too, is very attached to her son. But unlike Larry Robison, George does not see a better life for himself anywhere on the horizon.
At the conclusion of his retrial, a Montgomery County jury again found George guilty of murder. This time around, he was sentenced to 99 years in prison -- 39 years more than after his first conviction. Before the trial, George's attorney had been gung-ho about filing a class-action lawsuit about the treatment of the mentally impaired in TDCJ. Now, even the appeal of George's latest conviction appears to be on hold.
George is still waiting to be transferred from the Montgomery County jail back to the psychiatric care TDCJ system. Every day he makes a collect call to his mother, but each time the conversation grows shorter.
"All he can say, over and over," she says, "is '99 years.'"


text:
As the Florida Senate appears ready to outlaw the electronic slot machine-like games offered by Internet cafes, adult arcades and maquinita operators in Florida, there is talk that the machines will be resurrected next year.
Sen. John Thrasher, a St. Augustine Republican and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said Tuesday that he would like to consider allowing the machines to be operated at the dog tracks, horse traces and jai alai frontons throughout the state, which are currently regulated and paying taxes.
"As long as they're regulated in the pari-mutuel facilities that's something for us to talk about. I've always said if we are going to allow any expansion of gaming – which I'm not really for – the existing authorized, legitimate are where we should do it," he said.
Las Vegas-style slot machines are currently only allowed in the six parimutuel faciliites Miami Dade and Broward but in 2011 Thrasher proposed an amendment to a bill in the final hours of the legislative session that would have allowed the Jacksonsville greyhound track in his district to operate a copycat version, known as video lottery terminals, that allow players to play against each other, not the house. The amendment nearly derailed the end of session, but it didn't pass.
Now, Thrasher says, when the Florida Legislature returns next year to take a comprehensive look at the state's gambling laws, the issue should return. The House and Senate have set up select committees to study gaming regulation and come up with a proposal next year. The Senate committee is chaired by Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, and the House's is chaired by Rep. Rob Schenck, R-Spring Hill.
"I suspect that when Sen. Richter does his deal next year that some of the pari-mutuels will come in and say 'let us do it' because we're paying taxes – a high rate of taxes,'' he said.


text:
|How to obtain copies of South Dakota vital records, such as South Dakota birth certificates, South Dakota death records, South Dakota marriage licenses & South Dakota divorce decrees. See the guidelines for general information on how to order vital records. Check the related links for additional vital records and genealogical information on South Dakota.
South Dakota State Vital Records Office Information
Index to South Dakota County Vital Records Offices
Divorce records may be obtained from the State Office or from the Clerk of Courts in the county where the divorce occured.
Follow this link to Rootsweb to determine what county a city or town is in.
Aurora . Beadle . Bennett . Bon Homme . Brookings . Brown . Brule . Buffalo . Butte . Campbell . Charles Mix . Clark . Clay . Codington . Corson . Custer . Davison . Day . Deuel . Dewey . Douglas . Edmunds . Fall River . Faulk . Grant . Gregory . Haakon . Hamlin . Hand . Hanson . Harding . Hughes . Hutchinson . Hyde . Jackson . Jerauld . Jones . Kingsbury . Lake . Lawrence . Lincoln . Lyman . Marshall . McCook . McPherson . Meade . Mellette . Miner . Minnehaha . Moody . Pennington . Perkins . Potter . Roberts . Sanborn . Shannon . Spink . Stanley . Sully . Todd . Tripp . Turner . Union . Walworth . Yankton . Ziebach .
You Must Discover the South Dakota Vital Records
It would behoove you to know what the South Dakota vital records are. The critical historical documents that this resource holds give evidence of folks who lived in this Midwestern state. If you are looking at empty lines on your family tree, then you must take a trip through these documents. If you are writing a research paper centering on this state, then you should take a gander at these records. The information here is available to many people for different reasons. To keep records on the state and national level, the South Dakota vital records provide an invaluable service.
Researching for Your Family Tree
The design and creation of a family tree can be an adventure or a disaster. There are some helpful tips to store away in your head when you take on this kind of project. Proceed to write on your fresh family tree the names and dates of family members you know. The recording of the birth dates of the people living in your house is an easy way to get a start on your family tree. Pretending like you know the birthdays of the people in the next room is not good enough. Gather the courage to ask your son when his birthday is. After you have recorded this initial information, you can feel self-assured to take the next step and investigate the South Dakota vital records. A jackpot of evidence is contained in these documents. Remember to be patient when conducting your search, and you will not be frustrated.
Researching for School Assignments
College students, and even some high school students, are eager to get the best possible grade on research papers. A project that has superb evidence often convinces better than the weakly researched project. Primary sources are critical in this school assignment. Facts that are not arguable should be included in your research paper, and that is where the South Dakota vital records come into play. Birth and death dates of South Dakotans are found within these papers. For this very good reason, this resource is considered a primary source. Please include names and dates in your assigned project.
You can unlock the key to the South Dakota vital records in one central location. This place is open to the public, and this information is easy to access on the web.
Searchable Databases and other Helpful Links
Please send web site additions and corrections to the webmaster.