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Tuesday, May 12 – Goodbye Colorado
We been at Rocky Mountain National Park for 8 nights. Moraine Campground has had few campers since we arrived but now it's starting to fill up with college students. It must be time for their summer break. It's also time for us to move on. We need to be in Chicago for a family wedding at the end of May and Rapid City seems like a good place to leave the Airstream for a couple of weeks. Nearby is Devil's Tower, the Badlands National Park, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument, Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park. I never knew South Dakota has so much to offer.
It's about 4 o'clock as we pull into the Lewis Park Campground in Wheatland Wyoming. Lewis Park Campground offers 30 amp service and best of all it's free! It's part of a city park just off I-25 making it a great stopover spot for the night. We towed the Airstream 165 miles today and will drive another 200 miles tomorrow to reach Wind Cave National Park, about 30 miles south of Rapid City.
Wind Cave National Park – Thursday May 14
We arrived at Wind Cave National Park yesterday and we're one of only two campers here. There're no hookups other than a shared water spigot but at $9 a night, who can complain? Today's weather is perfect with bright blue sunny skies and a high of 70 degrees so this is not a day to spend underground. As its name implies, Wind Cave NP is best known for its caves. The park covers 52 square miles but concealed beneath its surface lies 140 miles of explored cave passageways, one of the largest in the world. Cindy and I have no interest in caves, so we head out to explore the park.
Along our drive we see elk, deer, pronghorn, countless prairie dogs and lots of bison. Most of the wildlife is far from the road but the bison are everywhere. We'll be here 3 more nights then head 30 miles north to Custer State Park.
Custer State Park – Monday May 18th
Custer State Park is no ordinary state park. At first, we were put off by the $15 weekly entrance fee but once we started driving around this massive park, it seemed more like a National Park than a State Park. At 71,000 acres, it's twice the size of Wind Cave National Park to its south. The park contains multiple campgrounds, scenic drives including a wildlife drive, historic lodges and cabins, restaurants and drop-dead gorgeous scenery. With snow in tomorrow's forecast, we decide today is a good time to see Mt. Rushmore.
Best Way to Visit Mt. Rushmore
We're staying at the Game Lodge Campground near the eastern side of Custer State Park. Nearby, Highway 16A turns north where it becomes known as the Iron Mountain Road, a route made famous for its scenic, one-lane tunnels aligned to frame the faces on Mount Rushmore. The road twists and turns and climbs ever higher. We see very few cars on our drive. I know we're getting close but so far we haven't seen it. We finally come to one of the famous tunnels and see Mt. Rushmore for the first time. I stop the truck to take a few photos. Seeing Mount Rushmore in person after a lifetime of seeing it in textbooks, movies, and elsewhere gives me a special feeling that's hard to put into words. As a result, we decide to forego visiting it up close. From what we've heard, the monument has a shopping mall atmosphere with a multi-story parking garage, gift shop and crowds of tourists. We prefer remembering it in the solitude of its natural surroundings.
Tuesday May 19th – It's snowing again??!!
Do they have summer in South Dakota? We wake up to a couple inches of snow and decide to treat ourselves to breakfast out. On the way, we'll drive the wildlife loop in search of wild burros. We had made this trip yesterday but only saw bison. Perhaps the snow has made the burros hungry and we'll see them on our way to the Blue Bell Lodge. If so, Cindy is ready with the carrots.
Along the way, Cindy and I see pronghorn…
While feeding wildlife in the park is prohibited, an exception is made for the "begging burros" descended from pack animals once used for treks to the Harney Peak summit.
After feeding the burros a breakfast of carrots, Cindy and I head to the Blue Bell Lodge for a breakfast of pancakes and a western skillet.
After breakfast, we head for the Needles Highway, a scenic route known for its needle-like rock formations. As we turn onto the Needles Highway, signs warn us of narrow tunnels, steep grades and numerous switchbacks. No trucks or trailers are allowed. I hope they're not referring to big pickup trucks.
We come to a tunnel that's only 8 feet, 4 inches wide. It's a tight fit but we make it through…
Thursday, May 21st – Badlands National Park
Tomorrow's Friday, the start of Memorial Day Weekend. We don't like to arrive at a new campground on Friday, especially on a holiday weekend so we're leaving today to secure a first-come, first-served spot at Sage Creek Campground in the Badlands National Park. We stop off at Walmart and Petco in Rapid City to stock up on supplies. Sage Creek Campground has no hookups and is a long way from town so we need to go prepared.
As we drive down the gravel road leading into the campground, a couple of bull bison line the road. It's remote out here and I sense these guys don't see many visitors. As we slowly drive by, the largest of the bison objects to our presence and charges the truck, stopping short of striking us.
The campground is mostly empty when we arrive and we select a spot by the horse hitching posts. After settling in, we take Trixie and Eddie for a walk around the campground loop. On our way out, Cindy almost steps on what appears to be a rattlesnake. We later determine it's a non-venomous bull snake. Needless to say, we are both shaken up by the experience.
On returning, we find a visitor by the Airstream. Now we have to decide to walk by the area where we saw the snake or continue past the bison. If we make it back safely, an extra large Margarita is in order.
Friday, May 21st – A New Day at Sage Creek Campground
Despite our encounters with a charging bison and an impostor rattlesnake, Sage Creek Campground is quite nice. Cindy and I head up the hill outside the Airstream door for a morning hike.by


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I bought three mini-packs of lettuce and mustard at the farmer's market and after only two weeks, everything got huge. Now I can't bring myself to cut it because it's so pretty.
I grew up where people shoot their ailing animals, and now I'm so urbanized I can't snip veggies.
Had no problem putting down the dill, though.

subset: commoncrawl


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I never truly sang until that Saturday.
Sitting in the Rynearson Auditorium in Nashville, listening to the gospel choirs sing their glory, I sat mesmerized.
All day long they sang, like angels dancing in the air.
My ankles grew tired from tapping my feet, and my hands were sore from clapping out the rhythm.
In my head, I heard the tunes, but was so afraid that my voice would betray the genius in my ears.
I felt a movement in my throat – strange but not uncomfortable.
It started vibrating up to my mouth, and when my lips parted, I screamed with wicked abandon.
The rollicking chorus had us up and dancing, and while I cried, my heart poured through song that came from my soul.
The release was outrageously overdue, and when we stepped outside into the warm, wilty night air, I was drenched with sweat and I felt powerful and strong.


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Bird Poop On Concrete Porch
Most of the time birds aren't a problem, the times when
they are, they can leave some deposits in places where we might not want
It's not uncommon to find bird poop around your home, however, when it starts to pile up on your sidewalks, roofing or other parts of your home, that are visible to anyone walking by, this is when it starts to become an eyesore.
If poops on the ground, there are birds above. You don't need to remember to much more than that. In the picture above, there are a couple of areas where the bird poop seems to be concentrated. This should tell you, that there's probably a nest directly above or its an area where birds perch regularly.
Home Repair Tip: Now what are you going to do about it, you could remove the vining plant that's clinging to the ceiling and the birds wouldn't have anything to nest or sit on. However, if you enjoy the plants, you're going to need to get creative. How can you make this area less accessible?
Most home improvement centers sell plastic bird spikes and these spikes could be wired to your plant or any area where the birds have become a problem. They're relatively inexpensive and once the birds leave, it seems like they rarely come back. With a little persistence and some creativity, you can make their nesting area, difficult to access and this will solve your problem.


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Living Donor Organ Transplantation
The Kovler Organ Transplantation Center is one of the best in the Midwest region and is a leader in living donor transplant surgery.
Request Appointment, Find Doctors or Contact Us
Living donor organ transplantation
Since organ transplant surgery was first introduced in the mid 1900s, the number of seriously ill patients waiting for an organ has steadily increased. Currently, there are more than 122,000 people on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)* registry waiting for an organ, with more than 5,400 in Illinois alone.
Unfortunately, the number of organs available for transplantation has not kept pace with the demand. In 2013, only 22,517 organs from deceased donors were available nationwide.
To lessen this gap, surgeons found a way to transplant organs between two living people. Since the first living donor transplant surgery was performed in 1954, thousands of patients have received lifesaving organs from living donors.
Kidney is the most common living donor transplant performed, since the body can function normally with only one kidney. Living donor liver transplants also are performed, as the liver can regenerate itself to replace the transplanted portion.
Why Northwestern Medicine?
The Kovler Organ Transplantation Center is a leader in living donor transplant surgery. Our transplant physicians and nurses have performed more than 2,100 living donor kidney transplants and more than 190 living donor liver transplants.
In 2013, Northwestern Memorial Hospital was one of the largest living donor kidney transplant programs in the country, performing 122 such transplants. The benefits of living donor kidney transplants are well-documented; the kidneys from living donors have longer graft survival rates, function better and have fewer complications than kidneys from deceased donors.
In 2013, Northwestern Memorial Hospital performed 16 adult living donor liver transplants, making ours one of the largest living donor liver programs in the country.
Potential donors must be in relatively good health, both physically and emotionally, and have a compatible blood type with the organ recipient. Additionally, kidney donors need to be over the age of 18 and liver donors need to be between 18 and 60 years old. Those who agree to be a living donor do so as a volunteer and find great reward in saving a life.
Milestone Transplant: Sibling Offers Life-Saving Gift to Gurnee Woman
A Gurnee woman no longer needs dialysis thanks to her younger brother's ultimate gift.
A Mother's Gift: Mom donates part of her liver to daughter
Arnela Hadzic, 21, has a rare liver disease. She received a transplant from a deceased donor when she was 7 years old, but it was failing. So two weeks ago, she received a partial liver from a living donor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Anonymous Kidney Donations Create Huge, Rare Donation Chain That Connects Them All in Remarkable Way
Six donors had no idea where their kidneys were going, but the recipients created a 12-person chain that miraculously connected all of them through their personal relationships.
Chicago Father Saves Son's Life With Kidney Transplant
Ricky de la Cruz is a 19-year-old who was born with half a heart and has been sick all his life, his mom said. Cruz's father was able to save his life by donating his own kidney.
Initiative Aimed at Educating Latino Community About Organ Donation
A new initiative at Northwestern Memorial Hospital is aimed at educating the Latino community about organ donation. NBC 5's Anayeli Ruiz has more.
- Downtown (AMC)
- Northern Suburbs
- Western Suburbs
- South Suburbs
- Northwest Indiana
Related Resources
- Living Donor Kidney Health Questionnaire
- Living Liver Donation: A Patient Handbook
- Donante Vivo de Hígado: Manual del Paciente
- Donante Vivo De Riñón: Manual del Paciente
- Living Kidney Donation: A Patient Handbook
- Health History Questionnaire for the Living Kidney Donor
- Health History Questionnaire for the Living Donor
- Authorization to Obtain Information
- Patient Confidential Communications
- Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network*: Website of the not-for-profit organ procurement organization that works with hospitals and donor families in the northern three-fourths of Illinois and northwest Indiana. The organization is responsible for the recovery of organs and tissue for medical transplantation in the service area, as well as for professional and public education on organ and tissue donation.
- US Transplant—Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR)*: The SRTR supports the ongoing evaluation of the scientific and clinical status of solid organ transplantation in the United States.
- Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN)*: OPTN is a unique public-private partnership that links all of the professionals involved in the donation and transplantation system. Its goals are to increase the supply of donated organs available for transplantation and the effectiveness and efficiency of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).
- Coalition on Donation*: The organization promotes organ donation and provides education about it.
- MedlinePlus*: This is a trusted source that covers all aspects of organ donation and provides easy access to medical journal articles, extensive information about drugs, an illustrated medical encyclopedia, interactive patient tutorials and the latest health news.
- National Organ and Tissue Donation Initiative*: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is undertaking this initiative to ease the critical shortage of organ and tissue donors by building a national community of organ sharing.
- United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)*: Through the UNOS Organ Center, organ donors are matched to waiting recipients 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Through its policies, UNOS ensures that all patients have a fair chance at receiving the organ they need—regardless of age, sex, race, lifestyle, religion, or financial or social status. UNOS members include every transplant program, organ procurement organization and tissue typing laboratory in the United States.
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By clicking on these websites, you are leaving the Northwestern Medicine website. These websites are independent resources. Northwestern Medicine does not operate or control the content of these websites. By visiting these websites, you agree to this third party's terms of use for their website.


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Jennifer Dombrowski Talks Travel Fulfilled And Hoped For
Paul and Jennifer talk travel. As Jennifer is into her second year as one of our correspondents we thought it only fitting to let you in on why she is such a valuable contributor to Traveling. Johnny Jet introduced us and since then we've benefited by Jennifer's great expertise and also her understanding of the world we live in. Jennifer's website and blog, jdombstravels.com is not only a source of accurate travel information (trust us that isn't always the case when it comes to blogs) but it's also written with a sensitivity to our men and women serving around the world. But perhaps Jennifer says it best in this from her website:
We're Jennifer and Tim and we love adventure and we love wine, so we often try to combine the two! By day, you'll find us out on some crazy adventure like snorkeling in Iceland in winter, but by night, we're creatures of comfort. We both work full time, so we bring you practical tips for how anyone can fit travel into their busy lives – just like us! So far, we've visited 48 countries on 3 continents, lived in the United States and Italy, and Tim has lived in Korea. And we do it all while both holding down full time careers, Jennifer as a communications manager and social media strategist at a university and Tim as an active duty service member in the US Air Force. That's how much we love travel. We can hardly stand to stay home in Italy for too long; wanderlust always gets the best of us. Travel has literally changed our lives, strengthened our marriage, and challenged us beyond our wildest dreams. Living by our motto "Live a Life of Adventure," we're here to prove to you that travel isn't at all intimidating, there's much more to see and do than that guide book you picked up shows you, and that you can balance a life of travel with your career. The travel will never stop for Jennifer and Tim. Our bucket list continues to grow with far flung places on this beautiful planet and we're continually working toward our goal to become full time travelers once Tim retires from the Air Force. Join us as we show you how you can live a life of adventure! We're always happy to offer our advice, so send us an email or leave us a note on our Facebook page.


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India flags U.S. military aid to Pakistan
India on raised the issue of continued American military assistance to Pakistan and sought an end to cross-border terrorism, setting the agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first meeting with U.S President Donald Trump.
India's Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin told the United Nations Security Council to deal with the adversary that provides safe haven to terrorists who target Afghanistan, which was a reference towards Pakistan.
He even pointed out that the UNSC has often failed to condemn terror incidents in Afghanistan.
Some pertinent questions raised by India's Permanent Representative to UN,
- From where do the anti-government elements receiving their weapons, explosives, training and funding
- Where do they find safe havens and sanctuaries
- How is it that these anti-government elements have stood up against one of the biggest collective military efforts
The official spokesperson of MEA Gopal Baglay stated,
- U.S. military aid provided by the US to Pakistan is diverted to target India
- Though he specified that the US-Pakistan relationship is a relationship between two sovereign countries, but India has expressed its concerns in terms of diversion of military aid
- Problems with Pakistan remain a bilateral issue without the possibility of a third-party intervention


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How To Choose A Good Academy
Choose a good Academy is essential for the security and stability you need when your future is at stake. Study oppositions requires time and money that should not be missed. For this reason it is very important that the election … Continue reading
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Dr. NTR Health University PGMET Admit Cards 2014
Hyderabad, 12 April 2014: Dr.NTR Health University, Vijayawada is going to conduct FRESH PG Medical Entrance Test on 27th April from 10.00 AM to 1.00 PM. Candidates who have applied and appeared for earlier exam (February) and FRESH applicants should download Admit Card/ Hall Tickets from ntr university website from 21st April to till the exam date.
DR. NTR Health University PGMET 2014 Admit Cards Download begins on: 21st Apri
DR. NTR Health University PGMET 2014 date of the exam: 27th April 10.00 AM to 1.00 PM
DR.NTR Health University PGMET 2014 Admit Cards availalble here: http://ntruhs.ap.nic.in/
Hyderabad, 30 January 2014: Dr. NTR Health University, Vijayawada is scheduled to conduct PG Medical Entrance Exam in February 2014. PGMET is an entrance test for admissions in MD/ MS/ Diploma Courses.
Candidates who have applied for MDS/ PG Medical Courses can download their admit cards from 19th February onwards.
Exam Dates:
MDS courses: 23rd February 2014 from 11.00 AM to 12.30 PM.
PG Medical courses: 2nd March 2014 from 10.00 AM to 1.00 PM.
Admit Cards Download:
MDS Admit Cards available on 19th& 20th February 2014
PG Medical Courses (MD/ MS/ PG Medical Courses): 25th to 28th February 2014.
For downloading admit cards see here: http://www.drntruhs.org


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Let me predicate this piece with a statement of my position:
I'm not in favour of either an FTTN or FTTP NBN, but of a reasonable National Digital Infrastructure. Australia has needed an NBN since before Trujillo floated the idea in 2005, but for complex Politico-Economic reasons, it hasn't happened. Ideally, after the deregulation of Telecommunications and the privatisation of Telstra, the private sector would've co-operated and delivered Universal Fast Broadband. It didn't. Nothing focuses the mind of Engineers so well as a strict Budget and economic necessity: while a Publicly funded network can be built, we know it may not be the most cost-efficient engineering design because "Necessity is the Mother of Invention". I'm sure both side of politics would rather be devoting their energies and $30 billion of public money to other priorities, not making good on a gap that the private sector should've filled.I'm putting aside the cost of upgrading an FTTN to Fibre-to-Premises. That's another debate.
Also, I've previously identified that Telstra poses a "drop-dead" risk for an FTTN: the shareholders could easily decide to charge more to sell or lease the "last-mile" copper.
Turnbull in his plan has omitted two critical factors:
- An estimate of the total cost of the DSL network,
- $900/line is tucked away in there, we can infer from "25% of Fibre Costs" and "Mac Bank estimates $3,600/premise for Fibre".
- The Node-Premise maximum distance. Is it 1500m, 800m, 400m or "varies between 1500m and 400m"?
There are subtleties in the financing and economics of big projects that mean even if the CapEx of an FTTN is the same ($29.5 billion) as FTTP, it is still a better investment: the time value of money, expressed in the Net Present Value (NPV).
There is also the Engineering Risk and estimation error inherent in the FTTP figures We just don't know what the real project cost will be. The high-volume construction hasn't started, we don't know if their per-premise cost is reasonable or not (I make their figures to be $1.7 billion common infrastructure plus incremental $2195/premise).
All large projects contain "surprises": until you've done, you can't tell what you don't know.
My experience is that almost all "surprises" are bad: they cost more and delay things. Sometimes you cut a break, but not often.
It's not unreasonable to believe that NBN Co will over-run on budget for the Fibre rollout. The only question is: by how much? We'll only know in 2014 after their first full year of full-rate rollout.
Schedule I don't have a problem with... Fibre is laid by independent teams and can scale up linearly: teams don't get in each others way nor depend on others work, once the commons are laid down.
It may be cynical, but I think ex-Servicemen from the USA might be a great source of expert technical folk for the fibre jointing. With the war winding down, they'll be a lot of them getting out, with very high-level skills and no work of that sort in the USA.
The Four Horsemen for the DSL-NBN:
- Copper Remediation
- The 2005 Telstra NBN for 4M of 5.6M lines in the Big 5 cities, 20,000 nodes for 2/3 lines, included $3.1 billion from Telstra and a preferred position of 6Mbps at $5.7 billion total.
- Trujillo gave Howard in 2005 (TLS385) 3 options for Govt contribution:
- $1.1 billion for 1.5Mbps everywhere
- $2.6 billion for 6 Mbps (ADSL2)
- $4.7 billion for 12 Mbps. [The Rudd DSL-NBN figure]
- They also rated "remediation" as one of the big project costs.
- Since 2005, the network will have deteriorated further. But by how much?
- Will this be another $5-$10 billion on top?
- NTD's (Network Termination Devices)
- These are specific devices to NBN Co bitstream, not your usual ADSL router/modems.
- They are needed on all network types, Wireless, Satellite and Fibre.
- I've not seen costings for them or cost to install.
- My guess for Fibre is $250/unit in volume
- And VDSL, $200/unit.
- I don't know if NBN Co will be charging an install fee to defray their expense.
- I think NBN Co cost will be $250 device + $150 labour: $
- Every DSL NBN plan I've seen, including the Coalitions', ignore the cost of the supply and install of the NTD. I infer from this that it's a customer expense, paid for at connection time.
- because it's part of the Telco network, the NTD has to be installed by a licensed cabler.
- My guess would be $200 device + $250 labour (retail rate, 1hr) = $450 install.
- Fibre uplinks and SFP GBIC's
- My rough estimate was for 75,000km of Fibre to node. Access Economics in 2009 estimated 81,000 km.
- My rough estimate for laying single tube fibre in ducts was $20,000/km. An expert opinion is $17,500 to $25,000. Splicing is time consuming and expensive. Need a person at both ends to check splices are good.
- I'd forgotten that high-power, Extended Distance Ethernet Fibre interfaces (SFP's or GBIC's) are needed. Two per node for redundant links over diverse paths.
- I think longest fibre run to a node will be ~25km, though with regeneration, this may be reduced to 10km.
- High-power GBIC's are still expensive.
- 1Gbps can be used to start, but will
- 10Gbps or 40Gbps are needed to get beyond 10Mbps per line with 100 ports in a node. They're currently $1,000's, even in volume, for LX and EX versions.
- Relaying and rejoint the copper network for an optimal Node layout
- Telstra in responding to the FANOC proposal said they could use 40% fewer nodes by redeploying the last-mile from "best for phone" to "best for DSL".
- This comes at a price


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Police officers are much safer than they used to be. Fatalities, shooting deaths, and felony murders of police are way down. Since I started reporting on this trend two years ago, one question has continually nagged at me: why? Why is police work getting safer?
1. Vests and EMTs
One answer is that we've just gotten better at saving lives — bulletproof vests became widespread and standard for police in the late 1980s, and emergency medical care has improved, as well. Nobody can deny that these are valuable and important, but they can't explain the trend.
First, killings of police were in decline for a long time before vests became common. Second, assaults, injuries, and non-lethal shootings of police are also way, way down. In other words, cops are not just being saved more often: they are being attacked and injured less frequently in first place.
2. Violent Crime
Another answer is that all crime, especially murder and other violent crime, has declined dramatically since the early 1990s. Since cops' jobs are directly related to crime and violence, you'd suspect that killings of police would strongly track overall violence. This is so obvious that it is has to be true, on some level.
Trouble is, violence and police killings don't correlate well. Cop killings peaked in the mid-1970s and declined ever since, while violent crime continued to rise drastically until the early 1990s.
Cop killings seem to follow overall violent crime from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, and from the mid-1990s to the present, but for about twenty years, from the mid '70s to the mid '90s, they go in opposite directions. The most substantial drop in cop killings happened in those two decades before crime started falling. Killings of police per capita fell by 75 percent from 1973 and 2014 — but 80 percent of that decline happened between 1973 to 1992, while violent crime was still rising.
3. Culture
Another theory is that public opinion is responsible for officer safety: respect or contempt, trust in or fear of police is what drives violence against cops. This theory does not appear to hold up, at least in the aggregate. Gallup has surveyed the public about confidence in police since 1993, and it's been pretty steady for the last twenty plus years.
We have three perfectly sound intuitions about what might be responsible for officer safety, but they match up poorly with the data we have. It's possible that more data would give us a better clue (I don't yet have data on rates of assault and injury of police prior to 1987, but I'm FOIA-ing the FBI to get it), and it's possible the data we have isn't good enough ("confidence" in police might be too broad to give us a good measure of what we want to know).
I still suspect that some combination of technology/equipment, culture/trust, and crime/violence has to play a significant role in officer safety. But the data is just too messy to say for sure.


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Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats follows unemployed documentarian Jane Takagi-Little on her experience working as a producer for a Japanese TV show called My American Wife, which is sponsored by a Texas-based meat industry lobby organization called Beef-Ex. To continue the pattern of westernization in Japan, My American Wife features American wives demonstrating the steps to simple American recipes that contain red meat and can be performed at home for a family dinner. At the typical American family dinner table, red meat represents the main dish that unites each family member to bond with each other by sharing the dish. In order to establish a bond for the Japanese family during dinnertime, Jane Takagi-Little emphasizes the modern American tradition of serving red meat at the dinner table.
As the main purpose of the TV Show, red meat, instead of the American housewife, is the star of My American Wife. Sponsored by Beef-Ex, My American Wife wants Japanese housewives to "feel the hearty sense of warmth, of comfort, of hearth and home – the traditional family values symbolized by red meat in rural America" (Ozeki 8). Normally, the typical Japanese family indulges in light-tasting dishes, such as seafood, rice, soup, and vegetables. Although these dishes are light in flavor, the Japanese consider this cuisine as a commonplace in their culture. However, red meat, an "attractive, appealing, all-American dish," gives the Japanese a sense of both westernization and modernization with the appeal of the American culture. As Japan becomes more of a Western-cultured civilization with the increase of American fast food places and red meat at the markets, it is reasonable for home-cooked meals to include the use of red meat as a main dish.
In order for the audience to gain interest in American red meat cuisine, Ruth Ozeki's word choice to describe the purpose of the show creates a warm and persuasive tone. For example, the passage emphasizes how red meat brings the "hearty" sense of "warmth," "comfort," "hearth," and "home." (Ozeki 8) Instead of having the normal Japanese dinner, the Japanese should try something that would provides tons of flavor while producing the pleasant feeling of comfort while consuming the dish made of red meat. Ozeki wants to appeal to the Japanese housewives so their family members can intensify the feeling of comfort at home while enjoying their meal as a family. By intensifying this comfortable feeling, this allows family members to endure in bonding with sharing the amiability of their main dish of hearty red meat.
By emphasizing the value of bonding as a family as well as the use of red meat at the dinner table, the American tradition of the culinary concoction of red meat allows the Japanese housewife and her family to experience the ways at the dinner table of the modern American family. As a rising country in the westernization of cuisine, utilizing red meat in home-cooked meals allows the typical Japanese family to meet the modern expectations of the modern westernized Japanese culture.


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Companies come to us to help them overcome financial and accounting challenges that keep them from realizing their full potential. Our deeply experienced team of financial and accounting professionals provide expertise, efficiently and cost-effectively solve acute problems, and drive incremental growth.
Simply put, we make companies stronger, smarter, better, and faster. How can we help you?
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- Liaison with commercial bankers to negotiate outside working capital credit facilities and ongoing review of bank covenants to minimize corporate cost of funds
- Ensure records systems are maintained in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles
- Manage capital for optimal leverage
Capital Raising Overview
Our firms helps entrepreneurs and small business owners determine their feasibility in the market, determine proper use of funds, and fund amounts. Since capital raising is a combination of banking and consultancy services, we provide financial consultancy to our clients to help run, expand and modernize their business. A financial engineer for your business, if you will. We help companies raise growth equity or debt capital from investors. We also help companies secure lines of credit from bank and non-bank lenders.
Two Approaches to Capital Raising
- Equity – Method of raising capital by selling company stock to investors. In return for the investment, the shareholders receive ownership interests in the company.
- Debt – When a firm raises money for working capital or capital expenditures by selling debt instruments to individuals and/or institutional investors. In return for lending the money, the individuals or institutions become creditors and receive a promise that the principal and interest on the debt will be repaid.
Preparation for a Capital Raise
Preparing a business plan, an executive summary of the business plan and a presentation for investors.
Building your core team and assuring your investors your background and experience, as well as your vision for the company is relevant and meaningful.
Creating your team of advisors who are experienced in raising venture capital, whether they are Board member, attorneys, accountants, professional investors or industry executives.
Create a target list of investors using key criteria to include industry sector, investment stage, geographic proximity, amount to be raise, comparable or competitive portfolio companies and potential investor contacts.
Practice Your Pitch
Familiarize Yourself with Your Capitalization Table so you know who owns stock in the company; document options and stock issuances to avoid open-ended equity promises.
Types of Investors for Equity and Debt
- Small Business Investment Companies
- Venture Capital Firms
- Angel Investors
- Bank Lenders
- Non-bank, mezzanine lenders
- Foreign Investment Funds
How can The CEO's Right Hand Assist You with a Capital Raise:
Our methodology for securing equity/debt financing includes the following components:
Interview Company Management
- Interview company management regarding the company's vision, mission, capital structure (amount of money to be raised, valuation, share structure, etc.). This process allows us to effectively articulate and market the investment opportunity to investors.
Prepare Documentation
- We develop or refine investor materials, including slide deck, executive summary, full business plan, and private placement memorandums (PPM), as appropriate.
- In this process, we highlight the company's management team, competitive advantages, and value proposition. We develop a well-defined exit strategy and demonstrate the high potential for return on investment. As a result, we generate investor interest and encourage favorable investment terms.
Develop Investor Lists
- We develop comprehensive lists of qualified investors from our extensive network and proprietary informational databases. We invest significant time and energy to identify and assess unique, creative sources of equity investment, including strategic investors.
Tax Planning Services
- Federal taxes
- State taxes
- Employee benefit compliance
- 1099s
- Income tax on profits
- IRS Audit Representation
- Tax return filing
- Back taxes
- Payroll tax questions
For startup companies, there are also tax-saving strategies and opportunities you can take advantage of such as the R&D credit, deferring tax liabilities, using investments to produce income that is tax exempt, and finding tax deductions by structuring your money accordingly.


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Issue: 464
Sent: 13-12-2011 11:47:02
In this issue:
Return to full article list
HomeFree weekly newsletterSelf Managed Super Fund ArticlesContact usLogin
Three Issues This Week
Tony Negline
a. Draft Tax Ruling on TPD Insurance
An extremely interesting draft tax ruling about the deductibility of death and disability insurance premiums was published last week (TR 2011/D6).
The ruling replaces an earlier draft ruling because after the first version was released new legislation and associated regulations were put in place. These new rules apply from 1 July 2011.
Super fund trustees will still need to consider this insurance issue very carefully and the linkage between their super fund and the insurance they purchase as well as the operation of the super preservation laws.
The ruling covers all relevant areas quite well and is essential reading with any super fund with TPD benefits.
b. Government's mini-budget
You'll all be familiar with the changes made by the Government in its recent mini budget to the super system. I have more to say about these changes in my DIY Super article in The Australian on 14 December.
c. Cabinet Reshuffle
You will have heard about the Cabinet Reshuffle. When news of it began to leak I expected that financial services and superannuation would be shifted to a new minister. It's somewhat surprising that super and financial services has been mixed in with workplace relations and employment.
I'm not sure where the tax aspects of super will reside. Presumably this will remain the preserve of the Treasury with an Assistant Treasurer who has a number of other unrelated responsibilities. Typically Ministers guard their patches aggressively which sometimes reminds me of how partners in large legal practises behave over clients.
The different layers will keep the industry lobbyists busier!
Some will welcome that super has been officially put into the Cabinet. We shall see.
Finally please consider purchasing a copy of this book "A How To Book Of Self Managed Super Funds". You can look at the contents page at the following link: http://www.atcbiz.com.au/r.php?r=0mjd6ne
For details of the changes made from version 4 to version 5 visit: http://www.atcbiz.com.au/r.php?r=d5xcpch
As you'll see from the list there have been many changes.
Two purchase options are available - once only subscription - $55 inc GST - or an annual subscription will gives you access to all the updates made throughout the year ($120 inc GST). The book can be purchased at the following link: http://www.atcbiz.com.au/r.php?r=5a4agqb
This email is general in nature only and does not constitute or convey specific or professional advice. Legislation changes may occur quickly. Formal advice should be sought before acting in any of the areas discussed. Be aware that the information in these articles may become innaccurate with time. Responsibility is disclaimed for any inaccuracies, errors or omissions. Particular investments are neither invited nor recommended and hence this publication is not "financial product advice" as defined in Section 766B of the above legislation. All expressions of opinion by contributors are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as expressing the official opinion of any other person or entity unless expressly stated. No responsibility for the accuracy of the opinions or information contained in the contributor's articles is accepted by any other person or entity. Copyright: This publication is copyright. If you wish to reproduce this article you require a license, which can be purchased here, to do so.


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Not all windows are alike. In fact, the many combinations of materials, glass options, locking systems, shapes and sizes available today make it easier than ever to get the window you want. But it can also be more difficult to make the best decision about important replacement window features.
One of the most important choices you will have to make is the material which makes up the frame and sash of your new windows. Certainly, thermal glass packages and improved weather stripping are essential for a window to be truly energy efficient. But a properly engineered frame and sash, made of right material, give the window its structural rigidity and add to the overall energy performance.
Here are the most common materials used in building today's windows, with the benefits (and drawbacks) of each.
- Vinyl Windows – Although the technology is only about 25 years old, window frames and sashes made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are the most popular in America today. Vinyl windows are highly weather resistant, offer excellent insulating values, and are virtually maintenance-free. Because they can be formed in any shape and size, vinyl windows are generally custom-sized and can fit any home. While a hollow vinyl frame offers good insulation, some newer vinyl windows come with insulation filled frames, which makes them thermally superior to standard vinyl and wood frames.
- Wood Windows – Wood frames are aesthetically pleasing and can present a natural look and feel. Wood offers some insulating value, but many newer wood windows must be clad with an external covering of aluminum or vinyl for protection and durability. Wood windows without cladding require regular maintenance, and can expand and contract with variations in temperature. Wood can be painted, but the exterior surfaces can chip, crack and peel, and must be scraped and repainted every few years.
- Aluminum Windows – At one time, aluminum windows were among the most advanced available. They are more durable and lighter than wood, but have poor insulation properties, allowing heat and cold to pass through easily. Some newer aluminum windows include a vinyl or rubber insert to help slow energy loss.
- Fiberglass Windows – Nearly as rigid as aluminum, fiberglass windows offer similar durability to vinyl frames. Made up of glass fibers mixed with a bonding agent, fiberglass windows require little maintenance. Fiberglass frames are susceptible to nicks and colors can fade after exposure to direct sunlight.
- Composite Windows – Some manufacturers are combining a variety of materials in an attempt to create a "better" window. You can find composites make up of wood chips, particleboard and laminated strand lumber. They have similar properties as standard wood windows, but are generally more resistant to moisture.
Which replacement window is right for your home? Call Rescom at (866) 410-5884 to schedule a free, in-home consultation. We'll go over your options and help you choose the best windows for your home, your budget and your family.


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Report – Global game unit sales declined by 8% in 2009
GfK-ChartTrack has released a report on the state of global gaming in 2009, and found that unit sales declined by 8 percent worldwide, totaling 379.3 million units.
The monthly report, titled Top Global Markets, combines figures from cross the world's three largest games markets using The NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track Limited and Enterbrain, Inc. information and combing all unit sales.
The declines were more modest in Japan, which saw a 2 percent drop in software units, with 5 percent decline in console software and a 1 percent in portable software.
US software sales declined 7 percent, with console and portable software dropping 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
The UK saw an overall decline in software of 14 percent with a 6 percent drop for console and and 25 percent drop for handhelds.
According to the report, the 2009 decline was continued from 2008 largely due to the diminishing market for PS2 which saw a 57 percent decline across the board last year: Japan – 55 percent; US- 56 percent; UK -67 percent.
"For the UK videogame home console software market it is clear that current generation systems suffered slight negative growth overall in 2009, even though PS3 and 360 both enjoyed record volume (and value) software sales for the year, and were the only formats to exhibit positive growth over 2008," said GfK-ChartTrack business director, Dorian Bloch.
"Growth on these platforms did not manage to offset the steep decline in PS2 software units (-67%), which in real terms was close to a decline of 4 million units. Also, the incredible performance exhibited by Nintendo's Wii in 2008 meant that Wii units fell back 10 percent, although remained the number one format in terms of units sold in 2009.
"Within the portable market, it is clear that this is the reason for the overall console software decline. Nintendo DS volume (and value) sales in 2008 reached a high point brought about by massive, record-breaking DS Lite sales – rolling on to 2009 saw much lower DS hardware sell-through and no new must-have DS titles at the top of the charts, apart from 'Professor Layton and Pandora's Box.'
"Sony's PSP suffered a similar fate, with few must-have titles arriving in 2009, and a continued decline in PSP hardware sales, ever since the sweet spot achieved in 2006 with the original PSP."
Over in the States, NPD's Anita Frazier notes a trend starting to emerge from publishers, who are chatting about creating fewer titles each year in order to focus on quality – which harkens back to 2004.
"Looking at software sales performance, video game software unit sales declined seven percent for all of 2009. Still, while year-over-year comparisons show declines, the industry is still boasting significant volumes that were unseen before 2008," said NPD's Anita Frazier.
"With the huge investment needed to produce software for this generation's consoles, many publishers talk about releasing fewer titles each year which will allow their teams to better focus on maximizing the success of each title. The theory is that this will produce more high quality games resulting in better sales.
"However, the year end data from 2009 shows us that the number of titles entering the market is still growing. 778 new titles were released in 2009, up from the 764 in 2008.
"So, while there has been no noticeable slow down in the number of titles launched each year, we do see some evidence of a converse relationship between the number of titles launched and the average unit sales of a title. When looking back at the past 7 years, we see that 2004 had the lowest number of titles launched, yet the highest average unit sales. On the other hand, 2009 had the most titles launched and average unit sales were lower than they've been since 2005."
In the same report, it was noted that Modern Warfare 2 was top dog in 2009, with world sales reaching 11.86 million units.
Nintendo finished off the top-five with with four titles, which combined equal global sales of 26.22 million units.
Full thing through MCV.


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DataMan 8600 Series Handheld Reader
DataMan® 8600 series image-based ID readers provide the world's most advanced barcode reading technology for decoding DPM, 2-D and 1-D codes of varying sizes, quality and marking or printing methods. These handheld DPM barcode readers are designed for the harshest factory floor environments.
Equipped with an advanced imaging system and patented flexible lighting technology, the DataMan 8600 series of barcode readers decode the most challenging Direct Part Mark (DPM) barcodes on the widest variety of surfaces. And, the modular communication design supports Ethernet with Industrial Protocols as well as corded and wireless modules to ensure the DataMan 8600 series of readers are ready to meet your application communication requirements.
Cognex's most powerful algorithms, 2DMax+ ™ and 1DMax+™with Hotbars,™ enable the DataMan 8600 series image-based readers to decode the most challenging DPM barcodes in the most demanding industrial conditions.


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Headbands for tinnitus sufferers
Dr Hilary joins Lorraine to talk through the health stories and headlines making the news this week, including why a headband could offer some comfort to tinnitus sufferers.
Tinnitus is not an illness or disease but a term used to describe a constant ringing, whistling and buzzing in the ears. It can be very distressing for the affected individual, often leading to issues with sleep, concentration and mood.
But could a new headband masking the noise help sufferers to get a better night's sleep?


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For your convenience, we offer extended business hours every day of the week and encourage you to utilize our trusted afterhours emergency pet care services available until 1:00 a.m. every evening. We welcome new clients and referrals alike. Contact us to schedule your visit today!


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Name Of Project
Footie 4 Females
Funder & Amount
Comic Relief £7,230
Start Date
June 2014
End Date
May 2015
Interim or End Report
End Report
Aims & Objective Summary
To work with 25 young females aged 16+ in LBBD.
To provide a free sports activity for young females to participate in a regular sports and exercise and healthy lifestyle for the young females this includes: Physical well-being, weight loss, confidence building also all participants will have opportunities to volunteer.
Support access to other local young people services :
10 will achieve Level 1 FA Coaching qualifications
5 will be working towards sports coaching Level 2
5 will be trained as volunteers
Were these met & how?
We worked with 23 young females on this project
4 are awaiting their Level 1 FA Coaching Badge
1 is working towards their Level 2 Sports Coaching Certificate (almost completed)
1 is continuing to work towards their BTec Sports Science (almost completed)
2 females are working towards their Youth work qualifications
6 young females have continuously volunteered on the project to develop their skills, knowledge & experience in project work and administration, sports coaching, child protection, health & safety, equal opportunities, leadership, group work, budgeting and youth work.
12 females have volunteered in total on this project
6 volunteers undertook outreach training and child protection training
3 females are currently volunteer coaching with another group on the weekends
4 of the females are now participating in another female project which further develops their fitness, confidence and employability skills.
2 young females have been referred to mental health services and are currently engaging with these services
6 of the females have engaged with sexual health services since the start of the project
5 of the females have trials to play for Barking Ladies FC
Feedback from the volunteers includes them enjoying their role and enjoying making new friends, increasing their social networks.
Self-reported feedback & evaluations from beneficiaries show that all of the young females feel they have improved their physical well-being, have lost weight and developed their confidence.
19 reported they have improved their fitness since starting footie for females
19 reported they have enjoyed the sessions
13 reported they have made new friends
8 are working towards a qualification
6 females are actively volunteering and 10 have volunteered for the first time on this project and reported they would volunteer again
19 have reported an improvement with health related issues E.g.
We were unable to take part in any formal tournaments due to injuries and organisers cancelling tournaments. However, the group engaged with the Essex FA and Dagenham & Redbridge FC to arrange mini tournaments to ensure the competitive element of the project was included. Feedback from the group included;
'This was fun. We should do it more often.'
'I've never played in a real football match before.'
'This is the first medal I've ever won.'
Events were planned but due to various issues within the group only one event took place. This was a trip to see Dagenham & Redbridge FC play a match at home. The feedback from the group included;
'This is the first match I've been to.'
'I liked all the chanting. That was great.'
What are the development plans?
Face to face and social media outreach sessions engaged 11 more young females
We held 15 project development meetings throughout the project
We evaluated the project at 4 different stages gathering feedback about different parts of the project
We engaged with many different partners including the Essex FA, Dagenham & Redbridge FC, Terence Higgins Trust, The Women's Trust, local authority health & mental health services & Barking Ladies FC.
We have not yet been able to secure significant funding to sustain the project. However, we have received further equipment from the Essex FA and support with development and training of players and coaches. Robert Clack Leisure Centre have provided us with 4 weeks in kind pitch hire to give us more time to secure funding. Dagenham & Redbridge FC will provide 1 coach for the next 4 weeks and the volunteers will continue to work on the project. The group will work together to identify and apply for further funding to continue to the project beyond the end of June 2015.
Please list & attach evaluation & feedback evidence
19 participant evaluation forms
2 beneficiary statements
8 volunteer evaluation forms
2 staff evaluation forms
Krystal Oakley, Amy Bailey, Rachel Parker, Taylor Clements & Sarah Robertson
May 2015


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No one knows just why Steve Bannon, then an obscure media figure and now President Trump's special adviser, would have walked up to Ronald Radosh at a dinner party in 2014 and told him "I'm a Leninist." Even Radosh, who once upon a time was a Leninist, doesn't know. Nor has anyone, in fact, been able to confirm Radosh's assertion including Steve Bannon who claims not even to remember the meeting let alone what he might have said. Let's assume, however, since Bannon hasn't denied the story or claimed that it's "fake news" that it happened. What, we might ask, would a former naval officer and employee at Goldman Sachs who grew up in a working class home in Norfolk, Virginia have possibly meant by saying he was a Leninist?
This anecdote has occasionally been glossed with reference to Vladimir Lenin's tract, "The State and Revolution," a work neither Bannon nor Radosh mention. Bannon may only have had a sophomoric desire to shock a neoconservative intellectual whose political background is well known. Or, in a colossal mis-reading of the Russian revolution, he may think of himself as a system-destroying revolutionary.
Odd as it may seem, however, we have much to learn by considering how Bannon, or indeed many contemporary Republican voters and Tea Party activists, might read what Lenin wrote in the months before the November 7 coup in Saint Petersburg brought him to power. Lenin's pamphlet has little relevance to Soviet governance, but it may have been and may remain far more useful as a guide to American practice. My aim here is not to write about what Lenin really meant and whether Leninism betrayed Lenin or the Russian revolution. It is to consider the themes of "The State and Revolution" as they might be read by right-wing radical American activists. "The State and Revolution" is far more concerned with bureaucracy, regulation and the political power of expertise than it is with class structures, dialectical materialism, or the role of a vanguard party. It may be the least Leninist thing Lenin ever wrote.
The contemporary bureaucratic and regulatory structures that most Americans know and that the Tea Party generally abhors are just about 100 years old in this country. In France and Germany they are somewhat older. American academics tend to focus on the German scholar Max Weber as the earliest and most important student of bureaucratic structures but at the turn of the twentieth century there were eminent scholars around the world who noticed the sudden emergence of bureaucracy and state regulation as new methods of governance. As Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound noticed shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, administrative law—the law of the bureaucracy—was so new in the US that it was almost unstudied in law schools.
It is not surprising that Karl Marx paid relatively little attention to the state because in the country that most affected his view of the world and that he saw as the most advanced, England, the administrative state was relatively unimportant. Despite the existence of a theoretically strong parliament, government in the United Kingdom of the late 19th century, although the most advanced industrial and capitalist country in the world, still existed primarily as a set of highly local practices. Marx's view of socialism was largely colored by his concern that labor be joyful and that governance be, in essence, amateur. It is instructive that Marx saw the state as a committee rather than as a set of administrative and regulatory structures. Marx understood that the state employed coercion, but neither the Rhineland nor England—the two societies that most strongly shaped his understanding of capitalism and government—had powerful bureaucracies during his lifetime.
Lenin was heir to mid-19th century debates about the nature of society and the state. During his study of law at the University of Kazan in the 1880's, the first Tsarist experiments in creating codified law were still being implemented and the peasantry, the vast majority of Russia's inhabitants, lived with almost no contact with the new legal structures, their courts, or their administrative edicts. Unlike his near contemporaries, Weber and Pound, Lenin had a significant impact on the creation of modern political structures. Not least of these was his insistence that political parties be made up of disciplined professionals who carried particular discourses and practices (the party "line") into society. Lenin's invention was thus of a party that ultimately allowed the state to organize and agitate society rather than being a mechanism for the projection of social and civic interests into government.
On the eve of the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, Lenin briefly looked back at earlier utopian debates on the ultimate goal of the socialist movement and discussed one of Marx's old and only briefly elaborated themes: the withering away of the state. It was far easier in Marx's day to imagine the progressive disappearance of still weakly bureaucratized governing structures than it would be in the aftermath of the mobilization for total war that occurred for the generations that lived from 1914 until 1945. Lenin fully grasped that when Marx proposed the necessity of smashing what he called the bureaucratic-military machine his words only applied to France and the situation of French revolutionaries in 1871 during the year of the Paris Commune. England then, and by extension the United States, lacked both a military clique and an extensive bureaucracy. Consequently Lenin wrote, in Britain, it was possible to imagine a people's revolution (his words) without the need to destroy the already existing machinery of the state.
It was not difficult for Lenin, in the chaotic Russian summer of 1917, to assert that both the bureaucracy and the standing army were "parasites" on the body of bourgeois society. Relying on Marx's analysis of the Paris Commune and on the assumption that by 1917 Russian revolutionaries as well as those in England and the US would need to smash the state, Lenin considered what would replace it, or more accurately just who would replace the state.
Despite the association of Lenin's name with the pervasive and rigid bureaucracy of the Soviet state and its highly privileged elite—the so-called nomenklatura—he foresaw a very different outcome than the self-proclaimed leaders of twentieth century totalitarianism. "All citizens," Lenin wrote in State and Revolution, "are transformed into hired employees of the state, which consists of the armed workers." With rising levels of literacy and numeracy, Lenin predicted that "all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken over the work into their own hands….from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether."
Whatever similarities exist between the bureaucracies in the fascist and communist states in the 1930s, the utopian ideal proposed by Lenin is distinctly different than that of contemporary fascist leaders. Both Hitler and Mussolini considered the state a tool to be seized and used. Hitler in Mein Kampf and Mussolini in "The Doctrine of Fascism" saw the state as an instrument for social order and cohesion. It might be necessary to purge state officials (an idea with which Stalin agreed) and it might be necessary to develop new and more hideous instruments of coercion and murder. Eliminating the state, even as an ideal, was alien to their thinking and to their movements as it was for Lenin when he finally acquired state power and even more so when he was succeeded by Stalin.
Eliminating the state solves one of the most acute problems of government as a socially autonomous institution. Political thinkers from Plato to Madison, to Foucault and Hobbes, all wondered who governs the governors. More specifically what prevents those with administrative authority from using it on their own behalf? There are many different answers and Lenin was not reluctant to propose, at least in theory, his own:
"When all have learned to administer and actually do independently administer social production, independently keep accounts and exercise control over parasites…escape from this popular accounting and control will inevitably become so incredibly difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe accounting (for the armed workers are practical men and not sentimental intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that the necessity of observing…the rules of the community will very soon become a habit."
European socialists and revolutionaries at the turn of the 20th century strongly opposed the use of violence against minorities and Lenin was no exception. Nevertheless the independent action of armed workers against government officials is close to lynch law which was usually justified by asserting that the competent government officials were derelict in their duty. One place where armed workers possessed the capacity to threaten officials was the United States and especially the American South, where tradition, statute, and constitutional law (the Second Amendment) sanctioned white violence against black citizens accused but not convicted to criminal acts. Lynching was never promoted as a substitute for the judicial system but it was frequently excused as the direct action of an emotionally mobilized community.
Those who defended lynching recognized that it undermined the state. Benjamin Tillman participated in the Hamburg Massacre of 1876 which was one of a long chain of events in which armed insurrection overthrew the Reconstruction government. He later served as state governor and US Senator. Speaking of lynching to the legislature in 1895 he argued that in a government dominated by white supremacists, whites had no reason to resort to lynching. Yet, as Tillman knew lynching often required not only a mob but the collusion of state officials who (to paraphrase Lenin) undertook to obey the rules of the community as a habit.
A far more common use of arbitrary authority in the South occurred in voter registration. The states of the Old Confederacy after Reconstruction never legislatively denied African-Americans the franchise directly. Much as they might have wanted to, white politicians understood that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution precluded such a direct assault. Instead they created literacy and administrative requirements that gave voter registrars significant leeway in determining who could vote and how to validate ballots. The administrative mechanism they created was therefore quite distant from what Weber or Pound might have expected. Registrars and other officials therefore had both the incentive and the authority to eliminate the influence of large sections of the population on government. In many Southern states ultimately more white than black voters were disenfranchised. The broad democracy that Reconstruction was supposed to plant in the south withered.
Whatever Steve Bannon's views on race, ethnicity, religion and gender, however, he's no Ben Tillman at least in public. Any listener to recordings of his somewhat rambling talks available on the internet can attest that his speech is devoid of racial slurs or ethnic epithets. That listener can also attest to Bannon's view that he believes in the superiority of Western civilization and the culture of Christian religiosity without necessarily showing any great familiarity with either. Compared to the rants of "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman or "The Great White Chief" James Vardaman of Mississippi, Bannon is a mild-mannered politician. But again neither Tillman or Vardaman would have described themselves as Leninists who hoped for the destruction either of the elite or the state. Where Bannon's vision is reminiscent of Lenin's is when he reassures his audience that their values—rather than the actual laws—ought to be what animates government.
Donald Trump has no desire for the state to vanish. Someone must keep track of deeds, clean the streets, patrol the borders, and prosecute violent crime. Beyond those tasks, however, Trump and much of the leadership of the Republican party question the need for the regulatory and social service bureaucracy of the contemporary state. Trump and the Republican majority in Congress are in agreement to dispense, as far as possible, with these institutions of the state. Many of Trump's appointments, notably Betsy DeVos at Education and Ben Carson at Housing, have little experience either with large bureaucratic institutions or with the substance of the policy disputes they must address. They also both prefer private and for-profit solutions to public and governmental ones. They will therefore be neither inclined nor able to ensure that their agencies function well either in society or in the conflict for funds, influence, and the president's attention. It is unlikely they will defend their agencies vigorously against threats of dissolution such as bills recently introduced into Congress to dissolve the Department of Education or the Environmental Protection Agency.
Someone must also defend the rights of owners of private property. Trump exhibits greater ambivalence about government property. During Cliven Bundy's April 2014 armed stand-off with Bureau of Land Management employees over grazing rights in Nevada, Trump acknowledged respect for Bundy. He also recognized that government would collapse if everyone did what Bundy was doing. While not exactly Lenin's concept of armed workers enforcing their will on bureaucrats, Bundy's action was remarkably close.
Bundy's armed actions posed a problem for Trump but not primarily because it was armed. Trump does not support transferring Federal land to state governments. As a real estate developer who has frequently benefited from it, he supports the right of government to take private land with compensation (eminent domain). Many Trump voters are closer to Bundy's way of thinking. Thus, Trump proposed a solution to the crisis in which Bundy negotiated his way out of the standoff and his unpaid arrears to the government. In 2016, Bundy's son, Ammon, took over the Malheur Federal wildlife refuge. Trump asserted that if he were President he would end the occupation by calling the leaders and asking them to stand down and bring their complaints to him. Gerald DeLemus, co-chair of the New Hampshire Veterans for Trump Committee, saw the armed take-over of Federal offices in a different light. He flew to Malheur to join the protest where he was arrested.
Although they intervened with arms against government officials, Bundy father and son are not Leninists. They descend from a long tradition of the use of armed force against officials by farmers that began western Pennsylvania with the whiskey rebellion of 1791. This armed protest, like later ones, sought to change government policy by preventing officials from carrying it out. Limiting the power of the government to tax and regulate was the issue, not the destruction of the state.
So, too, neither Trump nor Bannon seek the end of the state although they both, like paleo-conservatives and neo-liberals, seek to roll back the administrative state. What is different and what Bannon may have recognized in "State and Revolution" if he ever read it is a two-fold idea. The first is simply that armed protest—of a kind that is almost impossible to imagine outside a constitution that guarantees the right of private citizens to bear arms—plays an extremely disruptive role with the institutions of the modern state. The second is that increasing the discretion of police officers to enforce law can enhance the ability of an executive to accomplish popular but formally unconstitutional goals.
This suggests a different way to understand Trump's executive orders and especially his most recent conflict with the Ninth Circuit. That these orders are poorly written and that Trump had little understanding of their content or how they would be received by the courts is clear. Neither Steve Bannon nor Donald Trump has a legal education and the President reads little and certainly not closely. Something of an argument has developed about whether the poorly drafted orders are the result of incompetence or some extraordinarily diabolic cleverness. I suggest a third possibility: the executive orders are not primarily meant as legal documents. They are messages conveying to officials such as immigration officers at the border or police in the field that, rather than being strictly commanded to engage in extreme vetting, they have been given extreme latitude to enforce the law.
If Steve Bannon really bounced up to Ronald Radosh and provocatively announced that he was a Leninist, he didn't mean destroying the bureaucracy. He meant transforming it from an organization bound by law into one inhabited by a million little Trumps.


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With original roots in Brisbane and quickly growing into a national company servicing businesses across Australia, it made sense for insignia to expand its warehouse distribution into Townsville. insignia's Townsville branch operates through its sister company, Signet, located at 33-37 Webb Dr, Bohle.
insignia - Townsville
33-37 Webb Dr
North Queensland, 4818
Opening Hours:
Our contact centre is available from 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Phone: 1300 467 446
Email: email@example.com
Need Technical Assitance?
|- Label Printer Breakdowns
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|Sighting Report
|Occurred : 9/21/2005 07:00 (Entered as : 09/21/2005 07:00)
Reported: 9/22/2005 10:23:13 PM 22:23
Posted: 10/11/2005
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Shape: Cone
Duration:30 minutes
|Large glowing streak in sky with two strange objects.
Object flew towards N.W. at fast rate with large glowing misty tail about 1/4 mile long from top of mountain peak. Sky was very well lit due to this. Left a red colored tail with yellowish blue myst. Colors stayed in air for 1/2 hour. Flying object was gone after 10 minutes or less. Large white object hovered over area with no side to side motion. Brighter than a star and was above mountain. Later it was gone.
((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD))


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Welcome to NordicDesign.tv!
This website is an extension of NordicDesign.ca.
Since we initiated the blog last year, we came across several fun, interesting and beautiful videos about Scandinavian design & designers. However, it can happen that we are not able to find enough interesting, related content to feature a video on the blog and to create a satisfying post. This site is the best solution to share with you all those great videos we come across.
On NordicDesign.tv, you can enjoy videos of interviews with designers, house tours, fashion shows, behind the scenes images, and much more.
We highly welcome your suggestions to optimize and improve this website, as well as links to worthwhile videos! Write to us: firstname.lastname@example.com
We hope you enjoy NordicDesign.tv!


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It's been a long, strange season for Mid-South cotton growers. Early on, they dealt with wet weather which delayed planting, and market volatility which led to difficulties in booking rising cotton prices. Late in the season, a major cotton merchant buckled under as volatility struck again, only this time, the run went in the wrong direction.
About the only thing going right for producers — particularly those in the north Delta — appears to be the average to better crop coming out of the fields. Here's the view from some past winners of Delta Farm Press's High Cotton award.
Marty White, Jonesboro, Ark., farmer and 2003 High Cotton award winner for the Delta states, was one of many cotton growers who had booked cotton with Paul Reinhart, Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Oct. 15, citing losses of around $80 million. The "good" news, if you will, is that according to an Oct. 30 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, courts authorized Reinhart to reject all of its outstanding cotton purchase contracts. This meant that producers holding Reinhart contracts are free to put their cotton into the marketing loan program, which guarantees a minimum of 52 cents per pound.
"My biggest fear was that all our cotton would get tied up in the courts and we would be an unsecured creditor," White said. "That would have killed farmers in this area. It's bad enough that we have to take a price of 52 cents. We had ours (through Reinhart) booked at 82 cents net to us."
As to whether something can be settled from that, White noted, "We're cautiously optimistic that something will get settled before the first of the year. If there's a lawsuit, we probably won't see much from that. If it drags on, it's never a good deal for anybody."
Meanwhile White's cotton crop is yielding extremely well. "We're probably going to pick 1,100 pounds to 1,200 pounds. We have some fields that are doing very well. We have some fields with dryland corners on the big pivots that didn't do as well. Overall, we're having a good cotton crop. If we can just get something out of it."
White trimmed cotton acres back considerably in 2008, going from 6,200 acres in 2007 to 2,300 acres this year. "So I did one thing right. We went with more corn, beans, wheat and rice. We went from being 80 percent or more cotton, to being evenly split among the various commodities to take some of that risk out. We have pretty much diversified ourselves now.
"It's cost us money because we've had to buy grain equipment. But that's what we have to do to stay in business. We'll be ready when cotton prices come back. Four years ago, no one around here wanted to be a rice farmer, and now everybody wants to be a rice farmer. It will be that way on cotton, too. It's a part of farming."
Early rice planted on time "did real well," for White. "We had about 1,500 acres of June 5- to June 11-planted rice, and yields on that fell off quite a bit. We had it booked at a good price, so we did alright on it."
White said soybean yields hit a homerun this year. "Even with half the acres in wheat/beans, we're still going to average 50-plus bushels. On the early beans, every field is 60-plus bushels. And we're talking some pretty good-size soybean fields. Corn yields are coming in at 160 bushels to 170 bushels, even with some big pivot corners hardly making anything."
Those good yields in other crops are nice because White feels he'll lose money on his cotton operation this year "because of the low prices. The high yields may get us to breakeven."
With oil prices headed down, White is looking to lock in fuel prices at current levels. "The price now is close to half of what we were paying this summer for our diesel. I can live with that. I got a tanker load the other day and it was about $11,000 cheaper than what we were paying back during the summer. We used 25 or 30 tanker loads this year."
White believes that reduced cotton acres might be just what the U.S. cotton industry needs right now. "We need to get that carryover out of here, so we can get some higher prices. I don't think we'll get back to that position (high carryover) again because now it's not possible to grow cotton for the government. For the last few years, you could afford to take the government price and still do alright. You can't do that now except on your best ground. We need to be growing our cotton for the marketplace and not for the government."
B. Lindsey, 2008 High Cotton winner from Caldwell, Ark., says his cotton crop is a little off from last year's crop, "but we still made a good crop of cotton. A lot of farmers are disappointed. We can get spoiled on 1,250-pound to 1,300-pound yields."
Lindsey says two ginning operations owned by the farm will likely drop from around 84,000 bales to around 70,000 bales this year, "mostly due to a drop in cotton acres, rather than yield. We're at 30,500 acres this year compared to 35,000 acres last year."
Good cottonseed prices have helped offset some of the production decline, according to Lindsey, "but I'm still waiting for that $400-a-ton price," he said. "It did get to $340 a ton, which is pretty good when you look at the big picture. We booked ours at different levels and came out with a real good average."
Lindsey plans on keeping his cotton acres about the same in 2009. "If there's any way possible, we're not going to take this real good cotton land that we're making 2.5 bales on and put it in soybeans. There is a misconception about soybeans. You still have to spray them twice for weeds and worms, and you may have to piggyback a fungicide. You can't just plant them and forget them if you want to make 50 to 60 bushels.
"Depending on the new farm bill regulations, I don't see cotton producers in this area being down over 10 percent. I don't see corn coming in and pulling a lot of acres unless a farmer wants to rotate. The fertilizer cost for corn is going to be about the same, and the water costs greater, than cotton. But soybeans will be the culprit to come in and get the biggest amount of cotton acreage."
Justin Cariker, 2007 High Cotton winner, says his cotton crop "wasn't a banker's crop, one that looked good from the turnrow, but it's turning out to be better than I expected. We're picking some good cotton. I would have thought we would be picking a bale and a quarter, but we're picking two and a quarter. I'm really pleased with it."
Cariker was expecting to finish picking the crop in early November. The sunny weather has made for a smooth harvest season. "We had about a 3-inch rain a couple of weeks ago. But the ground got back in shape real quick, and I don't think we lost a lot of cotton on the ground."
Cariker says he has little idea on his crop mix for 2009, "but we are definitely going to add some rice. We haven't grown any in about 10 years. I'll probably cut back on my cotton acres some, especially if the market doesn't get up there by February or March. Luckily, in 2009, we forward contracted a lot of cotton in March when the price ran up."
Cariker says if Mid-South growers are able to capitalize on lower fuel prices, "It can save us some money on irrigation next year. We do so much no-till and minimum-till that I think we burn more fuel irrigating than we do getting the crop ready."
Last year, Cariker, whose farming operation owns a fuel company, pre-booked almost all his fuel in the last week in January at a "decent" price. "We bought almost seven tanker loads last year, and we just ran out last week. We saved about $50,000. That's real money. I'm hearing we may need to wait another month before we do any booking for 2009."
Cariker adds that he's a little leery about expanding his soybean acreage in 2009. "Soybeans can promise you more and give you less. We have some dryland fields that picked two bales of cotton this year. It's not a lot of money at the price, but what kind of soybean yield could I get off the field? That's what scares me.
"Being in the cotton business, we have a tremendous amount of overhead. Ten dollar soybeans and 50 bushels still is not a lot of money to cover overhead after you spend $150 in rent and $250 to grow it. The farmers who are growing a lot of beans probably don't have that much overhead. We still have picker notes and employees."
e-mail: email@example.com


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This decorative ornamental horse fashioned in kadamb wood (white wood) has an antique touch.
Crafted beautifully with rich details, its raised posture adds charm and vigour to the piece. It can beautify any table-top or liven up a bookshelf.
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Music and Meaning
March 8, 2010 Leave a Comment
(Written Thursday afternoon) For me, many pieces of music hold distinct memories. Some are unlocked simply by the title, composer, or performer, but some are held within the music itself. Music that I spent hours with in college, but had since forgotten. I'm at the North Central American Choral Director's Association convention this week and there are lots of concerts involved. This morning the Dordt College Choir sang a song called Ngana by Stephen Leek. On paper, it rang no bells. But then came the first notes, and my voice wanted to cry out. I knew every single note. I don't know what semester we sang it, but I remember wrestling with it and, subsequently falling in love with it.
This past Sunday, we sang a setting of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, as the middle hymn. All I could think of was singing it with the choir at Berea. Holding hands with two tenors, surrounding the congregation, and singing my heart out. To me, that song meant concert choir. It meant that I was part of a community and that I was bound to the people next to me, both literally (during the song) and figuratively (during the semester). It also meant that my eyes wouldn't necessarily be dry at the end of the piece, but that, five years later, if I needed a favor, I could email or call many of those choir members and they would be more than willing to help me out. Because that's the way choir works. And while I still have some of that in my choir today, it's a little different. Because in some ways I feel like a church is supposed to be like that anyways.
The Iowa State Singers are singing right now. I first encountered them at the national convention in 2005, and, amusingly, one of their cds is the ONLY overlap between my and Ben's cd collection. But they just sang a piece by Cyrillus Kreek. In 2004, I went to six King's Singer's concerts in Germany and Austria over eight days and 1000 kilometers. The first of these was in Waldsassen, a tiny German town on the Czech border, in a massive cathedral. One of the most wonderful and eerie songs they sang in their religious program was Onnis on inimene by Cyrillus Kreek. Kreek's music was getting slightly more well known, but I could only find one group that had recorded Onnis. To remember how the haunting Alleluias went, I wrote the notes in their relationships to each other, in my journal. That was my introduction to Cyrillus Kreek. A massive Eastern European Cathedral on spring break, sung by six English men. (For fun you can also imagine I was surrounded by Germans, I don't speak German, no one clapped during the concert, and I had arrived two minutes before the concert started, after ten hours of travel.) It's amazing, in some ways, that these college students from Iowa can transport me halfway around the world and six years back in time, but they can. That's the power of music.
And because you made it this far… here's a video clip for you of the Real Group. Because I am kindof obsessed with them now. And I was contemplating starting my own Swedish Acapella Jazz Group. But then I remembered I wasn't Swedish, so there was another failed life plan. Enjoy!


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Club News
District News
National News
Welcome to the Woodend Lions Club of Victoria
Woodend Lions Club is a group of like-minded men and women who have been gathering together to serve their community for over 40 years.
There is a strong philosophy within Lions that serving should be fun and we certainly do that many strong friendships are formed. Woodend Lions meet on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month, alternating between dinner and business meetings.
Dinner meetings occassional include a guest speaker, and are held at the Victoria Hotel in Woodend. We enjoy good food and good company.
We have some regular ongoing projects and are always open to new ideas from the community,
Current projects include:
- Woodend Lions Sunday Market
- Woodend Lions annual Art Show and Sale
- Annual community Carols by Candlelight
- Letters to Santa
- Restoration of the Lions Rotunda on the Five mile creek
- Collecting no longer used glasses for Sight First
- Trauma Bears for local emergency services
Woodend Lions Market 3rd Sunday of the month. Sept to May
Woodend Lions Market 2018-2019 season kicked off on Sunday 16th September.
We are looking forward seeing our regular stall holders and to meeting new ones.
Something new is the introduction of a second hand goods area. So people are bound to find a bargain.
Becoming a Woodend Lion
Lions club members are men and women who strive to make a difference in their local community as well as in communities worldwide. Their volunteer efforts go beyond the support of vision care, to addressing unmet health and education needs worldwide.
Interested in becoming a member? Click Here
Here is a brief 6 minute video about Lions Clubs in Australia.
Lions Clubs Australia


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Weekend Edition December 6-8, 2013.
"South Africa's democratization was profoundly compromised by an intra-elite economic deal that, for most people, worsened poverty, unemployment, inequality and ecological degradation, while also exacerbating many racial, gender and geographical differences. In the pages below we can review most of the critical choices and outcomes from 1994-1999. These confirmed the late-apartheid turn to neoliberal economic management, and amplified that turn in the context of world neoliberal hegemony until – and beyond – the 1998 East Asian crisis. To understand why requires combining analysis of the changing structure of capital – especially its worsening unevenness and financialisation – with study of divisions within the subordinate classes. This will in turn set the stage for considering a variety of public policies adopted immediately after formal apartheid ended, many of which reflected more continuity than change.
Ending the apartheid regime was one of the greatest human achievements of the past century. However, to promote a peaceful transition, the agreement negotiated between the racist regime and Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) allowed whites to keep the best land, the mines, manufacturing plants, and financial institutions, and to export vast quantities of capital.
For there had been only two basic paths that the ANC could have followed. One was to mobilize the people and all their enthusiasm, energy, and hard work, use a larger share of the economic surplus (through state-directed investments and higher taxes), and stop the flow of capital abroad, including the repayment of illegitimate apartheid-era debt. The other, which was ultimately the one chosen, was to trudge down the neoliberal capitalist path, with merely a small reform here or there to permit superficial claims to the sustaining of a "National Democratic Revolution." Because the latter path was chosen, we start by consider the economic barriers to deepened democracy, before proceeding to the economic outcomes, followed by a discussion of social policy patterns, the commercialized state, environmental concerns and the reactions of civil society."
In one of the last public photos released of Nelson Mandela (29 April 2013), he sits with successors in the African National Congress leadership, each disgraced by scandals linking SA politics to crony mining capitalism: Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa and Baleka Mbete.Read the rest here.
*****Comment: Professor Patrick Bond has written a significant - though excruciatingly long-winded - analysis of the progress (or lack thereof) made in post-apartheid South Africa from the time of President Mandela onwards.
I think it important at the outset that he recognizes that Mandela and the ANC have made a crucial break with the racist apartheid past. The problem, however, has been the rush to a neoliberal capitalist agenda that has compounded the oppression by erecting class barriers that approximate and deepen the crisis of inequality.
His analysis is not unique or even new. It is in effect as old - at least - as the post-independence counter struggles against cronyism and corrupt capitalism that has afflicted most post-colonial states in Africa and beyond.
The solution he provides is somewhat deflating given the long-winded analysis to get the reader to the point of asking 'so what is the next step'. He writes:
"To solve South Africa's vast problems – not least of which is being both a major victim and a major villain when it comes to climate change – will require a major overhaul of every system in our lives here: production, consumption and social reproduction, energy, transport, agriculture, disposal, financing and everything in between. What is Mandela's legacy, if not cementing the worst features of these systems, aside from beginning to undo their correlation with racism?I am not sure where an "eco-socialist and feminist perspective within a strong but loving state" exists or even what kind of political theory props up this construction.
The solution to the problems that Mandela left behind will only come when a democratic society votes for a political party – probably the one after the ANC fully degenerates and loses power, perhaps in 2019 after six more years of destruction under Jacob Zuma's rule – to overturn all these inheritances of apartheid capitalism. And then, an eco-socialist and feminist perspective within a strong but loving state will be vital."
What I am relatively sure of is that any struggle to rearrange wealth in South Africa will not be fought in isolation within the borders of this country. If the move toward neoliberalism in the ANC tells us anything it tells us about the force or power of neoliberalism to co-opt revolutions.
Given that power what kind of political movement is necessary to unseat not only the ANC but in effect go against the global capitalist system to create an eco-socialist feminist state that is loving?
This line of analysis smacks of armchair academic nonsense I am sorry to say.
These notions are removed from the very people that Bond is essentially appropriating and obscuring to make an argument against neoliberalism and its relationship with Mandela and the ANC.
The problem with Bond's argument is not that it can be faulted in its overall diagnosis. The problem is that it falls short on providing a grounded dialectic to move the revolution forward.
At the very least he should be dissuaded to posture the nonsense about a "loving" state that can go against capitalism. This assertion is romanticized hogwash but it also tells us just how complicated the problems in South Africa are when the best of intellectuals here can frankly appear quite fruity.


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Lalibela Game Reserve, Eastern Cape - Four rhinos were killed for their horns at the Lalibela game reserve in the Eastern Cape on Wednesday, the private reserve said.
Marketing director Vernon Wait said a 28-year-old cow, an eight-year-old pregnant bull, another eight-year-old bull and a three-year-old male were killed and had their horns removed.
Wait said the rhinos were probably poisoned before their horns were removed.
He said the method used by the poachers was "very professional".
"Unlike usual incidents of poaching where the horns are hacked off with pangas or axes, in this case, the horns were "clinically" cut off... very professional."
The game reserve's Facebook page reported that there were no visible bullet wounds on any of the rhinos and it was likely that they were poisoned.
The Democratic Alliance in the province condemned the killings.
"The DA condemns the massacre of four rhinos at the Lalibela Game Reserve and insists that MEC Mcebisi Jonas takes it as a warning of things to come," said DA spokesman John Cupido.
He said only rhinos from privately owned game reserves had been poached this year in the province.
"So far none of the rhinos lost to poaching in the Eastern Cape this year have been on state reserves, but this lucky streak will not last," he said.
Cupido said if the Green Scorpions were not improved, there would be astronomical losses in game reserves, as poachers would start targeting state owned reserves too.
"The Green Scorpions are staffed with dedicated rangers, but is severely under-equipped... an immediate concern is the unit's lack of vehicles," said Cupido.
He said the DA would submit parliamentary questions to the MEC to find out how under-equipped the Green Scorpions were and how the MEC planned to increase security on game reserves.
The office of the MEC was not immediately available for comment.
Two weeks ago, the department of environmental affairs said 381 rhinos had been killed in 2012 alone.
It said the provinces which were hardest hit by rhino poaching included Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and the North West.
Police were investigating the poaching incident at the Lalibela game reserve. - Sapa