text:
I updated the url for the repo tool which didnt work
--Smouch (talk) 08:58, 19 September 2012 (UTC) I'm not sure these directions make a lot of sense. Requirements section indicates that one should download the Android SDK (but does not discuss installation) Then in a section entitled "Install Android SDK" we are directed to a different URL, and instructed to install it into our $HOME directory rather than a shared location.
Neither of these instructions indicate following the GOOGLE installation procedure here
--Smouch (talk) 10:21, 19 September 2012 (UTC) Actually it appears these instructions are now almost entirely obsolete as of eclipse/Juno and the latest android SDK. Menu options have moved. Application names have changed. Dialog layout and fields are very different.


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Heavy rains in California in recent days have partly alleviated the drought that parched the state in January. The dry spell is merely exacerbating a long-developing problem in northern California, however: The huge volumes of water used to grow marijuana, as well as the noxious fertilizers and pesticides gushing into streams, are pushing local watersheds to their breaking point.
"Marijuana cultivation has the potential to completely dewater and dry up streams in the areas where [cannabis farmers are] growing pretty extensively," Scott Bauer, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), tells Quartz. He describes encountering waterless streambeds littered with dead fish.
Pot is not the only water-guzzling business that's booming in the Emerald Triangle, as Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties are known. Wineries are too. The problem is that the government treats them differently, says Gary Graham Hughes, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), a non-profit group.
The paradoxical status of marijuana in the US—it is legal to grow and sell in some states, but remains illegal under federal law—makes it hard to regulate. In theory, Californian state or local regulators should be able to set environmental standards for cannabis cultivation, the way they might with grapes or timber. But the federal government won't let them. As a result, growers enjoy unregulated use of water, and the resulting easy profits have helped attract operations that are increasingly industrial in scale—and run by growers who are unrepentant about sucking the Emerald Triangle dry.
Pot is central to the local economy…
Pot is one heck of a valuable crop. The farm value of cannabis grown in California for local consumption is probably between $2.5 billion and $5 billion a year, according to Dale Gieringer, an economist at California Norml (CA Norml), a pro-legalization non-profit, assuming a price of $2,500 per pound. The out-of-state export market could be even larger, he says.
It's especially valuable for the otherwise downtrodden Emerald Triangle economies. In Humboldt, occasionally called the Silicon Valley of weed, some 4,000 commercial growers generate at least $400 million in annual sales. That compares with the $66 million made by Humboldt's timber industry in 2011 (pdf, p.3), the last year for which data was available.
…but the "green rush" is putting a strain on the land
It hasn't always been a cash crop. The Emerald Triangle's cannabis growing dates back to the 1970s, when a wave of liberal activists settled there, dropping out of society to go "back to the land." They found the terrain unusually ideal for growing cannabis. But they grew it alongside other garden produce, seldom in any large scale—and rarely destructively (these hippies were some of the framers of the modern US conservation movement, after all).
California's legalization of medical marijuana in 1996, as well as steadily rising prices, encouraged their offspring, some less ecologically conscientious than their parents, to enter the business. But it's in the last few years that things have changed dramatically. From 2009 to 2012 the amount of land cultivated for pot in the Emerald Triangle nearly doubled, to 221 acres, according to the CDFW. An aerial view shows once-dense forests now pocked with "grows," as pot farms are called. And they're getting bigger and bigger, says Bauer, with industrial grows now raising 2,000-5,000 plants. Here's a look at national forest land on Post Mountain, a rural area of Trinity county, in 2005:
Here's Post Mountain—which locals now call "Pot Mountain"—in 2012:
Many within the industry point to the expanding presence of outsiders: Everyone from Kentuckians to Bulgarians is flocking to the area. Some of this trend, which locals liken to the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, is due to a worry that the recent legalization of weed for recreational use in Washington and Colorado might drive down prices.
"People come to Humboldt to grow as much as they can to get that one last hit before it goes legal," says Tony Silvaggio, an environmental sociologist at the Center for Study of Cannabis and Social Policy (CASP). "Every year it goes bigger and bigger."
But another reason is simply that weed is incredibly profitable to grow. Its illegal status, says Silvaggo, inflates its price, and cannabis growers don't have to pay taxes, rights to water and land use fees the way "legal" industries do.
The water cost is a biggie. A single plant of marijuana needs about six gallons (22.7 liters) of water per day to grow. That means industrial grows need between 12,000 and 30,000 gallons of water per day.
This has exacerbated the water crisis…
The dry summer months happen to be the peak of the April-October pot-growing season. Conscientious growers—typically, long-term residents—invest in tanks to gather and store water during the winter, when it rains more. Unethical growers irrigate by damming streams and using diesel pumps to suck water to their sites. They also tend to pump runoff fouled with dangerous fertilizers and pesticides back into the water supply.
Marijuana growing in four sub-areas of the Emerald Triangle's watersheds is now consuming 20%-30% of the water in local streams, says the CDFW. That's scuttling hopes for the recovery of northern California's beleaguered Chinook salmon population, which the logging industry almost wiped out in the 1950s. Since 2008, water overuse has driven the number of salmon returning to the rivers to spawn to record lows.
To get a better sense of context, consider the case of the Outlet Creek basin, one of the headwaters of the Eel River and a habitat for Chinook and coho salmon. Outdoor cannabis cultivation in Mendocino's Outlet Creek watershed consumes an Olympic-sized pool worth of water each week, on average. And that's just for 160-square-mile (414 square kilometers) swatch of the total Eel River watershed, which spans nearly 4,000 square miles. That concentration of activity is happening all over the 8,800 square miles of Emerald Triangle watersheds. Here's an analysis Silvaggio and Mother Jones did using Google Earth in early 2013:
… and the US government "is directly to blame"
Cannabis cultivation need not be so bad for the environment. Other local industries, like wineries and timber, have the potential to be worse. While state and local agencies have dozens of workers in northern California focused strictly on protecting the environment from vintners and loggers, no one's doing that for cannabis growers.
But don't point fingers at local regulators, says CA Norml's Gieringer. The "US government is directly to blame for [ending] established efforts to regulate outdoor growth," he says.
That's seems like a pretty extreme statement—at least until you hear about what happened in Mendocino.
The Feds cut short Mendocino's experiment with cannabis regulation…
The story starts in 2010, when Tom Allman, Mendocino's sheriff, began charging medically licensed marijuana growing collectives $1,050 for cultivation permits, monthly inspection fees of around $500, and $25 for a serial-numbered zip-tie that growers were to attach to each plant (pdf, p.5), certifying that the produce met environmental and public safety standards. The regulation also capped the number of plants per individual at 25, and per collective at 99.
In an interview with PBS in 2011, Allman explained that his motivation was remove the gray area around cultivation in order to honor what California voters had mandated when they legalized medical marijuana, and to free up his officers to focus on crime. "We're taking money from people who want to follow the law, … and we are using that exact money to go after the people who are breaking the law," said Allman. "[I]f we can remove the gray, if we can remove the inconsistencies, if we can have people not confused about the marijuana laws, then I have succeeded."
He didn't succeed immediately. Growers were initially suspicious that the police would rat them out to the Feds; in the first year, only 18 people signed up. But by the end of 2011, the program had enlisted nearly 100 growers, bringing in $663,000 in fees in 2011—and important source of revenue for an office that normally relied on federal funds.
Those fees helped finance Allman's aggressive campaign against illegal "trespass grows"—meaning those on public land—including some that were illegally damming streams and piping water for irrigation. Allman and his officers eradicated 642,000 illegal marijuana plants in Mendocino county 2011—more than one-third of what the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) typically eradicates each year in all of California. (For comparison, California is about 44 times bigger and 440 times more populous than Mendocino county.)
It helped consumers too, since they could purchase marijuana guaranteed not to contain scary pesticides. And licensed growers were able to "reintegrate into the county and not feel like outlaws," as county supervisor John McCowen put it.
But though Mendocino created clear categories of legal and illegal growers, the federal government didn't see it that way. DEA agents raided farms of Mendocino's most prominently law-abiding growers—a crackdown on "significant drug traffickers,"said US attorney Melinda Haag. Then 2012, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Mendocino's records of all participants in the program, which the county's lawyer said was a breach of medical privacy guarantees. This was a huge blow to the trust forged between growers and Mendocino police. The federal government insisted that Mendocino shut down the program, threatening to prosecute officials individually if they granted permits. In March 2012, Mendocino finally gave in.
"That," explains CANorml's Gieringer, "put an end to the attempt to regulate outdoor cultivation in California."
… and there's a cynical theory about why
The federal government isn't allowed to participate in anything that treats marijuana as legal. But nothing about Mendocino's zip-tie program required federal involvement—so why did the Feds crack down?
Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the DEA, said he wasn't familiar with Mendocino's zip-tie program. However, he says that the DEA is almost exclusively focused on major operations. "You'll rarely if ever see the DEA show up and bang on someone's door if they have five plants," Payne tells Quartz.
While Gieringer, Silvaggio and others who support legalization argue that Mendocino was a successful effort at bringing order to the market through legalization, Payne argues that such systems would paradoxically increase the market share of illegal growers.
"There are a lot of… myths that [marijuana is] safe, that's it's okay if it's regulated. We think it's dangerous, and one reason is that it's proven to be a significant source of revenue for the most violent organizations in the world, [such as] the Mexican drug cartels," he says. "Any time you have a regulated system, you're going to have taxes and fees. We would see drug trafficking organizations undercut the so-called legal market to the extent that cartels were even more emboldened by dropping their prices because they'd be able to sell even more."
If Payne's theory is right, legalization would give the DEA even more illegal activity to crack down on. But what if it turned out, instead, that an expanding legal market enticed some growers out of the black market, thus driving down prices and pushing smaller illegal growers out of business—and at the same time, generating revenue for local police to go after trespass growers more aggressively, the way Sheriff Allman did?
To test those theories you'd need an experiment, and the run of Mendocino's experiment was probably too short to tell either way. However, a cynical interpretation of the DEA's attitude is that it fears widespread adoption of programs similar to Mendocino's would harm the interests of federal agencies, like the DEA, that depend on the "War on Drugs" for funding.
Here's the reasoning.
Around 60% of the $24.5 billion (pdf, p.19) the US federal government allocated in fiscal year 2013 for drug-control programs went toward disrupting the supply of illegal drugs. Two factors on which Congress evaluates the success of the DEA and its partner law-enforcement agencies are the number of plants eradicated (pdf, p.64-5)—or "plant count," as it's known—and the number of organizations whose operations they disrupt, says Payne. Some 53% of the outdoor plants (pdf) the DEA eradicated in 2012 were in California. That isn't particularly surprising, given that California grows between a quarter and two-thirds of the rest of the country's pot, according to sources close to the industry.
Now, what if the whole of California adopted Mendocino's zip-tie program, creating clear classes of law-abiding and illegal growers? The program would take smaller illegal growers out of business or turn them legal, which would likely bring down California prices. But because the export market would still pay a premium, the biggest trespass grows—which are mainly producing for export out of California—would stay in business, and as Payne says, those are what the DEA focuses on. The surviving operations would be the bigger and better-organized ones that are more dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming to raid. That would make it harder for federal agencies to eradicate the same number of plants and disrupt the same number of operations as they had in the past.
And eventually, legalization in California's current export markets—meaning, other states—will cause local production capacity to expand and reduce the risk premium. Falling prices will close more and more of these Emerald Triangle trespass grows. When that happens, it will be harder for illegal growers to stay in business by undercutting legal ones in a market where consumers and retailers have gotten used to regulated, quality-controlled legal weed.
The Office of National Drug-Control Policy (ONDCP)—the White House office that coordinates federal anti-drug efforts, including the DEA—has a dual mandate, to reduce both the supply and demand of drugs. It's being undermined on the demand side, as support for legalization is rising fast—especially for medical use, now legal in 15 states and the District of Columbia—and so are rates of marijuana use by teens. The mandate to eliminate supply is therefore crucial to being able to justify the ONDCP's increasingly endangered budget, which shrank nearly 20% (pdf, p.232) in the latest fiscal year. As for the DEA, the Department of Justice, which oversees it, explicitly identifies legalization as a "performance challenge" (pdf, p. 21-2).
What this all boils down to, according to the cynical interpretation, is that successful local-level regulation in California would threaten to deprive federal anti-drug agencies of a large source of their income, and set an example for other states. That could further undermine federal policy, and the agencies' budgets.
The War on Drugs is now supposedly about the environment…
If this reasoning seems too much like a conspiracy theory, consider that the federal government has long cited the threat to public safety posed by violent "Mexican cartels" (pdf, p.72) to justify its aggressive tactics and hefty budgets. Only last year did Tommy Lanier, director of the ONDCP's National Marijuana Initiative, quietly admit, "Based on our intelligence, which includes thousands of cellphone numbers and wiretaps, we haven't been able to connect anyone to a major cartel."
In the 2012 National Drug Control Strategy, which is published by ONDCP, the sole rationale given for eradicating marijuana cultivation in the US was to stop "violent transnational criminal organizations" (pdf, p.28).
In the 2013 strategy, that changed (pdf, p.45) to an emphasis on the environment:
This, argue some, is of a piece with new federal government talking points emphasizing that cannabis crackdowns are needed to protect the environment. Dominic Corva, head of CASP, says this newfound passion for conservation is more about justifying the anti-marijuana policy in the face of growing public acceptance of marijuana. "Before it was 'cannabis is bad,'" says Corva. "Now it's 'environmental degradation caused by cannabis is bad.'"
The DEA's Payne says that his organization has long paid attention to environmental destruction by trespass growers. "The environmental impacts—those are obviously concerns for anyone [in regard to] what these drug trafficking organizations are doing to our public lands," he says. But, he also says, "we're not environmental experts—we go after drug traffickers."
…but it isn't exactly being fought that way
If the end result is that the DEA reduces the cannabis industry's environmental abuse, does it matter if the way it goes about it is by treating the industry as something to be wiped out?
In all fairness to the DEA, it isn't supposed to be regulating water pumps. Indeed, saddling an anti-drug agency with environmental policing seems a perverse way of doing things, especially when other federal agencies are refusing to do it. Take, for instance, the National Forest Service. Once focused on regulating (and promoting) economic development on forested land, the agency has shifted more recently toward protecting the environment (pdf, p.3), including watersheds. Part of its job is to research how commercial industries like logging affect the environment in forests. However, it has steadfastly rejected EPIC's requests that it do the same for marijuana cultivation. "The best way to minimize impacts to affected resources is by discouraging this criminal activity through aggressive law enforcement," says the US Forest Service (pdf).
Even if the DEA had the capacity to target the most egregious environmental abusers, it wouldn't be sufficient, says EPIC's Hughes. "These are really profound environmental harms that need more than just a bust to be dealt with," he says. He argues that public land management should be prioritized over law enforcement.
CASP's Silvaggio says that the DEA's focus continues to be on destroying plants and arresting easy targets—low-level workers. That means it's disrupting industrial grows basically by creating minor staffing headaches. And, if the growers subsequently replant, they end up using even more water.
On top of that, law-enforcement officers don't generally know a lot about managing the environment, and lack the staff who does. That means they sometimes lean heavily on local volunteers to clean up pot-growing sites after a raid, says EPIC's Hughes. Because that risks putting volunteers in harm's way—one died on the job in Sep. 2013—law enforcement operations tend to stay away from the bigger, riskier grow sites in remote, hard-to-access areas, he adds, meaning those grows continue to do environmental damage.
Busting trespass grows, the main focus of the DEA's work, also does nothing to limit damage to the water supply from growers on private residential land. Compared with public-land grows, those account for a majority of cannabis cultivation in the area, says CDFW (pdf, p.25) and others close to the industry.
So what's the future of the Emerald Triangle "green rush"?
There's a glimmer of hope for northern California's streams yet. The federal government recently showed signs of relaxing its "enforcement-only" position: It said it plans to scale back the practice of using legal marijuana businesses' bank records to prosecute them. (That practice has forced many growers to use cash only, which encourages crime.)
And California's new state budget proposal earmarks $3.3 million (pdf, p.108-119) to "improve the prevention" of destructive water use by marijuana cultivators and to protect endangered species. It's not clear whether the budget, if approved, will be earmarked for enforcement only—meaning, to help state water and wildlife departments join the federal campaign against trespass grows that are polluting or overusing water, for example—or for education, community outreach and other types of programs, which might violate federal law.
Bauer of the CDFW, thinks the budget will finally give him the staff needed to educate growers on winter water storage and other best practices. Busts, he says, won't be the priority. On the other hand, EPIC's Hughes is skeptical that the new budget would fund anything besides the usual—enforcement. "The state and the counties I believe are still running scared… because of the threat that the Feds will come down and say that [they] are involved with an illegal activity." In other words, he argues, northern California and its water supply "will continue to pay the environmental fallout of the Drug War."


text:
My kitchen looks a lot like this these days. Drawers and cabinets are always askew.
Why would it be like this?
Because our little man has learned a new skill - the opening and closing of things. I hear whoosh-SLAM, whoosh-SLAM multiple times a day. It's his obsession, a new exciting skill.


text:
Pukka Organic Lemon, Ginger & Manuka Honey 20 sachets
Regular price $11.56
Lemon, Ginger & Manuka Honey tea creates a moment of bliss – a veritable hug that will keep your spirits warm.
Take your seat and settle in to savour the spicy-sweet zest of sun-ripe whole Sicilian lemons to the slow-dried ginger root with FairWild elderflowers. Finally the velvet kiss of manuka honey creates a cup of tea that warms your heart as well as your body. Isn't this heaven?
Good news for soothing your spirit.


text:
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Boston's collapse was one for the ages. The Flyers had a comeback for the history books.
Down 3-0 in the best-of-seven series, then down 3-0 in Game 7, the Philadelphia Flyers erased the long odds and pulled off a shocking rally to win the decisive game 4-3 and move on last season to the Eastern Conference finals.
Those kind of runs happen only, oh, every 30-plus years or so.
In fact, the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs and the 1975 New York Islanders were the only NHL teams to overcome 3-0 deficits to win a best-of-seven playoff series.
Here they are again, one year later ... in the same round. The 2010 East chokers vs. the 2010 East champs.
The Bruins sounded this week as if they were giving testimony before a congressional committee: They're not here to talk about the past.
"Last year was last year, this year is this year," Bruins winger Shawn Thornton said. "Half the team has been turned over. We've brought in some great people. So, it's a whole new year."
The Flyers, well, they also tried to insist this is a brand new series and their run of wins in Game 4, Game 5, Game 6 and Game 7 mean as much this May as playoff wins from 30 years ago.
They just weren't convinced Boston had forgotten about its flop.
"I'm sure they're going to use that to their advantage," Flyers center Danny Briere said Friday. "But at the same time, it goes both ways. We might be in their heads, as well. We have that confidence that no matter what happens, we seem to play well when we're playing against them."
The Bruins, of course, want to put the series to rest. Once the puck drops in Game 1 Saturday in Philadelphia, Boston will surely have an extra shot of motivation against the team that spoiled their Stanley Cup run.
"It's always a new situation, it's a new opportunity, and that's how we're looking at it," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "Just a new opportunity for us to get past these guys and hopefully win this series."
Laviolette said the Flyers also have big motivation: Win a Stanley Cup.
But it is true - like all rosters from year to year - that these teams are quite different.
Philadelphia's Simon Gagne scored the Game 7 winner a year ago, but was traded in the offseason to Tampa Bay. Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask has been replaced by Tim Thomas. And Bruins forward Nathan Horton, a newcomer, scored the overtime winner in Game 7 to give them a win over the Montreal Canadiens in the first round.
Brian Boucher's run as the starting goalie ended in Game 5 when he sprained the MCL in his left knee. That opened up the job for Michael Leighton, who led the Flyers to Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals. But Boucher is back in net, for now, after the Flyers used a three-goalie carousel in a seven-game first round vs. the Sabres.
Boucher, as well, brushed off the significance of last year's upset.
"Last year plays no role into this year. This is a whole new year," he said. "There are new faces in both locker rooms."
New and old Flyers say they can win again - just maybe save the rallies for another day.
"Hopefully, we don't spot them a three-game lead again," Briere said. "That would be a lot easier."
Sometimes, that win-or-else mentality fuels a postseason run. The Flyers won Game 6 in overtime in Buffalo and returned home to rout the Sabres in Game 7 to complete yet another series comeback, this one from down 3-2.
"I don't believe in momentum in the playoffs," Flyers coach Peter Laviolette said. "I believe in desperation."
The Bruins had their share of desperation in the first round against Montreal. Boston rallied from a 2-0 hole in the series, a two-goal deficit in Game 4, and won a Game 7 in which they lost two leads. The Boston franchise had never won a playoff series after trailing 0-2.
The Bruins were also the first team to ever win a seven-game series without scoring a power-play goal. They went 0 for 21 vs. the Canadiens. The Flyers struggled with the man advantage as well, before scoring two power-play goals in Game 7 vs. Buffalo.
"There are lots of things that pop up and catch your attention at different times," Laviolette said. "Certainly, power plays can win series, and penalty kills can win series. I guess that just proves not to say that it can't win."
The Bruins had four players score multiple goals in their series, but none who matched James van Riemsdyk's four and Briere's six for the Flyers.
Thomas saved 93 percent of his shots in the first round and has a huge edge over the veteran Boucher.
But this series isn't as much about how teams fare on power plays and shots on goal. It could be about how the teams handle questions and quiet doubts that fill every series.
If Boston takes a 2-0 lead, the Flyers will shrug it off. Hey, they won from that spot before. The Bruins will be bombarded with questions about how can they be sure they won't cough up a lead.
"It doesn't really have a factor on this year's series, except for the fact we haven't forgotten about it because (the media) remind us day in and day out," Thornton said, "And I'm sure you will for the next two weeks."


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Groundbreaking radar pinpoints impact of rapid shell fire for US Department of Defense
Cambridge, MA and UK –September 20, 2011 – Cambridge Consultants has successfully carried out trials tracking 5 inch shells travelling at over 1,000 miles per hour for the US Department of Defense (DoD). The groundbreaking radar developed specifically for this task was able to measure the trajectory and burst points of shells fired from a naval gun at a rate of one every three seconds — the first time radar has been used this way. The technology will eventually be used by the US DoD for training against attack by fast moving land and sea vehicles.
The terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, where a small craft was detonated alongside the ship killing or injuring 56 American sailors, reinforced the need for the US DoD to train against possible attack. With the high costs of live fire training proving unsustainable, the US Department for Operational Test & Evaluation commissioned Cambridge Consultants to use its radar expertise to develop a shell-scoring system. Following just 14 months of development, Cambridge Consultants unveiled the industry's first holographic radar scoring system, the Land and Surface Target Scorer (LSTS).
Installed on high-speed land or sea surface target vehicles, the system uses receiver array panels combined with high-speed signal processing to detect and track small projectiles in the presence of very large radar clutter, such as that experienced on moving land and sea surface targets. During trials at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren VA, the system successfully detected, tracked and located the point of impact of inert 5 inch projectiles, and was also able to plot the burst point of a high explosive round. Observers were able to see the results in near real-time on a laptop.
"Land and sea surface vehicle installations present a considerable challenge because the clutter return produced by the ground or water surface is considerably larger than the projectile to be measured. It is like finding a needle in a haystack," said Gary Kemp, Program Director at Cambridge Consultants. "Holographic radar offers the optimum solution in such difficult conditions as it extracts projectiles of interest from clutter using tracking algorithms while retaining the full sensitivity of the radar, rather than by raising thresholds and potentially missing critical data. During these trials we were able to produce raw data plots immediately and full trajectory reconstructions in just 15 minutes, under the scrutiny of our customer."
The demonstration test took place with the radar system mounted on a tethered pontoon to prove its detection and tracking capabilities over a zone within the specified 360 degree, 1,000 foot coverage. The demonstration team then conducted a rapid-fire test, during which all rounds were tracked through to impact on the water.
Dae Hong, Head of Target Systems Division, Naval Air Warfare Center commented, "To witness a successful proof of concept constitutes a significant milestone for our program. To have produced a working prototype from concept in just 14 months is testament to the depth of knowledge and skills of the team at Cambridge Consultants. We look forward to developing the technology further and enhancing the training capabilities we are able to offer our troops."
It is expected that development of the LSTS system will be taken to the next level during 2011, concluding with a full-coverage demonstration, installed on a sea target moving at high-speed with results being continuously produced in real-time over an extended test period.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense


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Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some great articles on steps to financial success, why you should track cash flow, and saving on food and meal planning.
A Woman's Money: 8 Steps to Financial Success — To have financial success, create a realistic budget and spend wisely on luxuries. [Money Under 30]
Money 101: Why You Should Track Cash Flow — Tracking your cash flow can help you grow your net worth over time. [Free Money Finance]
How to Save Money on Food and Meal Plan for a Month in Minutes — Saving the recipes your family likes on a Pinterest board can help you save money on food! [Money Saving Enthusiast]
What Your Parents Never Told You About Life in Your 20s — Chances are, your parents never told you that you may have to relocate to find work or that you might not get the job you want right out of college. [Studenomics]
Does Money Buy Happiness? — Having a higher income will help you improve the evaluation of your life but not your emotional well-being. [Frugal Zeitgeist]
4 Occasions you Tend To Overspend — People tend to spend more when they are dating or receive a windfall. [Cash The Checks]
The Cost Of Decluttering Your Home — Did you know Best Buy has a program where they will take up to three electronic items off your hands for free? [Enemy of Debt]
Balance Your Resume Focus — Make sure your resume shows how you can contribute above and beyond. [Step Away From the Mall]
The $15 Haunted House - No Tricks Here! — Instead of carving pumpkins this year, consider adding decals to pumpkins! [PopSugar Smart Living]
7 Reasons to Never Let Your Children Watch TV Again — With the amount of violence and rude language on TV these days, you may want to keep your kids from watching TV. [Parenting Squad]
Disclaimer: The links and mentions on this site may be affiliate links. But they do not affect the actual opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.


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The Century Club: Angeles Crest 100
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
Dust, desert, mountains and an exhilarating classic. // www.ac100.com
Photo by Larry Gassan
Where: Wrightwood, California (elev. 5935 feet), an outpost in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Rundown: Since 1986, a relatively small and steady stream of trail runners— rarely more than 150—have circled late summer or early fall on their calendars. The AC100, however, is somehow overshadowed by many other 100s in the West, but not because it is a "softie." Even though the race has a cumulative drop in elevation, it still challenges runners with nearly 22,000 feet in total climbing, at least half of which is found at altitudes over 5000 feet. The terrain is high-mountain desert for much of the way, before plunging to a finish barely 800 feet above sea level. The AC is a singletracker's dream, with 92 total miles of trail.
"As a first timer, you constantly feel that you're walking in history," says Adam Ray of Oakland, California, who, in 2006, chose the race as his first-ever 100 miler. "And walk you will."
The AC also offers unique sights and sounds of California. Ray recalls some of his memories from his run (which he completed in 27:18): "The razor ridges of the San Gabriels, the beauty of the high desert and the bell clanging that accompanies the Tarahumura runners." The wildlife also helped to enhance Ray's run: "I had the experience of being paced up a steep hill by a tarantula."
Mettle Test: Angeles Crest-ers raise their eyebrows and their stomachs do cartwheels when recalling the final 25 miles, which are often considered among the most difficult in ultrarunning. This is where the cool of night slides into the rearview mirror and the heat combines with dust, humidity, scratchy overgrowth and the cumulative toll of over 70 miles. Mike Palmer, a Berkeley, California, resident who has completed AC 11 times, gets more specific: "The climb up to Sam Merrill at around 87 miles will get you in touch with the voices that lurk inside your head."
+++ | Angeles Crest 100 Alternatives
The AC crowd tends to stick to the southern California races. And why not? There are many down there. In preparation, AC runners gravitate toward big climbs, heat and sunshine.
PCT 50 Miler // East of San Diego // Early May // www.pct50.com
Bishop High Sierra 20 Mile, 50K, 50 Mile, 100K // Bishop, CA // Mid May // www.bhs50.com
Mount Baldy 50K // Claremont, CA // Late July // www.larrygassan.com/BP50k_All/BP50k_000/BP50k_index.html
Mt. Disappointment 50K and 50 Miler // Mt. Wilson, CA // Early August //
Leona Divide 50K and 50 Miler // Lake Hughes, CA // April 30, 2011 //
By the Numbers
Times the AC has been cancelled due to fire (2002 and 2009)
Percent of the course that
is road, either dirt (six miles)
or paved (two)
Cumulative drop, in feet,
of the AC 100 course
The last year the AC concluded
in the famed Rose Bowl. Organizers had to move the
race in 1992 because of a Guns
N' Roses concert.


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It is literally impossible for white people to have child services take away their children.Zombiecross
Then Chris Hansen stepped out, and the gator knew he was going to prison for a loooong time.parkerbrother
"See ya later Alligator!...After while Pedophile!!!"Discorocks
A young Paris Hilton meets her future shoes and handbag collection.AssHolyroller
Mom suggested taking karate to discourage bullies. Dad had a different plan.Hasselhoff
"Now pumpkin, you have to eat the WHOLE heart to gain its power."Sharktopus
If she was truly a little lady, she'd ride sidesaddle.DlifeofRiley
"Mommy, this ride is lame. I liked the Tiger better."hadleydb
"...and I will name him George and I will love him and pet him and squeeze him and OOOOOW! BAD GEORGE!"jtklove
In Cajun country, this is referred to as "Playing with your food".DlifeofRiley
Can you spot 14 things wrong with this picture? If you can't the FBI wants to talk with you.Julius_Goat
"Give. Me. Back. Mr. Fluffy you scaly bastard you!!"DaleSams
Little Tiffany lasted longer than any of the other children that day at 3 minutes and 12 seconds.phillerspace
"Yeah..... Well what did YOU get for Christmas?"Chris Berglund
"Daddy! I keep putting quarters in, but it still doesn't move!"Sharktopus


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Born in Michigan, Brace played football and basketball in high school and was recruited to play in college, but instead, decided to take a high-paying job in the business sector. At age 18, Brace enrolled in a local modeling/finishing school. Brace dabbled in modeling, but decided he preferred the corporate world. After graduating from engineering school and continuing his business career, he took an interest in bodybuilding and began to compete. At that time, he also discovered Yoshokia Aikido and spent the next seven years dedicating his life to the study. Brace attended Kenshu, an advanced Aikido school and completed his Aikido training.
Brace's business interests are vast and they include real estate, nutritional supplements, and he has even developed a hair tool that was sold on QVC. Brace believes health and fitness are extremely important and regularly uses fasting, nutritional supplementation, weight training, yoga, meditation, organic skin care, and organic foods to achieve ultimate health. He likes exotic cars, modern home design, beautiful women, adventure, organic food, weight training, stylish clothes, exotic locations, and being around good quality people.


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I just received my copy of Dan Pink's new book (thank you, Dan), The Adventures of Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, and I am already writing about it. Dan and I corresponded about manga at the time he went to Japan months ago. The impact of a comic book that teaches lessons applicable to business did not hit me until now that I have the book in my hands.
Manga is the word for Japanese (or Japan-inspired) comics. In Japan, manga isn't just for kids. You can find manga histories, manga how-to guides, and manga cookbooks. In fact, one—fourth of all printed material in Japan is in comics. And the form has become wildly popular in just about every other country on the planet. As Forbes says, manga is the "hardiest and most voracious cultural virus presently known to human society."
Susan Berfield writes in Business Week, that the Johnny Bunko experiment comes at a time when business book publishers, like any others, are contending with readers who have less time to gather information from the printed page.
The Story
Bunko is an office jockey at Boggs Corp., a bumbling Everyman trapped in a job he loathes, wondering how he got there. Enter a supernatural career adviser, Diana, who emerges from Bunko's chopsticks late one soulless night at the office. She is sarcastic, tough, and wise and reveals to Johnny the six essential lessons for thriving in the new world or work.
The story itself can be enough to draw us in, after all, who has not had a similar experience? Well, aside from the magic character... unless you did. And, drawing us in is exactly what Pink plans to do with the activities surrounding the book launch.
Pink Does Social Media
Readers will be asked to send in photos of the Johnny Bunkos in their offices, suggestions for the seventh lesson, and narration to accompany drawings. I see many more opportunities with the book, which I read in less than one hour last night.
For example choosing a color palette, adding characters that are custom to your experience, and changing the marketing challenge to something that resonates more with you.
One note of interest is that Rob Ten Pas, the artist who worked with Pink on the book, is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), the school I had the privilege of visiting last week. Pas is the winner of TOKYOPOP's annual Rising Stars of Manga competition.
What advice would you give someone who is just starting their first job?


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Silver Lake Management LLC and partners are close to lining up about $15 billion in funds for a buyout of Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), the third-biggest maker of personal computers, people familiar told Bloomberg news Thursday.
Lenders including Credit Suisse Group AG, Royal Bank of Canada, Barclays Plc and Bank of America Corp. may informally disclose terms to a small group of possible buyers of the bridge loan as soon as today, said one of the people, who asked not to be named as the process is private. Dell's enterprise value is about $19.7 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The deal could be announced as soon as next week, said one of the people. The lenders are informally canvassing debt investors to gauge whether they can parcel out pieces of the financing in a so-called syndication process once the deal is final, another person said. JPMorgan Chase & Co., which is advising Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker Dell, would also provide so-called staple financing to the group led by Silver Lake, said one of the people.
Dell ranks No. 3 in global PC sales behind HP and Lenovo.
The technology-focused buyout firm's financing is crucial to completing a leveraged buyout of Dell, which would be the biggest since the financial crisis. The rest of the funds to take Dell private would come from Silver Lake and its partners, Dell itself or founder and Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell, said one of these people.
Data Focus
Dell, which lost almost a third of its value last year, is struggling amid competition from tablet makers such as Apple Inc. Going private may give Dell more room to overhaul the company's corporate structure and focus on data-center equipment instead of PCs. Dell's shares advanced 1.7 percent to $12.83 Thursday afternoon.
Turning the computer maker into a private company would allow Michael Dell and his private-equity backers to manage the company's finances differently, said a person familiar with the matter. For example, they could borrow money by securitizing accounts receivables, a move a public board and public shareholders would likely reject, said this person.
Dell needs more urgency and focus, said Erik Gordon, a professor of law and business at the University of Michigan. "It hasn't diddled too long in PC-land because public stockholders tied its hands," Gordon said in an e-mailed statement. "It was free to go into tablets and services, as did its competitors, but management chose not to."
TPG Capital
David Frink, a spokesman for Dell, declined to comment. Jason Golz, a spokesman for Silver Lake at Brunswick Group, didn't return a call and an email seeking comment. Officials at Credit Suisse, JPMorgan, Barclays, Bank of America, and Royal Bank declined to comment.
TPG Capital, which earlier looked at participating in a transaction, is unlikely to be part of any deal with Silver Lake, said a person familiar with the matter. KKR & Co., which considered a deal with Dell last year, also isn't likely to bid at this time, said another person. Representatives at TPG and KKR declined to comment.
Silver Lake has ammunition some other buyout firms don't: It just raised $7 billion for a new fund that could swell to as much as $10 billion, two people familiar with the matter said this week, and that fund can only invest in technology companies. Michael Dell also was one of the early investors in Silver Lake's initial fund of $2.3 billion.
Dell's Stake
Under the current negotiations, Michael Dell, the top shareholder in the computer maker, would roll his stake into the buyout, said one of the people. Dell, 47, owns about 15.7 percent of the company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, valuing his stake at $3.45 billion, based on yesterday's closing price.
He and Glenn Hutchins, co-founder and Co-CEO of Silver Lake, are scheduled to attend the World Economic Forum, which takes place in Davos, Switzerland from Jan. 22 to Jan. 27.
Based on the company's market value, a deal could be the largest buyout of a technology company since 2007, when KKR bought First Data Corp. for more than $25 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It might also be the biggest acquisition in the computer industry since Hewlett-Packard Co. bought Compaq Computer Corp. for about $19 billion more than a decade ago, the data show.
Large leveraged buyouts have been scarce since the financial crisis. The biggest for the technology sector in the past two years was Blackstone Group LP's $3 billion purchase of health-care billing company Emdeon Inc., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Technology Buyouts
Other technology companies, including disk-drive maker Seagate Technology Plc, have tried to go private and seen talks collapse over valuations or financing difficulties.
Silver Lake has been investing in technology companies since its founding in 1999. Its latest fund, Silver Lake Partners III LP, was generating an 18 percent net internal rate of return, according to data from California Public Employees' Retirement System, a limited partner.
In 2009, the Menlo Park, California-based firm bought a majority stake in Skype Technologies SA from EBay Inc. in a deal that valued the calling service at $2.75 billion. Less than two years later, Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy Skype for $8.5 billion.
While Skype yielded a threefold return for Silver Lake, another big bet didn't. Silver Lake's 2007 investment in communications equipment maker Avaya Holdings Corp. was marked at cost as of Dec. 31, 2011, meaning the firm has yet to book a profit on the deal, according to a marketing document.


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Thursday, January 18, 2018
The Orcas of Nakugard, Part 5
Serg Lion had been the first Orca bot to experience the wrath of Alt's Taloses. In addition, Alt's smartbombing cruiser destroyed Serg's implants. The miner was podded right out of the system.
...But four hours later, Serg returned to the very same asteroid belt in a brand new Orca. What a Goofus! The new Orca's fit was almost identical; a slight improvement to the shield tank was the only evidence that Serg had noticed a problem with his operation. Importantly, Serg still lacked a mining permit. So Alt killed the new Orca.
Bots are good for one thing, at least--they make pretty explosions when they die.
Alt 00 proudly announced the destruction of the fourth mining Orca in just a few hours. Interestingly, she seemed to be winning over some of the locals.
...Khelty Zaph was not one of them. Serg Lion himself remained silent, as is typical of a miner-bot. But you can always count on a rebel carebear like Khelty to side with bots.
Bot-aspirants are bot sympathizers, too. When bots die, the bot-aspirant miners know they could be next, since there's so little difference between the two groups.
The miners of Nakugard had watched as Alt 00 repeatedly dropped Talos fleets on any miner she didn't like. The carebears knew that they were completely at the mercy of the New Order Agent. They could no longer pretend otherwise.
Khelty struggled to explain why she was speaking in defense of a credibly accused botter. When Alt 00 spoke my name, the miner fell silent.
Just then, another mouthy miner spoke up. She identified herself as a member of the resistance.
EDISON CLONE attempted to provide an intel report to the miners. It was about as useful as you'd expect from "miner intelligence".
In any event, it wasn't like Alt 00 was trying to be subtle. Her Orca ganks were quite a spectacle, to say the least.
More Nakugard locals sided with the winning team. The death of Serg Lion's second Orca seemed to be the tipping point. The rebel miners evacuated, fleeing for their lives. Nakugard was at peace.
But... for how long?
To be continued...
17 comments:
- AnonymousJanuary 18, 2018 at 6:29 PM
Fuck Alt 00 and the rest of the CHODE. slaves.ReplyDelete
Mining peacefully in a high security system as I type this. Watching YouTube videos as well. Life is good..........Replies
- AnonymousJanuary 19, 2018 at 5:27 AM
Yea, thought not. What you ment to say was you are currently in station, too scared to undock because you are a highsec crybear and a coward.
We understand that you are unable to tell the truth because you are too mad.
- AnonymousJanuary 19, 2018 at 4:39 PM
As if I'm stupid enough to post my EO player name on Jamey's blog so you CHODE. slaves can engage in even more hunting and harassment.Delete
No, the more you pretend to squeeze your fists the more smart miners like myself slip through your fingers.
"It's nice to see a complete end to illegal mining activity in Nakugard."ReplyDelete
Maybe reduced but certainly not a complete end. I have a few secured bins floating in the first two belts full of ore as proofReplies
- AnonymousJanuary 18, 2018 at 7:24 PM
Sure you do. Left them there all day and nobody even saw an agent too I bet. Blah blah blah blah.Delete
ehnemapoo it was spoken in the moment, days or maybe weeks ago, you fail at even the simplest of arguments. Still got that EBT blog? alphawhatever
Do you even subscribe bro?
Anon724 if I said no, would you ragequit?Delete
bragging about 2mil of ore in a can in some random back end system is a sure thing to be proud of.Delete
- AnonymousJanuary 18, 2018 at 9:28 PM
Enough said.
- AnonymousJanuary 18, 2018 at 9:36 PM
Lol that's one retarded alpha shitter. Nothing quite like a waterhead with an elevated sense of self. Unwarranted as it is.Delete
Why not a sub? Are you a poor or are you just a poor? #nopoors #alphaiswelfare #getsubbedorgetrekt
- AnonymousJanuary 19, 2018 at 12:44 AM
ehnee, what is your goal/reason for posting here? Did someone do something to you that causes an emotional response? Do you feel vindicated when you post lies and tears here in a community that you claim to be against somehow?Delete
You spend a lot of time concerned with a game that you don't even care enough about to supoort with a subscription. I sesne conflict in you. Broadcast 4 reps if you feel confused, don't pull a kalynn.
Also, you can sub up or get rekt friend.
- AnonymousJanuary 19, 2018 at 6:42 PM
How big are your boobs girlieDelete
- AnonymousJanuary 19, 2018 at 12:19 AM
Carebears are the most violent players.ReplyDelete
- Layalina KasyanenkovaJanuary 19, 2018 at 6:41 AM
The Code always wins, always!ReplyDelete
- Karma balancerJanuary 19, 2018 at 10:22 AM
I love seeing russians explode. You can attribute the blue flash of the explosion to potato vodka.ReplyDelete
Get rekt ukrainians.
It's nice that I found this blog. escort-london.comReplyDelete
Note: If you are unable to post a comment, try enabling the "allow third-party cookies" option on your browser.


text: James M. Shelley is a retired Baltimore City Police law enforcement officer who served in a variety of patrol and investigative assignments as well as a police academy instructor. Most recently he served as ISAF Joint Command's Deputy Director and Director of the National Police Coordination Center, Kabul, Afghanistan. The views in the paper are those of the author and do not represent the Department of Defense or NATO.


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- Science
- Not Exactly Rocket Science
Control Altered by Deletion – is lost DNA behind our bigger brains and spineless penises?
Where genes are concerned, less is sometimes more. Cory McLean, Phillip Reno and Alex Pollen from Stanford University have found many stretches of DNA that are missing in our genomes but are otherwise shared by chimps and other mammals. They think that the loss of these sequences coincided with the evolution of our larger brains, and the loss of features like whiskers and penis spines. Our genome's loss has been our gain.
The trio found 583 stretches of DNA in the chimp genome that are shared with a variety of different mammals, except for humans. They called these sequences hCONDELs (short for "highly conserved deletions"). Except for one, they are all "enhancers", stretches of DNA that control other genes, but aren't genes themselves. They are overlords that have managed the activity of genes throughout the mammal family tree, but that abruptly abandoned their posts in the human branch.
The team found that hCONDELs cluster next to two main groups of genes – one that affects our neurons, and another that controls how we respond to hormones like testosterone or oestrogen. "We chose to follow up on one gene in each of these two categories," says Daivd Kingsley, who led the study.
One of the hCONDELs affects a gene called the androgen receptor (AR), which produces a protein of the same name. Think of the AR protein as a machine – it's switched on by hormones like testosterone, and it drives the development of male physical features, everything from penises to facial hair. The AR gene contains the instructions for making this machine, and the enhancers tell the body where and when to build it.
In chimps and mice, one of these enhancers instructs an embryo to build the AR protein in specific parts of the face and genitals. As the embryo grows up, it develops facial whiskers and spines on its penis. Because we don't have this enhancer, we don't build AR in the same places, and we never develop these features that are normally found in other mammals.
We might have facial hair, but we lack the sensitive whiskers that many other mammals use. That's understandable for vision is our main sense. But why did we lose penis spines, and why do other animals have them in the first place? The spines aren't there to inflict injuries (as those of many insects are). They're hair-like and sensitive. Without them, sex is probably a less stimulating activity for human men than for other male mammals, and it takes relatively longer.
It's possible that by evolving to have less arousing sex, lengthy human intercourse creates a stronger social bond than chimp quickies. "Penile spines are often found in species with competitive mating systems, where multiple males [aggressively] compete for fertilization success," says Kingsley. "Humans have evolved a more monogamous, long-term bonding system, which involves many changes. "
In both these cases – whiskers and spines – losing an enhancer meant losing a body part. But that's not always the case as McLean, Reno and Pollen found when they looked at a second gene called GADD45G. Like AR, this gene is also missing an enhancer in the human genome.
In mice and chimps, GADD45G is active in the subventricular zone, a part of the brain where new neurons are created. It acts as a barrier that restrains the brain from producing too many neurons. By losing one of its enhancers, our ancestors lifted these restraints and that could have contributed to the evolution of our big brains. "Loss of DNA could lead to expansion of some human structures," says Kingsley.
Shyam Prabhakar, who also works on enhancer evolution, is impressed by the study, but not quite convinced about the effect of the missing enhancers. To him, the big question is whether the loss of these sequences benefited our ancestors – whether they were adaptive. He has good reason to ask – in 2008, he showed that an enhancer called HACNS1 may have contributed to the uniquely human aspects of our thumbs, wrists, ankles and feet. Since we diverged from chimps, HACNS1 has changed more rapidly than most other parts of the human genome. The speedy nature of this change provides strong evidence that it was adaptive.
The case is more ambiguous for the lost enhancers that McLean, Reno and Pollen identified. It's possible, for example, that the loss of the AR enhancer drove the loss of penile spines. Maybe our ancestors has already lost the spines because of changes elsewhere in the genome, allowing them to jettison the AR enhancer without any ill effect. Maybe things happened gradually, and the enhancer's disappearance was just one of many events that de-spined our genitals.
The only way to tell the difference between these possibilities is to remove the enhancers in mice and see what happens. "If the knockouts result in reduced penile spines and bigger brains, that would be wonderful," says Prabhakar. That would also tell them if they've matched up the enhancers with the right genes – after all, these sequences can often sit a long way off from the genes that they control.
Meanwhile, McLean, Reno and Pollen have a long list of missing enhancers to work through. "We suspect other deletions on the list may be related to other human-specific traits (skeletal modifications, bipedalism, hairlessness, etc), and are beginning experiments to test some of these possibilities," says Kingsley. It's a fascinating concept – some of our most human traits could lie, not in the genes we still have, but in the missing shadows of their former companions.
This research has the potential to tell us about more than just the origins of human features. Prabhakar wants researchers to look at genetic changes that separate primates from other mammals."Most of the time, biologists try to understand humans by studying mice, not chimpanzees," he explains. "So from the standpoint of biomedical research, the fact that we are not mice is much more problematic than the fact that we are not chimpanzees." We need to understand the parts of our genome that define us as primates, rather than specifically as humans. "This treasure hunt is only just beginning."
Reference: McLean, Reno, Pollen et al. 2011. Human-specific loss of regulatory DNA and the evolution of human-specific traits. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09774
More on the genetics of human evolution:
- Did a gene enhancer humanise our thumbs?
- RNA gene separates human brains from chimpanzees
- The secret history of X and Z – how sex chromosomes from humans and chickens found common ground
- Revisiting FOXP2 and the origins of language
- Scientists "humanise" Foxp2 gene in mice to probe origins of human language
- Elephants and humans evolved similar solutions to problems of gas-guzzling brains
- Genetic neoteny – how delayed genes separate human brains from chimps
- A burst of DNA duplication in the ancestor of humans, chimps and gorillas


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Thursday, 30 June 2016
My Famous Friends: Geoff Slays Commercial Music!
My excellently-talented friend (since kindergarten) Geoff is an excellently-talented musician. Until recently he was the bass-playing part of Julia Massey and the Five Finger Discount (he can be heard on all of the FFD albums released up to this date). He is also the singer and 1/2 of the composers (I'm the other 1/2) of The Crazy Boy Floyds. He also produced a bunch of Trevor Peach's recent musics. And a bunches of other stuffs.
Now he's written the musics for a commercial for Slayer Espresso's new steam machine! Here's what Geoffs says:
Hey guys! Not only is Slayer an awesome company that I have loved since it's inception, but a while back Arthur Allen started working in their marketing department and asked if I'd be willing to make a little tune for the promos of their upcoming products. Of course I said yes! And of course Arthur has done amazing things with it! Thanks for the opportunity, man! I hope I get to work with you moooore!
Watch the 'mercial here and wissen to da musics within!
Also, that looks like a pretty kick-ass machine. If only I thought coffee had a good flavor taste instead of tasting like burnt bits you'd scrape off the bottom of an oven!
Categories: Music, My Famous Friends.


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Ornament - Rubens
Handmade Rubens Ornament
Approximately 6 inches tall
St. Nicolas specializes in bespoke, handmade decorations. For over 25 years, St. Nicolas has worked with a small charity in Thailand and India that helps disadvantaged rural women find work in their community, sewing decorations at home. Their Indian-made decorations are crafted using the traditional method of Zardozi embroidery, a highly skilled technique handed down from generation to generation that traditionally uses gold wires and jewels to embellish robes.
At this time, orders shipped within the United States are shipped using USPS or UPS. Tracking information will be provided via email.
International shipping is offered on case-by-case basis. Please email us at email@example.com to inquire.
For our local customers, we are pleased to offer a curbside pickup option! How it works:
Shop online at shop.pem.org
At checkout, select Curbside Pickup as your shipping method. Place your order.
Once we have prepared your order, you will receive an email that your order is ready for pickup.
Follow the pickup instructions provided in your email. Arrive at our designated curbside pickup location at 3 New Liberty Street and call 978-542-1619
- Orders not picked up within two weeks of order date will be canceled and refunded.
Please Note: Please allow 2-3 days from purchase date for processing. Curbside Pickup is available Thursday through Monday 11 am–4 pm.
We are pleased to accept returns within 30 days of the purchase date. All returned items must be in their original condition and packaging.
To begin your return process, please email us at: firstname.lastname@example.com
Please note: Sale, clearance and personal use items, such as face masks, cannot be returned or exchanged for store credit.


text:
A new study reveals that all children with Crohn's disease that were examined had a commonly occurring virus – an enterovirus – in their intestines. This link has previously not been shown for this chronic inflammatory intestinal disorder.
The findings are being published in the latest issue of the international journal Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology. These findings need to be confirmed in larger studies, but they are important, as this connection has never been pointed out before. This paves the way for a better understanding of what might be involved in causing the disease, says Alkwin Wanders, one of the scientists behind the study at Uppsala University and Uppsala University Hospital.
In Sweden several thousand adults live with Crohn's disease, and each year about 100 children and adolescents develop the disorder. The disease affects various parts of the gastrointestinal system and causes symptoms such as stomach aches, diarrhoea, and weight loss – in severe cases fistulas, or strictures in the intestines. The cause of Crohn's disease is not known. Mutations in more than 140 genes have been shown to be associated with the disorder, but this genetic connection is not a sufficient explanation. Many of these genes play key roles in the immune defence, which has prompted theories that the disease might be caused by impaired immune defence against various microorganisms. In that case, the disease would be a consequence of interplay between heredity and environment.
Recent research has shown that some of the genes that are strongly linked to the disorder are important for the immune defence against a certain type of viruses that have their genetic material in the form of RNA, so-called RNA viruses. Using this as a point of departure, an interdisciplinary research team was established in Sweden to investigate what role this type of virus plays in the disease.
The research team includes the paediatrician Niklas Nyström, the pathologist Alkwin Wanders, virus researchers Gun Frisk and Oskar Skog, the molecular biologist Mats Nilsson, and the geneticist Ulf Gyllensten at Uppsala University and Uppsala University Hospital, along with cell biologists Jonas Fuxe and Tove Berg the paediatrician Yigael Finkel at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
This unique composition, with complementary clinical and scientific expertise, has been extremely fruitful for our studies, says Alkwin Wanders.
In the present study the researchers investigated whether the RNA virus were present in children with Crohn´s disease. They focused in particular on the prevalence of enteroviruses, a group of RNA viruses that are known to infect the intestinal mucous lining. The results showed significant amounts of enteroviruses in the intestines of all of the children with Crohn´s disease, whereas the control group had no or only minimal amounts of enteroviruses in their intestines. Similar results were obtained using two different methods.
Enteroviruses were found not only in intestinal mucous linings but also in so-called nerve cell ganglia in deeper segments of the intestinal wall. Receptors for a group of enteroviruses were also found in both the intestinal mucous linings and nerve cell ganglia, which may explain how the virus can make its way into the nerve system in the intestine.
Another interesting finding is that the enterovirus could be thought to be stored in nerve cells in the intestine and to spread to different parts of the intestine via nerve fibres. This would explain both the fact that the disease is periodic (comes and goes) and the fact that it often affects multiple segments of the intestines, says Alkwin Wanders.
The present study comprises nine children with advanced Crohn's disease and fifteen children with incipient Crohn's disease symptoms. The research now wants to go on to examine larger groups of patients and more control individuals. They also want to pursue experimental research to investigate the link further.
Source: ScienceBlog


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ALL MY CHILDREN, ONE LIFE TO LIVE Return 2 Years After Cancellation — Online
Naturally television executives are trying to downplay the potential threat to their industry. While conceding that we are experiencing "an evolution of the viewing mechanism," Sony Pictures Television senior executive programming vice president Steve Kent insisted to Variety that "people have long predicted the demise of network television, but it still exists and will for the foreseeable future."
According to Greg Meng, one of the executive producers for DAYS OF OUR LIVES (which is produced by Sony Pictures Television), while network insiders had nothing but the best wishes for this project, they were confident that "these shows won't be competitive with us."
It seems like there is more fear among network suits than they initially let on.
Cady McClain and Hillary B. Smith share their excitement over AMC/OLTL being back in production
McClain: "I am so grateful for this moment in time. It's an incredibly beautiful experience that I wish everyone can have once in their lives. I feel so blessed. I can't wait to be at work every day!"
Smith: "Oh gosh, that was the most exciting thing of it all. We were all texting each other months before to see who was coming back. It was like a family reunion. It was also great to meet Jeff who is really committed to this project! He has been incredibly warm and welcoming and you can see the commitment."
WilleyWorld chooses 'Deathtrap' as 5th annual summer production
After four years of bringing ALL MY CHILDREN stars to perform in Ottawa, WilleyWorld Community Productions will continue the tradition and present the play "Deathtrap" as its fifth summer show — this time featuring not one, but two special guest artists — and a new location for the production.
"'Deathtrap' is a thriller that will have audiences glued to their seats — unless they're leaping out of them in shock," said Ottawa native Walt Willey (AMC's Jackson Montgomery) at a news conference Tuesday morning at City Hall.
Willey announced this year WWCP is bringing two guest artists to the Ottawa stage — Chance Willey, Walt's 18-year-old son, and Bobbie Eakes, his AMC co-star who portrayed Krystal Carey on the series.
Gary Carr joins DOWNTON ABBEY
His DOWNTON character, Jack Ross, is a jazz singer described as "a charming and charismatic" young man. The addition marks the first time Downton has had a black character. The show has in the past faced criticism that it lacks cultural diversity.
Ingo Rademacher in the DANCING WITH THE STARS bottom two, but survives
Last night, GENERAL HOSPITAL's Ingo Rademacher (ex-Jax) was in the bottom two on DANCING WITH THE STARS. Luckily, Andy Dick was sent home instead, but speaking with the actor after the show, he was shaken. "It's not a nice feeling to be in the bottom two," he admitted. "Not very good odds. I haven't cried enough yet. Next week I'm going to cry."
EASTENDERS storyline sparks surge of calls at Sale law firm
Slater Heelis Solicitous say the number of inquiries into marriage mediation has doubled after character Michael Moon ( played by Steve Shepherd) sought legal advice in separating from wife Janine Butcher (Charlie Brooks) and had mediation recommended as the best process to use by the on-screen family lawyer.
THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL's Katherine Kelly Lang on her supporting actress Daytime Emmy nomination
"I was supporting last year," she explains. "All my stories... I had no story that was about Brooke. I did a lot of mom stuff, and Brooke supported Susan [Flannery] during Stephanie's cancer storyline. If I'd had a lead story, I would have put myself in lead."
Chandler Massey excited about DAYS OF OUR LIVES nominations
"I'm thrilled about DAYS getting 17 nominations," Massey says. "Ari [Zucker, Nicole], Peggy [McCay, Caroline], and of course, Freddie [Smith, Sonny] got nominated. I'm thrilled for all three of them. The show made out well this year and I think DAYS deserves it. Everyone connected to the show works extremely hard and is very talented. I'm glad they're getting recognized for it." As for Massey's own reaction to being nominated for the third year in a row he shares, "I have the same feeling of gratitude and excitement I felt last year and the year before. Just being nominated is an honor and I appreciate it very much."
Freddie Smith honored to be nominated
"It's amazing. I woke up to my phone vibrating and saw that I had all these text messages and tweets. I took it all in, woke up and then realized, 'Oh, this is real!' It's an honor." Smith is also excited that co-star Chandler Massey (Will) is nominated in the same category. "To have both Chandler and I nominated is really cool because we play a couple on the show," he shares. "I'm so proud of Chandler and what we're doing."
GENERAL HOSPITAL's Jason Thompson on the scene he submitted for the Daytime Emmy Awards
"I ended up putting in the episode with the tie scene," he adds. "Where he wakes up and sees the ghost of Robin a couple ties when he's in bed, when he's in the shower and when he's tying his tie. Then he comes downstairs and sees Emma for a quick second and says 'I don't know how I'm going to do this.' I was happy with a lot of the stuff that happened last year as a team."
GH's Bradford Anderson on his Emmy material
Anderson reveals that the episode he submitted that earned him the nod was one from last summer when he had a confrontation with Jen Lilley's Maxie at Kelly's. "He gives her a speech about friendship," he says. "Sometimes it's hard when picking Emmy shows because my character isn't the kind of character that gets the knock down, drag out material. I'm not Lucky Spencer.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
NEWS: Daytime Emmy Reaction, Ingo Survives, Gary Carr Joins DOWNTON ABBEY, Cady McClain, Hillary B. Smith
Posted by Roger Newcomb
Categories: All My Children, Bradford Anderson, Cady McClain, Chandler Massey, Days of our Lives, Daytime, General Hospital, Hillary B. Smith, Katherine Kelly Lang, News Roundup, One Life to Live, The Bold and the Beautiful
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( Tomdispatch.com ) – [Editorial note: This remnant of a manuscript, discovered in a vault near the coastal town of Walpole, Massachusetts, appears to have been part of a larger project, probablyenvisioned as an interpretive history of the United States since the year 2000. Only a single chapter, probably written near the midpoint of the twenty-first century, has survived. Whether the remainder of the manuscript has been lost or the author abandoned it before its completion is unknown.]
Chapter 1
The Launch
From our present vantage point, it seems clear that, by 2019, the United States had passed a point of no return. In retrospect, this was the moment when indications of things gone fundamentally awry should have become unmistakable. Although at the time much remained hidden in shadows, the historic pivot now commonly referred to as the Great Reckoning had commenced.
Even today, it remains difficult to understand why, given mounting evidence of a grave crisis, passivity persisted for so long across most sectors of society. An epidemic of anomie affected a large swath of the population. Faced with a blizzard of troubling developments, large and small, Americans found it difficult to put things into anything approximating useful perspective. Few even bothered to try. Fewer succeeded. As with predictions of cataclysmic earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, a not-in-my-lifetime mood generally prevailed.
During what was then misleadingly known as the Age of Trump, the political classes dithered. While the antics of President Donald Trump provoked intense interest — the word "intense" hardly covers the attention paid to him — they also provided a convenient excuse for letting partisan bickering take precedence over actual governance or problem solving of any sort. Meanwhile, "thought leaders" (a term then commonly used to describe pontificating windbags) indulged themselves with various pet projects.
In the midst of what commentators were pleased to call the Information Age, most ordinary Americans showed a pronounced affinity for trivia over matters of substance. A staggering number of citizens willingly traded freedom and privacy for convenience, bowing to the dictates of an ever-expanding array of personalized gadgetry. What was then called a "smartphone" functioned as a talisman of sorts, the electronic equivalent of a rosary or prayer beads. Especially among the young, separation from one's "phone" for more than a few minutes could cause acute anxiety and distress. The novelty of "social media" had not yet worn off, with its most insidious implications just being discovered.
Divided, distracted, and desperately trying to keep up: these emerged then as the abiding traits of life in contemporary America. Craft beer, small-batch bourbon, and dining at the latest farm-to-table restaurant often seemed to matter more than the fate of the nation or, for that matter, the planet as a whole. But all that was about to change.
Scholars will undoubtedly locate the origins of the Great Reckoning well before 2019. Perhaps they will trace its source to the aftermath of the Cold War when American elites succumbed to a remarkable bout of imperial hubris, while ignoring (thanks in part to the efforts of Big Energy companies) the already growing body of information on the human-induced alteration of the planet, which came to be called "climate change" or "global warming." While, generally speaking, the collective story of humankind unfolds along a continuum, by 2019 conditions conducive to disruptive change were forming. History was about to zig sharply off its expected course.
This disruption occurred, of course, within a specific context. During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, American society absorbed a series of punishing blows. First came the contested election of 2000, the president of the United States installed in office by a 5-4 vote of a politicized Supreme Court, which thereby effectively usurped the role of the electorate. And that was just for starters. Following in short order came the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which the world's (self-proclaimed) premier intelligence services failed to anticipate and the world's preeminent military establishment failed to avert.
Less than two years later, the administration of George W. Bush, operating under the delusion that the ongoing war in Afghanistan was essentially won, ordered U.S. forces to invade Iraq, a nation that had played no part in the events of 9/11. The result of this patently illegal war of aggression would not be victory, despite the president's almost instant "
Then, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast, killing nearly 2,000 Americans. U.S. government agencies responded with breathtaking ineptitude, a sign of things to come, as nature itself was turning increasingly unruly. Other natural disasters of unnatural magnitude followed. In 2007, to cite but one example, more than 9,000 wildfires in California swept through more than a million acres. Like swarms of locusts, fires now became an annual (and worsening) plague ravaging the Golden State and the rest of the West Coast. If this weren't enough of a harbinger of approaching environmental catastrophe, the populations of honeybees, vital to American agriculture, began to collapse in these very same years.
Americans were, as it turned out, largely indifferent to the fate of honeybees. They paid far greater attention to the economy, however, which experienced its own form of collapse in 2008. The ensuing Great Recession saw millions thrown out of work and millions more lose their homes as a result of fraudulent mortgage practices. None of the perpetrators were punished. The administration of President Barack Obama chose instead to bail out offending banks and large corporations. Record federal deficits resulted, as the government abandoned once and for all even the pretense of trying to balance the budget. And, of course, the nation's multiple wars dragged on and on and on.
Through all these trials, the American people more or less persevered. If not altogether stoic, they remained largely compliant. As a result, few members of the nation's political, economic, intellectual, or cultural elites showed any awareness that something fundamental might be amiss. The two established parties retained their monopoly on national politics. As late as 2016, the status quo appeared firmly intact. Only with that year's presidential election did large numbers of citizens signal that they had had enough: wearing red MAGA caps rather than wielding pitchforks, they joined Donald Trump's assault on that elite and, thumbing their noses at Washington, installed a reality TV star in the White House.
To the legions who had found the previous status quo agreeable, Trump's ascent to the apex of American politics amounted to an unbearable affront. They might tolerate purposeless, endless wars, raise more or less any set of funds for the military that was so unsuccessfully fighting them, and turn a blind eye to economic arrangements that fostered inequality on a staggering scale. They might respond to the accelerating threat posed by climate change with lip service and, at best, quarter-measures. But Donald Trump in the Oval Office? That they could not abide.
As a result, from the moment of his election, Trump dominated the American scene. Yet the outrage that he provoked, day in and day out, had this unfortunate side effect: it obscured developments that would in time prove to be of far more importance than the 45th American president himself. Like
Here, then, is a very partial listing of some of the most important of those signals then readily available to anyone bothering to pay attention. On the eve of the Great Reckoning, however, they were generally treated as mere curiosities or matters of limited urgency — problems to be deferred to a later, more congenial moment.
Item: The reality of climate change was now indisputable. All that remained in question was how rapidly it would occur and the extent (and again rapidity) of the devastation that it would ultimately inflict.
Item: Despite everything that was then known about the dangers of further carbon emissions, the major atmospheric contributor to global warming, they only continued to increase, despite the myriad conferences and agreements intended to curb them. (U.S. carbon emissions, in particular, were still rising then, and global emissions were expected to rise by record or near-record amounts as 2019 began.)
Item: The polar icecap was disappearing, with scientists reporting that it had melted more in just 20 years than in the previous 10,000. This, in turn, meant that sea levels would continue to rise at record rates, posing an increasing threat to coastal cities.
Item: Deforestation and desertification were occurring at an alarming rate.
Item: Approximately eight million metric tons of plastic were seeping into the world's oceans each year, from the ingestion of which vast numbers of seabirds, fish, and marine mammals were dying annually. Payback would come in the form of microplastics contained in seafood consumed by humans.
Item: With China and other Asian countries increasingly refusing to accept American recyclables, municipalities in the United States found themselves overwhelmed by accumulations of discarded glass, plastic, metal, cardboard, and paper. That year, the complete breakdown of the global recycling system already loomed as a possibility.
Item: Worldwide bird and insect populations were plummeting. In other words, the Sixth Mass Extinction had begun.
All of these fall into the category of what we recognize today as planetary issues of existential importance. But even in 2019 there were other matters of less than planetary significance that ought to have functioned as a wake-up call. Among them were:
Item: With the federal government demonstrably unable to secure U.S. borders, immigration authorities were seizing hundreds of thousands of migrants annually. By 2019, the Trump administration was confining significant numbers of those migrants, including small children, in what were, in effect, concentration camps.
Item: Cybercrime had become a major growth industry, on track to rake in $6 trillion annually by 2021. Hackers were already demonstrating the ability to hold large American cities hostage and the authorities proved incapable of catching up.
Item: With the three richest Americans — Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet — controlling more wealth than the bottom 50% of the entire population, the United States had become a full-fledged oligarchy. While politicians occasionally expressed their dismay about this reality, prior to 2019 it was widely tolerated.
Item: As measured by roads, bridges, dams, or public transportation systems, the nation's infrastructure was strikingly inferior to what it had been a half-century earlier. (By 2019, China, for instance, had built more than 19,000 milesof high-speed rail; the U.S., not one.) Agreement that this was a problem that needed fixing was universal; corrective action (and government financing), however, was not forthcoming.
Item: Military spending in constant dollars
Item: Incivility, rudeness, bullying, and general nastinesshad become rampant, while the White House, once the site of solemn ceremony, deliberation, and decision, played host to politically divisive shouting matches and verbal brawls.
To say that Americans were oblivious to such matters would be inaccurate. Some were, for instance, considering a ban on plastic straws. Yet taken as a whole, the many indications of systemic and even planetary dysfunction received infinitely less popular attention than the pregnancies of British royals, the antics of the justifiably forgotten Kardashian clan, or fantasy football, a briefly popularearly twenty-first century fad.
Of course, decades later, viewed with the benefit of hindsight, the implications of these various trends and data points seem painfully clear: the dominant ideological abstraction of late postmodernity — liberal democratic capitalism — was rapidly failing or had simply become irrelevant to the challenges facing the United States and the human species as a whole. To employ another then-popular phrase, liberal democratic capitalism had become an expression of "fake news," a scam sold to the many for the benefit of the privileged few.
"Toward the end of an age," historian John Lukacs (1924-2019) once observed, "more and more people lose faith in their institutions and finally they abandon their belief that these institutions might still be reformed from within." Lukacs wrote those words in 1970, but they aptly described the situation that had come to exist in that turning-point year of 2019. Basic American institutions — the overworked U.S. military being a singular exception — no longer commanded popular respect.
In essence, the postmodern age was ending, though few seemed to know it — with elites, in particular, largely oblivious to what was occurring. What would replace postmodernity in a planet heading for ruin remained to be seen.
Only when…
[Editor's note: Here the account breaks off.]
Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular and the author most recently of The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, is a co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington, D.C. think tank in formation.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer's new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Copyright 2019 Andrew Bacevich
Via Tomdispatch.com
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ABC News: "Massive protests erupt over conditions at detention centers"


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Does someone has a reference to a modern proof of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula?
All proofs I have ever seen are related only to matrix Lie groups / Lie algebras and are not at all geometric (i.e. depend on indices, bases ect.)
By a 'modern' proof I'm thinking of a proof entirely in terms of differential geometry, i.e. in terms of the tangent bundle on the Lie group manifold or even better in terms of jets.
I'll keep the formulation vague on purpose, to higher my chances to get a good reference. I think the question is pretty clear anyway.
Beyond the plain BCH-equation I would like to get a deeper understanding WHY the commutator (and the linear structure of the Lie algebra) is enough to define the group product locally and what is geometrically going on.