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A new study confirms what has been long suspected: elephant populations are being decimated to the point that the survival of the species in Central Africa is now in question.
According to a study by the Gabonese National Parks Agency, WWF and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), poachers have killed an estimated 11,100 elephants – between 44 to 77 per cent of the population –in parts of Minkébé's National Park and its surroundings in northern Gabon since 2004, when it held Africa's largest forest elephant population.
"The situation is out of control. We are witnessing the systematic slaughter of the world's largest land mammal," said Bas Huijbregts, head of the Central African strand of WWF's global campaign against illegal wildlife trade.
"Some reports lead the world to believe that the ivory war has moved from the Central Africa region to other parts of the continent. This is wrong. What has changed is that these criminals are now also attacking the better protected elephant herds in Eastern and Southern Africa."
"But here in Central Africa, unnoticed to the world, elephants are losing this war at lightning speed."
A regional crisis
Fiona Maisels, a conservation scientist at WCS who has been analyzing the survey data, said that the data pointed to a regional crisis.
"The Minkébé data are representative of trends across all remaining forest elephant strongholds in the region, not to speak of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is believed to hold 7,000 to 10,000 elephants, or less than ten per cent of its population twenty years ago,"
Gabon, Maisels explained, represents only about 13% of the forests of Central Africa but is home to over half of Africa's forest elephants. The Minkébé National Park, in turn, is home to Gabon's biggest elephant population and to probably the largest forest elephant population in Africa. "At least until these data came out," she said.
Over in in the Central African Republic (CAR) – which in the mid 1980's held up to 80,000 elephants – poachers are taking advantage of the political instability to wipe out the country's remaining elephant, which can now number in the thousands.
Speaking from Bayanga in southwest CAR, Guian Zokoe, who is in charge of the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas for the CAR Ministry of Water and Forests, says poachers have killed at least 17 elephants around the Ngotto forest in the south of the country in the past few days. Unconfirmed reports by villagers hint that some sixty elephants were also killed further north, near the town of Yaloke, he said, adding there were reports of killings throughout the country.
"The Central African Republic's new government has to send its armed forces to stop these poachers before they hit its last elephant stronghold, Dzanga-Sangha, a recently declared World Heritage Site."
"It is not just a question of protecting CAR's natural resources, but of stopping these armed groups from waltzing around the country and terrorizing local populations wherever they go," Zokoe added.
How to end poaching
Although solutions to effectively address the poaching crisis in the region are varied, what can be concluded is clear: left unaddressed, Central Africa's elephants will follow the footstep of their western black and northern white rhinoceroses, both hunted to extinction.
"Governments in the region such as Cameroon, Chad and Gabon are recruiting more rangers and send their armies to fight these poachers. But that is not enough," Huijbregts says.
"The international intelligence community needs to get involved in this fight as soon as possible, in order to identify, track and put out of business these global criminal networks, which corrupt governments, erode national security and hamper economic development prospects."
But Huijbregts explained that to effectively put an end to the poaching crisis, countries in in East Asia would need to address their exploding demand for ivory, which is resulting in record prices.
"Unless the governments of the region and demand countries treat this issue as an international emergency we cannot rule out that, in our lifetime, there will no longer be any viable elephant populations in Central Africa," Huijbregts said.
Massive quantities of illegal African ivory are being laundered through Thai shops.
To save Africa's elephants it is essential that Thailand closes this legal loophole. Join us in asking Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to ban all ivory trade in Thailand.
For any media enquiries:
Pease contact Jules K Caron, WWF Head of Communications for the Illegal Wildlife Trade Campaign, Central Africa Region Programme Offices:Tel: +237 79 51 90 97 E-mail: email@example.com Skype: jcaron.wwfcarpo


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Guest Column: Ronald Reagan understood gun control
January 16, 2013
In the wake of the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., many conservatives have shown little inclination to consider new legislation on gun access. Those of us on the right who have expressed receptiveness to new proposals have been criticized within our own ranks.
By the standards of certain modern-day conservatives, however, even Ronald Reagan was a traitor to the Second Amendment and the conservative cause. After all, he signed into law gun restrictions that still exist today and was a strong voice in ensuring passage of others after his presidency.
Reagan is fondly remembered as a defender of the Constitution and of gun rights. However, while remaining true to that underlying belief, Reagan, before, during and after his presidency, supported common-sense gun restrictions that were compatible with the Second Amendment.
While still president in 1986, Reagan signed into law the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which was hailed by gun rights advocates because it included numerous protections for gun owners. However, it also banned ownership of any fully automatic rifles that were not already registered on the day the law was signed.
Then, in 1991, four years after the controversial Brady Bill was introduced in Congress and with passage again in doubt, Reagan penned an op-ed in The New York Times titled "Why I'm for the Brady Bill." In it, he expressed support for a seven-day waiting period before a purchaser could take possession of a handgun, an even more stringent restriction than the five-day cooling-off period that was included in the final legislation, and less stringent than the 15-day cooling-off period he signed into law as governor of California. Reagan stated that prohibitions on sales to felons, drug addicts and the mentally ill had "no enforcement mechanism" and that "a uniform standard across the country" was necessary.
Regarding handguns, Reagan stated, "This level of violence must be stopped. … If the passage of the Brady Bill were to result in a reduction of only 10 or 15 percent of those numbers (and it could be a good deal greater), it would be well worth making it the law of the land."
Finally, in 1994, Reagan successfully threw his support behind the Assault Weapons Ban in a joint letter to the Boston Globe, saying, "As a longtime gun owner and supporter of the right to bear arms … I am convinced that the limitations imposed in this bill are absolutely necessary." The ban on assault weapons had a sunset provision and lapsed in 2004, and many gun advocates have strongly opposed any attempts to pass it again, including after the Newtown massacre.
Was Reagan a heretic, an apostate, an unprincipled Constitution shredder, an inauthentic conservative, as some have accused me of being after I suggested recently that we should support sensible gun restrictions? Of course not.
Reagan appreciated that the Second Amendment does not say whatever you want it to say and that there was nothing incompatible with those rights and appropriate safeguards. Reagan also appreciated that, politically, doing nothing in the face of carnage was unacceptable.
The brilliance of Reagan's leadership was that, although he was a conservative, he was willing to compromise and be pragmatic. That didn't make him unprincipled or insincere. Then again, as Jeb Bush has observed, perhaps even Reagan was unfit for the current-day version of the movement he fathered, as there exists "an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement."
So, for conservatives so quick to accuse some of us as being insensitive to the Constitution or inauthentic in our conservatism, I say, do your homework and remember the Gipper.
Brett Joshpe is a lawyer in New York City and co-author of "Why You're Wrong About the Right."

subset: commoncrawl


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An Open Letter to Students Wondering, "Why Do We Use Radians Instead of Degrees?"
Let me start with a question of my own. Did you know that you speak Babylonian?
You may not think that you do – you can't ask for directions to a Babylonian bathroom, or order lunch off of a Babylonian menu, or ask a good-looking Babylonian out for coffee. But you've inherited Babylon's legacy nevertheless.
You've probably noticed that our systems of counting and measuring are largely base 10. There are 10 years in a decade, 10 decades in a century, and 10 centuries in a millennium. But take a look at shorter time lengths: We don't carve up the day into 10 hours, each 100 minutes long, even though this would make perfect sense. Instead, we divide our time up by multiples of 60 – 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour.
Why do we do this? Because our Babylonian uncles used a base 60 number system, and we've been following their example ever since.
Babylon left another relic in our system of measurements, one that requires a little deeper explanation, and which lies at the heart of your question (yes, I'm getting there): the degree.
Angles are everywhere. They form when light bounces off of a mirror, when a bird dives towards the water, when a lamp casts a shadow on a distant wall. And mathematicians, being the go-getters that they are, need a way to measure angles.
It's clear from looking at two angles which one is bigger:
But without any numbers, it's hard to say how much bigger. That's where angle measurements come in.
We can think of any angle as a piece of a circle. For example, a right angle (like the corner of a rectangle) is one quarter of a circle, and the angle in an equilateral triangle takes up one sixth of a circle:
So, how do we measure angles? Well, the Babylonians had an idea. They decided to cut a circle into 360 pieces, and call one of those pieces a degree.
This makes it easy to talk about the size of an angle. Since there are 360 degrees in a whole circle, a right angle will be one-quarter as many degrees – i.e., 90o.
Most people learn this system so well, and at such a young age, that it becomes second nature. Skateboarders pull 540o's, a businessman looking to change plans will call for a 180o, and at one point in our political past, Americans chanted "Fifty-four forty or fight!" to demand that our border with Canada be set at 54o40' of latitude (where 1' = 1/60th of a degree).
What this familiarity disguises is that the number 360 is totally arbitrary, chosen simply because the Babylonians preferred multiples of 60. Why not divide the circle into 100 pieces, or 5 pieces, or 400 pieces? (In fact, the 400-piece system does exist – 1/400th of a circle is called a gradian, and it's that weird mode on your calculator that you never use.) There's no mathematical reason to pick 360, or any specific number, for that matter. It's fundamentally just a matter of taste.
As it turns out, there's a better way. But to explore it, we've got to lift ourselves out of this rut of thinking. No more dividing the circle into some arbitrary number of units.
Instead, let's draw a whole circle, and throw in a radius for good measure.
Now, let's take that radius and wrap it around the outside of the circle. See how it forms an angle? We'll call that angle 1 radian.
Here's an angle that's 2 radians, for comparison.
And here's an angle that's 3 radians. Notice that it's almost half a circle (what we used to call 180o), but not quite.
This raises a question: how many radians are there in a circle? Draw it out, and you'll find that it's not a nice, round integer:
Looks like a little more than 6. But how much more?
For that, we'll need to dredge up a geometric formula relating the circumference and the radius:
C = 2πr
In other words, the circumference is equal to the length of the radius times 2π (where π is roughly 3.14. For a better – but still imperfect – approximation, try this).
This tells us exactly how many radians there are in a circle: 2π!
Knowing this, we can now convert between radians and degrees – just as we can convert between miles and kilometers, or Fahrenheit and Celsius. Radians become a perfectly valid, usable measure of angles.
But I know you're not satisfied with that. You're sharp-witted and wary of being made to learn new things. You want to know: What was wrong with degrees? Arbitrary or not, they let us work with integers ( like 30o) instead of nasty ratios involving irrational numbers (like π/6). Degrees are warm, friendly, familiar. Why ditch them in favor of this bizarre radian?
Here's the best answer I can give you: Degrees are fine for everyday measurements. But Trigonometry marks a turning point in math, when the student lifts his gaze from the everyday towards larger, more distant ideas. You begin exploring basic relationships, deep symmetries, the kinds of patterns that make the universe tick. And to navigate that terrain, you need a notion of angles that's more natural, more fundamental, than slicing up the circle into an arbitrary number of pieces. The number π, strange though it may seem, lies at the heart of mathematics. The number 360 doesn't. Clinging to that Babylonian artifact will only distract you and obscure the elegant truths you're searching for.
Just like you, I learned to speak Babylonian long before I encountered radians. And for years, Babylonian remained my native tongue – to give an angle in radians first required an act of mental translation. So if you're resistant towards radians, nostalgic for Babylon, I can sympathize.
Still, when push comes to shove, radians can take you places that degrees simply can't. That's why, when my Trig students give an angle in degrees instead of radians, I tell them: "I'm sorry, I don't speak Babylonian."
I hope this helps. When in doubt, remember: 180o = π radians.


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Rose Wave Crest
The Navajo sandstone of Anelope Canyon is turned a rose color as light is reflected and refracted off other pieces of stone in a narrow opening. NOTE: I did lighten the shadow / dark areas of the photograph in post by about 50% of their luminosity to more acurately reflect the tones as viewed when I took the photograph. I also decreased the overall exposure by one half stop as I had overexposed the image by that much atthe time of exposure.
Light Waterfall
Light beemed down a narrow shaft and cascaded off small outcroppings creating the feeling of a waterfall of light. No, I didn't throw dust in the air. NOTE: I increased the exposure in post by one stop as I had underexposed the image at the time.
A photograph taken directly up in Antelop Canyon North of a vortex created by fast flowing and spiraling debris that pushed through this space during flash floods. NOTE: No major edits were made to this photo in post. The biggest thing I had to do was remove dust particles in post that I didn't see on the lens prior to taking the shot. While this is painstakingly time consuming, it doesn't alter the result away from what was obvserved at the time of the photograph.
Follow the Light
This photograph was taken in the first entrance chamber of Antelope Canyon North. No, I didn't throw dust in the air to create this affect. NOTE: No major edits were made to the photo in post.
A Lady's Profile
A closeup of Lady in the Wind in Lower Antelope Canyon. NOTE: No major edits were made to this photo in post.
A Lady's Locks
A view from underneath the flowing locks of Lady in the Wind in Lower Antelope Canyon. NOTE: No major edits were made to this photo in post.
Lines and Colors
The Curve
Antelope Light
The Vortex
A view straight up of the vortex's creates in the rock by the flood waters.
Light and Tree
Antelope Entrance 2


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If you're looking for a good movie to watch tonight while curled up in the sofa with your significant other, Arduino: The Documentary may…not be the right film for you. But if you're as crazy over hacks and DIY projects as we here at GeekTech are, you owe it to yourself to take some time and watch it.
Arduino, of course, is a popular hardware toolkit/platform that's often used for prototyping, or more creatively, for various hacks and DIY tech projects (many of which we've featured on this very blog).
The documentary has been released under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial/Share-Alike license, and you can watch a stream of it on the Arduino Documentary site. English- and Spanish-language versions are available, and a torrent and direct-download should be available soon. Check it out!
[Arduino: The Documentary via Engadget and Adafruit]
Like this? You might also enjoy…
- Kinect, Wii Used to Play 'Call of Duty' in Epic Gadget Mashup Hack
- Robotic Privacy Curtain Fails, But Amuses the Masses
- Nexus S Runs Ubuntu; Linux Replaces…Linux
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Expanded 13-game schedule produces most-watched season
for Thursday Night Football with an average of 7.3 million viewers
Season rating up 8% vs. 2011 for the #1 Thursday program on cable this Fall
NFL Network's expanded schedule of Thursday Night Football broadcasts set rating and viewership records for the network in 2012. Including the audience from over-the-air broadcasts in local markets, Thursday Night Football finished with a record-high per game average audience of 7.3 million viewers in 2012, marking the fourth consecutive year that Thursday Night Football has set an all-time high viewership mark for NFL Network.
For the season, Thursday Night Football on NFL Network averaged a 4.6 US HH rating (including OTA's), another record for the network. The 4.6 US HH rating represents an 8% increase from the 2011 season. Each week of the 2012 Thursday Night Football schedule, NFL Network's game telecast was the day's most-watched program on cable television.
The Thursday Night Football opener in Week Two between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers delivered the highest Thursday Night Football audience of 2012 with 10.8 million viewers. The Bears-Packers opener is the fourth most-watched Thursday Night Football game in NFL Network's history with the 2011 Thanksgiving Night game between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens still holding the top mark with 12.3 million viewers.
All Thursday Night Football games were streamed live on NFL Mobile from Verizon with complementary online coverage via NFL.com/LIVE Thursday Night Football.
Thursday Night Football on NFL Network was first broadcast in 2006.
(Source: Nielsen Media Research, Live + Same Day viewing)
About NFL Network's 2012 Thursday Night Football
Play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler and Emmy-nominated analyst Mike Mayock returned to the Thursday Night Football broadcast booth for the second season and were joined by Alex Flanagan, in her third year as the sideline reporter.
Two hours before kickoff, NFL Network presented Thursday Night Kickoff Presented by Craftsmanlive from the stadium starting at 6:00 PM ET. Host Rich Eisen along with Hall of Famers Marshall Faulk, Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin, and former head coach Steve Mariucci provided analysis and the latest news while reporter Stacey Dales provided pregame reports from the locker rooms, as well as interviews with players and coaches.
The Lexus Halftime Show and the Kay Jewelers Postgame Show provided additional analysis live from inside the stadium each week on Thursday Night Football.
Bollywood superstar and 2101 Records/Desi Hits!/ Interscope Records recording artist Priyanka Chopra was the featured artist for NFL Network's Thursday Night Kickoff Presented by Craftsman pregame show. Priyanka's debut single "In My City,' featuring will.i.am and produced by RedOne (Lady Gaga) and Brian Kennedy, was the music bed for the intro to Thursday Night Kickoff Presented by Craftsman. For more information on Priyanka Chopra, please visit priyankachopramusic.com.
Leading in to every Thursday Night Football game, Grammy Award-winning artist Cee Lo Green sang the anthem entitled "Blitzkrieg Bop" (I Love Football), set to The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop." The 90-second show open for each Thursday Night Football game featured fan-sourced videos uploaded by fans.
NFL Network 2012 Thursday Night Football Schedule
All games at 8:00 pm ET
- Week 2 – 9/13: Green Bay 23, Chicago 10
- Week 3 – 9/20:New York Giants 36, Carolina Panthers 7
- Week 4 – 9/27:Baltimore Ravens 23, Cleveland Browns 16
- Week 5 – 10/4: St. Louis Rams 17, Arizona Cardinals 3
- Week 6 – 10/11:Tennessee Titans 26, Pittsburgh Steelers 23
- Week 7 – 10/18:San Francisco 49ers 13, Seattle Seahawks 6
- Week 8 – 10/25:Tampa Bay Buccaneers 36, Minnesota Vikings 17
- Week 9 – 11/1:San Diego Chargers 31, Kansas City Chiefs 13
- Week 10 – 11/8:Indianapolis Colts 27, Jacksonville Jaguars 10
- Week 11 – 11/15:Buffalo Bills 19, Miami Dolphins 14
- Week 13 – 11/29:Atlanta Falcons 23, New Orleans Saints 13
- Week 14 – 12/6:Denver Broncos 26, Oakland Raiders 13
- Week 15 – 12/13:Cincinnati Bengals 34, Philadelphia Eagles 13
For the entire 2012 NFL schedule, visit www.NFL.com.
NFL Network broadcasts seven days a week, 24 hours a day on a year-round basis and is the only television network fully dedicated to the NFL and the sport of football. For fans on the go, all NFL Network programming is streamed live on NFL Mobile from Verizon. For more information, log on to www.nfl.com/nflnetwork. NFL.com is the exclusive internet home of NFL Network.


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Francisco Hidalgo was born in the Andalusia region, and studied fine arts in Madrid, Barcelona and Paris. Although he eventually became famous for his work as a photographer, he began his career as a comic artist. Sometimes using the pseudonym Yves Roy, began his career drawing for Gran Chicos and Chicos. From 1948, he adapted the police novels of Rafael González into the comic series 'Doctor Niebla'. Written at first by Silver Kane and later Victor Mora, this series continued until 1959 in such magazines as Superpulgarcito and Le Supplemento de Historietas de DDT. Hidalgo also drew the series 'Dick Tober' for Acotan, as well as 'Angel Audaz' in Nuevo Coyotte. In the mid-1950s, he emigrated to France, where he began doing comics for Spirou and Pierrot ('Zalta el Libertador'). With writer Guy Hempay, he created the series 'Blason d'Argent' in Coeurs Vaillants in 1957. This series was later continued by Guy Mouminoux.
Among his most famous series are 'Bob Mallard', that appeared in Vaillant with scripts by Jean Sanitas, and 'Teddy Ted', a series for which he drew the first three episodes with scripts by Roger Lécureux. In the magazine Pilote, Hidalgo illustrated several short stories, as well as the series 'Luc Lancier - Prototype 2000' and 'Éric Murat'. His work was also published in Record ('Jack de Minuit', written by Jacques Lob) and Chouchou ('Pat Patrick et la Dame de Hong Kong'. In the late sixties, he stopped making comics and devoted his time to photography. He gained fame in the 1970s and 1980s for his images of famous cities like Paris, New York, London and Venice.
Le petit musée de Teddy Ted
(en français)


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Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
She would merengue and do the cha-cha
And while she tried to be a star
Tony always tended bar
Across the crowded floor, they worked from 8 til 4
They were young and they had each other
Who could ask for more?
At the copa (CO!) Copacabana (Copacabana)
The hottest spot north of Havana (here)
At the copa (CO!) Copacabana
Music and passion were always in fashion
At the copa.... they fell in love
His name was Rico
He wore a diamond
He was escorted to his chair, he saw Lola dancing there
And when she finished,he called her over
But Rico went a bit to far
Tony sailed across the bar
And then the punches flew and chairs were smashed in two
There was blood and a single gun shot
But just who shot who?
At the copa... she lost her love
Her name is Lola, she was a showgirl,
But that was 30 years ago, when they used to have a show
Now it's a disco, but not for Lola,
Still in dress she used to wear,
Faded feathers in her hair
She sits there so refined,and drinks herself half-blind
She lost her youth and she lost her Tony
Now she's lost her mind
At the copa... don't fall in love
Don't fall in love


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"If you are careful," Garp wrote, "if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day: what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane."
John Irving
The World According to Garp


text:
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text:
SAN ANTONIO -- Steven Bowditch held on to win the Texas Open in windy conditions Sunday for his first PGA Tour victory and a spot in the Masters.
The 30-year-old Australian bogeyed the par-5 18th for a 4-over 76 for a one-stroke victory.
"I'm over the moon. I really can't believe it," said Bowditch, who attempted suicide in 2006 and has fought depression throughout his career.
It was the highest closing score by a winner since Vijay Singh finished with a 4-over 76 in the 2004 PGA Championship, and the highest in a non-major since Fred Couples had a 5-over 77 in the 1983 Kemper Open.
Bowditch finished at 8-under 280 at TPC San Antonio and earned $1,116,000.
"Every time I got out of check, looking ahead to the Masters and winning golf events and making my speeches before I was finished, I had to pull myself in check every time," said Bowditch, wearing a green shirt. "And it happened a lot today."
Bowditch, based in Dallas, entered the week 339th in the world and had only two top-10 finishes in eight years on the tour. He won once on the Australasian circuit and twice on the Web.Com Tour.
"He's been a battler. He's gone through a lot in his life," said John Senden, a fellow Australian who won the Valspar Championship two weeks ago.
Senden waited about an hour after his round to shake Bowditch's hand.
"That last putt wasn't his best, but to finish it off he was as cool as a cucumber really," Senden said. "I'm proud to be his mate."
Will MacKenzie and Daniel Summerhays tied for second. MacKenzie shot 70, and Summerhays had a 71.
Chesson Hadley and Ryan Palmer missed chances to get into the Masters through the top 50 in the world ranking. Hadley, the Puerto Rico Open winner, needed at least a sixth-place finish, but closed with an 80 to tie for 56th at 5 over. Palmer needed a top-three finish and had an 82 to also tie for 56th.
Bowditch played the front nine in 3-over 39, making a double bogey on the par-4 fourth. He countered a bogey on the par-3 13th with a birdie on the par-5 14th and made three pars before missing a 3-foot par putt and settling for a bogey on 18.
On the par-3 16th, he got up-and-down after missing the green. He pushed his drive on the par-4 17th, hit his approach on the green and two-putted, then pulled his tee shot left on 18, recovered with a shot to the fairway and reached the green in three.
"I just drew back on some experience," Bowditch said.
MacKenzie made a 13-foot birdie putt on the 17th to pull within a stroke of Bowditch, but the Australian tapped in from 2 feet for his birdie at No. 14 to push the advantage back to two.
Matt Kuchar and Andrew Loupe shot 75s to tie for fourth at 6-under.


text:
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Carter Hutton stopped 38-of-39 shots in his first career win Sunday, backstopping the Nashville Predators over Winnipeg 3-1.
Hutton, who allowed one goal on 22 shots in his Oct. 3 NHL debut against St. Louis, kept the Predators in the game as he stopped all 26 shots he faced over the first two periods.
Nashville broke a scoreless tie in the second period on unassisted goals from Eric Nystrom and Patric Hornqvist.
Matt Cullen also scored as the Preds notched a second straight road win and their fourth victory in five games overall.
Evander Kane scored in the third period and Ondrej Pavelec made 23 saves for the Jets, who were coming off a 4-3 Friday shootout win over the Blues.


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Cardamom Infused Maple Syrup 250ml
Cardamom Infused Maple Syrup 250ml
Sale Sold out
Regular price $20.99 USD
Regular priceUnit price per
Sale price
So many great spices go well with maple syrup but cardamom is one of our favorites. We have made sure the spice shines through so you can add it to a cocktail or drizzle it over a favorite dish and taste just a bit of the cardamom. Serve it as a seasoning for curry or add it to frosting for a sophisticated turn. 250ml.


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Podcasts at a Glance
Episode 126 - Live at IHS 2011
|Welcome to The MelloCast -- a Podcast dedicated to the Mellophone,
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Episode 126: Live at the 2011 IHS Symposium
Hosts: Al Perkins, Dr. John Q. Ericson, Chris Nalls, Mark Taylor
Episode 125: Summer Camps
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Episode 124: First Horns
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Episode 123: How Cool is Your Case?
Hosts: Al Perkins, Chris Nalls, Mark Taylor
Episode 122: Interview With the Legendary Gordon Higginbottom
Hosts: Al Perkins, Chris Nalls, Gordon Higginbottom
Episode 121: Dream Horns
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text:
Candice Miller voted Yea (Passage) on this Legislation.
Read statements Candice Miller made in this general time period.
Title: Conservation and Economic Growth Act
Prohibits the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture from restricting the activities of U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Federal lands under his or her jurisdiction and located within 100 miles of an international border.
Title: Conservation and Economic Growth Act


text:
Uwe Siemon-Netto
There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble. "Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday.
His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism's "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," he wrote in the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today.
Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.
Writes Turkish philosopher Harun Yahya, "Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance."
As British philosopher Anthony Flew, once as hard-nosed a humanist as any, mused when turning his back on his former belief: It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.
Flew still does not accept the God of the Bible. But he has embraced the intelligent design concept of scholars such as William Dembski who only four years ago claimed to have been mobbed by pro-evolutionist colleagues at -- of all places -- Baylor University, a highly respected Southern Baptist institution in Waco, Tex.
The stunning desertion of a former intellectual ambassador of secular humanism to the belief in some form of intelligence behind the design of the universe makes Yahya's prediction sound probable: "The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world."
A few years ago, European scientists sniggered when studies in the United States -- for example, at Harvard and Duke universities -- showed a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. Now 1,200 studies at research centers around the world have come to similar conclusions, according to "Psychologie Heute," a German journal, citing, for example, the marked improvement of multiple sclerosis patients in Germany's Ruhr District do to "spiritual resources."
Atheism's other Achilles heel are the acts on inhumanity and lunacy committed in its name. As McGrath relates in Christianity Today: "With time (atheism) turned out to have just as many frauds, psychopaths, and careerists as religion does. ... With Stalin and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, atheism seems to have ended up mimicking the vices of the Spanish Inquisition and the worst televangelists, respectively."
John Updike's observation, "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been is drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position," appears to become common currency throughout much of the West.
The Rev. Paul M. Zulehner, dean of Vienna University's divinity school and one of the world's most distinguished sociologists of religion, told UPI Tuesday: "True atheists in Europe have become an infinitesimally small group. There are not enough of them to be used for sociological research."
The only exceptions to this rule, Zulehner said, are the former East Germany and the Czech Republic, where, as the saying goes, de-Christianization has been the only proven success of these regions' former communist rulers.
Zulehner cautions, however, that in the rest of Europe re-Christianization is by no means occurring. "What we are observing instead is a re-paganization," he went on, and this worries Christian theologians such as Munich's Pannenberg and the Rev. Gerald McDermott, an Episcopal priest and professor of religion and philosophy at Roanoke College in Salem, Va.
For although in every major European city except Paris spirituality is booming, according to Zulehner, this only proves the emergence of a diffuse belief system, Pannenberg said, but not the revitalization of traditional Christian religious faith.
Observing a similar phenomenon in the United States, McDermott stated that the "rise of all sorts of paganism is creating a false spirituality that proves to be a more dangerous rival to the Christian faith than atheism."
After all, a Satanist is also "spiritual."
Pannenberg, a Lutheran, praised the Roman Catholic Church for handling this peril more wisely than many of his fellow Protestants. "The Catholics stick to the central message of Christianity without making any concessions in the ethical realm," he said, referring to issues such as same-sex "marriages" and abortion.
In a similar vain, Zulehner, a Catholic, sees Christianity's greatest opportunity when its message addresses two seemingly irreconcilable quests of contemporary humanity - the quest for freedom and truth.
"Christianity alone affirms that truth and God's dependability are inseparable properties to which freedom is linked."
As for the "peril of spirituality," Zulehner sounded quite sanguine. He concluded from his research that in the long run the survival of worldviews should be expected to follow this lineup:
"The great world religions are best placed," he said. As a distant second he sees the diffuse forms of spirituality. Atheism, he insisted, will come in at the tail end.
Как писать рефераты
Практические рекомендации по написанию студенческих рефератов.
|План реферата Краткий список разделов, отражающий структура и порядок работы над будующим рефератом.
|Введение реферата Вводная часть работы, в которой отражается цель и обозначается список задач.
|Заключение реферата В заключении подводятся итоги, описывается была ли достигнута поставленная цель, каковы результаты.
|Оформление рефератов Методические рекомендации по грамотному оформлению работы по ГОСТ.
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text:
Yahoo failed to agree to an acquisition deal with Microsoft by Saturday, the deadline Microsoft had set for wrapping up negotiations.
Now Microsoft must decide whether to pursue a hostile takeover via a proxy fight or to drop the bid and seek other acquisition alternatives.
All along, Microsoft's management had indicated strongly that they would pursue Yahoo via all available options, including the hostile route of ousting the current board by proposing its own slate of director candidates at the next Yahoo shareholders' meeting.
But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and CFO Chris Liddell softened that stance in public comments last week, saying that giving up on the acquisition would also be an option.
On Sunday, Yahoo declined to comment. Microsoft responded by pointing to comments Liddell made on Thursday during Microsoft's earnings announcement.
"Unless we make progress with Yahoo towards an agreement by this weekend, we will reconsider our alternatives. We will provide updates as appropriate next week, these alternatives clearly including taking an offer to the Yahoo shareholders, or to withdraw our proposal and focus on other opportunities, both organic and inorganic," Liddell said then.
Citing anonymous sources, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Microsoft, Yahoo and their advisers have held talks in recent weeks but didn't achieve enough progress to hammer out a deal by Saturday.
The process has clearly been frustrating for Microsoft's management, who have maintained that their offer is fair and that they don't see a reason to revise it. Ballmer and his team have shown signs of getting impatient with the slow progress, not surprising considering Microsoft's urgency at boosting its underperforming Internet business and competing better against Google.
Launching a proxy fight would prolong even further the acquisition process and make the fight even nastier. Even if Microsoft were to win, it would not be a good start to what would be an arduous and lengthy post-acquisition integration process.
In the meantime, Google would no doubt seek to capitalize on the internal turmoil within Microsoft and Yahoo by trying to poach clients and valuable employees.
As soon as Microsoft announced its bid for Yahoo on Feb. 1 -- valued at US$44.6 billion at the time -- Yahoo's management began seeking and considering alternatives, while its stock began to rise from the latest pre-bid price of $19.18.
By the time Yahoo's board formally rejected the unsolicited offer on Feb. 11, saying it undervalued the company, Yahoo's stock price had risen to $29.87, erasing the offer's premium. The next day, Microsoft hinted in a letter to Yahoo that it wouldn't shy away from attempting a hostile takeover.
Since the bid's announcement, Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang has held conversations with various companies including Google, AOL, Disney and News Corp., exploring alternative deals that would strengthen Yahoo's business and relieve the pressure on it to be acquired.
On April 5, Microsoft, clearly impatient, threatened Yahoo's board of directors with a proxy battle if it wouldn't agree to a buy-out in the next three weeks. That's the deadline that lapsed on Saturday.
"The focus will be on Microsoft tomorrow [Monday] to make some statement about its intentions," said industry analyst Greg Sterling from Sterling Market Intelligence.
While there is still a reasonable chance that Microsoft will launch a proxy fight, it also seems much more likely than it did three weeks ago that Microsoft will drop its bid, Sterling said. Microsoft's management was clearly expecting a much smoother acquisition process, he said.
"Microsoft's tone during the initial call [announcing the bid] was that this was pretty much 'fait accompli' and that they were already looking past the deal towards the integration process," Sterling said. "Microsoft has been surprised to a degree and really frustrated by the resistance."
No alternative deal has materialized for Yahoo, except for a very limited, albeit eyebrow-raising, test that saw Yahoo run Google ads along with some search engine results on Yahoo.com. Observers speculated that the test, announced on April 9, could lead to a full-blown outsourcing of Yahoo's search ad business to Google, a move that financial analysts believe could boost Yahoo's revenue.
Yahoo also has made overt maneuvers to buy itself time. For example, on March 5, Yahoo lifted the following week's deadline for nominating directors to its board, an attempt to discourage Microsoft from launching a proxy fight to replace the current board with members willing to approve its Yahoo acquisition bid. Yahoo hasn't yet set a date for its shareholders' meeting.
On March 18, Yahoo kicked off a tour to investors by dusting off a three-month-old financial plan to reinforce its contention that Yahoo is worth much more than Microsoft offered to pay for it. The plan, originally presented to Yahoo's board in December, predicts that Yahoo will double its operating cash flow over the next three years from US$1.9 billion to $3.7 billion. The plan also forecasts that, subtracting the commission that Yahoo pays to sites in its advertising network, Yahoo will generate $8.8 billion in revenue in 2010. Financial analysts agreed the plan is highly optimistic.
Yahoo also has been in hyperactive mode with product and strategy announcements since Microsoft's bid, always pointing out that each initiative proved that it is able to improve its situation as an independent company. For example, it acquired online video player Maven Networks, announced its social network OneConnect mobile service, re-launched its video site and introduced Yahoo Buzz, a social news site that has been well received.
It also announced AMP, a new advertising management platform that it says will greatly simplify buying and selling ads online, and that will roll out in phases starting in 2008's third quarter and continuing into 2009. Yahoo also added video to Flickr and joined Google's OpenSocial project of common APIs for social networking applications.
Last week, it announced its most ambitious plan yet to take advantage of the popularity of social networking. Yahoo Open Strategy calls for the company to swing wide open the doors of its Web platforms to let outside developers create applications across its network of sites, starting with its search engine via a beta project called Search Monkey.
Also last week, Yahoo reported 2008 first quarter earnings that were considered solid, although not stellar, and that Yang said prove the company is in the rebound. Yahoo grew its revenue and net income and exceeded Wall Street's expectations for both categories.
Of course, there have been also reminders of why Yahoo found itself an acquisition target. The most concrete was on Feb. 12 when Yahoo, as it had been planning to do, started laying off about 1,000 staffers, and prominent executives like Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product strategy, voluntarily gave up on the company and left, in Horowitz's case to arch-rival Google.


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UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- Kentan Facey might have had a limited on-court role in the UConn Huskies' run to a national championship, but it was an educational first season.
"I'm a lot more experienced coming into this season than last season," Facey said prior to the Jim Calhoun Charity All-Star Classic last Friday night at Mohegan Sun Arena. "I was aware of the high level that was needed to compete here, but that one year taught me a lot and I'm definitely feeling good about the position I'm in."
Facey has spent the summer working out in Storrs and attended summer classes with fellow sophomores Amida Brimah, Sam Cassell Jr. and Rodney Purvis along with freshmen Daniel Hamilton and Rakim Lubin.
"One year of lifting and stuff definitely helped," said Facey, who has added muscle and thickness to his 6-foot-9 frame. "I feel a lot stronger right now."
UConn coach Kevin Ollie said earlier this month at his golf tournament that Facey was having a productive off-season.
The Huskies will need help from Facey this season with DeAndre Daniels opting to forgo his senior season and Niels Giffey having graduated. UConn has a limited number of bodies in the frontcourt on its 10-man roster. Brimah, junior center Phil Nolan and Lubin are the only other options at the center/power forward spots.
"I've just been working on my whole game and try to do what I need to do to help the team as much as I can this season," Facey said. "The same thing we worked on last year, we are still working on this year, but the fact that DeAndre left means that everybody on the team, not just myself, will have to do a little more in order to be as good as we were last year."
Off the bench, Facey averaged 1.5 points and 1.8 rebounds in 23 games, scoring a career-high 10 points against South Florida in mid-February on 4-of-5 shooting. He also pulled down a career-best nine rebounds in a non-league game against Maine, but was the fourth or fifth frontcourt option on most nights.
Facey played just three minutes in the postseason -- two coming against Memphis in the American Athletic Conference quarterfinals and the other against Villanova in the third round of the NCAA tournament.
"Any basketball player would be frustrated about not playing, but it's just what you took from it," the 21-year-old Jamaica native said. "Coach Ollie always said to me was be ready for an opportunity and that's what I did the whole year."
Facey almost missed his freshman season at UConn due to eligibility issues related to his school in Jamaica, but was cleared to play a few weeks before the season. While he was waiting for clearance, Ollie delivered a similar upbeat message.
"He's one of the best coaches I've ever had at that," Facey said.
UConn legend Tony Hanson was on campus today and met current Husky @32KFace #bleedblue pic.twitter.com/dFhf0oJ1SE
— UConn Men's Hoops (@UConnMBB) July 31, 2014


text:
We've already seen nunchaku light matches and battle ping pong balls (albeit in a viral video), but did you know you can use them to play golf, baseball, badminton and even open champagne bottles?
Sure nunchakus might have a slightly steep learning curve, but with enough talent and training, it seems like there's nothing you can't do with them. And you get to make crazy whooping noises all the while too! [Japan Probe]
Did Elon Musk Regret Buying Twitter? | Walter Isaacson Interview


text: This paper reviews the influence of the tropical climate on economic development. The paper highlights that the effect of climate is clearly not the only ruling constraint on economic development. It is claimed that climatic factors severely hamper development through their impact on both human beings and their agriculture. Human economic activity is directly and adversely affected through the widespread extent and impact of diseases; and tropical agriculture suffers in the quality of its soils, its rainfall, and its multiplicity of pests and diseases.


text: When HBGary Federal, had its website hacked and sensitive e-mail exposed by hacktivist group Anonymous last February, it became a question of how Sacramento, Calif.-based security firm HBGary could survive the damage to its reputation.But in spite of the bruising, HBGary not only didn't lose business customers in the course of the past year, but "we ended up getting additional business," says Greg Hoglund, founder and CEO of HBGary. Calling it an unexpected and even "weird side effect," Hoglund said the widely-publicized attack by Anonymous on HBGary Federal, a separate company set up by HBGary in 2009 to market to the federal government, appears to have elicited a sense of identification from many other companies. "They saw us go through things they were experiencing," he says.More on security: From Anonymous to Hackerazzi: The year in security mischief-making 2011's biggest security snafusLast February, members of Anonymous, apparently furious that then-CEO of HBGary Federal, Aaron Barr, had publicly alluded to his effort to infiltrate the hacktivist group to expose its leaders, lashed out by breaking into the HBGary Federal website. Anonymous then seized tens of thousands of the firm's e-mail to post them online. The dark episode even had HBGary President Penny Leavy, Hoglund's wife, going onto an Anonymous IRC channel to basically beg for the attack to end.Some of that e-mail included e-mail from Barr to a Bank of America law firm proposing a way to marginalize WikiLeaks, the group that in the past has published confidential corporate and government documents it secretly obtains, by hacking into it and feeding it fake documents.However, the bigger scandal in the hacked e-mail bundle was associated with comments made about possibly "disrupting" Glenn Greenwald, a Salon columnist who has been sympathetic to WikiLeaks, as well as a proposal to undermine US Chamber Watch, a critic of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The scandal forced Barr to resign from HBGary Federal and when Barr wanted to discuss his experiences chasing after Anonymous in a session scheduled at the Defcon Conference in July this year, HBGary Federal said it would seek an injunction against him if he did.HBGary was reluctant to say much about HBGary Federal. Ted Vera, COO of HBGary Federal, did not respond to a Network World inquiry to discuss its current situation either. A very long trail of inter-office e-mail correspondence between executives of HBGary and HBGary Federal even now litters the Internet, laying bare their thoughts up until that moment in February when the attack began. But today, Hoglund barely seems to want to acknowledge HBGary Federal anymore, even after having licensed his company name to it.Hoglund waves off references to HBGary Federal and the e-mail as not consequential to HBGary itself in terms of being attacked. "We shared an e-mail service, Google, with HBGary Federal," Hoglund says. "Anonymous never came within 2 to 3 network layers of us."The problems that HBGary Federal experienced, Hoglund says, were that its server was vulnerable to SQL injection attack and its e-mail password was cracked because hackers had stolen 50,000 IDs out of a poker-game server in an online game Barr had used. In his business life at HBGary Federal, Barr had "re-used the exact name and password. They had the credentials they needed to log in. Now they had the e-mail," Hoglund says.The devastating attack on HBGary Federal, Hoglund says, has convinced him that "you must use multi-factor authentication in every portal in your enterprise."Directly after the Anonymous attack on HBGary Federal, vandals tore up HBGary's booth at the RSA Conference 2011 last February, and Barr also cancelled a presentation he was scheduled to give at another conference at that time running adjacent to RSA, saying he was getting death threats.The investigation by law enforcement into the HBGary Federal incident is said to be ongoing. But Hoglund says he'll be at the RSA Conference 2012 in February, speaking on the topic "Modern Cyberthreats: The Changing Face Behind the Keyboard." He says his talk will be about advanced persistent threats, which are stealthy attacks to seize important data, and "all the things I learned about APT threats this year."Read more about wide area network in Network World's Wide Area Network section.


text:
If you didn't know, if you had no idea about Inside Llewyn Davis, looking at these photos, who would you think was the star of the movie?
Justin Timberlake, right?
Oscar Isaac is the star of Inside Llewyn Davis. Justin Timberlake, it's been joked, has less time screen time than the cat. But it's Justin Timberlake who's the centrepiece of all these pictures. WHY ISN'T OSCAR IN THE MIDDLE?!?
At the photo call and at the Palais, as predicted, it was the Justin Timberlake Show. Justin laughing, Justin making other people laugh, magnanimous, gregarious Justin -- that's the trademark of an attention whore: someone who knows he's being watched, and behaves extra so that he's watched some more. For f-ck's sake Justin Timberlake, Sit DOWN.
In fairness to him, if we have to, sure, he's a huge name, and the photographers would focus more on him, which is why there are so few of Oscar -- he'll get his own post, don't worry! -- and so many of the Pips. But you know, he could graciously stand to the side, you know? He could have positioned himself on the edge of the line and let Oscar and Carey step into the middle. But why? ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME. After all, it's JT's first Cannes.
And it's Mrs Timberlake's first Cannes too. She was at the Dior Cruise show on the weekend before making her debut at the Palais in Marchesa, obviously. Because, well, it's so ugly. That necklace is too much. And those feathers at the bottom of the dress look like rotting cotton balls.
Where's Kidman? We need her.


text: Although many people throughout the world do not live a life where they receive the elevation of humanity they deserve, dignity is a quality that arises from the inner being. It is not a trait bestowed by something outside our person ('authority' and 'power' are similar in this regard.) While one's dignity can be partially crushed by the not-so-simple affairs of everyday existence, it cannot be taken away.


text:
Some of you asked for details. How many queries did I send? How many rejections did I get? How many requests for fulls & partials? How many foot massages did I offer before finally landing the amazing Michelle Wolfson (who subsequently landed me a three-book deal)?
Fortunately, I saved all my original notes from my query days. It took awhile to compile statistics, and before I share, here's some background:
- I sent my first queries in late summer 2006 and my last mid-December 2006. Snail mail was common, and accounted for nearly 50% of my queries. Things have changed since then. Nearly everything is electronic now, and the only piece of printed correspondence I've swapped with my agent in 2.5 years is a contract.
- Because I had already sold a book to Harlequin/Silhouette when the line collapsed and left me orphaned, I was considered "published" by two or three agents I queried. In a couple cases, this resulted in phone calls or an expedited query process, but in most cases, I was part of the regular slush pile.
- As a result of the whole sold-a-book-that-never-got-published thing, several agents asked to see the orphaned novel (the rights were reverted to me). Since I knew I wanted to go a different direction with my career, I was more intent on querying a new book I'd written in a different genre. Know what's interesting? Neither of those novels – not the one that originally sold to Harlequin/Silhouette, and not the one that snagged offers of representation from four agents – has sold today. I don't say that to be discouraging. I say it to point out the publishing industry is fickle. Just because agents or editors love a book doesn't mean it's destined to land on bookshelves. This is one reason it's crucial to find an agent who is passionate about your whole career – not just one book.
So without further ado, here are my stats from 2006:
Number of queries
Rejections of initial query
Zero response to initial query
Partials requested & rejected
Fulls requested & rejected
Fulls/partials requested, then zero agent response
Agents who quit or closed to queries
Agents who referred me to other agents
Agents who offered representation
Fulls/partials requested after I had already signed with another agent
Agents who requested full, then bowed out when I issued a deadline upon receiving other offers
Bizarre photocopied full request w/ no agent name, no mention of my name or my book, and no email address given for follow-up questions
Some random, interesting tidbits:
- Of the 4 referrals I received from agents saying, "I'm not the right agent for this, but try my colleague so-and-so," two resulted in offers of representation from so-and-so.
- Prior to querying, I made a chart of agents and their requirements using agentquery. Then I cross-referenced it with info gathered from the agents' own websites. If they differed, I trusted what was listed on the agent sites.
- One of the agents who requested a full and ultimately rejected it contacted me out of the blue two years later to wish me well and say she always wonders if I'm "the one who got away." (Totally made my day).
- I did not, in fact, provide foot massages to any prospective agents (though I have a standing offer to Michelle to let my dog lick her feet if she so desires).
- No matter how polished your query is or how much homework you've done, you will screw something up. I guarantee it. Consider this when you send your initial queries. Do you want to contact your "dream agent" with a query you'll kick yourself about in a month, or do you want to save him/her for when you've learned a few things by trial & error? I got a whole lot more requests in my third month of querying than I did in my first because my query got better. I thank my lucky stars Michelle Wolfson was in the last batch of agents I queried because she didn't get to see what an idiot I could be (I saved the idiot thing for later in our relationship).
- As I've shared before, I initially signed with another agent and then left amicably after a year upon realizing it just wasn't the right fit. This happens, and it's no one's fault. Lucky for me, I knew Michelle was the right agent for me, and she was still willing to take me on a year after she made that initial offer.
Ready? Set? Go!
And happy querying to all!


text:
Northbound Lane on Minnesota Avenue to be Closed Wednesday
At 8:30 a.m., on Wednesday morning, January 8, 2014, the outside northbound lane on Minnesota Avenue will be closed north of 11th Street. Northbound traffic will use the inside northbound lane. The closure will be removed by 4:30 p.m. each evening.
Lloyd Construction will be performing utility work. The work is anticipated to be finished by the evening of January 9, 2014.
Motorists are urged to use caution and reduced speeds while travelling through the construction area.


text:
Keystone Advisers
With the strongest commitment to professionalism and quality, we provide financial advisory services tailored to every engagement to our clients. Keystone Advisers combine corporate finance expertise with an in-depth understanding of the private equity industry. Equally critical for our clients is our collective international experience from corporate management as well as strategy development and implementation.
Keystone Advisers is a self-financed firm built on a strong partner team. Our route to establishing a sustainable company for the long term is to continuously deliver outstanding value to our clients, usually proven as the maximisation of the client's long-term value creation. We have offices in Stockholm, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.
Strong track record of completed projects
Since its founding in February 2000, Keystone Advisers has completed around 110 financial advisory projects. Examples of our clients are medium-sized enterprises, large technology corporates, growth companies, as well as owners of these companies, such as venture capitalists and buyout institutions.
Liivalaia 45
Tallinn, 10145
Phone:+372 681 70 40
Fax:+372 681 70 41
E-mail: email@example.com


text:
August 13, 2010
Search Google Docs and Google Sites in Gmail
It's interesting to see that the Gmail Labs feature has been developed by the Apps Search team, which suggests that it's part of a bigger project. Most likely, Google will let you search all your data stored in a Google account from a single search box. If Google's universal search can combine images, videos, books, tweets, news articles in a single search results page, why can't Google develop an unified search service for Gmail messages, Google Calendar events, Google Reader subscriptions, Blogger posts, Picasa Web photos, contacts, tasks, Google Voice history and more?
Tip: If you want to search Google Docs and Google Sites, without displaying Gmail results, add -type:mail to your query.
Unexpected bonus feature: After enabling Apps Search, Gmail will show a "did you mean" message if your query includes misspellings:
{ spotted by Jérôme Flipo }
13 comments:
- AnonymousAugust 13, 2010 at 11:51 AM
when you click on a document result it shows a 403 forbidden pageReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 13, 2010 at 12:13 PM
Awesome. Step 1 to unified search is complete.ReplyDelete
I'm can't seem to get any sites results though.
- AnonymousAugust 13, 2010 at 12:29 PM
it's the same for me '403 forbidden'ReplyDelete
What is the search syntax to get all docs in a folder? Gmail's label equivalent is just label:[label]. I have gmail labels and docs folders under the same name. I would love to use this unified search feature to show me every google item I have under a particular tag/label/folder/etc.ReplyDelete
There's no such feature because Google Docs has a completely different labeling system. For example, you can create two or more folders that have the same name:
Very nice indeed!ReplyDelete
I think of something like that before, but with a approach more deeper: instead of just docs and site, it could search in tasks and calendar too.
What do you think?
i've learn this from other blog before but this post is more detail than the blog..thanks alexReplyDelete
Wrinkle Reducer
'403 forbidden' message...ReplyDelete
Also - 403 forbiddenReplyDelete
6.0.490.1 dev
- AnonymousAugust 14, 2010 at 4:52 PM
403 forbidden - also for me.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 15, 2010 at 12:43 PM
403 for me as well....ReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 16, 2010 at 2:13 PM
The links are now working for me!ReplyDelete


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Home Page Chess Life Online 2008 January Memorial Service for Jerry Hanken
|Memorial Service for Jerry Hanken
|October 11, 2009
A memorial service for journalist, promoter and life master Jerry Hanken will be held on October 25 in Pasadena, California. See details below and click here to see many touching memories of Jerry from USCF members.
Sunday, 3pm, October 25, 2009
Church of Truth
690 E. Orange Grove Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91104
Donations for the service and any questions can be sent to Barbara Hanken at 5200 Shearin, Los Angeles, CA 90041; [email protected]


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Former President Jimmy Carter said that a congressman's outburst to President Barack Obama during a speech to Congress last week was an act "based on racism" and rooted in fears of a black president.
"I think it's based on racism," Carter said Tuesday in response to an audience question at a town hall held at his presidential center in Atlanta. "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president."
The Georgia Democrat said the outburst was a part of a disturbing trend directed at the president that has included demonstrators equating Obama to Nazi leaders.
"Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care," he said. "It's deeper than that."
US Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, was formally rebuked Tuesday in a House vote for shouting "You lie!" during Obama's speech to Congress last Wednesday.
The shout came after the president commented that illegal aliens would be ineligible for federal subsidies to buy health insurance. Republicans expressed their disbelief with sounds of disapproval, punctuated by Wilson's outburst.
Tuesday's rebuke was a rare resolution of disapproval pushed through by Democrats who insisted that Wilson had violated basic rules of decorum and civility. Republicans characterized the measure as a witch hunt and Wilson, who had already apologized to Obama, insisted he owed the House no apology.
Wilson's spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but his eldest son defended his father.
"There is not a racist bone in my dad's body," said Alan Wilson, an Iraq veteran who is running for state attorney general. "He doesn't even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won't comment on former President Carter, because I don't know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it's just not in him."
"It's unfortunate people make that jump. People can disagree - and appropriately disagree - on issues of substance, but when they make the jump to race it's absolutely ludicrous. My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race."
South Carolina's former Democratic Party chairman said that he doesn't believe Wilson was motivated by racism, but said the outburst encouraged racist views.
"I think Joe's conduct was asinine, but I think it would be asinine no matter what the color of the president," said Dick Harpootlian, who has known Wilson for decades. "I don't think Joe's outburst was caused by President Obama being African-American. I think it was caused by no filter being between his brain and his mouth."
Harpootlian said he received scores of racial e-mails from outside South Carolina after he talked about the vote on Fox News.
"You have a bunch of folks out there looking for some comfort in their racial issues. They have a problem with an African-American president," he said. "But was he motivated by that? I don't think so. I respectfully disagree with President Carter, though it gives validity to racism."
Carter called Wilson's comment "dastardly" and an aftershock of racist views that have permeated American politics for decades.
"The president is not only the head of government, he is the head of state," he said. "And no matter who he is or how much we disagree with his policies, the president should be treated with respect."


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Ask NASA Climate | June 13, 2013, 14:59 PDT
Global warming consensus
Agreement among scientists confirmed again
By Erik Conway, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
A new paper has revisited the question of whether there's a consensus among climate scientists about the reality of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW). The study, by John Cook, of the University of Queensland's Global Change Institute in Australia and the Skeptical Science site, and several co-authors, confirms that climate scientists have not only accepted the existence of global warming, but also its human causation, as a matter of fact for the last two decades.
Drawing from 11,944 climate science abstracts from scientific journals between 1991 and 2011, the team found 66.4 percent of the abstracts expressed no opinion, 32.6 percent explicitly endorsed AGW, 0.7 percent rejected it and 0.3 percent expressed uncertainty on the cause of global warming. Then the authors invited a subset of these papers' authors to place their own papers into the same categories that Cook and his collaborators had used. These authors overwhelmingly endorsed the statement that most of the past century's warming was caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
This isn't a terribly surprising result. As the authors acknowledge, Naomi Oreskes found the same overwhelming consensus back in 2004 (though with a much smaller sample size). The methodology underlying the two papers differs, especially in that Cook and colleagues used a web-based, randomized abstract distribution and review process — and polled individual authors as a second check on their categorization. But the result, like several survey-based papers published in the last few years, is essentially the same. Climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change, and they have agreed on this for some time.
Perhaps the one new finding in this paper is the quantitative demonstration that the consensus existed by 1991. Again, I don't find this surprising. The National Academy of Science's 1979 report, "Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment," found "no reason to doubt that climate change will result, and no reason to believe that those changes will be negligible" from a continuing buildup of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. Oreskes' results also indicate that the consensus among publishing researchers was in place by the early 1990s. But further quantitative confirmation that these earlier studies were not far out on a limb is nice to have.
This latest publication by Cook and co. has resulted in a kerfuffle among some of the climate-change-friendly bloggers that I think is worth mentioning. One blogger I follow closely, Dan Kahan of the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University, has expressed unhappiness about it on the grounds that re-determining or re-emphasizing the existence of consensus doesn't advance climate science communication. Kahan and I, like most social scientists, are opponents of what's known as the "deficit model" of science communication, which posits that people are empty vessels into which one can simply pour facts. Rather, I believe that people accept, or reject, new information mostly on the basis of their pre-existing knowledge and beliefs. So merely telling the average citizen that 97 percent of climate scientists believe that humans are causing climate change isn't likely to change many minds about the issue.
But some polls and market research have shown that, for quite a few people, their views about government action change when they think the science is settled. This was a key finding of market research sponsored by the Western Fuels Association, a coal industry trade association, in the early 1990s — just as the scientific consensus on anthropogenic warming was emerging — and a major reason why they funded campaigns to persuade the American people that the science was unsettled. The idea was (and remains) to challenge the science to prevent action. And it was, of course, the guiding idea behind tobacco industry disinformation campaigns as well. So to the extent that this strategy works, it's important to continue to point out that it is based on a fallacy.
I do think there's more that Cook et al. could draw out of the data they've collected. I have a hypothesis that different disciplines within climate science reached consensus at different times: radiative transfer specialists in the 1980s, atmospheric scientists by the mid-1990s, physical oceanographers and cryosphere researchers in the early 2000s, etc. I don't have the data to test that hypothesis quantitatively, but I think Cook and his collaborators now do. I hope they take on the challenge, as that would be a worthwhile expansion of our knowledge about the historical development of this important science.
References/Further Reading:
John Cook et al., "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature," Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024 (2013), doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.
Naomi Oreskes, "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," Science Vol. 306, no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004), doi: 10.1126/science.1103618.
Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate, "Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment," National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (1979), quote from p. viii.Naomi Oreskes, "My facts are better than your facts: Spreading good news about global warming," in "How Well Do Facts Travel?", Cambridge University Press, pp. 136-166 (2010), doi:10.1017/CBO9780511762154.008.


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Moretum is a cheese, garlic, and herb spread mentioned in a wonderful little poem, also called Moretum, by the poet Virgil. The poem tells us about the farmer Symilus and his morning meal. Waking up early he lights his lamp and works his way to his grain stores. He gathers his grain, mills it down into flour, and makes a bread not unlike the one we made before. The farmer notices that he has no meat, and worries that the bread might not be tasty enough on its own, so he sets about making some moretum to go with it. Seeing as our bread could use a little lift, I'm going to follow this Roman farmer's example and make some of this cheese spread. The whole poem, which really is worth a read, can be found by clicking here. It's too long to post in full, so I've summarised the important bits here:
- Symilus gathers four heads of garlic (!), celery, parsley, rue, and coriander seeds.
- He grinds the garlic in his mortar and pestle, and adds salt and cheese.
- He then adds the celery, rue, parsley, and coriander seeds. He also grabs his crotch for extra leverage with the mortar and pestle, or so Virgil says.
- The smell is so strong that it makes his eyes water!
- He adds some olive oil, finishes off the mixture, and slaps some on his freshly baked bread.
|Symilus with his packed lunch.
- 1 Clove of Garlic
- 1/2 of a Celery Stick (with its leaves)
- A Small Bunch of Flat-Leaf Parsley
- 1 tbsp of Coriander Seeds
- A Pinch of Salt
- Some Cheese (I used Feta as it was easy to work with. With the benefit of hindsight, I would choose a milder cheese)
- 1 tsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- A Splash of Vinegar
- Peel the garlic, add to the mortar, and give it hell.
- Add the salt, the cheese, and the celery to the mortar and mash them up too. Really make sure to mix them well with the garlic from earlier.
- To this paste, add the coriander seeds, parsley, oil, and vinegar. I find that it is helpful to add the parsley in batches and break it down bit by bit rather than trying to do it all at once and making a mess. Test for flavour - if it is too garlicky, add more parsley.
- Break off a lump of bread, spread some of the moretum on, and enjoy!
Moretum was a great accompaniment for my Roman bread - its creaminess complimented the 'rough' texture of the bread, and the strong flavours drew attention away from the overly wheaty taste of the bread. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the wheaty after-taste provided by the bread was the perfect follow-on flavour for this cheese spread. However, even though I used just one garlic clove, this spread was verging on being too strong, something not helped by the saltiness of the feta either. Thankfully, a bit of extra parsley stopped that being so. Despite the inadequacies of this first attempt at moretum, it is a spread which I recommend you try, and one which I am looking forward to making again.


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San Francisco synopsis with stockpot and soup
A week in the Bay Area has come and gone, and I'm back in my long black Neo-esque wool coat, lugging groceries home in the Seattle rain, fingers numb in my gloves. But no matter. Though it was delicious to have a full seven days with people I adore in what may well be the best part of this enormous country, nothing could match my contentment last night upon returning to my cold little apartment after midnight, cranking up the heat and a gritty old Rolling Stones album, unpacking my suitcase, putting everything in its place, and folding myself into my poofy white bed. This is how vacation should feel.
But as promised, you, dear reader, get the two-dimensional dregs of my San Francisco stay. From Arizmendi Bakery's eggy brioche knot flecked with cinnamon and golden raisins to Max's obscenely huge dark-chocolate-dipped macaroons (approximately one pound each and best if bought at the to-go counter and brought home for quartering and sharing), Dungeness crabs, and the Acme pain au levain and olive bread, it was a delicious week indeed.
And the holidays would be nothing without a few little adventures and last-minute errands for crafty present-related odds and ends, such as 9" red zippers at JoAnn Fabrics, where my very petite cousin Katie found the wall of cheap fake flowers very appealing.
And while a snowy white Christmas is appropriate every now and then, I never object to a Christmas Eve walk at Tennessee Valley and out to the beach with the twins, all of us bundled ever-so-lightly in hooded sweatshirts and scarves.
And as for Christmas morning, there was the requisite wearing of gift bows around our heads, and there were the oddly perfect gag gifts, such as my mother's legwarmers, carefully selected by Sarah and Jim. After all, every Pilates instructor needs pink-and-gray legwarmers to wear with her high-heeled boots (aptly and unabashedly called "fuck-me heels" in this family).
Best of all, my kitchen reeled in quite a load of gifts, such as a long-awaited pair of poultry shears (no more standing on my tip-toes for knife-handling leverage; no more breaking a sweat!); a sparkling white 9- by 13-inch French porcelain baking dish; Katie, Sarah, and Jim's The Little Family Cookbook; and an instant-read thermometer. There were also gifts for my geeky brain, such as Women Who Eat and Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. And there were gifts that shocked and awed in the best possible way, such as the twelve-quart stainless-steel All-Clad Multipot picked out for me by my half-brother David and his fiancée.
I'd always thought I'd have to wait for a wedding gift registry to get one of these heavy, gleaming beauties, but I apparently underestimated the generosity of my relatives. This may be the most luscious piece of steel I've ever seen. I held it and stroked its every curve and ridge. I'll be with this pot for the rest of my life, and that's a long time. Between me and this pot, it's till death do us part.
So it was only appropriate that I get it down and dirty that very night and put it, naturally, to the old trial by fire. Indeed, my new stockpot was perfect for whipping up the evening's first course, a double batch of apple and butternut squash soup with curry, cardamom, and mace. It's a recipe my mother has been making for years, and it's well-traveled, having led off a very raucous, drink- and dancing-filled French-style Thanksgiving dinner in Paris in 1999. Also in its favor is the fact that it's very, very simple to make, assuming that you're not averse to a bit of chopping and have some sort of blending apparatus handy. Smooth and warming with an undertone of curry, it's just the thing for a San Francisco Christmas dinner, or Seattle winter nights with young Mick Jagger.
Apple and Butternut Squash Soup
If possible, make this soup a day or two ahead; its flavors meld and deepen after a day or so of sitting the fridge.
¼ cup olive oil
1 2-lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 2-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
2 flavorful apples, preferably Gala, peeled, cored, and cut into 2-inch pieces (about 2 cups)
1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped (about 1 cup)
¾ tsp curry powder
¾ tsp ground mace
½ tsp ground cardamom
1 cup good-quality apple cider
1 quart chicken stock (vegetable works fine as well)
½ tsp salt
¼ freshly ground pepper, preferably white
Heat oil in a large stockpot over medium-low heat. Add the squash, apples, and onion, and stir to coat with oil.
Sauté uncovered, stirring occasionally, for ten to fifteen minutes, or until onion is transparent.
Stir in the mace, curry, and cardamom, and continue cooking until the onion begins to brown.
Add the cider. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook for three minutes. Add the stock, lower the heat to medium-low, and simmer the mixture, partially covered, for another 35 minutes, or until squash is tender.
Working in batches, blend mixture in a food processor or blender until smooth (be careful to not overfill, as hot liquid could expand when machine is switched on, making a huge, burning-hot mess). Return soup to the stockpot. Reduce the soup, uncovered, over medium-low heat, to about one-fourth. Stir occasionally. Stir in salt and pepper, and serve hot.
Serves 4-5.


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Scame Catalogue
Surface mounting socket outlets with switch
Surface mounting socket outlets with switch specific for the Industrial sector complying with IEC 60309 Standard
Complete range of industrial electrical socket outlets with switch for surface mounting fixed installation, able to satisfy any need for electrical connection in the industrial field. Robust and versatile, they boast a high degree of IP protection, guaranteeing maximum installation flexibility and total safety for the user, even in the COMBI versions with integrated domestic standard socket outlets for powering small single-phase devices.
Present in section 3 serie


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26 December 2009
Holiday Circle of Lights - Mountain View Cemetery
I thought to myself Christmas at the cemetery? Awesome. It turns out that much like everything I get all excited about I fail to figure out that it just says "circle of lights". I've been to Mountain View a million times and just as you enter the cemetery gates you have the main office, the Gothic Chapel, and this traffic circle that goes around a small man made pond in the middle. Hence "circle". It's not very big. So I get there and I'm a little disappointed because I walk straight past the lights and find out that the cemetery has been closed off by barricades so all I'm going to see tonight is this circle of lights. Don't get me wrong they did a great job with the lights on the main office and around the pond as you can see above. They even did a great job with the Gothic Chapel you see below. I've always wondered what a Gothic Chapel actually is. Looks like I'll have to ask the cemetery personnel but it is my understanding that it serves as a regular chapel would serve, hosting several funeral services as well as a few weddings. Now I've been married before but had no idea this existed when I got married. I think it would take a special lady to marry me in a cemetery. I'm going on record right now and saying I'm not getting married again unless these conditions are met. I get married in a cemetery, there is a little person dressed like Jimi Hendrix playing the wedding march on an electric guitar and the wedding cake will need to be made off bacon. If all these conditions are met we can proceed with nuptials. Ok back to business...sometimes those thoughts up there stay in and sometimes they squeak through the cracks. Looks like that one squeaked through. So after we got done looking at the lights we noticed security patrolling the cemetery grounds behind the barricades. So we took a stroll over to the chapel and pretended to be intrigued with the lights on it. We sneak around the back and we're in the Jewish section...allright!! So my first night shots of Mountain View. Finally something to be excited about. Unfortunately my camera takes really crappy night photos. Please take the time to buy me the camera I want. Anyway we get home and start noticing pictures with bright and lighter colored orbs in them from the one section we could visit without security getting us. My girlfriend is all excited saying it's ghost energy etc. I say it's dust and the argument begins. She says "How could you not believe in ghosts?" and I say "Because I've never seen concrete evidence that there are ghosts." Now I'm not saying they don't exist. I'm just saying I can't really say that I have seen a ghost. I have seen things I thought were there maybe out of the corner of my eye but cannot say for sure if I saw a ghost or if something was a figment of my imagination. I'm more of a feel the energy sort of guy. But you can definitely see something in the picture above. I always look for a logical explanation for something and to her it seems everything is a ghost. But in these pictures I cannot dispute that I see orbs. Now what is an orb? Is it just dust reflecting light back at the camera? Or is it a piece of energy from the other side? I guess everyone has their own opinions on it. Overall this was a fun trip and I would like to thank my kids for not being too much of a pain in the butt as Dad cruised the graveyard at night. Happy Holidays everyone...
5 comments:
That's why I am happy that my little Fujifilm. It has a night setting. I never used it though.ReplyDelete
This comment has been removed by the author.ReplyDelete
Even though I'm a psychic and paranormal investigator I too look for the logical explanation re spirits and orbs first and if not, well then I get excited thinking I've captured something! I blew up your photos and the second one does have a pretty clear outline and looks kind of like a face. In the first photo the 'face' one is still obvious but the other orb is a real ball of light – beautiful.ReplyDelete
Thanks Jeane...I knew you'd have something to say. The bright one caught my eye almost immediately. My girlfriend took pics too and she was a little quicker on the trigger. She has 2 pics and her orbs seemed to move...ReplyDelete
I saw that dust myself. To me, it looks like the lens needs to be cleaned. I compared the two and they seem to be in the same spot.ReplyDelete


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THURSDAY, April 10, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Some parents and coaches think kids who focus on one sport early on will boost their chances of a college scholarship or pro career. But a new study casts doubt on that idea.
In a study of undergraduates at the University of California, Los Angeles -- a power in college athletics -- researchers found no evidence that athletes at the school launched their careers at a tender age.
Instead, the student-athletes looked a lot like their peers who simply enjoyed recreational sports: They usually dabbled in different sports as children, and waited until their teens to focus their attention on one sport.
"Most successful athletes participate in a number of sports when they're 6, 8 or 10 years old," said Dr. John DiFiori, chief of sports medicine at UCLA's School of Medicine.
That way, kids learn different skills and have the chance to discover which sport they truly enjoy, said DiFiori, who is scheduled to present the findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Society for Sports Medicine, in New Orleans.
There's a common belief that children need to zero in on a sport early in order to rise to an elite level, according to DiFiori.
"I think some parents have been influenced by specific, famous examples, like Tiger Woods or Andre Agassi," he said.
But while examples like that stick in people's minds, the actual research evidence paints a different picture, according to Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, medical director of primary care sports medicine at Loyola University, in Chicago.
"From a success point of view, early specialization is potentially detrimental," said Jayanthi, who was not involved in the new study.
In his own research, Jayanthi has found that children and teens who train intensely in one sport are more prone to overuse injuries than their peers who have varied activities.
Based on his findings, Jayanthi recommends some limits on kids' sports participation. One suggestion is that the amount of time a child spends in organized sports should be no more than double the time devoted to unstructured play and exercise.
"We think playing for fun is actually protective against injuries," Jayanthi said.
He explained that having varied activities -- including "free play" -- allows kids to develop skills and physical abilities that can help them in the long run.
The current findings are based on 296 UCLA student-athletes involved in 22 sports, and 164 students who weren't into elite sports, but were active and played sports for fun. Overall, DiFiori's team found, both groups started playing organized sports around the same age -- usually before age 10. And student-athletes were no more likely to have started before age 6.
What's more, there was no evidence that student-athletes "specialized" earlier. Most commonly, they settled on a sport during high school.
Where the athletes did stand out was family history: They were more likely than other students to have a parent or sibling who played sports in college or professionally.
Of the athletes, 43 percent had a parent who played college or pro sports, versus 8 percent of the comparison group. And 28 percent had a brother or sister who played college or pro sports, versus 5 percent of the other group, DiFiori said.
So that does mean athletic prowess is all in the genes? Not likely, DiFiori said. Although genes do play a role in athleticism, he noted, children of athletic parents probably also get a lot of support and encouragement to pursue sports.
"None of this means that practice and focus aren't important," DiFiori said.
But pushing your child to specialize in a sport early in life won't compensate for a lack of athletic genes, Loyola's Jayanthi said. And at worst, it could do harm if it leads to burnout or an injury.
DiFiori said that one of the issues in youth sports these days is the emphasis on "competition and winning," rather than building skills. But it is those skills -- which can be transferred from one sport to another -- that ultimately help kids become better athletes, he said.
Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on preventing kids' sports injuries.
This article: Copyright © 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.