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John Vaillant's The Tiger is part natural history, part Russian history and part thriller; it tells a gripping and gory story of what it's like to stalk — and be stalked by — the largest species of cat still walking the Earth.
The most bio-diverse region in all of Russia lies on a chunk of land sandwiched between China and the Pacific Ocean. There, in Russia's Far East, subarctic animals — such as caribou and wolves — mingle with tigers and other species of the subtropics. It was very nearly a perfect habitat for the tigers — until humans showed up.
The tigers that populate this region are commonly referred to as Siberian tigers, but they are more accurately known as the Amur tiger. "Imagine a creature that has the agility and appetite of the cat and the mass of an industrial refrigerator," Vaillant tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer. "The Amur tiger can weigh over 500 pounds and can be more than 10 feet long nose to tail."
These majestic tigers can jump as far as 25 feet — vertically, they can jump over a basketball hoop. Vaillant cites a famous tiger biologist who, when asked how high a tiger can jump, responded: "As high as it needs to."
At the center of the story is Vladimir Markov, a poacher who met a grisly end in the winter of 1997 after he shot and wounded a tiger, and then stole part of the tiger's kill.
The injured tiger hunted Markov down in a way that appears to be chillingly premeditated. The tiger staked out Markov's cabin, systematically destroyed anything that had Markov's scent on it, and then waited by the front door for Markov to come home.
"This wasn't an impulsive response," Vaillant says. "The tiger was able to hold this idea over a period of time." The animal waited for 12 to 48 hours before attacking.
When Markov finally appeared, the tiger killed him, dragged him into the bush and ate him. "The eating may have been secondary," Vaillant explains. "I think he killed him because he had a bone to pick."
The other central character in The Tiger is Yuri Trush, the head of the local squad of an anti-poaching unit known as Inspection Tiger, an organization created by the Russian government to combat the black-market trafficking of tigers and tiger parts.
Trush was "a guy well-suited to work in tiger country," Vaillant says. Physically imposing and a skilled fighter, Trush was a larger-than-life figure, and a "real warrior."
For most of his time with Inspection Tiger, Trush's job involved setting up sting operations and catching poachers. But Markov's death — which is followed later by the death of a second man — meant that Trush ended up having to hunt the same animal he had worked to protect.
Trush needed to anticipate what the tiger's next move would be, and then get there before the tiger did, Vaillant explains. "Trush was charged not just with protecting tigers, but now with saving human lives."
Vaillant's retelling is a life-and-death, moment-by-moment chase — and at times, it can be hard to remember whether you're rooting for the tiger or the humans.
"The tiger is just trying to be a tiger," Vaillant says.
"What's so fascinating to me about that region is that there are human beings and tigers hunting for the same prey in the same territory — and they don't have conflicts." But if you make the mistake of attacking a tiger, you will regret it, he says.
Markov certainly learned that the hard way. Vaillant says the tiger's response was "logical" and "understandable," but in the case of the revenge it exacted on Markov, it was anything but typical. In writing the book, Vaillant interviewed people of all ages from families who had lived in the Russian Far East for generations.
"In living memory, there was no record of an incident like this, of a tiger hunting a human being," he says. "This was a highly unusual circumstance, completely driven by human behavior. If the tiger hadn't been shot, there would be no story."
Excerpt: 'The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival'
Its wan light scatters shadows on the snow below, only obscuring further the forest that this man negotiates now as much by feel as by sight. He is on foot and on his own save for a single dog, which runs ahead, eager to be heading home at last. All around, the black trunks of oak, pine, and poplar soar into the dark above the scrub and deadfall, and their branches form a tattered canopy overhead. Slender birches, whiter than the snow, seem to emit a light of their own, but it is like the coat of an animal in winter: cold to the touch and for itself alone. All is quiet in this dormant, frozen world. It is so cold that spit will freeze before it lands; so cold that a tree, brittle as straw and unable to contain its expanding sap, may spontaneously explode. As they progress, man and dog alike leave behind a wake of heat, and the contrails of their breath hang in pale clouds above their tracks. Their scent stays close in the windless dark, but their footfalls carry and so, with every step, they announce themselves to the night.
Despite the bitter cold, the man wears rubber boots better suited to the rain; his clothes, too, are surprisingly light, considering that he has been out all day, searching. His gun has grown heavy on his shoulder, as have his rucksack and cartridge belt. But he knows this route like the back of his hand, and he is almost within sight of his cabin. Now, at last, he can allow himself the possibility of relief. Perhaps he imagines the lantern he will light and the fire he will build; perhaps he imagines the burdens he will soon lay down. The water in the kettle is certainly frozen, but the stove is thinly walled and soon it will glow fiercely against the cold and dark, just as his own body is doing now. Soon enough, there will be hot tea and a cigarette, followed by rice, meat, and more cigarettes. Maybe a shot or two of vodka, if there is any left. He savors this ritual and knows it by rote. Then, as the familiar angles take shape across the clearing, the dog collides with a scent as with a wall and stops short, growling. They are hunting partners and the man understands: someone is there by the cabin. The hackles on the dog's back and on his own neck rise together.
Together, they hear a rumble in the dark that seems to come from everywhere at once.
There are many people who don't believe this actually happened. They think it's some phantasm of my imagination. But it was real. There are the facts. — Yuri Anatolievich Trush
Shortly after dark on the afternoon of December 5, 1997, an urgent message was relayed to a man named Yuri Trush at his home in Luchegorsk, a mid-sized mining town in Primorye Territory in Russia's Far East, not far from the Chinese border. Primorye (Pri-mor-ya) is, among other things, the last stronghold of the Siberian tiger, and the official on the line had some disturbing news: a man had been attacked near Sobolonye, a small logging community located in the deep forest, sixty miles northeast of Luchegorsk. Yuri Trush was the squad leader of an Inspection Tiger unit, one of six in the territory whose purpose was to investigate forest crimes, specifically those involving tigers. Because poachers were often involved, these included tiger attacks. As a result, this situation — whatever it might entail — was now Trush's problem and, right away, he began preparing for the trip to Sobolonye.
Early the following morning — Saturday — Yuri Trush, along with his squadmates Alexander Gorborukov and Sasha Lazurenko, piled into a surplus army truck and rumbled north. Dressed in insulated fatigues and camouflage, and armed with knives, pistols, and semiautomatic rifles, the Tigers, as these inspectors are sometimes called, looked less like game wardens than like some kind of wilderness SWAT team. Their twenty-year-old truck was nicknamed a Kung, and it was the Russian army's four-ton equivalent to the Unimog and the Humvee. Gasoline-powered, with a winch, four-wheel-drive, and wide waist-high tires, it is a popular vehicle in Primorye's hinterlands. Along with a gun rack and brackets for extra fuel cans, this one had been modified to accommodate makeshift bunks, and was stocked with enough food to last four men a week. It was also equipped with a woodstove so that, even in the face of total mechanical failure, the crew could survive no matter where in the wilderness they happened to be.
After passing through the police checkpoint on the edge of town, the Tigers continued on up to a dirt road turnoff that led eastward along the Bikin River (be-keen), a large and meandering waterway that flows through some of the most isolated country in northern Primorye. The temperature was well below freezing and the snow was deep, and this slowed the heavy truck's progress. It also allowed these men, all of whom were experienced hunters and former soldiers, many hours to ponder and discuss what might be awaiting them. It is safe to say that nothing in their experience could have prepared them for what they found there.
Primorye, which is also known as the Maritime Territory, is about the size of Washington state. Tucked into the southeast corner of Russia by the Sea of Japan, it is a thickly forested and mountainous region that combines the backwoods claustrophobia of Appalachia with the frontier roughness of the Yukon. Industry here is of the crudest kind: logging, mining, fishing, and hunting, all of which are complicated by poor wages, corrupt officials, thriving black markets — and some of the world's largest cats.
One of the many negative effects of perestroika and the reopening of the border between Russia and China has been a surge in tiger poaching. As the economy disintegrated and unemployment spread throughout the 1990s, professional poachers, businessmen, and ordinary citizens alike began taking advantage of the forest's wealth in all its forms. The tigers, because they are so rare and so valuable, have been particularly hard hit: their organs, blood, and bone are much sought after for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Some believe the tiger's whiskers will make them bulletproof and that its powdered bones will soothe their aches and pains. Others believe its penis will make them virile, and there are many — from Tokyo to Moscow — who will pay thousands of dollars for a tiger's skin.
Between 1992 and 1994, approximately one hundred tigers — roughly one quarter of the country's wild population — were killed. Most of them ended up in China. With financial assistance (and pressure) from international conservation agencies, the territorial government created Inspection Tiger in the hope of restoring some semblance of law and order to the forests of Primorye. Armed with guns, cameras, and broad police powers, these teams were charged with intercepting poachers and resolving a steadily increasing number of conflicts between tigers and human beings.
In many ways, Inspection Tiger's mandate resembles that of detectives on a narcotics detail, and so does the risk: the money is big, and the players are often desperate and dangerous individuals. Tigers are similar to drugs in that they are sold by the gram and the kilo, and their value increases according to the refinement of both product and seller. But there are some key differences: tigers can weigh six hundred pounds; they have been hunting large prey, including humans, for two million years; and they have a memory. For these reasons, tigers can be as dangerous to the people trying to protect them as they are to those who would profit from them.
The territory covered by Yuri Trush's Inspection Tiger unit in the mid-1990s was centered around the Bikin (be-keen) River. You can drive a truck on the Bikin in winter, but in summer it has a languid bayou feel. For many of the valley's jobless inhabitants, the laws imposed by the river and the forest are more relevant than those of the local government. While most residents here poach game simply to survive, there are those among them who are in it for the money.
In 1997, Inspection Tiger had been in existence for only three years; given the state of the Russian economy in the 1990s, its members were lucky to have jobs, particularly because they were paid in dollars by foreign conservation groups. Four hundred dollars a month was an enviable wage at that time, but a lot was expected in return. Whether they were doing routine checks of hunters' documents in the forest, searching suspect cars en route to the Chinese border, or setting up sting operations, most of the people Inspection Tiger dealt with were armed. As often as not, these encounters took place in remote areas where backup was simply not available, and they never knew what they were going to find.
Following perestroika, virtually everything in Russia went on sale, and vast quantities of military ordnance disappeared from local armories. In the course of their raids on the many anonymous hunting cabins that dot the forest here, Trush and his men confiscated plastic explosives, TNT, and 12mm (.50 caliber) machine guns, robbed from armored vehicles. Trush could not imagine what one would do with guns that size in the forest, but the explosives were easier to explain: they were used in creeks to kill fish en masse, or to blow bears out of their dens. The Asian market is less interested in the intact skins or carcasses of bears than it is in their paws and gall bladders; the paws go into soup, and the gall bladders are used for medicinal purposes. In Primorye, in the mid-1990s, life, for man and animal alike, was cheap, and corruption was widespread at every level of government. During these years, Trush made busts involving high-ranking police officers and members of parliament, and these were dangerous enemies for a person to have. Trush, however, was well suited to this work because he is a formidable adversary, too.
Trush stands about six-foot-two with long arms and legs and a broad chest. His eyes are colored, coincidentally, like the semiprecious stone tiger's eye, with black rings around the irises. They peer out from a frank and homely face framed by great, drooping brows. Though frail and sickly as a boy, Trush had grown into a talented athlete with a commanding presence, a deep resonant voice, and an ability to remain composed under highly stressful circumstances. He is also immensely strong. As a young soldier in Kazakhstan, in the 1970s, Trush won a dozen regional kayaking championships for which he earned the Soviet rank Master of Sports, a distinction that meant he was eligible to compete at the national level. It was a serious undertaking: he wasn't just racing against Bulgarians and East Germans. "I was," he said, "defending the honor of the Military Forces of the USSR." In his mid-forties, when he joined Inspection Tiger, Trush won a territory-wide weightlifting competition three years running. This was not the kind of weightlifting one is likely to see in the Olympics; what Trush was doing looks more like a contest devised by bored artillerymen during the Napoleonic Wars. It consists of hefting a kettlebell — essentially a large cannonball with a handle — from the ground over your head as many times as you can, first with one hand, and then the other. Kettlebells are a Russian invention; they have been around for centuries and their use clearly favors the short and the stocky. So it is surprising to see someone as attenuated as Trush, who has the Law of the Lever weighted so heavily against him, heave these seventy-pound spheres around with such apparent ease.
Trush learned to shoot, first, from his father and, later, in the army. He also studied karate, aikido, and knife handling; in these, his rangy build works to his advantage because his long reach makes it nearly impossible to get at him. He is so talented at hand-to-hand fighting that he was hired to teach these skills to the military police. Trush's physicality is intense and often barely suppressed. He is a grabber, a hugger, and a roughhouser, but the hands initiating — and controlling — these games are thinly disguised weapons. His fists are knuckled mallets, and he can break bricks with them. As he runs through the motions of an immobilizing hold, or lines up an imaginary strike, one has the sense that his body hungers for opportunities to do these things in earnest. Referring to a former colleague who went bad and whom he tried for years to catch red-handed, Trush said, "He knows very well that I am capable of beheading him with my bare hands." This tension — between the kind and playful neighbor, friend and husband, and the Alpha male wilderness cop ready to throw down at a moment's notice — energizes almost every interaction. It is under the latter circumstances that Trush seems most alive.
The deeper Trush and his men drove into the forest, the rougher the road became. Once past Verkhny Pereval, their route took them through the snowbound village of Yasenovie, a sister logging community of the same size and vintage as Sobolonye. Here, they picked up a young deputy sheriff named Bush, but his presence on this mission was more formal than practical. Bush was a cop, and tiger attacks were beyond his purview; however, if there was a body, he was required to witness it. With Bush onboard, they trundled on upriver.
It was already afternoon by the time they reached Sobolonye, an impoverished village of unpainted log houses, that at first glance seemed barely inhabited. Gorborukov was behind the wheel, and here he steered the truck off the main road, such as it was, and plunged into the forest on a track wide enough for only a single vehicle. Several inches of new snow had fallen earlier in the week and, as they drove, Trush scanned the roadside for fresh tracks. They were about fifty miles from the nearest paved road and a couple of hard-won miles east of Sobolonye when they crossed a wide and improbably located gravel highway. This road had been conceived during Soviet times as an alternative to Primorye's only existing north-south throughway, which follows the Ussuri River north to Khabarovsk (the same route used by the Trans-Siberian Railway). Despite handling every kind of traffic, including transcontinental freight trucks, the Ussuri road is poorly maintained and only as wide as a residential street; it was also considered vulnerable to Chinese attack. This new highway, though safer, wider, and ruler-straight, was never finished and so it is essentially a highway to nowhere — in the middle of nowhere. The only people who benefit from it now are loggers, poachers, and smugglers — pretty much the only people around who can afford a vehicle. But sometimes tigers use this highway, too.
There is an unintended courtesy in the winter forest that occurs around pathways of any kind. It takes a lot of energy to break a trail through the snow, especially when it's crusty or deep, so whoever goes first, whether animal, human, or machine, is performing a valuable service for those following behind. Because energy — i.e., food — is at a premium in the winter, labor-saving gifts of this kind are rarely refused. As long as the footpath, logging road, frozen river — or highway — is going more or less in the desired direction, other forest creatures will use it, too, regardless of who made it. In this way, paths have a funneling, riverlike effect on the tributary creatures around them, and they can make for some strange encounters.
The last three miles of the journey were on a logging track so tortuous and convoluted that even a veteran Russian backcountry driver is moved to shout, in a torrent of fricatives and rolling Rs, "Paris-Dakar! Camel Trophy!" It contoured east through the rolling woods, crossing creeks on bridges made of log piles stacked at right angles to the road. Two miles short of a privately owned logging camp, Gorborukov took an unmarked turn and headed north. After a few minutes, he pulled up at a clearing, on the far side of which stood a cabin.
The cabin belonged to Vladimir Markov, a resident of Sobolonye, and a man best known for keeping bees. The crude structure stood by itself on the high side of a gentle south-facing slope, surrounded by a thick forest of birch, pine, and alder. It was a lonely spot but a lovely one and, under different circumstances, Trush might have seen its appeal. Now there was no time; it was three o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was already in the southwest, level with the treetops. Any warmth generated during this brief, bright day was quickly dissipating.
The first sign of trouble was the crows. Carrion crows will follow a tiger the same way seagulls follow a fishing boat: by sticking with a proven winner, they conserve energy and shift the odds of getting fed from If to When. When Trush and his men climbed down from the Kung, they heard the crows' raucous kvetching concentrated just west of the entrance road. Trush noted the way their dark bodies swirled and flickered above the trees and, even if he hadn't been warned ahead of time, this would have told him all he needed to know: something big was dead, or dying, and it was being guarded.
Parked in front of Markov's cabin was a heavy truck belonging to Markov's good friend and beekeeping partner, Danila Zaitsev, a reserved and industrious man in his early forties. Zaitsev was a skilled mechanic and his truck, another cast-off from the military, was one of the few vehicles still functioning in Sobolonye. With Zaitsev were Sasha Dvornik and Andrei Onofrecuk, both family men in their early thirties who often hunted and fished with Markov. It was evident from their haggard appearance that they had barely slept the night before.
Judging from the density of tracks, there had clearly been a lot of activity around the cabin. Several different species were represented and their trails overlaid each other so that, at first, it was hard to sort them out. Trush approached this tangled skein of information like a detective: somewhere in here was a beginning and an end, and somewhere, too, was a motive — perhaps several. Downhill from the cabin, closer to the entrance road, two tracks in particular caught his attention. One set traveled northward up the entrance road at a walking pace; the other traveled south from the cabin. They approached each other directly, as if the meeting had been intentional — like an appointment of some kind. The southbound tracks were noteworthy, not just because they were made by a tiger, but because there were large gaps — ten feet or more — between each set of impressions. At the point where they met, the northbound tracks disappeared, as if the person who made them had simply ceased to exist. Here the large paw prints veered off to the west, crossing the entrance road at right angles. Their regular spacing indicated a walking pace; they led into the forest, directly toward the crows.
Trush had a video camera with him and its unblinking eye recorded the scene in excruciating detail. Only in retrospect does it strike one how steady Trush's hand and voice are as he films the site, narrating as he goes: the rough cabin and the scrubby clearing in which it stands; the path of the attack and the point of impact, and then the long trail of horrific evidence. The camera doesn't waver as it pans across the pink and trampled snow, taking in the hind foot of a dog, a single glove, and then a bloodstained jacket cuff before halting at a patch of bare ground about a hundred yards into the forest. At this point the audio picks up a sudden, retching gasp. It is as if he has entered Grendel's den.
The temperature is thirty below zero and yet, here, the snow has been completely melted away. In the middle of this dark circle, presented like some kind of sacrificial offering, is a hand without an arm and a head without a face. Nearby is a long bone, a femur probably, that has been gnawed to a bloodless white. Beyond this, the trail continues deeper into the woods. Trush follows it, squinting through his camera while his squad and Markov's friends trail closely behind. The only sounds are the icy creak of
Trush's boots and the distant barking of his dog. Seven men have been stunned to silence. Not a sob; not a curse. Trush's hunting dog, a little Laika, is further down the trail, growing increasingly shrill and agitated. Her nose is tingling with blood scent and tiger musk, and she alone feels free to express her deepest fear: the tiger is there, somewhere up ahead. Trush's men have their rifles off their shoulders, and they cover him as he films. They arrive at another melted spot; this time, a large oval. Here, amid the twigs and leaf litter, is all that remains of Vladimir Ilyich Markov. It looks at first like a heap of laundry until one sees the boots, luminous stubs of broken bone protruding from the tops, the tattered shirt with an arm still fitted to one of the sleeves.
Trush had never seen a fellow human so thoroughly and gruesomely annihilated and, even as he filmed, his mind fled to the edges of the scene, taking refuge in peripheral details. He was struck by the poverty of this man — that he would be wearing thin rubber boots in such bitter weather. He reflected on the cartridge belt — loaded but for three shells — and wondered where the gun had gone. Meanwhile, Trush's dog, Gitta, is racing back and forth, hackles raised and barking in alarm. The tiger is somewhere close by — invisible to the men, but to the dog it is palpably, almost unbearably, present. The men, too, can sense a potency around them — something larger than their own fear, and they glance about, unsure where to look. They are so overwhelmed by the wreckage before them that it is hard to distinguish imminent danger from the present horror.
Save for the movements of the dog and the men, the forest has gone absolutely still; even the crows have withdrawn, waiting for this latest disturbance to pass. And so, it seems, has the tiger. Then, there is a sound: a brief, rushing exhale — the kind one would use to extinguish a candle. But there is something different about the volume of air being moved, and the force behind it — something bigger and deeper: this is not a human sound. At the same moment, perhaps ten yards ahead, the tip of a low fir branch spontaneously sheds its load of snow. The flakes powder down to the forest floor; the men freeze in mid-breath and, once again, all is still.
Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not in a language like Russian or Chinese, but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men — some more fluently than others. That single blast of breath contained a message lethal in its eloquence. But what does one do with such information so far from one's home ground? Gitta tightens the psychic leash connecting her to her master. Markov's friends, already shaken to the core, pull in closer, too. The tiger's latest communication serves not only to undo these men still further, but to deepen the invisible chasm between them — poachers to a man — and the armed officials on whom their liberty and safety now depend. Markov's friends are known to Trush because
he has busted them before — for possessing illegal firearms and hunting without a license. Of the three of them, only Zaitsev's gun is legal, but it is too light to stop a tiger. As for the others, their weapons are now hidden in the forest, leaving them more helpless than Trush's dog.
Trush is unarmed, too. There had been some back-and-forth at the entrance road about who was going to follow that grisly trail, and comments were made implying that Trush and his men didn't have what it took. Fear is not a sin in the taiga, but cowardice is, and Trush returned the challenge with a crisp invitation: "Poshli" — "Let's go." One of Markov's friends — Sasha Dvornik, as Trush recalled — then suggested that Trush's team could handle it themselves. Besides, he said, they had no weapons. Trush called his bluff by urging him to fetch his unregistered gun from hiding. "This is no time to be confiscating guns," he said. "What's important now is to protect ourselves." Still, Dvornik hesitated, and this is when Trush offered him his rifle. It was a bold gesture on several levels: not only did it imply an expectation of trust and cooperation, but Trush's semiautomatic was a far better weapon than Dvornik's battered smoothbore. It also short-circuited the argument: now, there was no excuse, and no way that Dvornik — with six men watching — could honorably refuse. It was this same mix of shame, fear, and loyalty that compelled Zaitsev and Onofrecuk to go along, too. Besides, there was safety in numbers.
But it had been a long time since Dvornik was in the army, and Trush's weapon felt strangely heavy in his hands; Trush, meanwhile, was feeling the absence of its reassuring weight, and that was strange, too. He still had his pistol, but it was holstered and, in any case, it would have been virtually useless against a tiger. His faith rested with his squad mates because he had put himself in an extremely vulnerable position: even though he was leading the way, he did so at an electronic remove — in this drama but not of it, exploring this dreadful surreality through the camera's narrow, cyclopean lens. Because Zaitsev and Dvornik couldn't be counted on, and Deputy Bush had only a pistol, the Tigers were Trush's only reliable proxies. Those with guns had them at the ready, but the forest was dense and visibility was poor. Were the tiger to attack, they could end up shooting one another. So they held their fire, eyes darting back and forth to that single, bare branch, wondering where the next sign would come from.
Behind the camera, Trush remained strangely calm. "We clearly see the tiger's tracks going away from the remains," he continued in his understated official drone, while Gitta barked incessantly, stiff-legged and staring. " … the dog clearly indicates that the tiger went this way."
Up ahead, the tiger's tracks showed plainly in the snow, brought into sharp relief by the shadows now pooling within them. The animal was maneuvering northward to higher ground, the place every cat prefers to be. "It looks like the tiger's not too far," Trush intoned to future viewers, "around forty yards." The snow wasn't deep and, under those conditions, a tiger could cover forty yards in about four seconds. This may have been why Trush chose that moment to shut off his camera, reclaim his gun, and step back into real time. But once there, he was going to have to make a difficult decision.
In his professional capacity as senior inspector for Inspection Tiger, Trush acted as a medium between the Law of the Jungle and the Law of the State; one is instinctive and often spontaneous while the other is contrived and always cumbersome. The two are, by their very natures, incompatible. When he was in the field, Trush usually had no means of contacting his superiors, or anyone else for that matter; his walkie-talkies had limited range (when they worked at all) so he and his squad mates were profoundly on their own. Because of this, Trush's job required a lot of judgment calls, and he was going to have to make one now: the tiger is a "Red Book" species — protected in Russia — so permission to kill had to come from Moscow. Trush did not yet have this permission, but it was Saturday, Moscow might as well have been the moon, and they had an opportunity to end this now.
Trush decided to track it. This had not been part of the plan; he had been sent to investigate an attack, not to hunt a tiger. Furthermore, his team was short a man, dusk was coming on, and Markov's friends were a liability; they were still in shock and so, for that matter, was Trush. But at that moment, he was poised — equidistant between the tiger and the harrowing evidence of what it had done. The two would never be so close again. Signaling Lazurenko to follow, Trush set off up the trail, knowing that every step would take him deeper into the tiger's comfort zone.


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Situated some 25km southeast of downtown Vientiane on the Mekong River, Xieng Khuan or the "Buddha Park" is surely Laos's quirkiest attraction – a tacky tourist trap to some travellers, one of the most interesting sights in Vientiane to others. This collection of massive ferro-concrete sculptures, dotted around a wide riverside meadow, was created under the direction of Luang Pou Bounleua Soulilat, a self-styled holy man who claimed to have been the disciple of a cave-dwelling Hindu hermit in Vietnam. Upon returning to Laos, Bounleua began the sculpture garden in the late 1950s as a means of spreading his philosophy of life and his ideas about the cosmos. After the revolution, Bounleua was forced to flee across the Mekong to Nong Khai, Thailand, where he established an even more elaborate version of his philosophy in concrete. Ironically, the Lao National Tourism Authority chose Bounleua's sculptures as the symbol of their "Visit Laos Year" campaign, and posters depicting the exiled guru's works can be seen in government offices throughout the country.
Besides the brontosaurian reclining Buddha that dominates the park, there are statues of every conceivable deity in the Hindu-Buddhist pantheon and even a handful of personalities from the old regime. Near the park's entrance is a strange edifice that resembles a giant pumpkin with a dead tree sprouting from its crown. Entering the structure through the gaping maw of devouring time, you can explore representations of the "three planes of existence": hell, earth and heaven. A spiral stairway leads to the roof of the building, which affords good views of the park and river.

subset: commoncrawl


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Achieve results
Engagement is more than a feeling, survey number, or a YouTube happy dance. We engage in actions directed towards results. The first key to consider when acting to increase employee engagement is what results are you working to achieve and how can you involve all employees in formulating those results or achieving those results? Powerful results matter to managers, organizations, employees, and customers.
Path progress
The most overlooked source of engagement and motivation is to experience progress. Recent research by Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer has demonstrated that progress is the single biggest key to motivation and engagement for knowledge workers. Learn how to structure work for progress and especially to guard against the demoralizing and disengaging experience of setbacks.
Maximize performance
Performance is anything worthy of your attention. How do you make key performances worthy of employee's attention and how do you offer feedback that is actually heard and acted upon by employees? We are witnessing the early stages of a significant fusion of performance management and employee engagement that may address some of the gaps we have experienced in attempting to have performance management do a better job of improving performance.
Foster recognition
Without recognition our workplaces are void of the human element. Are you fully letting employees know that you see them, you are thinking of them and you both recognize and appreciate them. Authentic recognition is so much more than an annual gala or occasional gift card for good behavior. Recognition is social, strategic, and powerful. Recognition is the "re-thinking" of engagement in our everyday interactions and recognition for progress creates a strong multiplier for motivation and engagement.
Build relationships
We need to focus on the two "R's" of engagement, results and relationships. How do our efforts achieve results while also building relationships?. Our brains are wired for the social element of work and in some ways all managers are becoming new versions of "social workers." While our staff may have a locus of engagement on tasks we need to ensure that we have a strong locus of engagement on people.
Enliven energy
The raw material of engagement is energy. It takes energy to engage and authentic engagement contributes to our energy. Energy comes in a variety of forms: mental, emotional, physical, organizational, and spiritual. Spiritual energy is the energy invested in something greater than ourselves and when you look closely at work and managing people it is always something greater than ourself or there would be no need for managers. We must strive towards mastery of physical, mental, and emotional energy.
Leverage strengths
Engagement is strong stuff. When you know your strengths, live your strengths, and leverage your strengths in the service of others you will have an increase in engagement. To bring out the strengths of others we must be aware of our own strengths. Powerful managers "spot" employees' strengths and make strength training a daily endeavor.
Make meaning
For work to sustain and enrich people it must be meaningful. Those who have a why to work can bear almost any how and a sense of meaningful work instills a strong and rich intrinsic motivation. Progress, when it is meaningful, can be one of the best events of our day.
Master moments
Engagement resides in the moment. Learn to master moments; from high quality interactions and 45-second engaging conversations to the power to transform interruptions into touch points. When we balance challenge and skills we enter the flow zone as we dwell and work within the moment. Working in the moment also reduces stress. As Stephen Rechtschaffen stated: "there is no stress in the present moment."
Enhance well-being
We need to find wellbeing inside of work. There are things we can do outside of work but how we promote and enhance well-being within work is becoming increasingly important as mobile devices makes work portable and 24/7. We must eliminate toxic workplace poisoned with a lack of respect or mutuality. We must create a profound wellbeing where people leave work enlivened and enriched rather than depleted and deadened.
10 "musts" to increase employee engagement
Achieve results


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Serviços Personalizados
Links relacionados
- Citado por Google
- Similares em Google
SAMJ: South African Medical Journal
versão On-line ISSN 2078-5135
versão impressa ISSN 0256-9574
SAUNDERS, Stuart. Contributions of the University of Cape Town to medical science in the first 100 years: personal reflections. SAMJ, S. Afr. med. j. [online]. 2012, vol.102, n.6, pp.391-391. ISSN 2078-5135.
The contributions of the University of Cape Town's Faculty of Health Sciences to medical science through research over the past 100 years are reviewed. The application of contemporary techniques to common medical problems in the developing world had important implications globally. The Faculty can be proud of its achievements in many areas important to the health of people in South Africa, Africa and beyond.
· texto em Inglês · Inglês ( pdf )


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By SCOTT BAUER
Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democrats who fled the state nearly three weeks ago asked Monday for a meeting with Gov. Scott Walker to talk about changes to his plan to eliminate most public workers' union rights, a request the governor dismissed as "ridiculous."
Walker said he and his administration have been in communication with at least a couple of the AWOL Senate Democrats about a deal that could bring them back, but the lawmaker who asked for the meeting, Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller, "is firmly standing in the way."
That accusation led to a flurry of angry responses from Democrats who said Walker was misrepresenting the talks.
The sometimes-angry exchange suggested that any resolution to the stalemate was farther away than ever.
"Right now, I'm so damn mad at his misrepresentation of the truth and the public should be as well," said Sen. Bob Jauch, one of two Democrats who had talked last week with the Senate Republican leader about possible compromises.
"Trust is completely broken down now. I don't believe anything he says."
The standoff has drawn national attention and placed Wisconsin at the center a vigorous debate over the future of union rights. Walker's proposal to balance the state budget remains in limbo because, without the 14 Democrats, the state Senate does not have enough members present for a quorum.
The senators said pressure is mounting on Walker and the GOP to compromise after weeks of protests that have drawn tens of thousands of people to the Capitol.
In addition, polls show substantial opposition to the governor and his plan, and recall efforts have been launched against Republican senators. Recall efforts have also begun against the Democrats.
"The problem for the Democrats is to figure out how to come back and not be seen as conceding," said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and founder of pollster.com.
"Both sides have been so strongly supported by their constituencies that it makes it awfully hard to compromise unless they can find a way to both claim victory," Franklin said. "And that's certainly difficult."
Walker tried to place blame for the stalemate on Miller, the Democratic leader in the Senate, saying he blocked progress on talks with Jauch and Sen. Tim Cullen.
"It leads you to question who's in charge," Walker said at a news conference also attended by the Republican leaders of the Senate and Assembly.
Miller issued a statement saying if Walker didn't want to talk with him, the governor could meet with any of the 14 Senate Democrats. And Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach said it was Walker who was standing in the way.
"We continually reach out with suggestions, ideas, offers," Erpenbach said. "We're not the ones getting in the way."
Before Walker refused the meeting request, Democrats were talking more openly about the need to return sooner rather than later. And even if they lose in a Senate vote, the lawmakers said, they had accomplished their broader goal of striking a nationwide political blow against the GOP's plans to cut back union rights.
"I don't think anyone expects us to stay here forever," Jauch said in a telephone interview from Illinois.
Walker's proposal would remove most collective bargaining rights for public employees, except over wage increases no greater than inflation. Police and fire departments would be the only exemptions. The legislation would also require state workers to start paying more for their pension and health care benefits starting in April, which amounts to an 8 percent pay cut on average.
The unions have agreed to the pay concessions as long as they can retain their bargaining rights. Over the past three weekends, rallies at the Capitol in opposition to the bill have grown as large as 80,000 people.
"We want to come back to the state of Wisconsin and stand with these hundreds of thousands of citizens who are now engaged," Jauch said. "Every day I feel like I'm closer to getting back because there has to be a transition from us to the rest of us. This isn't our fight. This is the citizens' fight."
Since last week, Miller has been talking about the importance of returning to oppose Walker's larger budget bill, which cuts about $1 billion from public schools and local governments to deal with a projected $3.6 billion shortfall.
"I don't think a lot of us have the stomach to stay away and watch our state plummet off a cliff," Democratic Sen. Chris Larson said.
Miller sent a letter Monday to Walker and the Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald asking for an in-person meeting "as soon as possible to resume negotiations" on how to resolve the impasse over the union bill.
Fitzgerald replied to Miller's request saying he forfeited his right to make changes to the bill when he skipped town rather than propose changes on the floor of the Senate.
"While we wait for you and your colleagues to finally show up, Senate Republicans continue to stand ready to do the job we were elected to do, here in Wisconsin," Fitzgerald said in the letter. "I hope you are enjoying your vacation, and your vacation from reality."
Both sides had been talking last week, but Democrats said negotiations broke down Thursday. Walker said his administration continued talks over the weekend, and he personally called a senator Monday morning.
Walker refused to describe what specifically was being negotiated, other than to say there were multiple ideas that get to the "mechanics of the process."
He reiterated that any part of the proposal dealing with collective bargaining rights could not be altered because doing so would make it more difficult for schools and local governments to deal with $1 billion in cuts he's proposing.
Senate Republicans have tried to increase pressure on Democrats to return with a variety of tactics, including holding their paychecks instead of allowing them to be deposited directly. The GOP also voted last week to allow police to essentially arrest the senators and force them to return if they are found in Wisconsin.
Erpenbach said that threat of arrest squelched progress last week on a possible return.
"What we have been doing from the beginning is trying to reach out and find some sort of compromise," Erpenbach said. "I think the pressure is really on them to find and forge some way to resolve this this week."
Among the 14 who fled the state are Sen. Julie Lassa, who is pregnant, and Sen. Fred Risser, who at 83 has been in the Legislature since 1956. He is the longest serving lawmaker in the country.
"There are some realities that have to be faced," Jauch said, referring to the fact that Lassa is more than seven months' pregnant.
If Democrats return without meaningful concessions, the protests will only intensify, Jauch said.
"It's very difficult because I realize even though we didn't plan it this way, people are resting their hopes on our decisions," he said. "I know that at the point we return, some people are going to be terribly let down. We have to communicate with them that we stand together."


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Twenty years ago, before the alarm about Climate Change, the World Bank warned about upcoming wars — not over oil, but water. Now, the UN predicts that two thirds of the world will suffer shortages in the next ten years due to waste, pollution, and the growth of a global middle class. Some Fortune 500 companies are ahead of the game, conserving and cleaning up water to protect their profits, while the cost for the rest of us rises. There are technologies to create more fresh water, but they're expensive. Is water a commercial product, or a basic human right?
Also, the "day of rage" in Gaza, and should the US revive the firing squad?
Banner Image Credit: Vinoth Chandar


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Or rather, it can be placed on robots that are capable of flight. Pretty sure this is a world first here- Quadrotor from UC Berkeley using a Kinect for autonomous navigation. How cool is that? I bet Microsoft never realized just how many people would be hacking these in short time. Given my own circle of friends, I know more people using them for robotics than playing videogames!
This work is part of the STARMAC Project in the Hybrid Systems Lab at UC Berkeley (EECS department).http://hybrid.eecs.berkeley.edu/
Researcher: Patrick Bouffard
PI: Prof. Claire Tomlin
Our lab's Ascending Technologies [1] Pelican quadrotor, flying autonomously and avoiding obstacles.
The attached Microsoft Kinect [2] delivers a point cloud to the onboard computer via the ROS [3] kinect driver, which uses the OpenKinect/Freenect [4] project's driver for hardware access. A sample consensus algorithm [5] fits a planar model to the points on the floor, and this planar model is fed into the controller as the sensed altitude. All processing is done on the on-board 1.6 GHz Intel Atom based computer, running Linux (Ubuntu 10.04).
A VICON [6] motion capture system is used to provide the other necessary degrees of freedom (lateral and yaw) and acts as a safety backup to the Kinect altitude–in case of a dropout in the altitude reading from the Kinect data, the VICON based reading is used instead. In this video however, the safety backup was not needed.
[1] http://www.asctec.de
[2] http://www.microsoft.com
[3] http://www.ros.org/wiki/kinect
[4] http://openkinect.org
[5] http://www.ros.org/wiki/pcl
[6] http://www.vicon.com


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Tuskegee Awards Celebration 2017
The 19th Annual Tuition Assistance Awards Celebration of the Major General Irene Trowell-Harris Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen was held on Saturday, February 4, 2017 at Anthony's Pier 9 in New Windsor, NY.Read More
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Susan Cain, perhaps ironically, has become the voice of introversion. She is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. In January of this year, Cain wrote a provocative piece for the New York Times disparaging collaboration in our organizations as "the rise of the new groupthink."
She even went so far as to question the value of brainstorming, which is the stock and trade of most organizational development practitioners. Since publishing her book on introversion, Cain has presented at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and can be seen making a cogent and eloquent case against the marginalization of introverts at a TED Conference. As she herself describes it, Cain has become "an impossibly oxymoronic creature: the public introvert."
Cain wrote another piece for the New York Times this past weekend about what she sees as the myth of the gregarious leader. Cain wrote, "Culturally, we tend to associate leadership with extroversion and attach less importance to judgment, vision and mettle. We prize leaders who are eager talkers over those who have something to say." Ouch! It's a nice turn of phrase, but can't an eager talker have something substantive to say? Cain contrasted Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to illustrate how introversion and extroversion manifests in leaders. She wrote, "Introverted leaders often possess an innate caution that may be more valuable than we realize. President Clinton's extroversion served him well, but may have contributed to conduct that almost derailed his presidency."
To be fair, Cain is not bashing extroversion. If anything, she's out to level the playing field. Cain sees a bias at work in the criticisms of Obama for preferring to socialize in more intimate settings. What does it say about us that, long after we've forgotten the clarity of Bill Clinton's tour de force nomination speech, his charm will be stuck in our head like a tune we can't shake? On the next night, Obama gave us substance; he warned us about the empty calories of a quick fix and demanded that we eat our vegetables. Cain may have a point about our biases. We may trust Obama more than Clinton, but in the end Clinton might be the reason some people go out and vote.
So should someone who aspires to be a great leader act more like an extrovert or more like an introvert? It's a silly question. I'm wondering when the search for the elusive leader formula will end. In a recent article for Fast Company magazine, Gautam Mukunda, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, wrote that leaders need to be both humble and confident. My own company recommends that leaders be facilitative. There are scholarly and not-so-scholarly perspectives arguing that leaders should be everything from accountable to zealous. Seems to me that these would be admirable traits for anyone.
Russ Volckmann, executive editor of the Integral Leadership Review, pointed out at a recent Saybrook University residential conference that we frequently confuse the role of "leader" with the person in the role. Because Bill Clinton is gregarious does not mean that leaders should be gregarious. Because Abraham Lincoln was, according to Mukunda, "supremely confident and supremely humble" does not mean that leaders should be confident and humble. Because Obama is reserved, does not mean that leaders should be reserved. Clinton, Lincoln, Obama, and, for that matter, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, John McCain and the principal of your local elementary school are all people bringing their individual humanity to a role they've chosen to perform. Like each of us, there are times when we find our roles easy to perform because the task at hand suits our personality. Similarly, there are times when we find our roles difficult to perform because the task at hand requires us to draw on resources we've had to develop.
It's compelling to talk about the characteristics of our national leaders. The problem with deconstructing the person who aspires to lead is the implication that some alchemy of characteristics is ideal.
Read other posts by Jay G. Cone
Keep up with our community: Facebook | Twitter | Saybrook's Organizational Systems Program


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There's a lot of buzz about Facebook, but what is it, exactly? What does it do? Can anybody join? How much does it cost?
In this article, I'll give you the basics of joining Facebook and what you can expect to find there. I'll explain the opportunities and services available for businesses and for individuals, based on my experience as a newbie who recently joined.
Until I became a member, I didn't really know what Facebook was. A friend of mine had told me that he met his fiancée on Facebook. Another friend said she gets together with her friends from all over the city on Facebook every Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. Then I overheard a colleague at work say that he'd been looking for his high school girlfriend for years and, just recently, found her on Facebook, living in Scotland with her deceased husband's family.
All these things left me confused. At first, I believed Facebook was an online dating service, then I thought it was a chat room and then a worldwide phone directory. Then another colleague told me that members could advertise anything imaginable -- from skiing to skydiving to skeet shooter's clay pigeons -- on the Facebook Marketplace, for free. That sold me. I signed up that very day.
About Facebook
Facebook was launched in February 2004 by a young Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg. It started out as a sort of virtual campus hangout for Ivy League students, but quickly expanded from the university to the universe, and now anyone 13 or older can join.
It's growing quickly across the globe (250,000 people become members every day) with new sites in Spanish, German and, soon, in French.
It's also gaining on the more established social networking site MySpace. Forrester Research Inc. analyst Jeremiah Owyang says, "We predict that the total registered users of Facebook will eclipse the total amount of MySpace users in Q4 of 2008 but, even with that said, MySpace and Facebook will coexist, because they both serve different purposes to different audiences."
According to Owyang, Facebook is more of a lifestyle site. That is, like the college campuses where it was launched, Facebook has become a central networking hub where its members can connect and share, in spite of their busy lives. Its largest, growing audience is the 35+ crowd. MySpace tends to attract the younger social surfers who are more media conscious and therefore flock to MySpace's "bands and brands" multimedia options, which include various forms of artistic self-expression.
Joining Facebook
Joining Facebook is, literally, as easy as 1-2-3.
- Go to Facebook.com and create a UserID (your e-mail address), password and birth date (all three are mandatory fields). Notice that the Sign Up dialog box on the home page says: Sign up for Facebook. It's free and anyone can join. (So, that answered my questions about who could join and how much it costs.)
- Next, type in a security code (a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart or CAPTCHA; you know, one of those strings of jumbled up, curvy letters that look like shorthand on a roller coaster).
- Then, Facebook says: You will get an e-mail shortly telling you how to confirm your account. The e-mail provides a link back to Facebook that, when activated, takes you back to the program to begin the ride.


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Authentic vintage advertisement, professionally matted and framed with real glass, final size 11x14". Ready for your wall!
We've sold on eBay since 1997, have an A+ rating from the BBB, we are a JSA (James Spence Authentication) authorized dealer since 2008, and a member of the Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce. Our company has been featured in Sports Illustrated magazine, KDKA Radio Pittsburgh, ESPN Radio Pittsburgh, and in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. We were named as the Pittsburgh Magazine 2018 Best of the Burgh Issue as an Editor's Choice Selection for "Best Autograph Repository". Buy with absolute confidence.
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International orders are our specialty, all customs and fees are the responsibility of the buyer, and items are declared at the sale price.
PA orders must add 6% sales tax or a valid resale certificate.
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LONDON (AP) - Legislation that will end a centuries-old British rule that puts boys before girls in the succession to the throne has cleared the House of Lords, and now goes to Queen Elizabeth II for approval.
The change means that if Prince William and the former Kate Middleton have a girl first, she will become queen, and no younger brother will be able to jump the line and displace her.
The legislation also permits an heir to the throne to marry a Catholic, though Catholics would still be barred from succeeding to the throne.
The bill, which has been fast-tracked through Parliament, passed a third and final reading in the House of Lords on Monday.
The government wants to change current laws, which date back to the 1701 Act of Settlement, before the royal couple's first child is born in July. The baby will be third in line to the throne after William and his father Prince Charles.
Kate, formally known as the Duchess of Cambridge, has kept up a fairly busy schedule of royal engagements since becoming pregnant.
On Tuesday, she visited a school in Manchester to launch a counselling project and meet workers from a youth mental health services charity.


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Which is downright racist, as his lawyers are suggesting that blacks might be more sympathetic to terrorists blowing up whitey.
(FPM) If only they could get that all-Muslim jury they obviously have their hearts set on. Then their murdering client might have a shot.
Suggesting blacks, young and old people will be grievously underrepresented in favor of white, middle-aged faces when a jury is picked Tuesday, lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev filed papers this morning asking yet again that his trial be stopped from going forward next week and the 30-count indictment for which he faces death be dismissed.Of course white people were also overrepresented among the victims of Dzhokar's murderous killing spree in the name of Islam. It seems fitting that they should also be overrepresented on the jury that locks him up for life.
With opening statements in the nearly 2-year-old case now just six days away, the accused Boston Marathon bomber's defense team wants the jury wheel that led to the random selection of 1,373 possible jurors "reconstituted" and the process started all over again so the jury's makeup fairly represents a cross-section of the state.
Among the attorneys' contentions are that white prospective jurors summonsed in early January to fill out 27-page screening questionnaires were moved up in order "based on non-random factors such as arrival time," and black and young jurors fell behind in the numerical assignment process.


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Ladakh : The Kingdom of the Blue Skies
Situated on the line separating fantasy and reality, Ladakh, the land of high passes, the roof of the world, continues to perplex the minds of a first time traveler. Its unrealistic landscapes, desert and snow along with the freezing breeze bring one into a state of reverie from which only a few escape. Here is a glimpse, Have a look !Read More


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Livian Vermont is helping people buy and sell homes all over the Vermont area. We offer expertise, professional services and an innovative online approach. Our team of experienced, full-time real estate agents is ready to walk you through the process of buying the perfect home or selling your existing house for the best price.
Looking to buy a home? We offer these free services:
Ready to sell your house? We know that online exposure works, so we offer a maximum web presence for your house through:


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Advanced Search
Letters to Redmond
Software religion and its zealots, and Microsoft's diverse but sometimes overlapping products.
Becky Nagel responds:
Thanks for your feedback, Loyd. We never meant to imply that zealots are more
or less prevalent among different OS users. We based the story on reader feedback,
and being a magazine for Windows users, I think our readers just see the issue
more on the other side. I do think that software religion exists equally among
all groups. In fact, if there's one thing that I learned from writing this article,
it's that software religion really has nothing to do with the software itself
-- it's all about the person.
Sole Redmond Zealot
I actually printed out the November 2005 cover story, "Software Crusades," and
put it on my wall at work. I learned a lot from it. I am the sole "Microsoft
Zealot." I'm sure there must be more out there, but I've never met one (not
even in thousands of chatrooms), not one!
I do use and consider alternatives, though. I use VMware, Servu and Linksys firewall, all of which have Microsoft versions, which I avoid.
One point I would like to make is that when you have a "pure" Microsoft LAN, there are much less interoperability problems than a mixed environment.
Also, there's a $245 tech support
call you can make to Microsoft that will actually solve any problem, (providing they're all Microsoft components). From a problem in Outlook XP, that goes through an ISA firewall, across a Microsoft VPN, into an Exchange 2003 server, running SharePoint, they will take ownership of the problem and solve it, no matter how many departments or engineers they have to involve.
Thanks for the great article. Although I will still wear my Windows shirts
in the halls of IBM, I will take care to always give the alternatives a fair
Mark Egleston, MCSE
IBM Global Operations
Fishkill, N.Y.
Keeping It Real
Fantastic article ["Software Crusades"]. I'm in the midst of way too many zealots,
most of whom believe that an AS400 is the only real computer. They really need
to learn a bit about servers, how they work and how Windows servers truly augment
an AS400, because without them, their servers couldn't function in my domain.
Larry Miller
Washougal, Wash.
Product Complexity
Doug Barney recently mentioned [in his November
2005 Chief Concerns column] that to do some collaboration work, a person
could use SharePoint [Services], Office, Outlook or several other products.
I think this and other instances where Microsoft seems to be offering a product
for anything and everything, with products often overlapping unhelpfully, doesn't
seem like positive diversification. I hope it's not a symptom of a lack of focus
at Redmond.
Rodney Allen
London, U.K.
About the Author
This page is compiled by the editors of Redmond magazine from your letters. Write to us at [email protected] and if your letter is printed in the magazine, you'll be entered into a drawing for a free Redmond T-shirt.
Microsoft has improved the remediation process when users authenticating via on-premises methods are deemed to be at risk by the Microsoft Entra ID Protection service, per a Thursday announcement.
As Microsoft's new AI assistant gets into more hands this week, let's break down some of my impressions.
Microsoft on Wednesday gave notice that its Exchange Online e-mail tamper protections are planned for completion in 2024, which may entail some backend changes by IT departments.
Azure Automation provide IT with the ways to make their jobs more interesting. Got a task you're sick of doing? Automate it away!
The new update, rolling out for some, includes a preview of Microsoft's AI-powered Windows Copilot.
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New to Mom Bloggers Club and excited to start connecting with other moms. I have a photography business in Orange County and I'm looking for new ways to spread the word about my business and any…Continue
Started Jan 31, 2012 0 Replies 0 Likes
New to Mom Bloggers Club and excited to start connecting with other moms. I have a photography business in Orange County and I'm looking for new ways to spread the word about my business and any…Continue
I added you on GFC! I enjoyed the stuff you wrote about talking to your photographer, and the pictures you take are beautiful. I don't have specific questions, but tips about how to photograph kids are great.
Hi Ashley. I found your question on one of the forums about finding blog topics, and I just wanted to let you know I loved your photography tips on your site! I love taking pictures, but I need ideas! Also, I was trying to find where on your blog you have followers so I could add you. Please stop by and visit, and let me know if you add Google Plus to your website I will definitely add you! http://bowofbronze.com/amysblog
Welcome to MBC! We are glad to have you here. We look forward connecting more with you here. I'm a Super Mama who has a family friendly blog, i also have a weekday blog hop called Exposure 99%. This weekday blog hop helps you get more dedicated readers and blog followers. Hope you link up weekly. If you have any questions about how to link up do not hesitate to let me know.
Feel free to check me at One moment in time
Hi there and welcome from The Girlz Korner in upstate New York where you'll find light, witty and rather entertaining articles on every topic imaginable from beauty, health, fashion, parenting, sex and everything else in between. So if you get a chance to kick back and exhale, if only for a brief moment, we'd love to have you. Hope you enjoy your stay :) http://www.thegirlzkorner.com
Hello, welcome to Mom Bloggers. This is a wonderful community where you can meet other interesting moms.
I am Nekky from Reflexions, a fun loving mom of two who like to meet people, make friends and share opinions. I have some weekly blog hops: GET CONNECTED TUESDAY BLOG HOPand WELCOME TO WEEKEND BLOG HOP. Always feel free to link up every week as this will enable you gain some new followers. Come and also make new blogger friends from around the world.
Hope you enjoy your stay here. Happy Connections.


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The Chula Vista Elementary School District is committed to providing a working and learning environment free from discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying. The district prohibits discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying based on race, color, ancestry, national origin, ethnic group identification, age, religion, marital or parental status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information; the perception of one or more of such characteristics, or association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics in any program, practice or activity it conducts. The Chula Vista Elementary School District is committed to providing equal educational, contracting, and employment opportunities to all in strict compliance with all applicable State and Federal laws and regulations. Any individual who believes they have been a victim of unlawful discrimination in employment, contracting, or in an education program or activity may file a formal complaint with the corresponding department below.
For inquiries about district policies and procedures related to student-to-student, student-to-staff, and staff-to-student harassment/discrimination, including how to file a harassment/discrimination complaint, contact:
For inquiries or complaints related to employee-to-employee, student-to-employee, or work/employment-related discrimination or harassment, contact:
Human Resources Service and Support Department
Jason Romero
Assistant Superintendent/Title IX Coordinator
[email protected]
(619) 425-9600, Ext. 181340


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Walmart moms back Obama's SOTU plans
If it were up to a group of swing voters known as Walmart moms, Congress would pass President Barack Obama's State of the Union proposals to expand preschool education and enact stricter gun laws.
But they are ambivalent about Obama's pledge to raise the federal minimum wage, cool on his plan to overhaul immigration and skeptical about the focus on climate change.
These were the broad conclusions from focus groups of so-called Walmart moms conducted Wednesday in Philadelphia and Kansas City. A recording of the discussions was screened Thursday for reporters in Washington.
The Walmart moms, a group first identified by Public Opinion Strategies in 2008 and tracked in the last two elections, backed Obama in 2008, the GOP congressional candidates in 2010 and Obama last year. They are working- and middle-class women who have struggled through the economic downturn, pinched by the rising costs of health care, college, food and gas.
And although they have little faith in Washington, they remain surprisingly hopeful that Congress and the president will work together over the next four years. When asked to rate their level on hope on a scale of one (lowest) to 10 (highest), the average in both groups was about 6.
Among all the issues discussed in the State of the Union, the president's plan for expanding early childhood education drew the most enthusiastic response from both parties, although they raised concerns on how it would be funded.
They questioned the effectiveness of passing new gun laws, but most of the moms – Democrat and Republican – said Congress should do something.
Chaleah, 34, a mother of four children in Kansas City who voted for Republican Mitt Romney, said hunters such as herself have no use for high-capacity magazines and assault weapons.
Katie, 36, a mother of three children in Philadelphia who also backed Romney, said: "It is a common sense at this point. There is a problem, clear and simple. There is a major problem with guns."
Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage didn't excite the women in Philadelphia or Kansas City. They worried that businesses couldn't afford it, that the price of everything else would go up in response and that it wouldn't make much of a difference in their lives.
The same was said about immigration ("not an in-my-face issue," said a Romney voter in Kansas City) and climate change ("that is the last thing they should be worried about," said an Obama voter in Philadelphia).
The focus groups are part of a multi-year collaboration between Walmart and pollsters Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm, and Momentum Analysis, a Democratic firm.
Most Walmart moms are primarily between the ages of 18-44. About 60-70 percent are white, 45 percent earn less than $50,000 annually and 40-48 percent are college educated.


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1011 E Wells Ave, Pierre, SD 57501
Local: 605-224-1775
We will not be accepting orders for delivery or delivering arrangements between Oct. 10, 2023 and Oct. 13, 2023.
The FTD® Fall Harvest™ Bouquet19-F6
Whether it's for your relatives across the country or a friend down the street, show that you're truly grateful this season with our Fall Harvest Bouquet. Set in a striking, wood inspired geometric ceramic vase, this arrangement is comprised of gorgeous yellow roses, sunflowers, green trick dianthus and more. From its elevated design to the beauty captured within each bloom, this bouquet is a gift sure to bring a message of thanks and love to anyone it's given to. GOOD bouquet is approx. 14"H x 13"W. BETTER bouquet is approx. 15"H x 15"W. BEST bouquet is approx. 15"H x 16"W.
- For U.S. and Canada deliveries only
- Delivery Information
All items featured on this site represent the types of arrangements we offer and may vary depending upon availability in certain regions. Substitution Policy


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Palette Collection
Find and show your true colors
Dark colors diminish, bright colors enlarge – all colors make a change. That's the short version of how colors affect the perception of a room, but the truth is more versatile and individual than that. White feels bright, crispy and fresh for some, but empty and insipid for others. Rebel Walls encourages a more personal, curious and brave approach to colors.
Re-Evaluate and Upgrade Your Color Palette
Most of us find and stick to our favorite colors from a young age. To re-evaluate and upgrade your personal palette as life goes on feels like a true and above all fun attitude to color. In Palette, you will find wall mural suggestions in many colors that will enhance the character and function of each room. Get rid of old prejudices about color, your own and others, and find new and unexpected favorites in our collection, Palette.


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Torben Kjelstrup
Torben Kjelstrup
Tuborg / Tilt Your World
Hailing from Denmark, Torben left his architectural background and turned his passion for film and photography into a career.
His music video, "Soy Yo," for Bomba Estero has reached more than 60 million views on YouTube. The music video, which was written and directed by Torben, catapulted him onto the global stage. In 2017, he picked up a Latin Grammy nomination and a Young Directors Award at Cannes Lions.
Torben has directed films for brands such as Tuborg, Mercedes, Coursera, Marks & Spencer, Lego, PlayStation, Nespresso, 3M, and Samsung with agencies such as Callen, Venables, Bell & Partners, Huge Inc, FCB and R/GA. His work for Samsung out of R/GA New York features Ninja, the world's viral top-ranked "Fortnite" player, and has garnered over 8 million views.
Click HERE for Torben's personal website.


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What's on your Baylor Bucket List?
What should be on a true Baylor Bucket List?
Steppin' Out? Tortilla tossing from the Suspension Bridge? Dr Pepper Hour? What things must a Baylor student do and experience before leaving campus — and/or should an alum do upon returning to campus?
Baylor Magazine wants to hear from you; they're compiling the responses and will run a lengthy list in the Fall 2013 issue — well-timed for students returning to campus, those just settling in for the first time, and for alumni searching for a few more things to do at Homecoming (Oct. 17-20, 2013).
Click here to share your Baylor Bucket List ideas!
Sic 'em, Bears!


text: You will be all right with white if you make the right decision to buy your white nail polish from Nail Polish Direct. Despite the uniformity of the colour, we offer white nail polishes in many different finishes, like creme, jelly, foil and glitter. Reputable nail polish brands represented in our stock typically include OPI, China Glaze and Color Club.


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Want to OCR images and extract the text from the images for editing? Now, try the free online OCR services provided by Easy ScreenOCR. Easy to use and the process is super fast. Just drag and drop your pictures, and wait for a while. Our online OCR tool will upload your images and perform the OCR process with its powerful OCR technology. All uploaded files will be deleted within 30 minutes. Your privacy is our priority. 100% free for online OCR!
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We provide 100% free OCR services to extract text from pictures online.No registration required. All uploaded images will be cleared every 30 minutes
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You can add 5 pictures each time for the image OCR. The plain text from each image will be written in a .txt file. All files will be zipped for downloading.
Advanced Engine
Powered by Google machine learning and other advanced OCR engines, the image OCR process and results could be safe and reliable. Just have a try!
There are so many free online OCR services all around the World, why using Easy ScreenOCR? Well, you have the choice. But I will try all my best to do better for every visitor than the competition would. If you have any suggestions, please contact me: [email protected]
Try our software EasyScreenOCR for Windows and for Mac. These programs enable you to capture screenshot and convert them to text. You can also translate the text to other languages directly. Support more than 100 languages for OCR and 27 languages for translation.


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This work clock functions in an unexpected way. With each passing second it displays a random four letter word on the right side of the display. Traditional word clocks tell the time in natural language, but this one is simply used as a learning opportunity.
[Iron Jungle] got his hands on the display for just five buck from Deal Extreme. Looks like the price has gone up two dollars but that's still a bargain. He wanted to use all eight digits of the display, and was looking for an opportunity to control more than one i2c device at a time. He ended up rolling an EEPROM and DS1307 RTC into the design. He figured the could display 24-hour time on four of the digits, and pull a library of four-letter words off of the EEPROM to fill the rest. He grabbed a word list off of the Internet then used a Python script to remove words containing 7-segment unfriendly characters (K, M, V, W, X, Z). The final touch was to use a salvaged relay to give the clock a ticking sound. Hear it for yourself in the clip after the break.


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Stones and Politicians
"The National Unity Government has come apart!"
This headline in the local media caused an entire nation and world to wonder how this could happen at a time when Israel faces some of the most serious security and economic problems it has ever had to deal with.
When Jews hear this weeks Torah portion read in synagogues they will get an insight into a historical perspective of unity.
When the Patriarch Yaakov lay down to sleep at the site where the Holy Temple would someday stand, the Torah relates that he formed a protective fence and pillow from "stones" he gathered from the area. After he awoke from his prophetic dream of angels and a ladder reaching to Heaven, those same "stones" are referred to as a single "stone." He erected that stone as a pillar upon which he poured a libation of oil in thanks to G-d who assured him in that dream that the earth he slept on would belong to his descendants forever.
How "stones" become one "stone" is explained by the Talmudic Sages. The stones which Yaakov gathered began to quarrel amongst themselves, with each vying for the privilege of having the righteous Patriarch rest his head upon it. G-d thereupon combined all of the stones into one large stone so that all of them would be privileged and pleased.
Let us put aside all of the cynical observations of political analysts who accuse one or the other of the protagonists in this drama, Prime Minister Sharon and Labor Party head Ben-Eliezer, of causing the collapse of the unity government by sticking to the uncompromising stances they adopted in order to gain popularity with the voters in their respective parties who must soon decide in primary elections their political futures. Let us be nave enough to attribute to each of these politicians a genuine concern for the nation as their motive. But are they not like those stones vying for the privilege of rescuing Israel from its security and economic woes? If G-d imposed on the Jewish state problems of such magnitude that compelled such competing "stones" to form into one entity, could we not expect that all parties would be pleased to have the privilege of serving the people who elected them as leaders?
Perhaps the difference between stones and politicians is that stones have no agenda other than providing support for the righteous. Let the politicians take a cue from the stones and increase their support for the righteous Torah institutions which are the best guarantee for the security and economy of Israel forever!


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- From: <email@example.com>
- Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 10:11:37 -0400
- To: "Taki Kamiya" <email@example.com>
- Cc: "'Henry S. Thompson'" <firstname.lastname@example.com>, "'David Orchard'" <firstname.lastname@example.com>, firstname.lastname@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com
Thank you very much. Your response exactly matches my understanding of the status of the EXI work and of our efforts to coordinate. Taki Kamiya wrote: > While I do not know all the context of the TAG's action 176, I > do not think > there's much TAG can work on at this moment, until we publish > the next draft > of EXI evaluation note. Subject to agreement from the rest of the TAG, I will: * close our ACTION-176 * establish myself as our TAG shepherd for TAG ISSUE-30 (binaryXML-30 Standardize a "binary XML" format?) * update the description of that issue to point to your note below, and to indicate that we will await further word from you on a) developments relating to the use of Content-encoding or similar mechanisms, and b) the possibile availability of a more detailed peformance analysis from you. We would very much appreciate it if you would keep us informed of significant developments in these areas. Thank you very much. Noah Mendelsohn TAG co-chair -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 -------------------------------------- "Taki Kamiya" <email@example.com> 02/28/2009 10:03 PM To: <email@example.com>, <email@example.com> cc: <email@example.com>, "'Henry S. Thompson'" <firstname.lastname@example.com>, "'David Orchard'" <email@example.com> Subject: RE: TAG review of EXI Best Practices Hi Noah, It is my understanding that the disucssion between TAG and EXI has revolved around mainly two issues. One is improving the affinity of EXI to XML and more broadly to the Web, which involved not only the discussion of the need for a more robust identifier in the stream header to distinguish EXI from other resources, but also the better (least worse) way for EXI to integrate into existing XML systems on the Web. The identifier issue has already been addressed in the format spec, and the main discussion we had in TPAC last year was mostly about the latter; in particular, usage of content-coding in the context of HTTP. Since then, we updated the internal draft of the spec to reflect the TPAC joint discussion (as I wrote in the email you attached), and are now in the process of registering cotent-coding tag "exi" by proposing it to ietf-types [1]. There is still some uncertainty in this regard, given that there have been shown a number of concerns from within that community. We plan to engage more on this issue for achieving desired resolution, however, we understand that there is a possibility that we may not get what we requested. The other issue we jointly discussed before is about the measurements of EXI. The action was for us to provide articulate, concise demonstration of clear benefit of EXI that's much more amenable to readers. We have taken the first step towards that goal, and produced a draft of such a document "Efficient XML Interchange Evaluation" [2] last year, which as you indicated provided observation of EXI benefits on the aspect of compactness. We intend to publish an updated version of evaluation note as soon as it becomes ready, of which the the main change will be the addition of processing efficiency data and analysis. Currently we are working on getting reliable numbers on systems and discussing how to improve the way we exhibit and describe the data for clarity. However, the exact timing of the publication is not clear yet, though we expect it to happen within the next couple of months. While I do not know all the context of the TAG's action 176, I do not think there's much TAG can work on at this moment, until we publish the next draft of EXI evaluation note. We appreciate TAG's coninued attention to EXI activity, which keeps us on alert and reminded of broad implicatioins of EXI that we sometimes lose sight of while too much focusing on itty-bitty details of the format. Thank you, Taki Kamiya for the EXI Working Group [1] http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-types/2008-October/002103.html [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/exi-evaluation/ -----Original Message----- From: firstname.lastname@example.com [mailto:email@example.com] On Behalf Of firstname.lastname@example.com Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 5:52 PM To: Taki Kamiya Cc: 'Henry S. Thompson'; firstname.lastname@example.com; firstname.lastname@example.com; David Orchard Subject: RE: TAG review of EXI Best Practices You sent this note many months ago, but I am (finally) moved to respond now. Please accept my apologies for the delay. In particular, I would like to inquire as to whether the EXI working group is currently waiting on or expecting any particular response from the TAG in relation to the attached email? The reason I ask is that the TAG has for some months been tracking an action assigned to me and to Dave Orchard, though since he's graduated from the TAG it now falls just to me. Anyway, our ACTION-176 [1] asks that Dave and I "send comments on exi w.r.t. evaluation and efficiency" to you. When I was reminded of this issue a few months ago, my intuition was that it had in fact been assigned before TPAC, and that whatever interaction was at the time required between the TAG and the EXI group indeed happened at TPAC, if not before, and that the action should probably have been closed after TPAC. Just when I was about to revisit this, I was appointed TAG chair, which not surprisingly proved a bit of a distraction for awhile. Anyway, with great embarassment for the delay, I am now revisiting the history of this action, and I find that it indeed was originally assigned ahead of TPAC [2]. This somewhat supports, but does not completely confirm, my intuition that in fact that action should have been marked CLOSED at that time. FWIW, I see in the minutes of our session at TPAC [3] my mentioning some existing TAG actions, presumably including 176. Though I doubt there's anything tremendously sensitive, I see that your WG minutes are member-only, so I won't quote them here. They do include some mention by me of the fact that further details on speed (as opposed to compression) would be helpful, and my impression is that there was agreement that you would work on those. Anyway, I'd like to propose a reset, on the following basis. 1) My recollection is that, at TPAC, you made the case that suitably well documented compression results had been provided for EXI, and we in the TAG agreed, at least informally. So, unless something changes, the TAG does not expect to again raise questions about the compactness achievable with EXI. 2) As noted above, my recollection is that you were intending to write a more careful analysis of speed results, and that we on the TAG expressed at least an informal interest in seeing them. Please let us know whether such a document has indeed been produced, if not whether you still intend to produce it, whether my recollection of the history is flawed, etc.. 3) If you are waiting on any other feedback from the TAG right now, please clarify what it is. Once you confirm that you are not, I will close TAG action 176. This is just a proposal from me, not a formal proposal from the TAG, but if you agree that the above is appropriate I will confirm with other TAG members that it is acceptable to them. If not, please suggest what might be a better approach. Of course, if you wish to consult us on some matter in the future, we will be glad to try and help, and we reserve the right to raise new questions should we become aware of them in the future. That said, when last we discussed this, the TAG felt that you and the community were in general aware of our concerns regarding the analysis of EXI speed, and at least informally, I can say that we have no expectation at this point of doing anything that would impede your progress toward Recommendation. Thank you very much Noah Mendelsohn [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/actions/176 [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/actions/176?changelog [3] http://www.w3.org/2008/10/20-exi-minutes.html#item02 -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 -------------------------------------- "Taki Kamiya" <firstname.lastname@example.com> Sent by: firstname.lastname@example.com 10/29/2008 07:50 PM To: "'Henry S. Thompson'" <email@example.com>, <firstname.lastname@example.com> cc: <firstname.lastname@example.com>, (bcc: Noah Mendelsohn/Cambridge/IBM) Subject: RE: TAG review of EXI Best Practices Dear TAG members, Per the resolution in the joint meeting in TPAC last week, we have updated the working copy of the EXI format specification to add a caveat regarding the use of content-coding in EXI, clarifying that it is applicable only to XML documents and it is neither byte- nor character-preserving. Note that, since EXI Best Practices document was last updated, the EXI specification has described its use of content coding and internet media type in the appendix. We believe that the above mentioned caveat fits best into this appendix section. We appreciate TAG's continued attention, guidance and support for our activity, which are all valuable to us. Thank you, Taki Kamiya for the EXI Working Group -----Original Message----- From: email@example.com [mailto:email@example.com] On Behalf Of Henry S. Thompson Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 6:43 AM To: email@example.com Cc: firstname.lastname@example.com Subject: TAG review of EXI Best Practices -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On behalf of the TAG, we welcome the expression of the outcome of the discussions at TPAC last year in this document [1]. Presuming this now 10-month-old draft continues to represent the WG's position on the matter, we endorse the commitment to the 'Content Encoding' route as the least-bad alternative available. We would encourage you, however, to devote a bit more space to explaining the details of what this amounts to, in particular the way in which EXI as specified cannot literally take the place of a Content Encoding: 1) It doesn't map text to text; 2) Even if a version of it were specified that did, it is not universal, that is, it _only_ maps XML to XML. Compare this to for example gzip: gzip maps text to encoded text, and back again, whereas EXI as spec'ed maps infosets to encoded text and back again, so a message which says "Content-Encoding: gzip; Content-Type: application/svg+xml" can be understood as saying "Unzip this byte-stream and you'll get a message body to which normal application/svg+xml processing can be applied", whereas a message which says "Content-Encoding: x-gzip; Content-Type: application/svg+xml" cannot be interpreted as saying "EXI-decode this byte-stream, and you'll get a message to which normal application/svg+xml processing can be applied", because the result of the EXI decoding algorithm is not a message body, it's an Infoset. And of course you can gzip anything, whereas you can only EXI-encode XML. ht, on behalf of the TAG [2] [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-exi-best-practices-20071219/ [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/actions/180 - -- Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh Half-time member of W3C Team 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440 Fax: (44) 131 651-1426, e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/ [mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFI5M/skjnJixAXWBoRAvGFAJ4yANHqyS6U4zvngnEuetypoS1kGgCdGetr Ftund8ggscvGfmzgqNQ833U= =etF8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Monday, 9 March 2009 14:12:32 UTC


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The ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine (Internal Medicine) has defined a new standard for patient safety and quality of care that will take effect July 1, 2012. Are you prepared?
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Under these new requirements, the use of point-of-care ultrasound for guided procedures and imaging evaluations will need to include:
- Techniques to perform thoracentesis
- The placing of intravascular and intracavitary tubes and catheters
- The use of transcutaneous pacemakers
- Imaging techniques (including the use of ultrasound) commonly employed in the evaluation of patients with pulmonary disease or critical illness.
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Below is a sample 3D animated video for the performance of a thoracentesis, one of the ultrasound examinations specified in the ACGME requirements.
Sonosite is ideally positioned to assist you in preparing for July 1. To explore the ultrasound equipment product line and get more information around Sonosite educational resources call: 1 877-290-4911
View all of our 3D Animated Learning "Visual Guide Series" videos.


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Must be ordered in multiples of 6
Touch of Nature EVA 3.25″ Female Cardinals w/Clip, 6pcs
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© 2019 Midwest Design Imports, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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Ok so as of lately Kuroshitsuji as become my favorite anime and I am very hooked to it XD I would like to make a wallpaper challnge where you make a kuorhistuji wallpaper.
Sounds simple enough, eh? Well there is one catch to it, I know Ciel and Sebtastian are the two most liked and the ones everyone makes a wall of. Well in this challnge I want to see a wall of anyone from Kuro besides those two. (it pians me to say that T.T)
1: I want the credit it needs, if you don't have a link then just give me some site names please (and if you really forgot then it's ok I know I don't useally have them anyways so ja...)
2: Don't forget NO Ciel or The hot demon also known as Sebastain
3: It needs to have some textures, brushes ect not just a image blown up to wall size. That's not a wall to me
4: Please dedicate it to me so I can see it when its made otherwise I miss them
5:No stealing other's work
6:Only inter with one account
7: and have fun
If you need to know anything else just as me!
you have one month