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According to the study—part of the RN Work Project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation— there are a variety of motivators, from desire for advancement to job dissatisfaction, that influence registered nurses (RNs) to pursue a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) degree or higher. The study was published in the November/December issue of the Journal of Professional Nursing.
RWJF Contact: Gretchen Wright | firstname.lastname@example.com (202) 371-1999
A Road Map for Encouraging Nurses' Academic Progression
A key recommendation of the Institute of Medicine's landmark report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health is to have nurses achieve higher levels of education, with a goal of 80 percent of nurses holding a bachelor's degree or higher by 2020. Now, a new study identifies the factors that best predict whether nurses will return to school to earn those degrees.
According to the study—part of the RN Work Project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation— there are a variety of motivators, from desire for advancement to job dissatisfaction, that influence registered nurses (RNs) to pursue a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) degree or higher. The study was published in the November/December issue of the Journal of Professional Nursing.
Motivators cited in the study include an interest in career and professional advancement, gaining new knowledge, improving social welfare skills, and being a positive model for one's children. RNs identified a desire to achieve personal and job satisfaction and professional achievement as important intrinsic motivators. Nurses with graduate degrees are more likely to report being extremely satisfied with their jobs, compared with nurses who hold associate's degrees, who more frequently report moderate to extreme dissatisfaction with their jobs.
Lead investigators for the study were Christine T. Kovner, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor at the College of Nursing, New York University; Carol Brewer, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor at the School of Nursing, University at Buffalo. Kovner and Brewer direct the RN Work Project.
The research team also asked nurses about barriers to returning to school and getting an additional nursing degree. The two most prevalent responses were "cost" and "family/children." A "lack of time" came in third. Of those reporting cost and time as significant barriers, many cite difficulty scheduling classes around their work schedules as a significant challenge.
RNs report that support from employers and educational institutions increase the likelihood that they will return to school. RNs who say they are undecided about continuing their nursing education identify organizational incentives and rewards as important motivators. Those include tuition reimbursement, compatible work and class hours, paid sabbaticals, forgivable loans for service, pay for attending class, and Web-based and worksite classes.
"As our health care system changes, the need for more nurses with bachelor's degrees or higher is increasing," said Kovner. "The patient population is aging and more patients are presenting with more and more complicated conditions. Health care is relying ever more heavily on information technology. More people are able to access care. Not only do we need more BSN-prepared nurses to provide care in this increasingly complex system, we need more nursing faculty at our institutions of higher education to educate the next generation of nurses. Knowing what motivates nurses to seek BSN and higher degrees is crucial."
"Given that the cost of education is a major barrier for many nurses, increasing scholarships and other financial incentives for returning to school should be the highest priority for funders," added Kovner. "Scheduling bachelor's-level and graduate classes at times and in places that make them more convenient for RNs is also very important."
For nurses with associate's degrees, being Black, living in a rural area, having non-nursing work experience, an optimistic outlook, higher work motivation, working in the intensive care unit or step-down unit, and working the day shift are among the most important predictors that they will pursue a bachelor's degree.
For those holding a bachelor's degree, being Black,having non-nursing work experience, holding more than one job, living in a non-rural area, working the day shift, working voluntary overtime, lower intent to stay at current employer, and higher work motivation are among the top indicators that they will pursue a higher degree, such as an MSN.
"Understanding the characteristics of nurses who obtain higher degrees is key to knowing how to increase the number of nurses with BSNs and advanced degrees," said Brewer. "We still have quite a ways to go to meet the Institute of Medicine report's goal of having 80 percent of RNs hold a BSN or higher degree by 2020, but these findings give us insight into the factors that influence nurses to return to school, and the best targets for recruitment and encouragement."
The RN Work Project is a 10-year study of newly licensed registered nurses (NLRNs) that began in 2006. It is the only multi-state, longitudinal study of new nurses' turnover rates, intentions and attitudes—including intent, satisfaction, organizational commitment and preferences about work. The study draws on data from nurses in 34 states, covering 51 metropolitan areas and nine rural areas.


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Maine's largest erractic glacial boulder
Open weekends from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. during July and August. 501-c3
High Peaks Alliance heritage trail that honors the legacy of Cornelia
Hours: open most Wed 9a-3p or by appointment; Open: June-September Wed 10-2, Sun 1-4
"Dedicated to preserving the Maine logging industry; it's history and future by means of educating all who walk through the Logging Museum doors!"
The Northen Forest Canoe Trail links the waterways of Maine, New Hampshire, Quebec, Vermont, and New York
Open 7 days a week all year 10:00-5:00, free admission
The Phillips Area Community Center is a non-profit community organization, dedicated to sponsoring events and scholarships for youth, as well as offering a sense of community for area residents.The venue boasts a large hall with a stage at one end, a small kitchen, and two restrooms, one of which is ADA compliant. This historic brick building was the old machine shop for the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad, and then the Phillips High School Gym. Known now as "the PACC", community members donate a small amount annually to become "Leaders of the PACC". These Leaders get notices for the annual Celtic concert series, local musicians, and other events throughout the year. The PACC is available for events, and may be rented for private celebrations. The PACC hosts suppers, dances, theater performances, roller and ice skating, and a variety of other events. A "First Saturday of the Month" Craft and Flea Market is held June through October.
Vose House. Open summers on the 1st & 3rd Sundays of each month or by appointment. 501-c3
A non-profit organization. Mission: preserving natural areas, scenic beauty, critical wildlife habitat and the cultural heritage that makes this place so special
Open – July & August. Hours – Monday-Saturday 10am-12pm. 501-c3
Part of Rangeley Lakes Historical Society.
June-October Weekends 11am-3pm; Ghost Train schedule in October
Winter Hours Seven Days a Week
June through October, Tuesday to Sunday 1 to 4PM
July and August: Wednesday-Sunday 1-5 pm
September: Saturdays only 1-5 pm
Maine's only remaining historic wire suspension bridge

subset: commoncrawl


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Amy Love's Home Page
May 29th, 1999
|Hi, my name is Amy Chua. I am
married to a wonderful man named Paul. We were married May
29,1999 in Bellevue, Washington. I am currently a kindergarten
teacher in the Seattle area. Things I enjoy doing include: skiing, softball, basketball, swimming,
volleyball and biking. When I was two years old I traveled on the back of a tandem 10 speed bike down the
Oregon coast for a week with my parents. We did it again when I was 12 years old. My
senior year in High school I did the S.T.P. (Seattle to Portland) bike ride.
The first picture on the left was taken on a vacation to Cannon Beach, Oregon. The lower picture is of myself and my husband Paul, just in case he ever forgets my picture when he travels he can look me up on the web.
Wedding Party:Trish Chua, Naomi Melero-Jordan, Mindy Condon, Jennifer Murai, Amy, Paul, Christine Love, Chris Santos, Greg Deveer, Jamie Love, Rian Takahashi, Taylor Love
We made it through the reception!!!!


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| Aditya Chakrabortty
Tian Yu worked more than 12 hours a day, six days a week. She had to skip meals to do overtime. Then she threw herself from a fourth-floor window
Aditya ChakraborttyMonday 5 August 2013, The Guardian Tian Yu tried to kill herself in 2010, as did 17 of her Foxconn colleagues. Photograph: University Research Group At around 8am on 17 March 2010, Tian Yu threw herself from the fourth floor of her factory dormitory in Shenzhen, southern China. For the past month, the teenager had worked on an assembly line churning out parts for Apple iPhones and iPads. At Foxconn's Longhua facility, that is what the 400,000 employees do: produce the smartphones and tablets that are sold by Samsung or Sony or Dell and end up in British and American homes. But most famously of all, China's biggest factory makes gadgets for Apple. Without its No 1 supplier, the Cupertino giant's current riches would be unimaginable: in 2010, Longhua employees made 137,000 iPhones a day, or around 90 a minute. That same year, 18 workers – none older than 25 – attempted suicide at Foxconn facilities. Fourteen died. Tian Yu was one of the lucky ones: emerging from a 12-day coma, she was left with fractures to her spine and hips and paralysed from the waist down. She was 17. When news broke of the suicide spree, reporters battled to piece together what was wrong in Apple's supply chain. Photos were printed of safety nets strung by the company under dorm windows; interviews with workers revealed just how bad conditions were. Some quibbled over how unusual the Foxconn deaths were, arguing that they were in line with China's high rate of self-killing. However conscience-soothing that claim was in both Shenzhen and California, it overlooked how those who take their own lives are often elderly or women in villages, rather than youngsters who have just moved to cities to seek their fortunes. For the three years since, that's the spot where the debate has been paused. In all the talk of corporate social responsibility and activists' counter-claims that the producers of iPads and iPhones are still sweating in "labour camp" conditions, you hardly ever hear those who actually work at Foxconn speak at length and in their own terms. People such as Tian Yu. Yu was interviewed over three years by Jenny Chan and Sacom, a Hong Kong-based group of rights campaigners. From her hospital recuperation in Shenzhen to her return to her family's village, Chan and her colleagues kept in touch throughout and have published the interviews in the latest issue of an academic journal called New Technology, Work and Employment. The result is a rare and revealing insight into how big electronics companies now rely on what is effectively a human battery-farming system: employing young, poor migrants from the Chinese countryside, cramming them into vast workhouses and crowded dorms, then spitting out the ones who struggle to keep up. Yu fits the profile to a T. In February 2010, she left her village in central China in order to earn money to support an impoverished family. As a leaving gift, her father scraped together about ¥500 (just over £50) and a secondhand mobile so she could call home. After a journey of nearly 700 miles, she was taken on at Foxconn. The employee handbook urged: "Hurry towards your finest dreams, pursue a magnificent life." But Yu doesn't remember her daily routine as particularly magnificent. Managers would begin shifts by asking workers: "How are you?" Staff were forced to reply: "Good! Very good! Very, very good!" After that, silence was enforced. She worked more than 12 hours each day, six days a week. She was compelled to attend early work meetings for no pay, and to skip meals to do overtime. Toilet breaks were restricted; mistakes earned you a shouting-at. And yet there was no training. In her first month, Yu had to work two seven-day weeks back to back. Foreign reporters who visit Longhua campus are shown its Olympic-sized swimming pools and shops, but she was too exhausted to do anything but sleep. She was swapped between day and night shifts and kept in an eight-person dormitory where she barely knew the names of her fellow sleepers. Stranded in a city far from her family, unable to make friends or even get a decent night's sleep, Yu finally broke when bosses didn't pay her for the month's labour because of some administrative foul-up. In desperation, she hurled herself out of a window. She was owed £140 in basic pay and overtime, or around a quarter of a new iPhone 5. Yu's experience flies in the face of Foxconn's own codes, let alone Apple's. Yet it is surely the inevitable fallout of a system in which Foxconn makes a wafer-thin margin on the goods it produces for Apple, and so is forced to squeeze workers ever harder. The suicide spate prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to call on Foxconn to improve working conditions. But there is no record of him providing any money to do so, or even relaxing the draconian contractual conditions imposed on Foxconn. Asked about it yesterday, Apple's press office said it did not discuss such matters and directed me to the company's latestSupplier Responsibility report. A glossy thing, it opens with "what we do to empower workers" and describes how staff can study for degrees. After her suicide attempt, Yu received a one-off "humanitarian payment" of ¥180,000 (£18,000) to help her go home. According to her father: "It was as if they were buying and selling a thing." Last year, Tim Cook received wages of $4m – it was a big drop on the package he took in 2011.


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United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo: Allegations of fraud in handling and accounting of Cargo at Pristina airport (ID Case No. 0192-04), 1 Jan 2004
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- January 12, 2009
United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (UN OIOS) 1 Jan 2004 report titled "Allegations of fraud in handling and accounting of Cargo at Pristina airport [ID Case No. 0192-04]" relating to the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo. The report runs to 6 printed pages.Note
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UNITED NATIONS NATIONS UNIES United Nations Interim Mission d'Administration Administration Mission Int�rimaire des Nations Unies in Kosovo UNMIK au Kosovo INVESTIGATION TASK FORCE Allegation of fraud in handling and accounting of Cargo at Pristina Airport (Case No. 0192/04) I. Introduction 1. The Investigation Task Force (ITF) received a report that the Cargo Department at Pristina Airport had improperly sought payment for importation and storage of goods owned by the Company. It was further alleged that an amount of 8,000.00 was sought and received by an official (Official 1) of the Pristina Airport, which was illegal and therefore not recorded in the accounts of the Airport. 2. After the ITF conducted a preliminary investigation into this allegation, prima facie evidence of a crime was identified and the case was referred to the Department of Justice, Pillar I, UNMIK, on July 22nd, 2004 for further judicial action. This report is a summary of the information adduced during the investigation. II. Background 3. ITF Investigators met with the Company Representative, who explained that a part of his business involves the importation and marketing of LED display equipment. The Company consists of 4 partners: � Partner 1 � Partner 2 � Partner 3 � Partner 4 4. The above company partners agreed to the following regarding the various payments to be effected as follows: � Partner 2 and Partner 3 were to pay the total price of all the goods; � Partner 1 was to pay everything regarding VAT, Custom Duties, Local Taxes and Storage. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. THE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF AIRPORT PRISTINA CARGO OFFICIALS 5. In general terms, airport officials are required to act in the best interests of Airport Pristina, a Kosovo Publicly Owned Enterprise (POE), while performing their duties and establishing and maintaining a responsible and transparent business framework in which Airport Pristina can function. All Cargo Department officials are obliged to follow the applicable law, and internal Rules, Regulations and Instructions, when dealing with Airport Pristina assets, resources and facilities. 6. Official 2 was responsible for the daily control and management of the Cargo section, including its assets and resources. He had the responsibility to ensure that all contracts concluded on behalf of Airport Pristina regarding storage fees payable by importers complied with the applicable law, regulations and instructions, and that they were subject to full and fair competition, openness and transparency and free from conflict of interest and corruption. His/her duty was to conduct the affairs of Airport Pristina as a senior official with the utmost integrity and transparency and to be fully accountable to the Board of Airport Pristina. 7. It was Official 2's responsibility to ensure that storage fees were paid and a record of the payments be kept. The procedure for recording payments is that the airway bill with a customs stamp should have been provided to the Finance Officer whereby he/she then calculates the storage fees owed. Before individuals or companies were allowed to retrieve their goods, this fee had to be paid pursuant to an official invoice. In this instant case, there is no record of such an invoice or any such payment. The absence of such a record is highly unusual and establishes that monies owed to the airport were not received in this case. 8. Official 1 worked in the Cargo Handling Office at the Airport. As with Official 2, it was Official 1's duty to ensure that all payments made by customers of the airport complied with the applicable regulations and instructions. III. INVESTIGATIVE DETAILS 9. A consignment of "LED Display equipment and accessories" for the Company arrived at the airport via Airline 1 on 26 December 2003, and consisted of four pallets containing 27 packages with a total weight of 976 kg. These goods were imported from Beirut and were accompanied by an Air Waybill. 10. The Company Representative was advised by Partner 2 of the consignment's arrival. Partner 2 was also the person that handed over the Air Waybill to the Company Representative. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. At the time the consignment arrived in Kosovo, the Company did not have permission to erect the LED screen on any city building for advertisement purposes as they had intended. This authorization was granted sometime later, circa March/April 2004. 12. The merchandise in question was paid for and cleared on the 15th of March 2004, by the nominated Shipping Agent. The same Agent, on behalf of the Company, paid a total amount of 11,581.00, VAT and Customs Duties included. 13. Once all the payments had been effected, the Company Representative went to the Cargo Building to pick up his goods, but according to his statements, he/she was approached by Official 1, who advised the Company Representative that he/she was now required to pay the amount of 32,800.00 that included a storage charge for the period 26 December 2003 to 15 March 2004. 14. Partner 2 was astonished at this excessive charge for storage. At this point, the Company management agreed to leave the goods in storage and decide on what action to take. They identified the possibility of returning the goods to their place of origin, due to the fact that the storage would have cost them nearly as much as the price of the screen (US$54,000.00). 15. Official 1 then advised the Company Representative that he would do everything in his/her power to assist in settling this situation, including an offer to lower the storage charge. Sometime thereafter, Official 1 advised the Company Representative that he/she was able to decrease the storage charge to 8,000.00 based on his/her position and connections at the Airport. 16. The Company management accepted the new offer and agreed to pay the lower storage charge of 8.000.00. However, due to the fact that Partner 1 did not have 8,000.00 in cash, he/she commenced a search amongst his/her friends for the money. Subsequently, Partner 1 was able to raise the money to pay both the Custom Excise and Airport Storage fees. 17. On the 16th of March 2004, Partner 1 paid the 8,000.00 to the Company Representative, who then went to Pristina Airport to hand it to Official 1. The Company Representative stated that the hand-over of the cash to Official 1 took place outside the airport terminal gate. The Airport X-Ray Operator, who observed the meeting between the two men, corroborated the fact that the meeting took place as stated. 18. ITF Investigators visited the Cargo Department Finance Office to check official documentation in relation to the Company merchandise. No trace of the payment of the 8,000 could be found in the Cargo Department account books for 2003 or 2004. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19. According to the tariff list that the Finance Officer of the Cargo Section provided to the ITF, the Company should have paid an amount of approximately 32,000.00 for storage fees from the 23rd of December 2003 to 15th of March 2004. 20. In view of the above, ITF Investigators interviewed Official 2 who offered no justifiable explanation as to why no payment had been effected with respect to the Company goods. He/she simply repeated that the goods were confiscated from the Customs Service and that just a minor payment of storage fees should have occurred. Unfortunately, no trace of payment (current official storage price list payment or the minor payment that Official 2 declared in his/her official interview) was detected by the ITF nor provided by Official 2. Further inquiries carried out by the ITF on 6 July 2004 at Pristina Airport Customs Offices and at Pristina Customs Services Headquarters, disclosed that the merchandise did indeed enter the airport storage on 26 December 2003 and left on 15 March 2004. According to two staff members, the Company merchandise was not confiscated based on a request from Customs. The ITF found that the Company paid a total amount of 11,581.00 for VAT and Customs Duties. 21. On July 12th 2004, ITF Investigators interviewed Partner 4 confirmed that the first requested amount was 32,000.00, which was later changed to the agreed sum of 8,000.00. He/she added that he/she received a strange phone call from a staff member of Airline 2 Pristina Office on 9 July 2004, advising him/her to urgently make contact with Official 2 on his/her mobile telephone, because Official 2 urgently needed to speak with Partner 4. According to Partner 4's statement, he/she called Official 2, who asked for an appointment in order to discuss "a certain issue". Partner 4 said he/she replied that there was no need to continue this conversation, as he/she knew that Official 2 was trying to influence any statements by Partner 4 that he/she may provide to any future inquiries from an investigative body. Partner 4 stated to the ITF that he/she advised the staff member of Airline 2 of his already scheduled appointment with ITF Investigators on the following Monday and that he/she was prepared to tell all he knew on the matter. In view of all the collected data and evidence, the ITF decided to refer the case to the Department of Justice. IV. CRIMINAL VIOLATIONS 22. Based on the referral from the ITF to the Department of Justice on 26 July 2004, arrest warrants were issued against Official 1 and Official 2. Each charge is detailed below: Count 1 That between the dates 14th March 2004 and 16th March 2004 inclusive, Official 1 and Official 2 acting in their capacity as officials of Airport Pristina, and acting in complicity with the intention to obtain an unlawful material benefit, presented a representative of the Company with a false statement of account claiming reduced storage fees, and in so doing, misled an authorized person to carry out an unlawful payment, thereby committing ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the offence of Fraud in Service in violation of Article 215, (1) and (2) of the Kosovo Criminal Code (KCC) punishable by imprisonment of one to ten years {equivalent to Fraud in Office contrary to Article 341 (1) and (2) of Provisional Kosovo Criminal Code (PCCK)}; and Complicity, in violation of Article 22 of Criminal Code of SFRY,( equivalent to Co- Perpetration, in violation of PCCK Article 23) Count 2 That between the dates 14th March 2004 and 16th March 2004 inclusive Official 1 and Official 2 with the intent to obtain an unlawful material benefit for themselves appropriated money (approx. 8,000.00 Euros) from the Company, amount which was allegedly decreased from an initial sum of 32,800.00 Euros to be paid to the Airport for storage fees for goods kept in the Cargo section of the Airport from 24.12.03 until 15.3.2004, thereby committing the offence of Embezzlement, in violation of Article 219 para. 1 and 3 of the KCC punishable by imprisonment of one to ten years (equivalent to Misappropriation in Office, in violation of Article 340, (1) and (3) of the PCCK) and Complicity, in violation of Article 22 of Criminal Code of SFRY ( equivalent Co- Perpetration, in violation of PCCK Article 23.) Count 3 That between the dates 14th March 2004 and 16th March 2004 inclusive Official 1 and Official 2 acting in complicity, with the intention to inflict damage to a business organization, abused their official position and exceeded the limits of their authorization and did not execute their official duties, by failing to collect, on behalf of their employer, the appropriate storage fee from the Company , and depriving the airport of that amount , thereby committing the criminal offence of Abusing Official Position of Authority in violation of Article 339 para. 1 and 3 of PCCK, punishable by imprisonment of one to eight years (equivalent to Abuse of Office in violation of Article 210 (1) and (3) and Co-Perpetration, in violation of PCCK Article 23. V. CONCLUSION 23. Given that the judicial process is ongoing and now rests with the Department of Justice, it is highly recommended that the information contained in this report be carefully protected from inappropriate disclosure. The two Pristina Airport staff members are under suspension and awaiting trial. Therefore, this information is to be treated as ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- highly confidential and should not be disseminated to any other party without the consent of the competent Judicial Authorities. VI. RECOMMENDATIONS 24. The ITF offers the following recommendations: Recommendation 1: The ITF recommends that UNMIK Pillar IV take no administrative action against Official 1 and Official 2 pending the resolution of their respective cases by the Department of Justice (IV04/192/01). Recommendation 2: The ITF recommends that UNMIK Pillar IV take appropriate disciplinary action against Official 1 if he/she is not criminally charged or sentenced by the competent authorities (IV04/192/02). Recommendation 3: The ITF recommends that UNMIK Pillar IV take appropriate disciplinary action against Official 2 if he/she is not criminally charged or sentenced by the competent authorities (IV04/192/03). -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel has left developer BioWare amid a wave of layoffs, Gamasutra reports today.
The 3 Best And 3 Worst Korok Challenges In Tears Of The Kingdom
Rumors have also been swirling on Twitter and message boards that other staff at BioWare Austin, the studio behind The Old Republic, have been laid off as well.
This could be part of a layoff plan that BioWare announced two months ago. Membership has struggled for the sci-fi massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which lost 400,000 subscribers earlier this year. BioWare has reportedly considered making Star Wars: The Old Republic a free-to-play game.


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Welcome to Told in a Garden's World Wide Web home page. The information here is intended to inform stitchers as to what is available. We do not sell directly to stitchers. Please purchase the charts at your local needlework shop.
Designs by Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum
Other Products
More Information
About the Designer
Handcrafted Needlework Stands
by Hearthside Craftworks
Finding These Designs
To find stores in your area that carry Told in a Garden designs, try the following sites:
All images contained within this site are legally copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner without the written consent of Told in a Garden.


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Creative directors speak about "voice, vision and narrative"
An engaging hour's talk filled with industry experience and trend observation of who, and what, dictates fashion, was held in Katie Murphy Amphitheater on Thursday. "What Makes a Good Creative Director?" was moderated by Faces & Places instructor Joshua Williams. … Continue reading


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Little Brown Mushroom asks the age-old question—does it matter what age, or how old you are? Is photography a young person's game?
Seems to me that how you frame the question has a lot to do with the answer (LBM's framing concerns "most influential work"), and that the bell curve of most such data tends to merely follow the bell curve of greatest vigor in the human lifetime. Note that link they provide for philosophers, and how the curve flattens out at the ages of 60 and 70—isn't that because a fair number of humans throughout history simply didn't live that long? Putting it another way, how much did Archimedes accomplish as a geometer after the siege of Syracuse?*
Over the years I've seen various claims relating to this question; one such claim—I forget where it came from (I'm too old to remember, clearly)—asserted that great artists' peak periods last approximately ten years. When I taught high school, I did have the feeling that if I collected the best pictures from ten years' worth of teaching, I could have put together a book that would have been a masterpiece by any standard. I never made it that far as a teacher, as it turned out.
In any event the quote from the New Yorker article about fiction writers needing to be young seems blatantly wrong to me. Fiction writing might merely share with photography a simple expedient—that it tends to be one of the things people try when they're young and hopeful, before they get practical and more seriously pursue the demands of living. You know, like being a musician or an actor. It's not that young people do better, it's that young people feel they have plenty time to waste working on impractical things like art photography even in the absence of any material encouragement. I might frame a different question...the way I put it in the header to this post.
Generally, though, I do agree with Alec Soth when he says, "Of course I'd mention the exceptions, but taken as a whole, photographic greatness seems to me to be a young person's game." Seems that way to me too—as a generality/stereotype. One thing that's always struck me is that young photographers in the flush of a youthful period of activity and production always think they're ramping up to an even greater future, when for most of them the "future" is right then—that is, the period they're in then is their most productive period. The problem more than anything is getting people to take themselves seriously and work harder at what they're doing, whatever age they are. That hasn't been the problem for Mr. Soth, but he's the exception there.
It's still an interesting question. Check out the post at LBM.
—Creaky Old Mike
(Thanks to Creaky Old Oren)
*"Noli turbare circulos meos!" Reputedly the last words of the great mathematician Archimedes—"don't disturb my circles!" According to legend, he was engrossed in solving his problems on an abax, a device used for drawing in sand, as the soldiers of the invading Marcellus were ravaging the city around him. Annoyed at being interrupted, he uttered his last words when a soldier burst into his study. The soldier promptly killed him (against Marcellus' explicit instructions).
According to an old joke, it's the only time a Roman ever figured in the history of mathematics.
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Featured Comment by Michel Hardy-Vallée: "I don't know how Alec Soth defines 'youth,' but if I look at the photographers whom I admire, their major work was published when they were at least in their thirties, which is at least a decade and a half older than the age at which pop musicians produce their magnum opi:
- William Eggleston's Guide came in 1976 (age 37)
- John Max's Open Passport in 1972 (age 36)
- Robert Adam's New West in 1974 (age 37)
- Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places in 1982 (age 35)
- Lynne Cohen's Occupied Territory in 1987 (age 43)
- Alec Soth's own Sleeping by the Mississippi in 2004 (age 35)
"And even though that's the work that broke their fame, what they did after is even more interesting if you look at people like Lynne Cohen, William Eggleston, or Robert Adams. Likewise, Yousuf Karsh's, Edward Weston's and Ansel Adams's most famous pictures were taken when they were in their forties and after.
"There are plenty of artists who hit the wall of creativity once the energy of their youth is gone, but I don't think it has to do with genius. It has more to do with whether they work in an art form that allows them to produce works tinted with maturity. Pop music has forbidden that since forever; in contrast, the visual arts allow for incredible works of maturity (the so-called 'late period' pieces).
"One would be remiss to consider that photography is a young person's sport: perhaps for certain genres it is the case, but there are plenty of talented photographers who hit their prime well beyond their twenties or even their thirties.
"Sad to say, I don't find what Alec Soth did after Niagara that interesting. Perhaps he was referring to his own work when he lamented the loss of youth's greatness, but I don't think his generalization is accurate."
Featured Comment by Bill Vann: "I think this is errrrr bullhonkers. Statistical manipulation of minimal facts to suit a predetermined outcome."
Featured Comment by Andreas Plath: "Well, someone once told me that life is divided in three parts: at first, you have time and inclination but lack money. Then, you have money and inclination but lack time. Finally, you have money and time but lack inclination. :-)"
Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Brooks Jensen a few years back commented on the link between age and artistic accomplishment, but he took the opposite tack, noting with relief how many great photographers did some of their best work at ages equal to or greater than his at the time. Certainly there are numerous energetic young photographers doing fabulous work, and plenty of older luminaries resting on their laurels and cranking out predictable rehashes of past glories. But there are also plenty of folks like Elliot Erwitt, Lee Friedlander, Albert Watson or the late Irving Penn turning out fabulous photographs at ages more commonly associated with rocking chairs and shuffleboard. I'm not quite ready to hang up my camera yet."
Ctein adds: Were this notion not so widespread and pernicious, I would simply ignore Alec's essay because it is so profoundly wrong and flawed (not the same thing). The notion that people do their best work when they're young is a persistent myth that is rarely backed up by the data. For some reason, people want to believe it, I don't know why, and then selection bias comes into play, where they think up all sorts of examples that support their case and ignore the ones that don't. It just doesn't hold.
That philosophers' plot that Alec presents as evidence doesn't even support his case. I binned the incidents by decades: there are 6 in their 20s, 13 in their 30s, 11 in their 40s, and 12 in their 50s. Aside from the fact that it appears people don't write great philosophy when they're very young (that doesn't seem like a profound surprise) it's pretty close to a flat distribution. It comes out a bit differently if one chooses the bins differently-- if I throw away the handful of events below the age 25, between 25 and 35, there are 9 hits; 35 to 45, 17; 45 to 55, 12; and 55 to 65, 9. Which is a modest peak. If you were a gambling man and placing a bet with someone about when some would-be future philosopher were to make their major contribution, you would do best betting on the 35 to 45 group. Except you'd still lose that that two thirds of the time! That particular decade has more than any other, but it is still only a modest plurality. It's a statistical bump, but it is a terrible predictor of individual performance.
Do this in almost any field that doesn't require extreme physical prowess and you'll find similar results.
As you note, age also biases the historical results In ways that have nothing to do with individual creativity. I pulled out my American mortality table from circa 1940. It's instructive to note that between the ages of 20 and 50, 25% of the population dies. Not a very high mortality rate per year, but it adds up. If you haven't done your work relatively young, you may not be around to do it at all. After that is another story. If you were 50 back then, you had a 1/6 chance of dying by the time you hit 60. If you were 60, you had a one third chance of dying before you hit 70. If you were 70, you had a two thirds chance of dying before you hit 80, and if you were 80, the odds were very very low that you would make it to 90.
Since then, that has moved forward by almost exactly a decade. Now, the mortality rate between 60 and 70 is around 1/6. Around one third between 70 and 80, around two thirds between 80 and 90, and don't plan on making it to 100. Even more significantly, that ineffable quality of life that has gotten much better. At age 62, I'm in middle age. And I don't mean that in the "oh my God I'm a baby boomer and I couldn't trust anyone over 30 and now I'm getting old and can't admit it" denial-of-mortality sense. I mean that I'm healthier, more active, and by just about every metric more youthful than my parents were at age 50. Even more important, I simply haven't started slowing down. My body and my brain aren't exhibiting many of the changes associated with old age yet. I'm still in that broad amorphous group called middle-aged.
I don't even look particularly old. Don't let the nearly white hair and beard fool you; if I chose to dye them black, you'd be very hard-pressed to figure out what age I was within that broad group. (I wouldn't do that, although I have considered purple.)
Looking around of my contemporaries (which I think of as anyone between about age 45 and 70) I'm a bit more youthful than the norm, a little luckier that way. But not anomalously so. I don't stand out like a freak, I'm just a little more towards that side of the bell curve.
As for my work, I made some of my best work (arbitrarily defined as oh, say, my 20 greatest photographs) when I was in my early 20s. I made some more of it in my early 30s. And some more of it in my early 40s. And some more of it in my early 50s.
I lack sufficient data after that. It's possible I have run out of steam and the rest of this decade will turn out to be a total waste. I wouldn't make any assumptions.
Mike replies: And that's not even the half of it. First of all there's the problem of definitions. At one point Alec talks about "the best creative years for a photographer." Well, that's a very different thing than "at what age to photographers do their most influential work," because you can be trace the creative peak of many individuals who are not at all "influential." So you'd have to frame the issue very carefully to even begin collecting data about it.
Another thing nobody's mentioned is that artists don't work in a vacuum. It depends a lot on what society values (and rewards) at any given time, and how much encouragement people get (or need) for doing their work. Many people don't know this, but, in Shakespeare's time, theater was absolutely the rage. Something like one in six Londoners went to the theater every week. It was the hottest art form in Elizabethan society, and consequently it was the coolest thing for creative people to be doing. So naturally there's going to be an efflorescence of accomplishment during that time—and sure enough, there was. A handful of decades later, Cromwell closed all the theaters down—so how many great English playwrights were there during that era? I don't know, but I doubt there were very many.
In photography, there was a huge boom in the 1960s and '70s. Many photographers who came on to the scene during that time were lionized when they were young and many of them are still famous. But then there was a big bust in the market in the early '80s, and photographers who came of age later than that have had a much harder time breaking in. To demonstrate this you could analyze the demographics of photography teachers in academic programs. Virtually all college and university photography programs were started during the boom years—and photographers who were qualified to fill the many teaching positions were highly sought after, and locked down many of the available jobs. The result was that in the '80s and '90s, it was much more difficult to get a college-level teaching job. Not only had the earlier generation snapped up most of the positions—and weren't budging from their perches—but successive waves of their MFA graduates were all competing for the few teaching positions that did open up! Not until the '90s and early 2000s did many of the now-diminished positions begin opening up again, as the original teachers aged, retired, or died.
Next you have to look at how much reward there is available for people to do creative photography. In the 1960s and early '70s, pop music ("rock and roll") was in a renaissance: there was lots of attention being paid to those musicians by society, lots of money to be earned, and it was a great way for creative people to be cool. Over the years the field has been flooded with competition, even as the art form itself has steadily declined in popularity. In the past decade the paradigm has finally changed, with the advent of Napster and file sharing and iTunes and the constriction of hard-copy sales. It's going to be far more difficult for musicians to make it big in the next fifteen years than it was for them to make it big in the 1960–75 period—regardless of their innate talent.
Right now, for an internet-based digital photographer, there's almost no encouragement available—it's very difficult to get any kind of recognition, still more difficult to earn any money, and far more difficult still to make a living as a photographer. And there's just a huge amount of competition. Those who do succeed do so by becoming professionals and serving a market—portraits, weddings, commercial advertising. And while that might earn them a living, it's not creative work that will make them famous as art photographers. Nor is it work that's going to be "influential." (Except possibly to others in the same fields.)
I still remember how crestfallen I was when I saw a list of all the photographers who are independently wealthy. It's a lot. I just used the example of Linda McCartney as an example in my "naturalism" post the other day—well, she was an heiress of a significant fortune and married a very wealthy man. Few would deny that Eliot Porter was an important and influential photographer, but he was able to quit a promising career as a medical doctor and devote himself to photography because he lived on his trust fund—he even threw a small party to celebrate when his income from photography finally equalled his income from his trust fund—and he was in his 50s when that happened, if memory serves.
If there were some social mechanism for rewarding young photographers to do creative (not just commericial) work and get both material support (wealth) and positive reinforcement (fame) for it, you'd see a renaissance of creativity in photography. It wouldn't have anything to do with how young they are; it would have more to do with the milieu in which they happen to live and work.
The bottom line: way, way too much noise in the data for any trend about mere age to be reliably extracted. Even though I don't want to discourage young people from trying, Or from believing that it's possible for them to acheive great things...because I think it is. There's never a guarantee of success, and it's also never impossible.
Featured Comment by mark lacey: "I wish I could find the quote but I recall one of the National Geographic editors saying that many of their photographers were middle aged because "a lot of photographers don't get traction until then." I don't see why wisdom and experience of age should not mean you just keep getting better, but some just run out of puff I guess. Being 52, I reckon I've my best years to come. Well, hope so anyway!"


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Amanda Hocking's story isn't just interesting because, at 26 years old, she's a millionaire from selling eBooks. Her tale is also fascinating because it remains a work in progress. Success brings new challenges, one of which is often defending that success. Something Hocking is having to do.
Hocking, a self-proclaimed unicorn enthusiast and Muppet activist, writes about vampires, zombies, and yes, romance. According to reports, just one year ago, the Minnesota-based writer was "impoverished," "living paycheck to paycheck," and the manuscripts she sent out were rejected by publishers all over New York. Like many authors, Hocking turned to self-publishing, creating a store on Amazon. She set the prices of her work relatively low — 99¢ to $2.99 — and for every $2.99 book she sells, she keeps 70%. Hocking tells USA Today: "To me, that was a price point that made sense for what I would be willing to spend on an e-book… I use iTunes a lot, and it's 99 cents and $1.29 a song."
Between her blog, Twitter, Facebook and word of mouth, Hocking's stories caught on; she sold 100,000 of her works in December, and over 10 months she's sold more than 900,000. She's about to buy a house, she's getting a lot of press, and Elle magazine is going to profile her. Cue the inevitable backlash.
Eli James of Novelr, a blog dedicated to Internet fiction, writes,
I'm surprised by the number of people who — after getting used to the idea that Amanda Hocking is making a bucketload of money via the Kindle store — come around to complain that her writing is lousy. Or that she needs an editor. Or that she needs 'more work'.
Interesting, since she was rejected by major publishers, and even last year, Amazon reviewers were saying things like her work is "rough around the edges" and that her plots are "annoyingly simple." Still, something is working — even though one paper called her a failed author, she's clearly not; and it's strange that just because she's a popular writer, folks are expecting her to be an excellent writer. Is Britney Spears an excellent singer? Is Jersey Shore an excellent show? It doesn't matter. People like what they like, and Hocking knows that her experience is not a typical one for self-published authors. In a blog post dated yesterday, she writes:
…Just because I sell a million books self-publishing, it doesn't mean everybody will. In fact, more people will sell less than 100 copies of their books self-publishing than will sell 10,000 books. I don't mean that to be mean, and just because a book doesn't sell well doesn't mean it's a bad book. It's just the nature of the business.
She adds:
By all accounts, [another writer] has done the same things I did, even writing in the same genre and pricing the books low. And he's even a better writer than I am. So why am I selling more books than he is? I don't know.
That's the truth of it. Nobody knows what makes one book a bestseller. Publishers and agents like to pretend they do, but if they did, they would only publish best sellers, and they don't.
It's ridiculous, to some extent, that Hocking has to admit her success is unusual. What does it matter? She created something people liked, the end. The questions of why and how seem to insinuate that there must be some magic formula, since a young! woman! from Minnesota! isn't "supposed" to be successful. Of course, some of the media attention probably is related to the fact that she is young, and a woman, and writes about paranormal things, since the world would love to find the "next" JK Rowling/Stephenie Meyer. (Hocking just might be the one: Her trilogy was optioned for a film.)
And so Hocking's story is not about a rejected writer "terrifying" the big publishing houses, or how writing on the internet can maybe make you rich. It's a story about one woman's persistence and well-earned success, and whether she can sustain her winning streak or hit new heights is a chapter yet to be written. But as Eli James puts it:
People are buying Amanda Hocking ebooks because they're cheap, they're easy, and they're good enough to read. And that's the metric that matters, really, because that's how disruption works: it almost always begins with 'good enough.'
Mega Success Story: How An Unknown 'Indie' Authoress Made Millions From eBooks [Daily Mail]
Self-Published Author Amanda Hocking Makes Millions From eBook Sales [HuffPo]
Good Enough Is How Disruption Happens [Novelr]
Authors Catch Fire With Self-Published e-Books [USA Today]
My Blood Approves [Amanda Hocking's Blog]
Amanda Hocking


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Wooohoo, thanks so much for joining our last challenge! It's sure hard to pick a winner and Top 3 among such a load of entries! I think we need to think about this for a few more days ;) I'm just kidding! Here we go;
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text: Jock 14 Posted March 31, 2013 Last week I flooded my Inon Z240 with salt water. It was pure stupidity, I obviously did not grease the O-ring of the battery compartment properly, so it was twisted a bit when I tightened the cap, just enough to let water in. During the dive the strobe fired correctly, but showed some strange behaviour (target light being off for a couple of seconds after a flash, at the end of the dive target light still on after shutting off the strobe). When I came back to the dive center I could see the twist in the O-ring (must admit I could have seen it before, but ...), so I knew what had happened. When I opened the battery compartment the infamous black liquid came out, and the batteries were heavily corroded. Another diver at the resort had some experience with such kinds of floodings. He washed the battery compartment, cleaned and dried it. After that the strobe was not functioning, but it was not completely dead. When turning on, the target light was shining, and there was a "crackled" sound as if the capacitor was was getting some charge, but it did not load completely. Seems that some gas that had built up during the battery corrosion pushed water or toxic broth into the strobe compartment, or the battery compartment is not sealed against the inside. I had a S&S backup strobe, so I let the Inon alone for that night and put it into the (hot) compressor room. Next morning I tried again, same behaviour. I saw that there are some tiny screws in the front of the strobe. I removed them and could lift the front plate of the strobe (I had to pull a bit to lift it off the o-ring seal. If you ever have to do so, don't use excessive force, since the onboard sensor sits in the plate and is wired). I let it rest for twelve hours in the air-conditioned camera room, hoping that all water/humidity inside the strobe would dry. Guess what - after I reassembled the front plate the strobe worked perfectly again up to the end of my trip! Of course I will let it have serviced now.This is just an info that not necessarily everything is lost once there is water inside the strobe compartment, but of course I sincerely hope that no one will never have to make use of this knowledge for him-/herself or some fellow divers! Jock p.s.: I just found out that a dealer in Germany offers an O-ring which is placed inside the top of the battery cap for additional safety. Costs just a few Euros, but that would have been a good investment... p.p.s.: Does anybody have an Inon repair or service manual? Would have been a great help if I coud have opened the strobe completely, which I did not dare to do in fear of ruining sensitive parts. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


text:
Scientology cult UK Annual Returns 2005
From WikiLeaks
Unless otherwise specified, the document described here:
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- Release date
- April 7, 2008
Further information
This document is a return made pursuant to English companies law by the Church of Scientology Religious Education College Inc.
It is important because it shows that (1) the Church of Scientology in the UK claims to not be liable for corporation tax (2) the Church of Scientology in the UK is exempt from requirements to file audited accounts. It also shows the income of the group.
Audience: British taxpayers and activists against the Church of Scientology
Verification: available for a fee from Companies House, the UK Government organisation responsible for collecting annual returns from English companies.Reason for leak: Public documents and company returns are not in the public domain within England; access to this document is available only for a fee; copyright status is uncertain, either belonging to Companies House or the Church of Scientology.


text:
Chris Ellenbogen grew up in western North Carolina in a small artist community near Penland School of Crafts. He went to college in Boone, NC and graduated from Appalachian State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Technical Photography. After college Chris spent some time living in the Caribbean on a small island called Vieques, off the east coast of Puerto Rico. Chris had traveled before this but found that living in a different culture rather than visiting as a tourist was a far richer experience. On his return to the US mainland, Chris moved to Birmingham AL and did freelance work with Coastal Living, Cooking Light and Southern Living Magazines. He loves traveling and worked for East Carolina University Italy Intensives study abroad program, living in the Tuscany region of Italy for two years. He helped run the program by teaching photography and leading group trips. He has extensive travel experience throughout much of Europe. He was most recently employed in the photography department at Southern Living Magazine in Birmingham AL. Chris has diverse editorial, freelance and studio photography experience. His technical skills include 360x180 or whole world panoramas. Chris is currently a freelance photographer based in Washington DC.
Other panoramas:
Italy Intensives
Penland School of Crafts


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As if America hadn't had enough firearm-induced horror for one mid-December weekend, police in Newport Beach, Calif. arrested 42-year-old Marco Gurrola in a shopping mall parking lot after he apparently fired off more than 50 rounds from a handgun Saturday evening. Though the mall was crowded (because December is the month Americans collectively worship our free market, consumer economy with weekend mall pilgrimages), police determined after a search of the parking lot and adjoining Macy's that no one was injured.
Shoppers at Fashion Island were understandably terrified when the shooting began, because, if firearms weren't scary enough on their own, the horrifying school shooting in Newtown, Conn. on Friday was fresh in everyone's mind. According to Deputy Chief David McGill of the Newport Beach Police, more than 50 rounds were recovered at the scene, though investigators have not released any details about the weapon, so there's no telling yet if the weapon was legal or if it violated California's 2000-banning of handgun magazines that hold more than 19 bullets. As any second-amendment proponent will gleefully tell you, however, guns don't kill people — people kill people. Guns just make it all sickeningly easy.
More than 50 shots fired at Fashion Island mall; suspect held [LA Times]


text:
- Updated On:
- March 22, 2021
Lets Move UK are please to offer to let this lovely ground floor apartment in Emersons Green. The property comprising of entrance hallway, lounge, separate fitted kitchen, 2 bedrooms (master with fitted wardrobes), family bathroom. The property further benefits double glazing, electric heating and an allocated parking space. SORRY NO SHARERS ,PETS, STUDENTS OR SMOKERS. 12 month min let.
Emersons Green has great access to the ring road and ideally located for the MOD, Aztec West or the M4/M5 Interchange. Bath and Keynsham are well within reach, Emersons Green retail park is close by with a a selection of shops and restaurants. There are buses that regularly run through Lyde Green into Downend, Fishponds and the city centre.
A household income of £24750 is required for this property. There is a holding fee of £190.38 required to secure the property and a deposit of £951.92.


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Goodbye, Seattle
Mar 14, 2013, 5:27 PM | Updated: Mar 15, 2013, 1:04 pm
By Mike Salk
I've never made a truly difficult decision in my life.
I knew I wanted to go to Pomona College from the moment I read about it. I knew I wanted to stay in LA afterwards and work in politics. Moving back to Boston a few years later to get into sports radio was fairly easy as well – I knew I wanted to love my job and that was the job I knew I would love.
Marrying Heather was the ultimate no-brainer. It took me some time to come around to having a baby, but I always knew I wanted children eventually.
Four years ago, when my station in Boston was dying and we were offered the chance to move to Seattle, that too was easy. Though I had never even visited the Northwest, it was a job offer in a field that doesn't provide endless opportunities. We were excited about the adventure and quickly fell in love with Seattle.
Though many will view my decision to return to Boston as another in a long series of obvious choices, it was not. And you are the primary reason.
Yes, I'm overwhelmingly excited about my new opportunity. I get to talk about the teams I grew up rooting for with the fan bases with which I most identified. I get to host afternoons during drive-time on the sports station I grew up listening to. It's a dream job and I couldn't say no. I can't wait to start.
But the only thing that gave me pause was Seattle.
I want to thank you for letting me into your community. Seattle is a wonderful, unique place. I often describe it as the perfect balance between San Francisco and Denver. The weather isn't great, but it almost never disrupts your life. The produce is the best I've ever tasted. The creative cuisine is cutting edge. The housing stock is solid; the neighborhoods are distinct.
And yes, the people can be slow to fully accept a newcomer.
I probably didn't help that when I suggested benching Ken Griffey Jr. I still think I was right, but it took me some time to understand the local mores and to say things accordingly. Thanks for teaching me and staying with me.
Bravo to Pete Carroll and the Seahawks for finding their quarterback. (AP)
I see big things ahead for Seattle.
I see a football team that is on the cusp of sustained greatness. As much as I stand by my Junior comments, I was 100 percent wrong about Pete Carroll. What he has accomplished in three short years is remarkable. I believed he was too soft to lead professional men and the opposite has been true. He (along with John Schneider and some well-chosen assistants) has shown a toughness that I never expected.
John Clayton said the Carroll era would be judged by his choice at quarterback and that's been a smashing success.
It was so much fun discussing that search. We debated Matt Hasselbeck, Tarvaris Jackson, Carson Palmer, David Garrard, Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Andy Dalton, Alex Smith, Michael Vick, Colt McCoy, Ryan Tannehill, Christian Ponder, Jake Locker, Matt Flynn, Mark Sanchez, Charlie Whitehurst and many others.
I suffered through the absurd calls for Mike Teel and Josh Portis. Please, stop.
And I got to watch Russell Wilson play every day. I'll always be thankful for that. The kid is legit.
I wish the Mariners had achieved that kind of success in my time here.
I am baseball fan first and I wanted so badly to talk about a winner. I wanted to see Safeco buzzing. I wanted to feel the energy in SoDo. I wanted playoff baseball in Seattle.
Will it happen soon? I don't know. I honestly don't. Jack Zduriencik took over a moribund franchise. The organizational depth was embarrassing. And his future will depend on his scouting. If he hits on some combination of Dustin Ackley, Jesus Montero, Justin Smoak, Kyle Seager, Mike Zunino and/or the young pitchers, this team will win. If not, it'll be back to the drawing board. We can debate what we think will happen, but we'll all have to watch and see how that plays out.
I think a new arena will be built in SoDo in short order. While I wish I could be here to see basketball and hockey played there, I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed the battle. I have never been more proud of our listeners that last year as we came together to have positive, intelligent discussion about a complicated and occasionally dry issue.
You didn't rant and rave. You didn't make demands on the non-sports loving public. You simply asked everyone to look at the facts and that was phenomenal. I wish certain editorial boards had done the same.
Enjoy having the Sonics back (although I still think it would be cool to choose a new name and a new logo). Enjoy hockey; it has everything the American sports fan wants. You'll love it.
I think I have just described the potential for the golden age of Seattle sports. Amazing, considering the climate in which 710 ESPN Seattle was launched.
Remember, in 2008 the Mariners spent $100 million to lose 100 games, the Seahawks stunk, the Huskies went 0-12, the Cougs went 1-11 and the Sonics left town. The next year we showed up! Ha!
After suffering through those years, I hope you enjoy what is to come. I know you will be in good hands with Brock and the rest of the staff at 710 ESPN Seattle.
I hope you'll call the station more often than you do now. Sports radio should be interactive and too often I think this fan base is too passive. It's alright to criticize your team without turning on them. You can still love your team even when you're mad at it. It's acceptable to have an opinion on a player other than a quarterback. You don't need to blindly trust a coach or a GM just because you hope they've made the right decision. The more actively you demand success from your teams, the more likely they are to win. Seattle does not need to accept anything less than greatness.
I hope you enjoy the next few years. I'm sorry I won't be there to enjoy it with you.
All that being said, I lied a little in the opening of this post. Yes, you are a huge reason why it'll be hard to leave, but you aren't the only one.
Spending the last four years manacled to Brock Huard has been among the best things that has ever happened to me.
Our early spats and differences have been well-chronicled. We had some awkward fits and starts. It took Brock a little while to feel comfortable opining on everything. He wasn't often critical in the early days and I thought I was going to lose it the day he nodded on the air.
I was no picnic for Brock either. Some of my early rants were over the top, overly critical and probably frustrating to my mild-mannered co-host.
But we knew we had to make the show better and we knew we had to come together to make that happen. We are both competitive people and we knew we'd have to put aside some of our differences if we wanted to win. That wasn't too complicated.
Brock Huard, Mike Salk and Tom Wassell pose for a picture following a broadcast from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn.
But something happened along the way.
We started really listening to each other. I know it sounds odd, but as we have argued, bantered and discussed for four years, we started agreeing on more things than we ever would have expected. I hope you have enjoyed hearing us each move towards the middle as much as we enjoyed finding ourselves there.
As it turns out, Brock is one of the smartest people I have ever met. I trust him with business or personal finance questions more than anyone I know. But that isn't his greatest strength.
He understands people better than anyone. I know everyone loves him because he is a local sports hero, but it goes so far beyond that. He gets to know people (even total strangers) so quickly. He asks them great questions because he genuinely cares about people. He actually wants to hear the answers. He is just curious and happy to get to know people.
I hope I have picked up just a little of that from him.
I have learned so much from others at the station and there are so many to thank.
Producer Tom Wassell had a vision to make this show more interactive and he succeeded. Our ratings took off when he joined our cast. He is also one of my best friends and my best sounding board.
Boy Howdy was a subtle force that could never be replaced. He has a unique ability to pipe in at the just the right time, even if what he said was almost always wrong. I gave him tons of grief (and he deserved all of it) but I secretly love the little guy.
You don't know our boss, Brian Long, but he created a working atmosphere that fostered success and taught me more about the importance of branding than you could imagine. His boss, Dave Pridemore, is exactly the kind of quirky leader that a station like 710 ESPN Seattle needed to thrive.
Brady Henderson, Colin Paisley, Jessamyn McIntyre, Matt Pitman, Kyle Brown, Shannon Drayer and the rest of the 710 sports-pit crew are such a creative and fun group to be around. That's important.
I've enjoyed working with each of the other 710 hosts, all of whom put aside their personal goals for the good of our station. Our working environment is as fun as it sounds.
And the various regular guests like Dave Cameron, Jeff Sullivan, Shannon Drayer, Jay Buhner, Pete Carroll, Eric Wedge, John Schneider, Jack Zduriencik, Danny O'Neil, Ray Roberts, Dave Wyman, and Robbie Tobeck have made these four years fly by.
But I'll end this the way I started it. By thanking each of you for listening, for emailing, for texting and for tweeting. Thanks for the conversation and the banter. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of Seattle's sports community. I will cherish it forever.
The hay is really now in the barn. See ya everybody.
(Now get to the choppah!)


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Thanks to services like Dropbox, many of us take it for granted that we can keep our files in sync across many machines, and that backup copies of those files will be saved up there in the cloud. But what if you want to use online file-storage with a group—to share files among your co-workers, say? Most of these same services provide straightforward file sharing in addition to storage and synchronization. Some go beyond those basics to offer the kinds of tools—such as file permission controls—that you might find on a file server.
Sharing files among multiple users can be complicated. A group might be temporary, existing only for the duration of a project, or long-term. Its members might all be in the same office or spread across the globe. Whatever the configuration of the group, online file-storage/syncing/sharing services must be able to make sure that everyone has the same version of the file, and that the changes one person makes don't overwrite those made by someone else.
To find out which online storage services might be best for group use, we chose to focus on a few services that we felt represented the wider field. Our criteria: We looked for services that synchronize files on multiple users' machines to the cloud. They had to have Mac- and Windows-compatible client software that automatically uploads and downloads changed files (or pieces of files) to all associated computers. They had to provide some kind of controls over which folders and/files were shared with which users. They needed to keep backups of older versions of documents and be able to restore deleted files.
We found dozens of services that qualified under most, if not all, of those criteria. We chose to focus on five that represent the gamut of what's available, that met the criteria most closely, and that have been in operation long enough to have a reliable track record: Box.net; Dropbox ( ) itself; the Mac version of Microsoft's Live Mesh 2011 ( ); Sugarsync ( ); Syncplicity ( ). For the sake of comparison, we looked at Google Docs as well, even though it isn't directly comparable to the others.
In our tests, all five performed as they should: They synchronized, updated, tracked, and retrieved files just as one would hope. Even more remarkably, I was able to run all five services at the same time, without any noticeable glitches. (Don't try this at the office, though: If you aren't careful about which folders you're syncing with which services, you can wind up in a recursive house of mirrors.) The differences came down to things like version archiving and the special features they offer in their business accounts. Pricing varies, but not enough to make that a paramount concern when you're evaluating.
The idea here isn't so much to recommend a specific service (though we'll do that) as much as to give you an idea of what to look for when you're investigating them yourself.
It's the apps
All but one of the services we looked at offer desktop clients for both Mac OS X and Windows; Box.net is currently beta testing its Mac client. In some cases, those client apps give you access to almost every feature the service offers; others let you do little more than control local preferences (such as bandwidth throttling for file transfers). SugarSync's software provides the most functionality, despite its scattered approach; Dropbox provides comparatively little.
One thing to remember about a service's reliance on a desktop client: Unless your collaborators (co-workers, clients, contractors, and so on) already use the service, you'll have to convince them to download and install the necessary software. If they don't, and they use the service's Web interface alone, they may be second-class collaborators.
The services vary widely in the quality and availability of mobile clients for the iPhone and such. Syncplicity and Live Mesh 2011, for example, offer no native smartphone clients; you have to use their mobile Web apps instead. Box.net, Dropbox, and SugarSync, by contrast, provide software for the most widely used smartphone platforms in the U.S.
All of the services except for Microsoft's Live Mesh allow you to manage files via Web apps as well as from desktop or mobile clients; some of them require you to use the Web for some operations (such as restoring old versions of files). Dropbox's Website is very Web 1.0; for example, most actions require a new page to load. Other services offer true Web apps or rely on Flash for quicker, more desktop-like access.
Syncing and sharing
These services vary in what they allow you to share, and how they let you share it. All except Dropbox allow you to share any folder you choose; some also allow you to share individual files. Dropbox opts for simplicity, allowing you to share just a single folder named Dropbox (including that folder's nested contents); there are workarounds to that, including manually creating symbolic links or using a third-party utility such as MacDropAny ( ).
Of the five services we looked at, only Syncplicity limits the number of computers that can sync to a given set of files or folders: if you have a free or personal account, you can sync two computers at a time. Box.net restricts desktop syncing to its paid business accounts. Windows Live Mesh 2011 is unique in that it will let you specify which computers a folder will sync with. Dropbox and Windows Live Mesh 2011 are the only services that synchronize directly between two machines on the same local network, without a round-trip out to the Internet. That's a distinct advantage when you're sharing large files with people in the same office.
When multiple users share files, they may make changes simultaneously, creating conflicts. All of these services except for Windows Live Mesh 2011 will notice if a file is synced at the same time from two different parties and then create conflict copies (typically labeled by user or machine name). But none of them achieve the level of version-control that's offered by Google Docs, which tracks all changes behind the scenes and applies them live to all users at the same time. Even when glitches occur, putting files out of sync, Google warns you and asks you to close and re-open the file.
The one thing these services won't let you do is lock individual files—preventing anyone from editing a file that someone else is already working on or making it impossible for specified users to ever modify a given file. Those features are commonly found in content-management systems (CMSes) that are specifically designed to handle such documents. Shared storage and syncing services aren't focused on the contents of documents as much as on saving a current copy of a file each time it's modified. (Some services let you mark files or folders as read-only—for everyone or particular users—but that's not the same thing as locking a file.)
Permissions and security
These services vary widely in the granularity of their file permissions. For example, Dropbox lets you set permissions on an entire folder, not for individual files. Furthermore, Dropbox's permissions give all users editing rights; other services let you grant view-only access to specific items or folders; some offer even finer control than that.
Many of these services let you share a file or folder with anyone for whom you provide an e-mail address, even if he or she doesn't have an account with the service; in some cases, that outsider can also share the file or folder with others. Some of them also allow you send out public links (which enable anyone to download a file from the service's Website) or links that only the recipient may use or that works one time only.
Except for Windows Live Mesh, all of these services save older versions of files. However, they vary in how many versions they store and in how they count those older files against your storage quota. Most will track who has made changes to a file. Being able to retrieve older versions is particularly important when you're sharing files with a group; while you may have local backups of the files you've used, cloud-based tools save changes more frequently, making retrieval of previous versions easier.
In an age of server break-ins, encryption protocol exploits, and man-in-the-middle attacks, any online storage service aimed at business users should secure data in transit as well as in storage. Microsoft provides less information about its security measures than some other services.
What happens if the company loses your data? It's a valid concern: Not too long ago, Google temporarily deleted hundreds of thousands of Gmail accounts, and it was days before it restored all of them. Some services, including Syncplicity and Dropbox, provide more detail about the care they take of your files than others.
Business plans
All of these services offer personal plans, which may be good enough for business use. All except Live Mesh also provide extra features that are especially useful for groups. Business accounts typically offer tools for managing multiple users, meaning you can create accounts and assign permissions, assign new users to multiple files at once, revoke access, allow users to invite people outside the account, and more. Business plans may also provide a pool of storage that's available to all members of the plan, instead of allotting separate quotas for each user. (Google, for one, does not.)
If you work with many different clients, customers, or vendors, an individual account will probably make more sense, partly because you retain control of it independent of which projects are using the shared storage. Fortunately, most services let you put your toes in the water by offering free personal accounts with limited storage, and 14-day or 30-day trials of business offerings.
Box.net is the clear winner among business offerings: It provides IT-style control and administration for groups of accounts. For most other services, business accounts are stapled on.
For four of the services we looked at—Box.net, Dropbox, SugarSync, and Syncplicity—per-user costs are remarkably close. SugarSync is the cheapest at $10 per month per user; Dropbox in the middle at $13.25 for the first five users, and about $10 for additional users; and Box.net and Syncplicity at the top of this short range at $15. Dropbox only allows yearly subscriptions, which dramatically reduces flexibility; SugarSync kicks in a 16 percent discount for yearly payments.
The services vary more in the amount of storage they provide. Box.net's three-user starter plan includes 500GB of pooled storage (167GB each), but it doesn't allow you to buy more. Syncplicity offers the least amount of storage and the highest prices for additional storage: 50GB shared among the first three users, and $10 per month for each additional 10GB—way out of scale with Box.net and Dropbox.
SugarSync is also expensive compared to Box.net and Dropbox, offering just 100GB (33GB per user) for its three-user starter plan, and charging $30 per month for each additional 100GB unit—nearly twice that of Dropbox.
Dropbox includes just 70GB for the starter five-user plan, and charges $17 per month (payable as $200 per year) per additional 100GB units. However, Dropbox doesn't count deleted files or old versions of files against these storage quantities. Depending on how much you revise, this could mean a huge difference in required storage for Dropbox versus other services, which mostly include versions and removed files in the quota.
Windows Live Mesh stands apart from those other four, because it's free. But it also lacks the kinds of storage and user upgrades you get from those others.
Note that, if you're using these services with people outside your company, you'll need to convince them to pay up—or you'll have to pick up the tab.
The bottom line
For serious-minded business users who want central control and granular access to files, Box.net's business accounts are the clear winner among the services we looked at. Too bad we have to wait for its Mac client to be released.
From the standpoint of simplicity and accounting, I'd have to go with Dropbox. Having a single folder to sync and straightforward options makes it an easy way to collaborate—as long as you don't need fine-toothed file- or folder-permissions. Its LAN Sync makes it great if you're collaborators are all on the same network. Because it doesn't count old versions or deleted files against your storage quota, it's particularly good for storing large, frequently revised project files. The service has a ways to go if it's going to compete in the business market; it needs to get more flexible account terms and some kind of trial membership for business users.
Google Docs's simultaneous editing and superb Web app interface are great—as long as you don't need to sync files on your Mac or other device. For some companies, using a separate service (such as Syncplicity) to enable Google Docs desktop syncing, while using the Web interface as the primary way to edit and collaborate, may be the right combination of cost, features, and reach.
Whichever service you choose, the point is to reduce the amount of time all project members spend managing files, and redirect that effort toward productive work. Collaborative cloud storage should keep project members down to earth, while all the magic happens way above them.
Glenn Fleishman is a senior contributor to Macworld, writes regularly for the Economist's Babbage blog, and is the author of many e-books in the Take Control series.


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I have listed a new property at 309 630 ROCHE POINT DR in North Vancouver.
This meticulous, spacious 890 square foot, 2 bedroom, 2 full bath & enclosed solarium/den makes for a perfect starter home, downsizer or investment property. Huge windows overlook the charming quiet courtyard & greenspace. 9' ceilings, laminate floors, gas fireplace, master with ensuite & walk-in closet, give a contemporary feel to this cozy home. Other features include separated bedrooms, new dishwasher, newer washer & dryer (hardly used) & freshly painted thoughout. Solarium is a true "flex space" & would suit a dining room or office.
Additional Features
- Insuite laundry (washer & dryer like new)
- Pets allowed (2 pets), Rentals allowed
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- Secure underground parking, storage locker
- Gym and bike room
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Location, Location, Location!
- Ideally situated with walking trails on your door step
- Close to 2 bus routes to Phibbs Exchange (central hub)
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- Close to Deep Cove, Cates Park, Mt. Seymour Skiing, Hiking & Capilano University


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There is currently very little potential for advanced-composite technology in high-volume automotive applications. That is not to say that advanced composites have not been or will not be used in the distant future (more than 10 years). For example, advanced composites (e.g., carbon fiber) are currently used in several specialty road cars, concept cars, and in many racing cars. However, these are not produced in high-volume or for use in large parts.
In the United States and Europe, the barrier to acceptance of advanced composites in the automotive industry is price vs. performance. While parts integration and large parts are a potential advantage for engineered and advanced composites over metal (steel included), the cycle times and material costs for advanced composites may still present a barrier to full-scale acceptance in the automotive industry in the near future.
Advanced composites, which are composed of oriented, high-performance fibers (e.g., carbon) in a high-performance resin matrix (e.g., epoxy), provide enhanced structural, electrical, and thermal properties to numerous aerospace applications. The materials are costly, and the fabrication processes are slow. The number of units that are produced is small when compared to high-volume automotive applications. Advanced composite technology is technically appreciated by the automotive industry but is currently not accepted because of formidable costs.
The cost of high-performance fibers (specifically carbon fiber) has been a continuing barrier to full-scale adaptation of advanced composites. Guideline experts estimate that carbon fibers used in the less sophisticated aerospace applications can cost $15 to $60/lb, whereas those used in sporting goods could cost $8 to $15. For carbon fibers to be a feasible option to be used in industrial applications (automotive, oil well tubes, etc), they should cost around $5/lb. However, the realistic threshold for the cost of carbon fibers is probably $6 to $8/lb. Even if some of the giants in the automotive industry can force down the price point of carbon fibers by buying in large volumes, no carbon fiber producer is expected to be able to fulfill the entire demand on time.
Engineered composites, which are composed of unoriented, discontinuous or continuous, low-cost fibers (e.g., glass) and a commodity thermoplastic matrix (e.g., polypropylene) or thermoset matrix (e.g., polyester) are well established in the automotive industry. The cost of materials is low and the fabrication times are relatively fast, ranging from a few seconds (thermoplastic GMT) to a few minutes (thermoset SMC).
Several developments in the field of engineered composites may help expedite the adaptation of advanced composites in the automotive industry. For example, oriented, continuous fiber preforms have been introduced, which will reduce fabrication time for resin infusion processes (RTM, VARTM, SRIM, and RRIM). A second example is the development of new machinery to mix and inject long glass fibers in the form of sheets. This process could provide a serious threat to both GMT and long fiber pellets.
Separately, the carbon fiber industry is reacting to the pressure to reduce fiber cost. A certain amount of progress is being made, but the optimum volumes to achieve the lowest costs are still a few years away.
|Car Parts
|Car Parts


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There's nothing like up-to-date, relevant travel information direct from the experts - get Go2Africa's essential Kenya travel advice before you go.
Safety & Security
'Can I travel to Kenya?' is a question asked by many travellers, especially first-timers wanting travel advice for this wildlife-rich East African country that is home to the Great Wildebeest Migration over the plains of the Masai Mara.
Although Kenya has been a victim of tragic terrorist attacks, it is important to remember that these are very far from the main tourism hubs. Security has been stepped up at all airports - especially Jomo Kenyatta and Wilson - and at hotels across Nairobi. We will never send a client to any place that we would not visit ourselves; Go2Africa safari experts Ashley Gerrand, Mary Keet and Anja Naude all visited in early 2015 and reported feeling very secure especially since, as travel experts, we created a seamless itinerary that ensured private drivers, trusted suppliers and experienced lodge staff all the way. In addition to knowing where each and every one of our clients is every step of their way, all Go2Africa travellers also have exclusive access to a 24/7 hotline manned by senior staff in the event of any emergency, no matter how small.
For more Kenya travel advice, please read our expert blog on 'Is it Safe to Travel to Kenya?' that is packed with important information and insiders' takes on the current situation.
Money & Spending
Kenya's national currency is the Kenyan Shilling and although foreign currencies such as US Dollars are widely accepted (and indeed the currency required for activities like hot-air balloon safaris) we'd recommend using local currency to pay for bar bills, souvenirs and meals not included in your itinerary.
Please note that due to the number of fake notes in circulation, no US Dollar bills printed before 2003 are accepted in Kenya and, in fact, your safest bet is to carry notes printed after 2006.
Banking facilities and ATMs are found throughout Kenya's major travel destinations and all major credit cards are widely accepted, in particular MasterCard, Visa and American Express.
Banking hours are from 9am to 3pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to 11am on the first and last Saturday of the month for most banks.
Tipping for good service is customary in Kenya although it is of course at your discretion - bear in mind that some of the larger hotels will add a service charge onto your bill. A 10% tip is customary in city restaurants and bars when a service charge is not included.
For in-depth tipping guidelines, enquire with one of our Africa Safari Experts - they'd be happy to share their knowledge with you.
Average summer temperatures: 20°C / 68°F to 34°C / 93°F
Average winter temperatures: 18°C / 64°F to 29°C / 84°F
Rainy season: mid-March to June ('long rains') and October to December ('short rains')
Refer to best time to visit Kenya for climate charts, details on the best wildlife-viewing times and when to witness the Masai Mara migration.
What to Pack
For your Kenya safari, pack light casual wear in neutral colours (try to avoid white, black and blue) and a warm jacket for evening game drives. For more on what to pack for a safari, refer to our Africa Safari Guide travel advice section.
In Kenya's major cities the dress code is conservative but not overly formal – jeans and modest tops for women are fine. Swimsuits are acceptable on the beach but you'll need to cover up in public places.
Kenya is a fairly conservative society, especially where Islam holds sway, and much emphasis is placed on courtesy and manners. Care needs to be taken when photographing local people - always ask permission and prepare to be asked for reward in Kenya's most popular destinations - but by and large the people of Kenya are easy-going, amiable, humorous and helpful, making travelling and interacting with them a real pleasure.
Flights & Getting Around
Did you know you can book your flights through Go2Africa? For more information and frequently asked questions, please see our Flights section.
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport: East Africa's major flight hub is located 13km / 8mi outside Nairobi and is the gateway to the Masai Mara, Amboseli, Mombasa and Kenya's beaches as well as Zanzibar and Tanzania. There are also good connections from here to Uganda, Rwanda and the Seychelles.
Wilson Airport: a regional airport about 90 minutes by road from Jomo Kenyatta, Wilson is the hub for almost all of Kenya's internal flights and serves its fly-in safari locations. Ensure you have time between your international flight and domestic flight to make the transfer between the two airports.
Moi Mombasa International Airport: located about 10km / 6.2mi northwest of the town itself, Mombasa's airport is the gateway to the Kenyan coast.
Chartered flights are a great way to get around Kenya and avoid the country's often dirt roads; transfers from airstrips to lodges are conducted in 4X4 vehicles.
Road transfers from airports and between major destinations tend to use mini buses as do scheduled safaris to popular destinations such as the Masai Mara. Sliding windows and a pop-up roof provide passengers on mini buses with ample viewing opportunities on game drives whereas safaris to more remote destinations and private conservancies use open-sided 4X4s.
Visa & Passport Requirements
Visas are required by most visitors to Kenya including British, American, Canadian, European, Australian and New Zealand passport holders. Citizens from some smaller Commonwealth countries are exempt.
Visas are valid for three months from the date of entry and can be purchased upon arrival at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Visitors can pay for their visas in local currency and they must possess a passport that is valid until six months after the initial date of travel.
If you plan on travelling onwards from Kenya, visas for other East African countries such as Tanzania and Uganda can generally be obtained in Nairobi for around US$50 each.
About Kenya
History & Economy
Independence from Britain in 1963 may have been the beginning of a new chapter for Kenya but this East African country has a human history that stretches back to prehistoric times.
Lying at the heart of a region from which modern humans emerged some 150 000 years ago, Kenya's history has been shaped not only by indigenous and migrating African ethnic groups but by European and Arabian traders, missionaries and colonisers as well. Jomo Kenyatta was the first leader of independent, post-colonial Kenya and his conciliatory rallying cry harambee - all pull together - became the national motto.
Today, Kenya boasts the largest and most advanced economy in East Africa. Agriculture accounts for 75% of the work force but it is the service industry, dominated by tourism, which contributes nearly two thirds of Kenya's GDP.
People & Culture
Kenya's predominantly young population (nearly 75% of Kenyans are under 30) is made up of many ethnic groups that include the famous Maasai. English and Swahili are the official languages (any attempts to speak Swahili will be warmly received by locals!) and the vast majority of Kenyans consider themselves Christian. About 10% of the population are Muslim, the majority living on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.
Landscape & Wildlife
Straddling the equator, Kenya is dominated by the Rift Valley, a raised region of lakes, hills and mountains that is the result of a 6 000km crack in the earth's crust. Dividing the flat coastal plains from the fertile shores of Lake Victoria, the rolling temperate grasslands of the central Rift Valley are home to huge numbers of animals and consequently Kenya's most famous parks and reserves.
Northern Kenya's hot and arid scrublands are home to wilder, more remote parks and a different set of animals while the Indian Ocean coast is a place of long sandy beaches, coral reefs and tropical islands.
Most famous for the wildebeest migration that moves through the Masai Mara and Serengeti ecosystem, Kenya's ban on hunting plus private and local community conservation initiatives have helped to safeguard one of Africa's most important populations of large animals. There are healthy numbers of the Big 5, abundant predators and plains game, and a long list of bird species. No wonder then that several Kenyan parks deliver the easiest game viewing in Africa!