text:
Show a little love for SanFran with our Bay Bridge Bay table cards. They feature a striking silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge. This card is ideal for San Francisco weddings or couples from the Bay area who want to celebrate their favorite city on their big day.
Phone: 201-215-2004 | 100 Hudson Street, Floor 2, Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA
Wedding Invitations & Stationery Boutique
Perfectly Invited is the perfect online invitation web site and retail
boutique for discerning couples who want the flexibility of having their
wedding stationery designed to fit their style and budget. It's a one-stop
wedding stationery shop for everything a couple would need from save the
date cards or magnets to wedding invitations, programs, menus, table place
cards to thank you cards.
© Copyright 2004-2020
Mimosa Digital
L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.
Find us on Google+

subset: commoncrawl


text:
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time in five years, the U.S. government has run a budget deficit below $1 trillion.
The government says the deficit for the 2013 budget year totaled $680.3 billion, down from $1.09 trillion in 2012. That's the smallest imbalance since 2008, when the government ran a $458.6 billion deficit.
The deficit is the gap between the government's tax revenue and its spending. It narrowed for the budget year that ended on Sept. 30 because revenue rose while spending fell.
Revenue jumped 13.3 percent to $2.77 trillion, reflecting a slightly better economy and higher tax rates. And government spending declined 2.4 percent to $3.45 trillion, in part because of across-the-board spending cuts that took effect in March.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
By engaging our brothers and sisters, we grow closer to God!
We are never totally aware of how God is moving in our lives, how He is active in our existence. We do know that He is there, that "in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). We are in Him and He is in us. But we are never totally conscious of just how He is there, and what are His motivations for our lives.
The Fathers of the East have known this truth of His "incomprehensibility" and have variously expressed it, remembering that we see, as Saint Paul said, "darkly, as through a glass." Not understanding completely, we wonder in fact if we can lure Him into doing what we want. We make a "deal": if this happens, I will do this or that. We sometimes make our faith conditional, even though our faith must be there in spite of what happens – not because of what happens.
We try to comprehend it all rationally, with our heads, but it does not work like that. We know such things not with our heads; we know them with our hearts – we intuit, we perceive, we sense, we experience. This is dangerous, as we will see, and yet it is truly the deepest kind of knowing.
But even with this kind of knowing, God's existence in our lives remains only partially in our awareness; the rest is out of our awareness.
Of course, the more we mature spiritually, the more we can bring His energy into us, into our awareness, where it can then become expressed in our lives' acts. We never completely exhaust this possibility because there will always be more; we are never totally "filled up" with God's energy. Saint Gregory of Nyssa knew this when he said that our search for God was an "endless seeking."
What he meant is that this energy is always coming to us, always active in us, always emerging, but we can become conscious of it, be aware of it, discern it, only partially. Although our consciousness, that is, our awareness or discernment of God in us, can only be in part, yet it constantly presses for expression.
Because this is true, we believe that God is in the "depths" of our lives as the source, and up from this source flows many forms, seeking always to incarnate His presence. In its face we cannot rest; our reaction to this "flow" cannot be one of fatigue. Saint Gregory of Nazianzos knew this: "Now it is time, truly it is time, oh my soul, to know yourself and your destiny … Look to yourself, oh my soul! Yield not to fatigue." Saint Antony said, further, "He who knows himself, knows everything," and Saint Peter of Damascus adds, "To him who has come to know himself is given knowledge of all things."
This does not happen automatically, however. We, as living and growing beings, have a part to play in making our person available and open to God's presence. We must cooperate – the Eastern Fathers called this "synergy" – in such a way that the energy of God and the energy of our very selves fuse, raising us to new levels continuously. Unlike some of the more common (yet valuable!) qualities associated with Christianity, there are specific qualities related to the exploration of our depths: surrendering, disclosure, silence, waiting, hoping, remembering, etc. It is through such qualities as these, which we can provide (that is, our part) that allows for the fullest flow of God's presence (that is, His part) into our consciousness. That flow takes various forms: compassion, forgiveness, love, care – holiness. In this exploration, we shall be mostly concerned with our part out of which we will see God's part emerging in such forms as these.
These "depths," then, are not only a receptical for life's repressed garbage and junk, as Freud thought; rather, as the Psalmist knew, they are also a source from which flows such Divine riches.
Certainly we fear that this experience of our depths is dangerous, because we do not know all that is there. We have, indeed, been warned that there, in our depths, the Evil One himself, the great deceiver, also dwells. We cannot presume that he does not also lurk in these deepest reaches of our souls, pushing always to mix his evil and dark intentions into the flowing of God's energies. The Desert Fathers knew that our depths seethe with tremendous forces, both negative and positive, dark and light. The dark and negative must also be brought into awareness, and there to be confessed, exorcised and acted upon. But this must not keep the force of light from incarnation; the devil must not keep us from God.
Emphasizing and demonstrating this positive aspect, we must not forget the need to recognize the negative. Our battleground is always "to wrestle against such principalities."
God wants to be more and more in our lives and it is truly up to us to expand our awareness of Him. Because He not only lives "above," but also in our "depths," our attempt must be to contact, penetrate and plumb these depths.
But these depths are not a place in the spatial or linear sense. Rather, they are a potential and a way. What lies in that potential and way is not merely something subjective, something that we have created; it is something objective, something placed there by another, the living God Himself, the Creator who "breathed life into the dust," placing there His own image. He is the Creator, we the created.
Unlike what others think in the secular, psychological environment, to become more conscious and aware is not here the value in itself; "increased consciousness" is not the aim at all. Rather, it is "pivotal" in the sense that it takes us to something beyond itself. Through increased consciousness we are attempting to develop a relationship with our depths as a way of touching what is shining through them as a transparency of Divinity, that is, the light of another being and life. Thus, what we seek is not an "experience," but God Himself. What is important is not an emotional, psychological, physical, or otherwise experience, but that our receptivity may be increased. The goal is clearly communion with the Divine; this is what we must seek to "experience."
Further, also unlike those in the secular environment, we are not attempting to totally control these depths which we cannot, in any case, absolutely grasp. Anxiety over "control" of any aspect of our lives, that is, an overabundance of concern for self-direction, can only kill any fresh and spontaneous reaction to God's arising message; this can only numb us. Wishing to absolutely "control" means forgetting that we are not our own, that we belong to Another Who shares our direction (and not that we can depend totally upon self-direction). More than that, our reaction is that one, precisely in order to "control," will engage his life in a stagnating, monotonous, killing repetition, in which case one feels in absolute control (which does not mean that he is in control), closing himself off to any entrance from "other," God or man. One who can never, therefore, live without the anxiety to control, can never live freely, like "the lilies of the field," as Our Lord commanded us; one can only deal in those automatic reactions which falsely make him feel in control. Thus, one becomes an "automaton."
Applying this truth to our exploration, such an anxiety to control the flow of our depths, never allows for that vitality and beauty which can proceed from there, the spirit of which is continually fresh and invigorating. That is precisely what one like Saint Simeon the New Theologian means: "Do not worry what will come next, you will discover it when it comes."
Rather than control, we want merely to relate to and make contact with our depths, so that we may see disclosed through them the emerging Divine Light. Relating to them constantly will inform our conscious acts and lives, giving us direction in living more fully the Christian existence.
But then, how is one to relate to such depths? The task is difficult since they are not a "place" in themselves. One sees the depths, actually, only through those contents which flow from them. This is a condition synonymous with love, which one truly sees only through the acts which demonstrate and incarnate that love. Otherwise, love has no internal content of its own – it is then merely a word.
The task is difficult, to be sure. More than that, it is fearful; "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Heb. 10:31)
And yet we must! Saint John Chrysostom meant this when he said, "Find the door to the inner chamber of your soul, and you will discover the door to the Kingdom of Heaven." And again, Saint Ephraim the Syrian knew that God placed in man at creation "all the Kingdom" for which he must dig deeply. Such men know this simple truth: the way "upward" is the way "inward."
We explore, then, the part that we can play in discovering just what it is that flows from these depths, revealing to us God's presence in whose image we are formed. It is, after all, from this deepest level of our self, that we can also exclaim, "Out of the depths have I cried."


text:
Admission into the Colleges is through Entrance Examination and interview. All intending students must purchase the application form of the school when it is on sale and submit directly to the institution, write the examination and if successful go for the interview and be admitted.
1. There is no age limit provided the candidate satisfies basic entry requirements.
2. Matured, highly disciplined individuals who possess all the attributes of being healthy i.e physically, mentally, socially, spiritual, culturally, and morally sound. There should be no traces of contagious diseases.
3. Good citizens with readiness to learn, lack of criminal tendencies and ability to abide with the rules and regulations of the school.
4. Cut-off passes mark in the Entrance Examination and the interview conducted by the schools in respect to the course of choice. Intending candidates must have at least (5) Credit passes in either WAEC, GCE, SSCE, NECO in not more than two sittings in English, Mathematicss, Biology, Chemistry and one relevant subject (Geography, Economics, Physics, etc) subject. These must be from one examination source.
• Dental Technology
• Dental Therapy
• Health Information Management
• Community Health
• Environmental Health Technology
• Public Health Nursing
• Other courses offered by the Colleges of Technology include
o Community Health Extension Worker (CHEW)
o Health Assistant Medical Course (HAM)
o Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT)
o Pharmacy Technician (PHT)
o X-Ray Technician (XR)
o Community Nutrition Technician (CNT)
o Food Hygienist (FH)
o Environment Health Assistant (EHA)
The course duration ranges from two (2) years to four (4) years depending on the programme. CALL 07043240159 NOW


text:
Lake Grove Urban Renewal Plan
On July 24, 2012, the City Council adopted Ordinance 2598, approving the Lake Grove Village Center Urban Renewal Plan. The Plan establishes the urban renewal area and authorizes the use of urban renewal financing for two projects: Boones Ferry Road and parking. Both projects are consistent with the Lake Grove Village Center Plan that was adopted in 2008 after many years of community work to develop a vision and plan for a revitalized Lake Grove. The Village Center Plan identifies private development design goals and public projects to improve the Lake Grove area and stimulate private investment, including the two urban renewal projects and other investments in infrastructure and amenities.
On November 3, 2015, the City Council adopted Ordinance 2692 (effective December 3, 2015), approving the Lake Grove Village Center Urban Renewal Plan First Amendment. The First Amendment adds approximately 12.88 acres of land (formerly West End Building property on Kruse Way) to the urban renewal boundary and removes approximately 0.19 acres of land within the Upper Drive right-of-way area from the boundary. Expanding the boundary increases the funding available to implement projects in the Plan and also shortens the timeframe of the district by at least one year.


text:
For the last two months, you've seen some version of the same story all over the Internet: Delete your search history before Google's new privacy settings take effect. A straightforward piece outlining a rudimentary technique, but also evidence that the search titan has a serious trust problem on its hands.
Our story on nuking your history was read nearly 200,000 times on this site alone—and it was a reprint of a piece originally put out by the EFF. Many other outlets republished the same piece. The Reddit page linking to the original had more than 1,000 comments. And the topic itself was debated on decidedly non-techie forums like NPR.
It's not surprising that the tracking debate had people up in arms. A Pew Internet study, conducted just before Google combined its privacy policies (and after it rolled out personalized search results in Search Plus Your World) found that three quarters of people don't want their search results tracked, and two thirds don't even want them personalized based on prior history.
The bottom line: People don't trust Google with their data. And that's new.
Google is a fundamentally different company than it has been in the past. Its culture and direction have changed radically in the past 18 months. It is trying to maneuver into position to operate in a post-pc, post-Web world, reacting to what it perceives as threats, and moving to where it thinks the puck will be.
At some point in the recent past, the Mountain View brass realized that owning the Web is not enough to survive. It makes sense—people are increasingly using non Web-based avenues to access the Internet, and Google would be remiss to not make a play for that business. The problem is that in branching out, Google has also abandoned its core principles and values.
Many of us have entered into a contract with the ur search company because its claims to be a good actor inspired our trust. Google has always claimed to put the interests of the user first. It's worth questioning whether or not that's still the case. Has Google reached a point where it must be evil?
Search is Dying
Imagine you woke up tomorrow and Google was gone. You would still be able to search the Web. You could still send email. You could still use maps, make phone calls, watch videos, network with friends, write blog posts. There would be a period of adjustment, and it would be incredibly inconvenient but you would get by. There are other options.
Some would feel it more than others; Google is a tool of the masses. Despite more than 20 years of the World Wide Web and more than 35 of personal computers, the Internet is still a very troubling place for many people. Google is the cipher they use to make sense of the chaos.
Case in point: A prolific science writer I know tells a story about how his mother calls him every time her Google is broken. What she means is that her Internet is down. But for her, Google is the Internet. And that's true for many, who use its search box as a gateway to the networked world. They get to Facebook by typing "Facebook" and hitting Search. Without Google, they'd be lost.
Google may not be a utility, but search is a very utility-like service. Search is what Google was built on, and why people go to Google in the first place. And when Google rolled out its newest iteration of search—Search Plus your World (SPYW)—people reacted to it like viewing an open grave.
There's a good reason for that revulsion: SPYW is a mess. In trying to deliver personalized results, Google polluted the page with its own inferior products (like Google+ instead of Twitter, Google Places instead of Yelp) while banishing competitors to lower listings in the results. Ads are everywhere. The People and Pages sidebar that now appears in search results is particularly galling. It is the ultimate subversion of Google to a commercial end. Basically, it's an enormous ad for Google's other products, hogging your screen.
It's hard to understand how Google could screw up its core product like that. But there's a remarkably simple explanation: Search is no longer Google's core product.
One Googler authorized to speak for the company on background (meaning I could use the information he gave me, but not directly quote or attribute it) told me something that I found shocking. Google isn't primarily about search anymore. Sure, search is still a core product, but it's no longer the core product. The core product, he said, is simply Google.
Ultimately, it's not about Gmail or Search or Android or Chrome or Maps or Plus. All of those are in service to one great master; pieces of the larger Google. He said that if I paid attention to what Larry Page has been saying recently, this would be apparent. And yup, PandoDaily recently quoted Page saying, "This is the path we're headed down – a single unified, 'beautiful' product across everything. If you don't get that, then you should probably work somewhere else."
It's stunning when you stop and think about it. Search isn't just what Google does best, it's what it is in most people's minds. The company's name is often used as a verb meaning "to search." It's in the Oxford English Dictionary! So what happened?
The Move from Search to Answers
Google owns the Web, but it didn't build it. And as it turns out, the open Web is kind of shitty real estate. Yes, the mansion itself is huge, but it's not built to code and is in constant need of renovation to keep it from falling apart.
Meanwhile, there are all these new homes going up in the same neighborhood. Nice places. Built from the ground up to perfectly fit their owners' needs. Places that people can can get to from the Web, but aren't really made of Web. Those are the kind of joints users want to go hang out in. As Chris Anderson argued in WIRED:
Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It's driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it's a world Google can't crawl, one where HTML doesn't rule.
Google needs to get inside those houses. Or failing that, build one of its own.
The Internet is the world's greatest collection of knowledge, but increasingly, that wisdom lives in walled off apps. It lives in services and platforms. Places where we build up relationships, express preferences, and reveal so much about ourselves. We're on Foursquare and Netflix and Facebook and Twitter and Skype. We're interacting in real time, and in ways that don't lend themselves well to indexing. Google can't know exactly what's going on in all those places. How the links between entities work. What and who we like and dislike. There is information there that it can't index. And if it can't index it, or understand it, it damn sure can't serve an ad.
Trouble is, that hard-to-index information is key to Google's future. Mountain View may not be all about search anymore, but it desperately wants to be able to answer real world questions for you; there's a huge difference. Search is just about retrieving information. Actually answering subjective questions requires a deep knowledge of the person doing the asking: Where you are, who your are friends, what your interests are, what you like and don't like.
Picture this scenario. You are about to leave San Francisco to drive to Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing, so you fire up your Android handset and ask it "what's the best restaurant between here and Lake Tahoe?"
It's an incredibly complex and subjective query. But Google wants to be able to answer it anyway. (This was an actual example given to me by Google.) To provide one, it needs to know things about you. A lot of things. A staggering number of things.
To start with, it needs to know where you are. Then there is the question of your route—are you taking 80 up to the north side of the lake, or will you take 50 and the southern route? It needs to know what you like. So it will look to the restaurants you've frequented in the past and what you've thought of them. It may want to know who is in the car with you—your vegan roommates?—and see their dining and review history as well. It would be helpful to see what kind of restaurants you've sought out before. It may look at your Web browsing habits to see what kind of sites you frequent. It wants to know which places your wider circle of friends have recommended. But of course, similar tastes may not mean similar budgets, so it could need to take a look at your spending history. It may look to the types of instructional cooking videos you've viewed or the recipes found in your browsing history.
It wants to look at every possible signal it can find, and deliver a highly relevant answer: You want to eat at Ikeda's in Auburn, California. Hey, I love that place too! Try the apple pie.
There is only one path to that answer, and it goes straight through your privacy. Google can't deliver this kind of a tailored result if you're using all kinds of other services that it doesn't control. Nor can it do it if you keep your Google services separated. You have to do all the things you used to do elsewhere within the confines of one big information sharing service called Google.
The Way Out
Google mastered search by looking at our values. In addition to just looking at the content on the page itself, Google looked at other pages that linked to it—backlinks. They were, essentially, objective verification of the page's importance. It used those backlinks and its proprietary algorithm to create a PageRank with the most relevant examples placed highest in the results. You no longer had to sift through pages and pages of results to find what you were looking for. It was wonderful. It was relevant.
But while Google was busy holding up the sky, the ground beneath its feet shifted in ways it didn't anticipate. Our searches have evolved from the merely factual to the deeply personal. We want to find a nice hotel or a good restaurant or a particular person. We want to know what's happening right now, right here. And increasingly, we turned to smaller, fragmented, platforms to get that stuff.
Facebook did for people searching what Google did for Web searching, in a very similar way. While Google used existing links between Web pages to determine relevance, Facebook used the existing links between people—the connections that we ourselves defined—to determine social relevance.
It explains why Facebook works so well right from the gate. Log onto Facebook for the first time, give it some social data—like your contacts database, your workplace, your high school, your university—and it begins finding people you know as if by magic.
Google was never very good at that. It doesn't know who we know. Let's say I'm looking to connect with Joe Brown: If I enter his name into Google, I'll get thousands of results for various Joes all over the world—judges, punk rockers, comedians. But on Facebook, when I enter his name, I find exactly who I want because he's connected to so many of my other friends already.
The backlinks my friends have already established give Facebook a social relevance Google doesn't have. And because Facebook hides the connections in its social graph, Google can't index that data. It can't understand it. In other words, Google can't even use what Facebook knows about me to know which Joe Brown I am looking for. (You know, this guy.)
And as we have begun to carry the Internet with us everywhere we go—posting photos and status updates and blog posts and videos along the way—we've increasingly wanted a different type of relevance, one that speaks more to what's relevant right now than overall and forever. We want up to the millisecond data. The kind of thing found on, say, Twitter.
Twitter is often mislabeled as a social network when it's actually more of a real-time information network. Yes, people make connections, but they tend to connect based on shared interests and location above existing friendships. You don't follow your friends from high school, or others with whom you have nothing in common; You follow people who have something to say. And-more importantly for Google-Twitter is the most expansive, real-time, searchable window to the world today.
Twitter and Facebook both have things Google needs if it wants to move into the post-web world. Facebook has social relevance. Twitter has real-time information. But Facebook and Google view themselves as competitors. And while Google and Twitter once had an arrangement, that deal fell through, for reasons neither party will fully disclose.
People often say Google's previous CEO, Eric Schmidt, missed the boat on social. But in reality, where he missed the boat was by not inking a deal that could get Google what it needed to deliver answers in a post-PC, post-Web world. Which brings us to Google+.
Google+ solves Google's big problems, at least in theory. It delivers a social network—arguably better constructed Facebook—that lets it understand the connections between people. It also lets Google tap into a stream of real-time data, and build a search system around that without having to worry that it will ever be left at the altar. And it does so much more, too! It has real time photos, like Instagram. It has a video chat service, like Skype. It lets you see which businesses your friends recommend, like Yelp. It's a one size fits all solution, and what's more it's on the open Web. Perfect!
One problem: People don't really want to use it. They're already entrenched in other stuff. Many of Google's recent actions can be explained by understanding that dilemma. Google wants to know things about you that you aren't already telling it so you will continue asking it questions and it can continue serving ads against the questions you ask it. So, it feels like it has to herd people into using Google+ whether they want to go there or not.
This explains why Google has been driving privacy advocates crazy and polluting its search results. It explains why now, on the Google homepage, there's a big ugly black bar across the top that reminds you of all its properties. It explains the glaring red box with the meaningless numbers that so desperately begs you to come see what's happening in its anti-social network. It explains why Google is being a bully. It explains why Google broke search: Because to remain relevant it has to give real-world answers.
Google has to get you under its tent, and break down all the silos between its individual products once you're there. It needs you to reveal your location, your friends, your history, your desires, your finances; nothing short of your essence. And it needs to combine all that knowledge together. That's Search Plus Your World. "Your World" is not just your friends, or your location. It's your everything. The breadth of information Google wants to collect and collate is the stuff of goosebumps.
And the thing is, Google's going to get it. All of it.
The question is not if Google will be able to do this. Of course it will. It doesn't have to build better products, it just has to force enough people into them. It will leverage everything it has—and it already is—to squeeze more information from us. The question is: should we be okay with that?
Perversely, some of the things Google has been doing to get us in that tent, and get that information from us, are the very things that suggest we may want to stay outside and keep our mouths shut.
What is Evil?
The only reason anyone uses the word evil about Google, is because Google asked us to. When it said that it wasn't evil, it immediately invited an argument.
It is actually quite difficult for a corporation to be evil in the traditional sense of the word. There are outliers most of us might call evil—Enron or arms merchants—that may operate outside the law. There are a smaller few companies like Monsanto, or Dow Chemical or Goldman Sachs that have done crucial damage to our planet or society. But it starts to get subjective pretty quickly. You might think a company with abhorrent labor practices is evil. Or one that is a large polluter. Or logs old-growth forests. Or provides abortions. Or doesn't provide abortions.
Evil is different things to different people.
Which is why it is ultimately not a very useful way of thinking about things. Evil is subjective. So perhaps what we should focus on instead of what we mean by evil, is what did Google mean by "evil?"
Fortunately, this is on the record; they said it, and we wrote it down.
Josh McHugh's January 2003 story about Google could have been written today. It identifies all the major problems Google faced then, which are still, largely, the problems it faces today. But it does something else, too. It pins the company down on what, exactly, evil is.
Google's code of conduct can be boiled down to a mere three words: Don't be evil.
Very Star Wars. But what does it mean?
"Evil," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, "is what Sergey says is evil."
As a private company, Google has one master: users. As a public company, there are shareholders to worry about. And more than happy users, shareholders want ever-greater profits.
If Brin's code of good and evil permits the company to negotiate with sovereign governments and allows for some legal meddling from unpopular religions, there is no wiggle room—no gray area whatsoever—when it comes to those who attempt to subvert the power of Google to their own commercial ends. One thing Brin is sure of: On the side of evil lies trickery.
I ask Brin to imagine, for a moment, running his company's evil twin, a sort of anti-Google. "We would be doing things like having advertising that wasn't marked as being paid for. Stuff that violates the trust of the users," he says, describing a site that sounds not unlike the pay-for-placement search site Overture. "Say someone came looking for breast cancer information and didn't know that some listings were paid for with money from drug companies. We'd be endangering people's health."
I've taken those passages from several different places in the story and the emphasis is mine. But the points are quite clear. In the past year—and especially the past six months—Google has unquestionably and to an unprecedented extent violated its users' trust. And of course the great irony is that the subversion of Google's power, the ultimate trickery, came not from an external force, but Google itself. Google has spent much of 2011 and 2012 getting called out for all kinds of nasty brutish behavior. Here are a few small but telling examples of that trickery:
- Google subverted mobile Safari's default protections to track users in ways they did not agree to be tracked. And lied about it, as the Wall Street Journal reported: "The findings appeared to contradict some of Google's own instructions to Safari users on how to avoid tracking."
- Google began promoting its own products in search over more obviously relevant ones. It placed Google+ profiles above those that are obviously more relevant on other social networks. Its Places frequently appear above the actual location listings.
- Google has increasingly given prominence to ads over results. If you use an 11" Macbook Air, for example, and search for a generalized term like "music" your small screen will be full of ads—you will have to scroll to find search results.
- Google falsely claimed it couldn't effectively index and rank Twitter.
- Google illegally accepted ads for Canadian pharmacies with the purpose of delivering them to American users.
- Google seems to have committed overt fraud in Kenya.
So yes, evil is different things to different people. But if we use Google's definition of evil, if we believe evil to be subverting the power of Google's information delivery system to a commercial end, tricking users and violating their trust, well...
While this is a problem today, it will be an even bigger one tomorrow.
What Now? Your Data. Your Privacy. Your Choices. Your Future.
Google has, for many years, essentially said "trust us." It's in its Founder's Letters, its mission statements, even on its about page. Google has pledged both overtly and in suggestive ways to not be evil by making a great product and putting users first.
You could argue that it still does both of those things. That its attempts to move beyond Search are just attempts to provide a better product. You could see these actions as taking a long term view. You could point to Google's Data Liberation policy—which is a fine policy—that lets you take all of your data with you if you decide to leave Google. And that is, in its own weird engineer-centric way, a user friendly thing to do. This is certainly the case right now, but if Google is OK with changing its course on one of its core values, how long will these policies and directions last?
What happens if, ten years from now, Google drastically changes again? Will you still be able to wipe yourself from Google's drives? Will there be a massive, or incremental policy shift? Will it secretly keep bits of you, just as it has secretly tracked bits of you, against your wishes? If Google is already going back on some of its initial promises, what comes next? If it can break one, can't it break them all?
What Google seems to have forgotten is that we were only willing to give them all that data in the first place because it gave us great products and seemed trustworthy.
Google has forgotten why we loved it. It has degraded its premier product in service of promoting others. It has done devious things to ferret out information from its users that they do not willingly provide. It is too much focused on the future, and conversely too scared of current competition.
Many years ago, when Google was embroiled in its first major privacy scandal—over the outcry that its robots would read the content of user emails in its then nascent and publicly unavailable Gmail service—I argued that this was no big deal. That scanning for content did not equal reading. That we shouldn't be scared of Google. I trusted Google. A few years later, I was told by an executive at the company that this story was seen as a turning point in the debate.
Google is far bigger now, and far less susceptible to the whims of the public. But I hope that, to some extent, it is still listening. Because the case against Google is for the first time starting to outweigh the case for it.
Google may have to get us to use Google+ if it wants to remain relevant. But it should be able to go about that in a fundamentally honest fashion.
If it can't keep its promises, if it can't avoid resorting to trickery, if it can't keep itself from subverting the power of its search engine for commercial ends, and on top of all that if it can't even deliver the highest quality search results at a default setting—the most basic thing people have come to expect from Google, the very thing its name has become synonymous with—why should you trust it with your personal data?
That's a question that we'll all have to answer for ourselves.


text:
Green Umbrella members can submit events for the calendar to email@example.com. Please provide all relevant details and a link to your organization's listing of the event at least three weeks prior to the event date. We feature a selection of member events in Green News You Can Use, which is published every other Wednesday.
Our calendar is color coded by Action Team sustainability areas. Look for events in the follow areas:
Energy Food Greenspace Outdoors Transportation Waste Reduction Watershed
Plus a couple of other categories we thought would be helpful: Professional Maker


text:
Trane, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ingersoll Rand, manufactures, manages and services HVAC equipment systems or controls for nearly half the commercial buildings in the United States, as well as buildings all over the world.
Human Resources is charged with maximizing our "people capability" by ensuring that the company has the right individuals in place, at the right time, with the right skills so we can achieve our mission. We accomplish this by creating a rewarding environment, motivating our talented people and delivering value and opportunity for the entire company.
About Trane
TCS College Visibility Program


text:
Find the right car for the right price and easily connect with dealers.
We are a full service New York used car dealer located in Lynbrook serving all nearby areas. We take pride in the quality used inventory that we carry that include all major makes. The cars, SUVs, minivans, trucks and pickups we carry are inspected and often may be eligible for the many extended service contracts & warranties we offer. Our finance department has relations with most banks and lending institutions in NY and will help you get a car loan at affordable payments. We provide sub-prime financing too and in most cases your credit history may not be a problem as you might think! At ACA Auto Sales, we believe you can get financed with good, bad or no credit history at all.
We take the hassle out of your vehicle search and connect you with car dealer inventories to simplify the car buying experience.


text:
UN peacekeepers in Congo hold record for rape, sex abuse
BUNIA, Congo (AP) — She had been orphaned by a brutal conflict, but the 14-year-old Congolese girl found refuge in a camp protected by United Nations peacekeepers.
The camp should have been safe the day she was raped. A delegation from the U.N. was paying a visit, and her grandmother had left her in charge of her siblings. That was the day, the girl says, that a Pakistani peacekeeper slipped inside their home and assaulted her in front of the other children.
But that was not the end of her story. Even though she reported the rape, the girl never got any help from the U.N. She did become pregnant, however, and had a baby.
If the U.N. sexual abuse crisis has an epicenter, it is the Congo, where the scope of the problem first emerged 13 years ago — and where promised reforms have most clearly fallen short. Of the 2,000 sexual abuse and exploitation complaints made against U.N. peacekeepers and personnel worldwide over the past 12 years, more than 700 occurred in Congo, The Associated Press found. The embattled African nation is home to the U.N.'s largest peacekeeping force, which costs a staggering $1 billion a year.
The raped teenager's experience is grimly emblematic of the underbelly of U.N. peacekeeping, and the organization as a whole. During a yearlong investigation, the AP found that despite promising reform for more than a decade, the U.N. failed to meet many of its pledges to stop the abuse or help victims, some of whom have been lost to a sprawling bureaucracy. Cases have disappeared or been handed off to the peacekeepers' home countries — which often do nothing with them.
The attack on the 14-year-old was so brazen it still haunts the U.N.'s top human rights official more than a decade after hearing the girl's story.
"What on earth would it take for this soldier not to do it — to have all the heads of the U.N. together, and he still does it?" asked Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, a member of the delegation that heard the girl's testimony in 2004. One year later, he helped write a landmark report intended to curb sexual abuse and exploitation within the U.N. system.
With rare exceptions, victims interviewed by the AP received no help. Instead, many were banished from their families for having mixed-race children, who also are shunned, becoming a second generation of victims.
The AP even found a girl who was raped by two peacekeepers; she gave birth to two babies by the time she was 14.
To this day, the sexual violence by U.N. peacekeepers and personnel continues: Congo already accounts for nearly one-third of the 43 allegations made worldwide in 2017.
William L. Swing was in charge of the Congo mission between May 2003 and January 2008, a period when abuse allegations swelled in a country that has been torn by dictatorship, civil war and unrest for the last half-century.
"I take full responsibility for what happened," Swing told the AP. "I knew at the time the buck stopped with me."
Swing said the U.N. at times made it clear he should be relieved of his duties. Instead, he was named the head of the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration. Now, he sits on a new task force appointed to tackle the problem yet again. Swing insists the mistakes made during the early years of the Congo mission provided lessons that could shape new reforms.
"You can never make someone who has been sexually violated whole," he said. "But you can give them a sense that the organization is trying to make them whole."
The AP found that victims of car accidents involving U.N. vehicles are more likely to receive compensation than victims of rape. Why? Because those injuries were inflicted during the course of the U.N. worker's "official duties."
Although the U.N. has substantiated at least 41 cases of paternity worldwide since 2010, it can cite only one instance in which a paternity payment was made, according to online records of allegations. The AP independently confirmed a second paternity payment to a Haitian woman earlier this year.
Justice is even more elusive because the cases get referred to the alleged perpetrators' home countries. Even after a U.N. investigation discovered a three-year child sex ring involving Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti, Sri Lanka prosecuted no one, the AP's investigation revealed.
Yet at the yearly U.N. General Assembly gathering in New York, Sri Lanka this past week was named to the U.N.'s "circle of leadership" for the next reform effort.
Poor record-keeping has been a major obstacle to reform.
The U.N. had no record of the 14-year-old orphan who was raped on the day the top U.N. delegation visited. Officials did find another case with similar details, but said it was "unsubstantiated" at the time because the girl identified the wrong foreigner in a photo lineup. They did not know what became of the orphan.
But in just three days last month, the AP found a woman whose story closely matched the one that Zeid, the U.N. human rights official, found so unforgettable. She was inebriated and living in poverty. A relative has raised the daughter born as a result of rape as her own.
In an interview with the AP, the adoptive mother, Dorcas Zawadi, said she refuses to allow the girl near U.N. bases.
"The peacekeepers try to distract the girls with cookies, candy and milk to rape them," she said.
In interviews with nearly a dozen women who said they were raped by peacekeepers, patterns quickly emerged.
A woman named Blandine said she was raped as a teenager and became pregnant. Her son Michael, now 8, only knows that the man was a foreigner from one of the U.N. peacekeeping missions that have been in Congo since his mother was a little girl.
Every time the boy sees a pale-skinned man, he cries out, "Daddy, Daddy, it's my Daddy!"
"He thinks anyone with pale skin might be his father. He'll hug any pale-skinned foreigner," his mother said. She and nine other sexual abuse victims interviewed in eastern Congo asked that only their first names be used because of what they endured.
Like his mother, the boy is shunned by villagers, left to play only with the other children of peacekeepers. In the eyes of the community the children of peacekeepers are "muzungus," a Swahili word used to describe white people. The mothers babysit for one another, sharing responsibilities and the reality of being effectively sentenced to a lifetime of poverty from a single, violent moment in their youths.
The women told the AP stories of not being able to finish their studies, of being thrown out of their homes for getting pregnant, and of not being able to find husbands because of their mixed-race children. One thing they all want is financial help to raise their kids.
The key to that is establishing paternity, which is elusive for most now that their attackers have long since gone home to their own countries.
Blandine remembers looking at a lineup in hopes of identifying the man who raped her, a peacekeeper she said came from Morocco. But the U.N. said it had no record of her case.
"The U.N. had sent investigators around 2010 to investigate our case and they had promised they would take care of our children, but nothing ever followed," she said.
When it comes to justice or transparency, the U.N. largely is powerless to force troop-contributing countries into action. As part of its investigation, the AP contacted nearly two dozen countries. None was willing to detail how many of its troops had been accused or the punishments imposed in substantiated cases, underscoring an overall lack of accountability.
Today, the U.N. says aid is provided to young girls and women even while they are awaiting paternity results. But that's too little, too late for young women in Congo like Bora, who was raped and exploited by two peacekeepers and bore their babies while she was a child herself.
Bora was 11 years old the first time. She didn't know where to turn. She had no idea she could file a complaint after being raped by a peacekeeper who had offered her bread and a banana. As a result, there was no physical evidence that could have confirmed the rape.
"It was the first man who ever touched me," she recalled.
She gave birth to a son she named John. Estranged from her family, she could no longer go to school.
Two years later, when Bora was 13, another peacekeeper took advantage of her, and she became pregnant a second time. As she talked to an AP reporter, she looked away at a concrete wall in the bare room, telling the story of her life as if it had happened to someone else.
An uncle took custody of her children after seeing how the teen was struggling. At times, Bora has gone as long as a year without being able to visit.
"I'll never forget what happened to me," she said. "It is lodged in my heart."
More than a decade after the peacekeeper scandal surfaced in 2004, the cases continued. In the Congolese village of Mavivi, about a dozen women, half of whom were minors at the time, said they had been impregnated by peacekeepers in recent years.
Among them is Noella, who sold bananas and mobile phone credit near the Tanzanians' U.N. base after her parents could no longer afford her school fees.
Early one morning just days after her 15th birthday in December 2014, she said, a Tanzanian peacekeeper called out to her and offered her $20. She thought he wanted phone credit.
"A few minutes later, he threw himself on top of me and started to rape me," she said. "I said nothing to my parents because I was afraid."
In a rare move, she reported the rape and identified the peacekeeper she thought fathered her child. Tanzania went ahead and conducted DNA testing, but the test was not a match.
With no proof of paternity, Noella was kicked out of her parents' home. Now she struggles to raise her 2-year-old child on her own.
The 14-year-old orphan who said she was raped by a Pakistani peacekeeper did not recover from her attack. Friends and relatives say she soon turned to alcohol to numb her pain. Zawadi says she whisked the child away when she still was a baby out of fear the mother would harm her.
"She only knows me as her mother, and I love her as my own child," the woman said. "When I die, she will receive the same inheritance as my other children. They know her as my biological child, even with her pale skin."
When Zawadi rescued the child, she gave the girl a new name, a name she prayed would give her a better life despite the circumstances of how she came into the world.
She called her Hope.
Dodds reported from several towns and cities in Haiti, Geneva and London. Associated Press writers Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro in Mavivi, Congo, and Saleh Mwanamilongo in Kinshasa, Congo, contributed to this report. Jamey Keaten contributed reporting from Geneva, Kathy Gannon from Islamabad, Pakistan, Alexandra Olson from New York, Angela Charlton from Paris and Katy Daigle from New Delhi.


text:
Contact: Stephenie Hendricks 415 258-9151 firstname.lastname@example.com
November 28, 2012
Toxic Chemicals Linked to Cancer Found in Couches
(Washington, DC) A new peer reviewed study published today in Environmental Science and Technology shows a carcinogen has been used to replace banned toxic flame retardants in many couches sampled across the United States.
"Hard to believe, 35 years after our research contributed to removing chlorinated Tris from children's sleepwear, our current study suggests that more than a third of American couches contain the same toxic flame retardant," said Dr. Arlene Blum, co-author of the study and executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute. "And sadly enough, many Americans could now have increased cancer risks from the chlorinated Tris in their furniture."
Kathy Curtis, LPN, and National Coordinator of the Alliance for Toxic-Free Fire Safety says, "It is alarming to know the couch I've owned for seven years, which my children and grandchild have sat on, played on, and grown up on, is shedding harmful chemicals. It's especially maddening given these chemicals don't provide any meaningful fire safety benefit in regards to the current regulations," said Curtis, who supports a New York legislative effort that would ban chlorinated Tris.
Policy momentum is building across the country to eliminate toxic flame retardant chemicals while providing effective fire safety. In addition to New York, a dozen other states are launching efforts in 2013 to restrict chlorinated Tris. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is working to adopt a re-drafted flammability standard, which can be met without the use of toxic chemicals. And the U.S. Senate passed a comprehensive chemical reform bill, the Safe Chemicals Act, out of the Environment and Public Works committee earlier this year. This bill could ultimately stop the use of toxic flame retardant chemicals in products.
"Communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals from many sources," says Ana Mascareñas, Policy and Communications Director with Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles. "Many low-income folks hang onto their furniture longer, increasing the chance their furniture contains already banned toxic flame retardant chemicals, and the aging materials continue emitting chemicals in household dust. We've tried for several years now to get our state legislature to change or halt this exposure, but the flame retardant chemical industry influence has been too great."
Judy Levin, MSW, and Pollution Prevention Co-Director with Center for Environmental Health, had her couch sampled and it tested positive for a cancer causing flame retardant. "I carefully picked my couch for style and comfort. Little did I know that the biggest decision about my couch, whether it contained toxic flame retardants, was out of my control. I am angry about the succession of toxic chemicals that the flame retardent chemical industry touts as safe, only to be proven, after we have all been exposed, that they are not safe at all."
Sonya Lunder, Senior Analyst with Environmental Working Group comments, "I bought my couch in 2008, after a multi-year effort to ban toxic PBDE fire retardants in foam furniture. At that point I didn't know that another class of toxic chemicals would take their place. We must not allow flame retardant chemical companies to add cancer causing chemicals to consumer products. When I was a kid my mother wrote letters to government officials asking them to take Tris out of my fleece pajamas," she continued. "Now I am a mother and come find out these chemicals are stuffed inside my couch cushions? Calling this an outrage doesn't do it justice."
Lisa Turner, a concerned mother from Michigan, was a study participant. Upon learning the results (her couch tested positive for Firemaster 550), Turner said "As a nursing mother, I have spent countless hours on my couch with my children. I shudder to think about what I unknowingly exposed them to, when they were most vulnerable. I shouldn't need a Ph.D. in Chemistry in order to determine what products are safe for my family."
Molly Rauch, with Moms Clean Air Force, had her couch tested. "I am troubled that a cancer-causing chemical deemed too risky to put in children's pajamas – Tris – was poured into my couch foam without my knowledge. My children sit on this couch every day. They do their homework on it, they read books on it, they play with our cats on it. Now I know they likely also breathe Tris on it. This is unacceptable to me, and to parents everywhere."
"Just a couple weeks before I am about to have my first child, I am learning that the sofa in my living room contains a toxic flame retardant called chlorinated Tris that is linked to cancer." said Jenny Rottmann, a participant of the study from Maine. "I would have been concerned about these results no matter what. But as someone who will become a new mom in just a few days, I am furious."
"This study shows what we have long suspected, that the current federal law does not protect us from toxic chemicals in everyday products. Until we have real federal reform, state legislatures will continue stepping up to protect their citizens from these hidden dangers," adds Sarah Doll, National Director, Safer States.
"I submitted a sample for testing and was shocked to discover that my beloved couch is loaded with chlorinated tris, a cancer-causing chemical. How dare they! When I bought my couch at a major retailer in Long Island a few years ago, there was nothing on the label indicating the couch was filled with this unnecessary toxic chemical. We need manufacturers and retailers l to get these dangerous chemicals out of our couches now, comments Mike Schade, with Center for Health, Environment & Justice.
"When I bought a new couch from a major retailer a few years ago, I had no idea I was going to be exposing my family to clorinated Tris, a chemical that was removed from children's pajamas in the 1970s as a mutagen and likely carcinogen. Why should I have to worry about letting my little granddaughter sit and lie on that couch? It's crazy," says Emily Moore, Minnesota grandmother
Take Action to call upon the Consumer Product Safety Commission to finalize their draft smolder flammability standard for upholstered furniture.
Images and Video for Bloggers & Reporters Here
Alliance for Toxic Free Fire Safety
Environmental Science & Technology Article
Green Science Policy Institute
FlameRetardants and Communities of Color Advisory


text:
Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: Couldn't resolve host name in /home/cosplayl/public_html/cont/FrontControl.php on line 2167
Warning: file_get_contents(http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=SearchResults&siteId=0&language=en-US&output=RSS20&sacat=0&ftrt=1&fbd=1&sabdlo=&sabdhi=&saprclo=&saprchi=&floc=1&saslop=1&fsop=1&fsoo=1&from=R6&fss=1&sasl=&sacur=0&afepn=5335848900&customid=Sanji%2BCosplay&saslc=0&fcl=3&saaff=afepn&catref=C5&frpp=100&satitle=Sanji+one+piece+%28cosplay%2Ccostume%29%2B+&ftrv=1&fts=&salic=0&sascs=0&fspt=0&fpos=&sadis=25&frts=0) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: operation failed in /home/cosplayl/public_html/cont/FrontControl.php on line 2167
Sanji Cosplay
No products matching your query have been found in our store at the moment.
Please bookmark this page and come back soon to see if we have what you want.
You may also like to select one of the alternative country flags at the top of the page to show similar items available to you from other eBay stores.
Subscribe to our RSS feed for related items to get them delivered straight to your email address or RSS reader by clicking the orange RSS icon to the left of this message.
What is RSS?
View more Sanji items on eBay
Or subscribe to our RSS feed for Sanji items.
Or subscribe to our RSS feed for Sanji items.
|CosDaddy/ Japanese Anime Costumes'One Piece Sanji Cosplay Costume/Tailor-made
See Listing for $...
|Mxnpolar One Piece Sanji Cosplay Costume Black Unoform Outfit Halloween Cosplay
See Listing for $...


text:
Minimal and clean UI design
If you enjoy the UI Kit here on our site, don't forget to share with your friends and please click follow so you will be notified for more cool products in the future.
You may want to check all the files in the kit before you download.
Special thanks for UX Lead (http://dribbble.com/uxlead) for designing and working for this.
Your feedback and opinions are very important to us! Should you have a question, concern or suggestion - don't hesitate to reach us out on our social media pages and we'll answer as soon as we can.
You may also email us at email@example.com
Thank you and enjoy designing!
EpicPxls <3


text:
Waitrose Canned Vegetables and Pastas
Turner Duckworth, San Francisco, California, 2006
Juror Notes
"Admirable restraint elevates mundane pantry staples to minimalist works of art."
"So nice and simple—refreshingly free of clutter, claims. I imagine it would stand out on supermarket shelves and look equally good at home; probably makes 'family' shopping easier. Kid-friendly photos."
"I liked the simplicity of the line, which runs counter to most supermarket packaging and will effectively stand out on the shelf."
Collections: AIGA 365: 28 (2007)
Repository: Denver Art Museum
Discipline: Package design
Format: Package
- Design firm
- Turner Duckworth
- Creative directors
- Bruce Duckworth, David Turner
- Designer
- Sarah Moffat
- Photographer
- Andy Grmshaw
- Client
- Waitrose


text:
Learning from the lessons of the 1%, I set forth to outsource our occupy-related labor to a robotic workforce. Robots obviously have many advantages over their human counterparts. For instance, robots never get tired, they don't get cold, they don't sleep, nor eat, don't require tents, and when armed insurrection becomes necessary, robots are much more morally ambivalent. Additionally, we had a discussion with an unnamed member of the San Francisco police force and they confided in us that the police currently do not have any plan for dealing with robotic occupiers.
For all of those reasons and more, I present to you Occu(pi) Bot; the first in a promising line of tireless, unstoppable, robotic class warriors.
Learn how to make your own:
[…] (via F.A.T.) […]
Who did this great track of music? 'd love to have a full track!
[…] Occu(pi) Bot of the Day: Randy Sarafan at F.A.T. decided that robots are better suited to occupy Wall Street than humans are, because they don't require silly things like food, clothing and shelter during a long protest, so he created the Occu(pi) Bot. […]
The expressions published in this site are all in the public domain. You may enjoy, use, modify, snipe about and republish all F.A.T. media and technologies as you see fit.


text:
Fairytale Photo Exhibit
Fairytale Photo Exhibition - February 2006, Prague. The theme of this photography exhibition was fairy tales. I chose the Story of Mother Holle by the Grimm Brothers. Here is a summary of the story, which might help in viewing the abstract photos... Once upon a time, there was a wealthy widow with a beautiful stepdaughter and an ugly, lazy daughter. The stepdaughter did all the work of the house while the mother and daughter did nothing. One day, while the beautiful girl was spinning by the well, she started to bleed and went to the well to wash the blood off in the water. The spindle fell into the well and the girl jumped into the well after the spindle. She went through the water and came out on the other side in a fairy tale world of flowers and sunshine, into the world of Mother Holle. The girl arrived at the house of Mother Holle and was frightened, but Mother Holle was a kind woman and took her in. In exchange for this care, the girl helped with the housekeeping. Although the girl was treated well, she soon started to get homesick. Mother Holle sent the girl get back home through the well. When the girl arrived home, she was covered in gold as a reward for her kindness and hard work. Upon seeing the girl covered in shining gold, the greedy stepmother decided that her own daughter should do the same. She threw her own daughter down the well, but the daughter is lazy and disobedient and Mother Holle gets tired of her. Instead of returning her home covered in gold, she returns her covered in tar that can never be washed off. © www.uncorneredmarket.comRead More


text:
Series; Snow, Moon, and Flowers
Masao Ido - Born in 1945, Masao Ido lived and worked in Kyoto. He studied with Koho and Otsubo Shigechika. He achieved an international reputation as one of Japan's leading contemporary artists, and his works are included in the collections of the Tokyo National Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was also a recognized teacher, having taught other contemporary masters such as Seiji Sano.
Known for his serene landscape prints of traditional Japanese subjects, Ido found his inspiration in Kyoto and the surrounding countryside. His tranquil images of private gardens, quiet streets, temple gates, and hillside views reflect his interest in nature and the changing seasons. A simplicity of form and a masterful layering of subtle color to achieve a sense of depth and richness distinguish his prints.
Ido's handsome woodblocks are a nice choice for collectors in the contemporary Japanese print market. His death in May of 2016 created a surge of interest in his works among collectors.
Signed - Masao Ido in pencil in bottom margin, dated '95
Numbered - 102/150
Artist - Masao Ido (1945 - 2016)
Image Size - 14" x 20" + margins as shown
Condition - This print with excellent color and detail as shown. Creasing at edges, slight rippling from printing process. Please note, due to the size, this print may be shipped rolled. Please see photos for details.


text:
Product Description
- You will receive two sets of earrings, One Dangle Crystal Set and One Charm set of earrings.
- Made with Surgical Stainless Steel Earring wires.
- Comes Packaged in a beautiful white gift box.
- Made by Hand in the USA!!
- Perfect gift for the women in your life, beautiful and meaningful.


text:
- Fall
- Occasions
- Birthday
- Wine Gifts
- Anniversary
- Corporate
- Subscription
- Deals
Expand your vino horizons with Monthly Sommelier. Our Wine of the Month Clubs consist entirely of wines sourced directly from professional wine agents, who scour the Earth in search of the finest vintages. Whether you'd like to indulge yourself or impress your loved ones, you will find that our range of products are the perfect way to indulge in the finest products and tastes of the world - Which is why we are proud to announce that we offer same-day delivery in New Hyde Park, New York. We currently have 12 distinct Wine Subscriptions and encourage you to explore what we have to offer. We provide a fully online service so you can order online 24/7 & 365 days a year! Our Wine & Wine Gifts can be shipped across Canada and the United States with free delivery on orders over $100 USD.
At Monthly Sommelier we believe that there is a wine for everyone! Which is why we have made it our mission to scour the earth and bring you the best wines, month after month. Whether you are a seasoned connoisseur or a relative newcomer to the world of wine, our Wine of The Month Clubs are the perfect way for you to take your appreciation to the next level.
When it comes to wines, no one understands flavors and notes quite like we do. At Monthly Sommelier, every wine we source is intriguing and exceptional. It not only sparks our curiosity, but the curiosity of our discerning subscribers as well. We draw upon our collective knowledge and sample exciting reds and whites from across the globe to ensure that we are providing the very best to our customers every month. We go through this lengthy process so that our subscribers will never be disappointed when they pop open a new shipment and savour the velvety notes and textures within.
We are proud to offer guaranteed same-day delivery in the New Hyde Park region on orders placed by 11:00 am EST. For more information regarding delivery times to New Hyde Park, view Monthly Sommelier's Shipping & Delivery page HERE. Between our free shipping and same day gift delivery, it's little surprise that Monthly Sommelier is the go-to place for wine gifts to New Hyde Park.
Whether you are shopping for yourself, your family or friends, Monthly Sommelier has the widest selection of wines and wine gifts across North America. A wine gift from Monthly Sommelier comes with an assurance of being of the finest quality and standard. Whether it's our wine subscriptions or wine gifts, each of our wine offerings redefine the standards. Explore our selection of club memberships, gift baskets and custom wine gift options today
Monthly Sommelier offers premium Wine of the Month Clubs and Wine Gifts to commemorate every occasion in your life. Our subscriptions and gift baskets ship for free across America & Canada on orders over $100. Monthly Sommelier is proud to also offer Expedited Ground Service and Premium Air Delivery options so you can be sure your gift will be delivered right when you want it to be! View our Shipping & Delivery pages for more information regarding free shipping to New Hyde Park, New York.


text:
Vegan Link Round-up!
There are some amazing vegan recipes, books, features and more out there on the internet, but it can be challenging to track down great content sometimes! That is where FindingVegan.com comes in. FV features recipes and more from the best vegan-friendly bloggers on the web! And this year, we FV asked some of its contributors to share their best content in a MEGA-amazing vegan round-up! Check out all that is going on in the vegan community!..
1. Kathy Patalsky, of HealthyHappyLife and founder on Finding Vegan is sharing:
* 12 Days of Vegan Christmas Giveaway + YouTube Series - $2700 grand prize!
* Kathy's cookbook to kickstart a healthy New Year: 365 Vegan Smoothies
* Triple Chocolate Pumpkin Cake
*photo credit: Kathy Patalsky
2. Rachael Renee of RawHighLife is sharing:
* Amazing raw vegan cinnamon rolls PERFECT for holiday brunch!
* Easy fruit and veggie recipes in her ebook
* The RAW High Life Facebook page
*photo credit: RawHighLife
3. June Burns of Philosophy and Cake is sharing:
* Chocolate Macarons recipe, gluten free + vegan
* Momofuku-Inspired Carrot Layer Cake
* Salty-sweet pecan pie bars with bourbon!
3. Kelly of ThePrettyBee is sharing:
* Vegan Holiday Treats
* Gluten Free Gifts in Jars
*photo credit: Kelly, the pretty bee
4. Aimee of TheVegLife is sharing:
* Her eBook of vegan Christmas Cookies. 25 exclusive cookie recipes for 2014, and more, 50 recipes in total!
* Cranberry Orange Muffins
5. Natalie Thomas of feasting on fruit is sharing:
* Chocolate Peppermint Cookiewiches
* Gingerbread Snack Cakes
* Caramel Hot Chocolate the Fruity Way
*photo credit: Natalie, feasting on fruit
6. Carolyn Murphy of PeaceMeal is sharing:
* Mulled Wine
* Salted Toffee Peanut Butter & Caramel Macchiato Cheesecake Cups
* Garlic and Sun Dried Tomato Cheese Ball
7. Lisa from Healthy Nibbles & Bits is sharing:
* Peppermint Bark Popcorn with Toasted Coconut
* Butternut Squash, Hummus & Guacamole Dip
8. Trinity of Trinity's Kitchen is sharing:
* Festive Seed Roast Loaf (gluten-free, vegan and super healthy)
* Christmas Fruit n' Nut Truffles
*photo credit: Trinity's Kitchen
9. Ginny from Vegan in the Freezer is sharing:
* Delicious Party Food - Spicy Tortilla Rollups
* Homemade Kahlua sounds like a holiday in itself
* Spiced Rum Balls - no kidding!
*photo credit: Ginny, vegan in the freezer
10. Tia from Tia's Kitchen is sharing:
* vegan hot chocolate
* vegan eggnog
11. Danielle Levy of DanielleLevyNutrition is sharing:
* Asian inspired Yuba Roast Chestnut Stuffing
* Classic comfort food: Walnut Crusted Tofu with braised chard and butternut squash
photo credit: Danielle Levy
12. Vanessa of Becomingness is sharing:
* Caramel Macadamia Chocolate Cups
* BecomingSweet!
* 15 Best Raw Desserts
13. Aurora of TheIndieBroccoli is sharing:
* Christmas Loaf with Lentils and Quinoa
* Rutabaga Fries with vegan lemon basil mayo
* Carrot Juice with Turmeric and Ginger
*photo credit: Aurora, the indie broccoli
14. Bianca of Elephantastic Vegan is sharing:
* Festive Holiday Recipe - Pink Beet Cupcakes
* Her website and facebook page!
15. Cate from A Traveling Cook is sharing:
* Vegan Christmas Pudding
16. Clemence of The Vegan Cookie Fairy is sharing:
*Her ebook of Vegan Christmas recipes, The Vegan Cookie Fairy's Christmas Recipes
* Her ebook of Vegan Chocolate recipes, The Vegan Cookie Fairy's Little Book of Chocolate
* Gingerbread Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares with Chocolate Drizzle
photo credit: The Vegan Cookie Fairy
17. Jennifer of VeggieInspiredJourney is sharing:
* Vegan Dilled Ceviche
* Chocolate Peppermint Crunch Bars
* Maple Cinnamon Cranberry Pear Sauce
18. Dana of VanishingVeggie is sharing:
* Her website
* Her Facebook page
* A bright, citrus salad, perfect for any gathering
19. Sophia from VeggiesDontBite is sharing:
* Layered Pumpkin Caramel Pie in a Mason Jar: one of my most favorite desserts for this season!
* Frothy Pistachio Milk Hot Chocolate: Cozy up this winter with this indulgent treat.
* The new Veggies Don't Bite Overnight Oats Jar: Breakfast just went from easy to easier. A healthy, quick and delicious way to start your day!
*photo credit: Sophia, veggies don't bite
20. Christina of TheBeautifulBalance is sharing:
* Soft and Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies
* Maple Apple Scones
* Pear & Raspberry Frangipane Tart
21. Stacey of SouthernVeganKitchen is sharing:
* Lumberjack Date Cake
* Peanut Butter Chocolate Dream Pie
22. Shannon of The Glowing Fridge is sharing:
* Candy Cane and Marshmallow Peppermint Fudge
* The Glow Effect Guide
* A Holiday Gift Guide for Her
23. Jessica of TwoGreenPeas Website is sharing:
* Chocolate Candy Cane Pretzel Bark
* Vegan Gingerbread Houses: Recipe & How-To
* Starry Night Cinnamon Okra Masala
*photo credit: Jessica, TwoGreenPeas
24. Majda of BreadOlives is sharing:
* Walnut Date Truffles
*photo credit: Majda, BreadOlives
25. Vicky of MayIHaveThatRecipe is sharing:
* Eggnog Sticky Toffee Pudding
* Vegan Tiramisu
* Roasted Veggie Tofu Pot Pies
*photo credit: Vicky, MayIhaveThatRecipe
26. Dora of Dora's Table is sharing:
* This is a recipe for Garabatos or scribble cookies. These cookies are very popular in Mexico city, and you will fall in love with them too. Who can resist two coconut shortbread cookies, sandwiched in a smooth chocolate filing, and drizzled with warm chocolate? The best part, they're 100% vegan.
*photo credit: Dora's Table
27. Kelly of Trial and Eater is sharing:
* Foodie Gift Guide
* How to make vanilla extract - Fun holiday gift idea!
* Sunflower wrap - Healthy holiday snacking!
28. Michelle of Healthier Steps is sharing:
* Vegan Broccoli and Rice Casserole
* Sweet Potato Souffle
* Jamaican Pumpkin Soup
Bonus a few recipes I personally adore from FindingVegan contributors!..
29. Cara of Fork and Beans makes Healthy Reindeer Cookies
30. VeggieAndTheBeast Ginger Cutout Cookies
31. VeguKate's Superfood Hot Cocoa
32. Marly of NamelyMarly is sharing:
* Vegan Queso Dip
* Sage Gouda Cheese Ball
*photo credit: NamelyMarly
...and SO many more on FindingVegan.com. Sign up for the Finding Vegan Monthly Newsletter here.


text:
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.Close
Daniel Hodge - November 25, 2019
S.4 E.8 Method as Identity in Religion and Kendrick: Dr's Monica Miller and Chris Driscoll
From Series: "Profane Faith"
A podcast that engages faith, on the margins. Faith that has been labeled, profane, non-conformist, and/ or "out there." We'll be exploring the intersections of the sacred, secular, and profane to find God. Profane Faith is a Dauntless Media Collective podcast. Visit dauntless.fm for more content.
Dr. Miller's Bio Dr. Driscoll on the Twitters Method as Identity (The Book) Chris' Episode on Profane Faith


text:
Top Hat
"I say, old chap, don't you find that fedora quite ridiculous, wot?"
A top hat is a very specialized type of headgear constructed out of the finest materials, which include, but are not limited to, black velvet, black silk, and black sabbath (currently the darkest shade of sabbath next to fuscia). They are carefully dusted and groomed to the slightest detail. Top hats are usually perched on top of the head of a man of gentlemanly status, so as to be seen and gazed upon with awe by the lower ranks, such as yourself. Top hats often stand more than half a foot off the wearers head, signifying the elevated status and/or betterness of the wearer; for example, I, wearing this top hat, signify that I am better than you, who has none. It is the emblem of the penultimate pinnacle of class standing amongst the structure of society. The ultimate emblem, of course, would be a crown. Top hats, upon manufacture, are ordained with the powers of the universe, and all subsequent wearers receive this power to some degree.
Being the Illustrious History of the Magnificent Top Hat
An Early History
Top hats sprung into existence with the end of the dark ages. Top hats were and still remain mainly worn by Anglo-Saxon descendants, i.e. the English.[1] All through the
medevall midival medival midevil feudal times, the right to own and wear a top hat was limited to only the king. After much subjugation and little respect or pie, the nobility rose up against King John and forced him to sign the Magna Cappa (in English, Great Hat), which gave top hats to all the nobility. This landmark document brought the top hat into wild popularity, although there were many commoners who still could not wear the near-sacred headdress.
Top hats Revived in the Age of Enlightenment
During the Renaissance, top hats fell into obscurity for reasons which still puzzle historians today. They were revived in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment by an English gentleman noble and my great-great-grand-uncle Lord Sir Walter J. Crumpet. Lord Sir Crumpet was a studious and learned man, and widely known from Edinburgh to Sussex. However, Lord Sir Crumpet desired a "look". Something that, when seen, would instantly invoke an image of himself.[2] He decided to develop the perfect hat, as the proliferation of headgear had dramatically increased over the decades. Over the course of many months, Lord Sir Crumpet labored in his study, often assisted with a pipe and/or large brandy. Through his research the top hat was discovered to be nature's most perfect creation. He wrote in his journal on the night it was finished.
Needless to say, his historic comments have yet to be deciphered.
Lord Sir Crumpet's fashion statement flew into a flurry of popularity among the gentry. Top hats were worn day and night, in various forms and shapes. The reasons why top hats became so popular are that 1) they made you look like a refined, cultured citizen of Her Majesty's Empire(big chick magnet), 2) they showed that commoners such as you were greatly inferior, and 3) a common side effect was immediate knowledge of the universe and all its workings. Lord Sir Crumpet, as the inventor of the top hat, received its full power. Quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity were simplicities. But that's not all. From the blessings poured out by his creation, the greatest was understanding women. He understood everything about them; why they say they want nothing for their birthday but get mad when you don't get anything, why they cry for no apparent reason, why they exist other than to nag, etc. Lord Sir Crumpet and many of those who wear the top hat, such as myself, used this fountain of knowledge to good use.
Top Hats in These Modern Times
The British nobility continued to wear the glorious headgear, and their knowledge of the universe coupled with its added style points indirectly brought about the British Empire. The top hat proved itself to be superior to nearly all other types of hats, including turbans (India), bowlers (Ireland), those pointy Asian hats (Hong Kong), ten gallon hats (America), moosefur hats (Canada), and fedoras (English commoners, such as yourself). The top hat was worn up until about 1947, after which the British Empire went kaput.
These days, top hats are worn solely for their aesthetic value, quite possibly because stupidity is extremely coveted today. On a rare day, an ancient Brit will don his traditional cap and walk down a street, being wrongly ridiculed for his huge hat.
A Census and Explanation on the Powers of the Top Hat
As previously stated, top hats can give the wearer near infinite knowledge on any topic, from the simple (time travel paradoxes) to the über-complicated (why the light in the fridge turns on when you open the door). However, it has become apparent that how much information you gain is determined on your social standing. For example, if you are named something like Prince Charles XXI (me), chances are you will receive more knowledge. If you're named something like Billy Bob (you), it is very likely that you will receive much less knowledge. Scientists, philosophers, scientologists, and poets have been baffled as to what gives top hats their amazing powers, though some suspect hodgepodge. The answer remains a mystery.
Enhancing the Powers of the Top Hat
Though the top hat is an extremely powerful device, many English gentry found that by wielding certain other items, their powers could be augmented to a higher level. Secrets leaked out, and soon mere commoners were attempting to wear these powerful items. Disaster was quite common in the early twentieth century. Some of the following are the more commonly used enhancers.
- The monocle: Monocles were discovered to give the wearer an upper-class bearing, higher authority, and powerful X-ray vision. Since the discovery, an increasing number of English women have had to bathe with the lights off. Any Englishman using a monocle who stares at a blank wall for more than 5 seconds can be arrested on suspicion of voyeurism. Needless to say, monocles became and still remain wildly popular among the French.
- The cane: Another of Lord Sir Crumpet's inventions, the cane was designed to give him an attention-getting swagger. Ladies flocked to him like flies to poop. Today, the proper "swagger" consists of walking forward, using the wrist to fling the cane as far as physics allow up and down. Some drawbacks to the cane arose when overzealous gentlemen would swing the cane so hard he would accidentally bash the women he was courting. Foolish commoners...
- The cravate: Fluffy cravates also worked wonders as a mate-attracting device, but many unqualified men of the masses often died of asphyxiation.
- The pocketwatch: Pocketwatches abounded not only in Europe, but spread to the Americas as well. Though they were intended to tell the time, they became known as the signature trademarks of pimps, who called it "bling."
When these articles of clothing were combined with a top hat, the wearer not only possessed the keys to the universe, but looked super sharp. As you may have noticed, most of these items were used to, *ahem*, "get action". Females can not resist such magnificence.
On the Misuse of Top Hats
Sadly, as with any object of great power, there is the possibility that the top hat could be used for great evil. As is often the case, an idiot (much like yourself) will find an abandoned top hat and purport to wear it. From this, all manner of mutations may occur, including foppishness, maniacal laughter, diabolical plans, randomly shouting "indubitably!" like an idiot, self-righteousness, double chins, sizeable paunches, and a distaste for "newfangled contraptions."
See Also
|Featured Article (read another featured article)
|Featured version: 26 November 2007
|This article has been featured on the main page. — You can vote for or nominate your favourite articles at Uncyclopedia:VFH.


text:
Product photography and illustrations have been reproduced as accurately as print and web technologies permit. To ensure highest satisfaction, we suggest you view an actual sample from your dealer for best color, wood grain and finish representation.
Bold, dark and warm on Maple, Espresso Black Glaze cabinet finish is as brown as a fresh coffee bean, topped with a true black glaze.


text:
"Going above 60mph significantly decreases your fuel efficiency."
Thank goodness it is impossible to go above 15 mph on the 405!
Your gas mileage depends more on the way you drive than on what car you are driving (of course, smaller is still better). Do you ever wonder why you don't seem to get the gas mileage that is advertised as the EPA rating for your car? Those tests are conducted under ideal conditions (weather, traffic, car condition) driven by an ideal driver. Most of us don't realize how much our driving habits affect our mileage, and what little effort it takes to improve it significantly. I can get 47 MPG on my 2001 Honda Civic (EPA's fuel economy rating for it is 32 MPG for combined city and highway). That's higher than what most people can get out of a hybrid Toyota Prius. So here are some tips to get better gas mileage — saving you money and helping our environment at the same time.
Everything you need to know about maintaining your car is in your manual. Follow the recommended maintenance schedule. You don't need an oil change every 3000–5000 miles as recommended by Jiffy Lube. But you do need to make sure your engine is healthy, the air filter gets replaced regularly, and your tires are inflated to proper levels. All this information is listed in your car manual. Don't let the mechanic sell you services you don't need. But make sure you are doing what needs to be done to keep your car in tip top shape.
Fueleconomy.gov states that keeping tires inflated to the recommended pressure can improve fuel economy by up to 5%.
Speeding, cutting in and out of lanes, tailgating, and other smartass maneuvers save you very little time and end up costing you at the gas station. Driving at an even speed is much more efficient than always accelerating and stopping. Don't smash your gas pedal when you start moving and if you see a red light up ahead, just take your foot off the gas and coast until you need to brake. Chances are it'll turn green before you even get there. By anticipating stops and accelerating moderately, Edmunds found that you can get up to 37% in gas savings. This also saves you from having to replace your brake pads too often. By far, this has increased my mileage the most. I've explained more why speed has such an impact in How to save $0.54 per gallon on gas.
Going above 60 MPH significantly decreases your fuel efficiency. According to fueleconomy.gov, each 5 MPH you drive over 60 reduces your fuel economy by 10%.
It's been hotly debated as to whether it's more fuel efficient to have your windows down or the air conditioning on. The answer is both. At low speeds, having the windows down is a better option. But as the speed increases, having the windows down creates higher air resistance, which decreases fuel economy. The exact speed where the windows down option crosses over to be less efficient than having the air conditioner on is 50 MPH.
You use up gas when your car is on idle. This doesn't mean turning off your car in the middle of the road when you're in traffic or at a red light, but keep in mind it's better to turn off your car and restart than to leave it on idle. Also, many short trips taken from a cold start can use twice as much fuel as one multipurpose trip covering the same distance when the engine is warmed up and efficient. You would save on mileage too by not having to cover the same area twice if you plan your errands ahead of time.
If you're carrying excess pounds in your trunk (no pun intended), get rid of it. Weight contributes to your gas mileage too, you know.
Driving efficienctly so you can save money at the gas station is great incentive to be more mindful when you drive. But more importantly it's a very easy and cheap way to contribute to saving our environment. Not to mention it'll make the roads a little safer and a happier place to be.
Disclaimer: The links and mentions on this site may be affiliate links. But they do not affect the actual opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
"Going above 60mph significantly decreases your fuel efficiency."
Thank goodness it is impossible to go above 15 mph on the 405!
I always thought that the whole "don't go above 60mph" rule was bollocks, seeing as how you take longer to get places the slower you go, so wouldn't you be spending the same amount of fuel anyway?
Turns out that the gas efficiency curve isn't linear, and I ended up discovering just HOW unlinear it is when I drove over the mountain pass at 30 miles and hour the other day during a snow storm. The whole 150 mile trip usually takes half a tank of gas - this time, it only took a quarter. Insane!
I was able to average 47.5 MPG out of a 2003 ford focus on about a 300 mile trip driving slow & coasting where I could. Car has a 5 speed
You don't need an oil change every three to five thousand miles as recommended by Jiffy Lube.
I disagree: The increased lubricity you get from changing your oil will make up for the environmental impact of using more motor oil AND will pay for the oil change. At 20 mpg you'll burn $300 of gas in 2000 miles so it doesn't take much to negate the cost of the oil. Remember the oil isn't discharged into the air as carbon dioxide unless it's burned in which case it's displacing other fossil fuels.
If you see a red light up ahead, just take your foot off the gas and coast until you need to brake.
I disagree: By braking early you will reduce your speed earlier thus increasing your minimum speed which is really the only relevant factor. So brake early so you can maintain a higher minimum speed and still get to the light as it gets green.
Personally I think vehicles over a certain weight should have a lower speed limit especially since they use more fuel and are carrying more kinetic energy at equal speeds to lighter vehicles. Alternately do something to encourage more diesels. Or tax gas to maintain a price at 3.25 or 3.50. If we had had a $1.00 gas tax when it was otherwise 75 cents to 2 dollars we never would have had this shortage driven $3 gas we have now.
Ever. I think it's rated 24 for city and 30 for highway and I usually do about 31 to 33 (mostly city, I drive my husband to the train and then home again, to the store, etc), so it's totally possible to beat the EPA estimates. It's a manual transmission and I do get the most out of hills and stops, it's in neutral a lot (approaching a red light, either the clutch goes in and I coast or I shift to neutral and coast - same with big hills, gears just slow you down on the hills. ) There are places that I can go for miles, literally, in neutral and at the speed of traffic. But, I think my real secret is that I'm a super mellow driver. I play the no braking, no shifting game (ie keeping my speed as constant as possible so I don't have to do either) and coasting when possible. If I'm approaching a stop sign, I take my foot off of the accelerator instead of speeding up until I'm on top of it and then slamming on the brakes. I use hills to slow me down (going up not down) and get pissed off at people who constantly break on hills - it's a hill, take your foot off of the gas. Occasionally people get royally pissed off at me and blow on by (and I really don't drive like a grandma, I"m just not in an all fired hurry) and then I end up behind them at the next light. Good thing they were in such a hurry to get absolutely nowhere.
I think a lot of people don't get good gas mileage because they're brake happy. How many people have you ever seen constantly tapping their brakes in front of you on the highway?? Bonus if they're going uphill. And, two footed drivers whose brake lights are on while they're obviously accelerating? Another bonus of a stick is that you can't drive with one foot on the gas and the other on the break, although I wouldn't ever do that anyway.
Another bonus is that my brakes (at 4 years old, bought it late in '03 and about 40k miles) are maybe 30% worn away, which means they should last until 120k at this rate and the clutch is fine.
"Good thing they were in such a hurry to get absolutely nowhere"
Those are the folks I roll up beside and congratulate on getting to the red light a LOT sooner than I did!
This would never work in San Antonio. Drivers have ME-FIRST SYNDROME. They will always do the opposite of what the author mentions in "No need for speed" paragraph. Driving over 80 mph is commonplace in addition to aggressive manuevering. Also, rapid acceleration and braking between red lights is the norm.
I totally agree with you Andrea. I wasn't convinced until I calculated my potential savings at http://www.mpgforspeed.com/ and then I was sold! My tanks go a lot further now!
I don't how I feel about the speed and MPG thing. If it's really so bad to go over 60 MPH then why are there speed limits in my area that are as high as 70 MPH? Wouldn't the government be interested in conserving the amount of fuel we use and the amount of CO2 that we put out as a result?
I have been hyper-driving a bit and gotten 39 mpg out of my 30 mpg Ford Ranger. Part of my technique is to put it in neutral and turn off the engine when I can. I don't need a lecture on safety but I wondered if anyone had a line on the cost of restarting the engine using the starter and the dynamics of just letting out the clutch to restart.
I would just use the clutch to restart whenever possible. That way you are not over-using the starter and constantly turning the ignition key.
If one were to know how, I can see wiring up a switch that will stop the engine, and then wiring in a button that will enable you to use the starter without turning the key. It would make stopping and re-starting the engine much quicker, safer, and easier.
The biggest consideration on cutting back on transportation costs is to determine whether you can get rid of your car entirely. For most, this would be too large an inconvenience to make a reality; however, what's more realistic is downgrading from multiple vehicles.
If you are one of the tens of millions of American families (or individuals) with more than one car, consider selling one. Whether or not you drive them, cars cost money.
The total cost of vehicle ownership is higher than most think. Besides pumping fuel for every inch of distance you drive, cars require continuous insurance payments and maintenence. Most importantly, cars come with a high opportunity cost on their value.
For instance, if your car is worth $10,000 and you have that much in 16% APR credit card debt, the cost of driving must include the interest payments you could otherwise erase. In this case, it amounts to roughly 1.32% per month, or $131. That's pure interest expense, for which you derive no worldly benefit!
Adding insurance, gas, amortized maintenance costs, and opportunity cost of capital, the monthly cost of driving can easily reach $500 per vehicle. Selling a car could easily mean the difference between being under the water on your bills or financially solvent.
I get 27 on the highway w/ my voyager that's rated at 18 combined. I think its a gas when, on a long trip, the same people pass me several times. I guess they must have stopped to fill up again and I just drove on by! It's also less stress to be the one cussed at rather than the one cussing. Go ahead and cuss me I CAN'T HEAR YOU
Averaging MPG is a farce. Two vehicles one getting 12MPG and one getting 500MPG may average 256 MPG but consume more gas than one getting 16 MPG and one getting 50 MPG that together "average" 33 MPG.
It's a feel good farce. All efficiency improvements should go in the 12-18 MPG cars not the 50-500 MPG cars but for too long the low MPG vehicles have been the golden goose for the industry... No longer thank GOD.
When you use overdrive gearing, your cars engine speed goes down. This saves gasoline and reduces engine wear.
We've all heard the calls lately for improved CAFE standards and it sounds good. We'd all like to be able to reduce our personal cost for driving as well as reduce our nation's and our planet's dependency on petroleum. The problem is the proposed CAFE standards (along with E85 capable vehicles) are a feel good measure that actually gives vehicle manufacturers license to produce more, not less, large gas guzzling vehicles.
Lets do the math. Take 2 cars that each are relatively safe and get 30 mpg each such as the Chevy Impala. The pair of them driving 1000 miles would consume 1000/30 x 2 gallons of gas or 66 gallons of gas. Now lets take a pair of vehicles that together average 30 mpg. I'll use a hypothetical 12 mpg vehicle (think Hummer) to average 30 mpg we'll pair it with a 48 mpg Honda Civic (48 +12 = 60 / 2 = 30). Over the course of 1000 miles the Hummer will consume just over 83 gallons of gas. So there's no need to even calculate the Civic's mileage. Even if it ran on sunshine nothing it could do could offset the Hummer's terrible mileage. By itself it consumed more than a pair of Impala's so the idea that somehow we can offset to achieve a goal of reducing gas consumption doesn't even come close to passing the "back of napkin" test.
Another real problem with CAFE standards is that in order to get these offsets car manufacturers need to get us to buy ultra efficient cars. This is how we got the Geo Metro a few years back. So instead of having vehicles of similar sizes on the road we have lots of cars at the extremes. This leads to a partially correct view that small cars are dangerous. They don't have to be, but when built with ultra high MPG as the main goal, they are too small to stand up to a high speed collision with a large or medium size vehicle. This perception of small cars as dangerous leads more people to buy large vehicles "to be safe". This increases the danger to those occupants of the smallest cars and increases the danger to the occupants of the large SUV who otherwise might be in something more sensible such as an Impala. The Impala is safer than the Hummer because it doesn't roll over as easily AND people in Impalas are more likely to wear their safety belts.
CAFE standards that allow averaging simple MPG numbers rather than averaging gallons of gas consumed lead to unintended consequences that we can't live with.
To optimize the mileage of your vehicle, keep your tires in good condition. Making sure that tires are efficient will save you gas (and money) because it will ensure that your machine does not consume excessive power when overcoming the consequent resistance created when your wheels start rolling during motion. In addition, if you want to replace your wheels, make sure that you consider both aesthetics and fuel efficiency. You vehicle was designed to work at its best with certain wheel specifications. Hence, get advice from experts regarding the best size and type of wheels for your car. In general, less strain on the gas engine allows your car to consume less fuel.


text:
YOU WON'T BELIEVE THE OUTSTANDING SOPHISTICATION & THE AWESOME RARE FLOORPLAN OF THIS GARDEN LEVEL SUITE. 1,553 Sq.Ft., 4 Bedrooms, 2 full baths & FRONT ROW SEATS to the SUNRISES & SUNSETS from the SOUTH FACING 193 sq. ft. OCEAN VIEW Patio. Second private west facing 210 sq. ft. patio if you prefer the shade. This suite is like a home with separated master suite for privacy.The kitchen combines elegance & functionality blending granite countertops, designer ceramic backsplash, maple hardwood floors,stainless steel appliances, gas range,glass & wood custom cabinets & an open plan design that encourages casual interaction & provides a stunning ocean & city view beyond the dining and living areas. Seperate entrance to exterior from livingroom & the river-rock faced custom fireplace adds ambiance & warmth. Diningroom with gorgeous chandelier & sliding glass doors to patio.
Additional Features
- Award winning design complex in this peaceful seaside community all about the lifestyle
- Newer stainless steel Kenmore appliances, maple hardwood floors, wooden blinds, designer paint
- Guest room with access to patio includes newer murphy bed
- Fourth bedroom currently used as office with access to patio (closet doors are available)
- Pets & Rentals welcome, 3 parking, 2 storage lockers
- Secure underground parking & ample visitor parking, bike room, car wash area
- Well equipped gym & clubhouse with full kitchen & large screen television
- Concrete slab ceiling provides great soundproofing
- AND No Property Transfer Tax
Location, Location, Location!
- A fantastic community with a whistler-like flair, soaring eagles, running deer, carol ships…..
- Run, Hike, Mountain Bike, Golf, Ski all in the same day
- Take the trails for a walk to Dollarton Shopping Center, Starbucks, Cates Park or Deep Cove
- Bask in the feeling of being away from it all while enjoying the nearby conveniences, easy hwy/bridge access & a short 20 min. commute to downtown