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On petitions for writs of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The petitions for writs of certiorari are denied.
Justice REHNQUIST, with whom Justice WHITE joins, dissenting.
In deciding this case, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that (1) the historic Flathead Reservation was not terminated by an Act of Congress in 1904; (2) by virtue of the Treaty of Hell Gate the title to the bed and banks of the south half of Flathead Lake, a large inland lake in northwestern Montana, was retained by the United States as trustee for respondent Tribe, rather than passing to the State of Montana at the time the latter was admitted to the Union; and (3) respondent Tribe has the authority to regulate the riparian rights of non-Indian owners of land abutting Flathead Lake. In my opinion, the decision of the Court of Appeals with respect to the "termination" issue was based on principles derived from cases such as Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Kneip, 430 U.S. 584 (1977), DeCoteau v. District County Court, 420 U.S. 425 (1975), and Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U.S. 481 (1973), and does not warrant review here. With respect to the "ownership" issue and the "regulatory" issue, as they were described by the Court of Appeals, however, I believe there is reason to think that the Court of Appeals incorrectly applied our decisions in Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544 , 67 L. Ed.2d 493 (1981), Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 , 98 S. Ct. 1011 (1978), and United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313 (1978), and I would grant certiorari to review these determinations. [459 U.S. 977 , 978] The "ownership" issue. This requires deciding who owns the southern half of the bed and banks of Flathead Lake. The Court of Appeals relied on its own decision 40 years ago in Montana Power Company v. Rochester, 127 F. 2d 189 (CA9 1942). Petitioners contended in the Court of Appeals that Rochester had been significantly undercut by our decision in Montana v. United States, supra, where we held that the treaty establishing the Crow Indian Reservation had not conveyed to the Indians beneficial ownership of the bed of the Big Horn River flowing through the Reservation. The Court of Appeals advanced several factual distinctions between the execution of the treaty in Montana and the execution of the Treaty of Hell Gate involved in this case. But the Court of Appeals apparently also disagreed with a portion of this Court's reasoning in Montana. In its opinion, the Court of Appeals stated:
"The Montana Court emphasized that 'Congress was, of course, aware of this presumption once it was established by this Court.' ( Citation omitted). There is no evidence, however, that the presumption against pre-statehood federal grants of land under navigable waters had been established at the time of the Hell Gate Treaty was negotiated and ratified. The earliest statement of the presumption appeared seven decades later...." 665 F.2d 951, 961, n. 27 (CA9 1982).
While this may be a proper statement of the chronology, it would surely be as applicable to the Crow treaty involved in Montana as to the Treaty of Hell Gate involved in this case.
It would appear that the Court of Appeals decision in Rochester, supra, was a dispute between a licensee under the Federal Power Commission which had built a dam at the outlet of Flathead Lake and a non-Indian owner of patented land. But the Rochester court did not even purport to discuss the principle laid down in United States v. Holt State Bank, 270 U.S. 49 (1926), and reaffirmed in Montana, supra, that there is no conveyance of ownership where there [459 U.S. 977 , 979] is nothing in a treaty "which even approaches a grant of rights in lands underlying navigable waters; nor anything evincing a purpose to depart from the established policy ... of treating such lands as held for the benefit of the future state." United States v. Holt State Bank, 270 U.S., at 58 -59, quoted in Montana v. United States, 450 U.S., at 552 -553.
While it may be understandable why the Court of Appeals treated its decision in Rochester as stare decisis in this case, the same is obviously not true so far as this Court is concerned. Because after Montana there is substantial doubt as to whether the Court of Appeals reached the right conclusion on the "ownership" issue, I would grant certiorari to review its judgment on that point.
The "regulatory" issue. The Court of Appeals also decided that a tribal ordinance regulating the riparian rights of owners of fee lands abutting Flathead Lake could be applied to non-Indian owners. The Court of Appeals, saw perhaps quite rightly, conflicting indications from our decisions in Montana v. United States, supra, Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), and United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313 (1978), on the one hand, and Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, 447 U.S. 134 (1980), on the other hand.
In Oliphant, supra, we acknowledged that Indian tribes retain elements of "quasi-sovereign" authority after ceding their lands to the United States, but went on to observe that
In Wheeler, supra, we further observed that "(t)he areas in which such implicit divestiture of sovereignty has been held to have occurred are those involving the relations between an [459 U.S. 977 , 980] Indian tribe and nonmembers of the tribe." 435 U.S., at 313 .
The Court of Appeals saw an inconsistency between these statements and the statement contained in Washington v. Confederated Tribes, supra, that "(t) ribal powers are not implicitly divested by virtue of the tribe's dependent status." 447 U.S., at 153 . But the Court of Appeals also recognized that the most recently decided of these cases, Montana v. United States, supra, cited Wheeler with complete approval. In Montana, we went on to say:
Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals felt that even under the more recently expressed doctrines re-affirmed in Montana, the ordinance regulating non-Indian lands abutting Flathead Lake was authorized because the southern half of the lake, in its view, was owned by the United States in trust for the Tribe. The correctness of that conclusion obviously depends upon the Court of Appeals' resolution of the "ownership" issue; if upon review of this latter determination we were to decide that the southern half of the Flathead Lake [459 U.S. 977 , 981] passed to the State of Montana under our decision in Montana v. United States, the Court of Appeals' justification for its decision of the " regulatory" issue would likewise fail.
The "ownership" and "regulatory" issues present important questions having ramifications throughout the many western states within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I would grant certiorari to review that court's decision of both issues.
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Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Self-Rating Scale (SABSS)
(Version for preliminary testing only!)
Copyright © Donald Robertson, 2013. All rights reserved.
NB: Your feedback is much appreciated, especially on whether the questions make sense to you, and whether you feel they adequately assess (self-rated) attitudes that would be consistent with a classical Stoic philosophy of life.
Introduction. This scale is still under development. The initial version is designed to help arrive at a consensus on items (questions/statements) that accurately and comprehensively define a classical Stoic philosophical outlook. There's also a section for basic Stoic practices or cognitive and behavioural strategies. In some cases a balance has to be struck between fidelity to the ancient tradition and making the statements comprehensible to a modern research participant. This scale is initially being developed with a view to using it in correlational research to establish the extent to which existing Stoic attitudes, among students of Stoicism or the general population, correlate with established measures of psychological resilience, emotional wellbeing, etc. (There are currently no reverse-scored questions, although these may be incorporated at a later date.)
Rate how strongly you agree with each of the statements below using this scale:
- Strongly disagree / 2. Disagree / 3. Neither agree nor disagree / 4. Agree / 5. Strongly agree
Overall Self-Rating of Stoicism
"I would describe myself as someone who believes in and tries to follow the Stoic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium."
Stoic Beliefs & Attitudes
"The goal of human life is to attain personal happiness and fulfilment."
"I seek to achieve happiness by living in harmony with my own nature and the world around me."
"When we accept what happens to us, insofar as it's outside of our control, life goes smoothly and it's easier to remain calm."
"Virtue, or excelling in terms of our moral reasoning, is the only true good in life and vice the only true evil."
"I like to think of all things in the universe as being parts of a unified whole."
"I think all virtues are fundamentally one and the same thing, different forms of practical wisdom."
"The material world is in constant change, as things gradually turn into their opposites."
"All material things are transient."
"We shouldn't be surprised by any misfortune because we know various things befall other people in life."
"Virtue consists in perfecting our essential nature as rational and social beings."
"Moral goodness is all that's required to have a good life."
"Health, wealth, reputation, and other 'external' things can never contribute to genuine happiness and fulfilment in life."
"The most important human virtues are prudence, justice, courage, and moderation."
"Peace of mind comes from abandoning fears and desires about things outside our control."
"Virtue consists in perfecting our rational nature, through cultivating wisdom."
"Practical wisdom mainly entails knowledge of what is good, bad, and indifferent in life."
"The fear of death is more harmful to the good life than death itself."
"Things beyond our control neither help nor harm our ability to flourish and be fulfilled in life."
"Emotional suffering is based on irrational judgments that place excessive value on external things."
"The only things truly under our control in life are our judgments and acts of will."
Stoic Behaviours & Strategies
"I like to contemplate what a perfectly wise and good person would do when faced with various misfortunes in life."
"We should wish that other people attain wisdom and flourish, fate permitting, while accepting that it is ultimately outside of our control."
"It's important to anticipate future misfortunes and to rehearse rising above them."
"I often contemplate the smallness and transience of human life in relation to the totality of space and time."
"Virtue requires effort in the form of continual attention to our judgments and actions."
"It's natural and healthy to be grounded in the present moment."
"I try to live simply and with moderation."
"When a disturbing thought enters my mind the first thing I do is remind myself it's just an impression and not the thing it claims to represent."
"I regularly contemplate the inevitability of my own death in order to come to terms with my mortality."
"I routinely examine my own actions and evaluate what I did well, what badly, and what I omitted to do."

subset: commoncrawl


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A couple of weeks ago at Lincoln Hall, late on a Saturday afternoon, Chester Novell Turner took the stage. Or rather, to be exact, he climbed onto the stage, throwing a leg sideways and hoisting himself from the floor to the stage. He did not seem to notice the short flight of stairs waiting a few feet away. The scene was awkward, unintentionally funny, yet charmingly befitting: Turner is the director of "Tales From the Quadead Zone" and "Black Devil Doll From Hell," microscopically budgeted, Chicago-made horror movies from the 1980s, both of which are beyond awkward — awkwardly paced, awkwardly acted. Both were shot on VHS tape, so the picture quality is awkward. And both led to a film career that's as awkward as it is remarkable.
So awkward that, although there were at least 50 fans at Lincoln Hall to see Turner, until recently many of those same fans probably assumed he was dead: About two decades ago, a rumor spread among aficionados of obscure, low-budget horror movies that the largely unknown Turner had died in a car accident.
He had not.
Last year he heard about that rumor for the first time. Which was awkward. But also, oddly heartening, because not only had Chester Turner not died in a car wreck in 1996, he had no idea that he had any fans.
He didn't know he had a legend.
"I always knew I was weird," he said after the Lincoln Hall show. "I knew I found things funny that most people do not laugh at. Now all this time later I find there are others like me. I do take some solace in that."
A lifetime ago, when he was in his early 30s, he had made two cheap horror flicks using an off-the-shelf video camera, a few friends for actors and some money from his mother. "Black Devil Doll From Hell" (1984) told the story of a timid churchgoer (Shirley L. Jones, Turner's girlfriend at the time) who buys a demonic ventriloquist dummy that converts her into a promiscuous zombie. "Tales From the Quadead Zone" (1987), an anthology movie, is a collection of shorts about killer clowns, ghostly suicide pacts and demented hillbilly dinner parties. The movies were shot mostly on the South and West sides. Neither was shown in movie theaters; instead, Turner and Jones sold VHS copies to neighborhood video stores throughout the Chicago area. He says the two movies, which together cost less than $15,000 to make, brought in less than $4,000.
So he stopped. He put his dreams of being a director behind him.
He met a woman with eight children, helped raise them. He started a home remodeling business.
Then a funny thing happened: Among fans of locally produced horror movies, and collectors of rare VHS tapes — which remain Turner's largest constituencies — his movies circulated far outside of Chicago.
Word of Turner, and bootlegs of his films, spread within horror circles. The few details known about him became as compelling as his films: He was the rare African-American filmmaker in a considerably white genre, making horror films with black casts, shooting in working-class living rooms, capturing the texture of everyday life (again, in a genre not traditionally known for its attention to everyday reality). His soundtracks were catchy, clever and forward-thinking — produced on a Casio keyboard by Turner himself, sounding somewhere between a minimalist John Carpenter score from the '70s and an 8-bit video game soundtrack from the '80s. But, most intriguingly: Turner's horror films were deeply idiosyncratic, sexual and unnerving.
The Black Devil Doll himself wore farmer's clothes, braids in his hair and was modeled on Rick James. In one of the "Quadead Zone" stories, a man steals his brother's corpse from a South Side funeral home, then — and you really never see this twist coming — dresses the body in a clown outfit. Then it gets really weird.
Even Michelle Turner, 46, one of Turner's two children from a previous marriage, said: "I am extremely proud of my father and surprised by the attention he's getting now. But he's twisted — a nice kind of twisted. When he had that devil doll making love? I'd never seen anything like that. Now I'm older, and I still haven't."
Technically speaking — sound, editing, etc.— the films of Chester Turner stand slightly ahead of your nephew's bar mitzvah video and slightly behind a community college recruitment pitch, circa 1982. But creatively? Nothing in his films gets played for laughs. And nothing is devoid of knowing smirks. Imagine your most surreal, sluggish, lurid daydreams, as impossible to predict as to shake off — "astonishingly repellent yet utterly hypnotic," Aaron Christensen wrote on his Chicago-based blog Horror 101 With Dr. AC.
Said Louis Justin, the 23-year-old Flint, Mich., native whose Massacre Video label recently reissued Turner's movies as a DVD set (leading to packed screenings in alternative cinemas and concert venues around the country, including Lincoln Hall): "I seriously see Chester's movies as good movies. They have technical flaws. But despite that, they are singular. Chester was clearly not just following a low-budget horror formula. There was no irony or winky-ness in what he did, and I respect that. For whatever reason, they stick with you."
Said Jake Yuzna, who showed "Quadead Zone" last year as part of a VHS retrospective at New York's Museum of Arts and Design: "Chester came out of a period when people with no formal training in film were making movies with video cameras, and though his movies have so many illogical places — 'Quadead Zone' suggests four stories; we get three — you feel a complete earnestness and unabashed love in what he's making. By traditional standards, these are failures. But this is what we're supposed to mean by 'indie film.'"
Within movie-collecting circles, an original Chester Turner VHS tape became so prized that, several years ago, Earl Kessler Jr., a graphic designer from Pennsylvania, paid $665 on eBay for a VHS of "Quadead Zone" (then "went ahead (and) sold the copy of the film I purchased off eBay and doubled my money," he wrote in an email). At Odd Obsession, a Wicker Park video store specializing in the unusual and rare, a copy of "Black Devil Doll" was stolen years ago and never replaced, said owner Brian Chankin. "The only people who come in for Chester Turner are VHS collector kids — but that is not a small number of people, actually."
All of which went on unbeknownst to Turner, whose story (and fate) remained a mystery to even the most obsessive horror fans. In the encyclopedic "Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990," author Brian Albright asked: "Who is Chester Turner, and what demons drove him to create these freakish cinematic experiments?"
Last fall, Cinefamily, a Los Angeles alt-theater (which lists actors Michael Cera and Joseph-Gordon Levitt on its advisory board) hosted a sold-out screening of "Black Devil Doll From Hell" and an appearance by Turner. "The truth is, up until that screening, we fantasized about what kind of person Chester was," said Bret Berg, director of programming. "He had become so legendary, and his films were so weird, I suppose you could call him an 'outsider artist,' but that's debatable. He is unquestionably an interesting filmmaker. And, in the age of the Internet, when you can find out about any filmmaker, Chester Turner stayed one of life's mysteries."
Actually, for most of the past 25 years, Chester Turner was living in plain sight. He just didn't announce himself as a filmmaker, let alone the filmmaker of marginal works he assumed were long forgotten. He is 67 and lives alongside a funeral home in the South Shore neighborhood. His apartment is small, warm and stuffy. His longtime girlfriend died a few years ago, and on a recent weekday, he could be found in front of his TV, surrounded by stacks of new DVDs, playing a round of the video game "Resident Evil" on PlayStation 3.
"I'm not a normal 67," he said, smiling.
He spoke with a soft, almost Southern lilt, though he grew up near the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. He had a goatee and was energetic, charmed by the new attention but guilelessly matter-of-fact. On that stage at Lincoln Hall, before mostly young guys, several wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with the titles of his movies, Turner wore a big smile, a Cubs jacket, a Cubs hat and not an ounce of self-importance. He did not seem like a man who had just discovered a treasure chest of hipster cred.
He explained to the audience that part of the $10,000 it took to make "Black Devil Doll" went to crew and actor salaries (he didn't know that working for free is an accepted part of the culture of independent filmmaking).
And when a guy asked what "Quadead Zone" meant, he replied: "'Quad' means four.
'Dead' … you know what that means."
Told in his apartment later that many of those people at Lincoln Hall (and at his well-attended appearances in New York, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas) were there undoubtedly because they just wanted to see the guy who would think to make a movie with sex scenes between a puppet and an actress, Turner chuckled. "When I showed that movie to my mother, she said, 'I love you, Chester, but you're a weird cookie.' I said, 'Ma, you helped finance me!'" Turner said. "Ideas just come to me. It's how I think: Say I have an idea about a grandmother, and she's baking. OK, what is she baking? You assume she's baking people, right? That's just the start for me."
Turner said he grew up fascinated by "The Twilight Zone" and was constantly writing horror stories, but he went to work in the remodeling business and put aside dreams of being a filmmaker. Then came the VHS revolution of the 1980s, when "lots of people noticed that something like 'Friday the 13th' was selling well on shelves and, as long as the box on a video-store shelf looked pretty good, they could make a horror movie with store-bought video cameras," said Joe Ziemba, a Homewood native, founder of the Bleeding Skull horror website and a programmer at the influential Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin (which has shown Turner's films).
Asked if Turner's being an African-American in a white scene or any degree of irony factored into the appreciation of his movies, Ziemba said: "Absolutely not. His work transcends all of that, actually. Like a lot of people who started making movies with video cameras back then, he had a creative volcano in his mind."
Indeed, Turner was so determined to make a film that he took a correspondence course on filmmaking, the only route he knew to get even the most rudimentary instruction. Turner said: "I'm not going to use the N-word, but that's what it felt like back then, even among my friends: 'Who's this … guy think he is? Spielberg?' Chicago doesn't offer support to any filmmaker, I think. And can you imagine how hard it was to make anything with four people? I had no connections to anyone or knew anyone who knew anyone who knew anything about how to make a movie. It was like telling someone I was going to be an astronaut now."
In the end, though Turner hoped to get his films shown on cable, the best he could do was selling several hundred copies of each movie, mostly to video stores; for a short time in the 1980s, "Black Devil Doll" was distributed on a now-defunct video label, which Turner says sent him a one-time check of just under $1,000.
"Chester was always the strongest one in our family," said Keefe Turner, his younger brother. "It took a lot of endurance even to get where he got. But I always thought it would happen for him eventually — eventually."
Chester Turner's rise from obscurity to slightly lesser obscurity began a year ago. Louis Justin of Massacre Video, obsessed with landing a copy of "Quadead Zone," spent months scouring phone books and databases for Turner; indeed, Google the name "Chester Turner," and the first thing you get is a wealth of material on the convicted Los Angeles serial killer Chester Turner. "I looked in obituaries," Justin said. "I searched the names in his credits (many of which were fabricated by Turner to give his productions a greater feeling of authenticity). I called every Chester Turner in Chicago, then every Turner in the Chicago area. The name was so common, and people would not know what I was talking about: 'Are you related to the Chester Turner who made "Black Devil Doll From Hell"?' A lot of people thought I was being a racist (expletive) and hung up on me. I went to Chicago and hit video stores on the South Side until I came to one that knew about the videos, and then I narrowed my search to a 5-mile radius of the store."
Justin returned to Michigan and dialed the phone numbers that hadn't picked up the first time — and then found Chester Turner. "I said to Chester, 'Did you direct a film by chance?' And Chester said, 'Yes, how do you know about that?' I hung up and composed myself, then called him back and told him that I wanted to release his films on video again."
Said Turner: "I didn't believe him. He said he was a big fan. So I'm thinking, 'Right, and your bottom line is?'"
Justin drove to Chicago. He and Turner talked over pizza and hashed out a deal: Justin would pay Turner for the rights to the two films. He also agreed to help finance a new Chester Turner horror movie. Justin said he paid Turner more than the director received for his films combined (he wouldn't say exactly how much but that it was less than $10,000). Turner, in a separate interview, said the deal was "very fair."
"But I actually didn't completely believe him that people loved my movies until we went to (a horror movie convention in) Cleveland," Turner said. "He got me a round-trip ticket and a hotel room. When I got there …"
Turner became misty-eyed recalling that day last fall: "It touched my heart."
Justin recalled: "Chester just kept signing autographs and looking over at me, and I would nod, like, 'See? I told you.'"
In fact, as they toured last fall, so many fans told Turner about the relative ease and affordability of digital filmmaking — as well as the micro-funding site Kickstarter, which Turner had not heard of (but which has been used by many filmmakers, including Zach Braff and Spike Lee) — that Turner became encouraged. He immediately set to work on writing "Tales From the Quadead Zone 2" and "Black Devil Doll From Hell 2."
"Quadead Zone 2" will be the first; Turner plans to begin shooting in March. And Keefe is building the next Black Devil Doll From Hell, which Chester said will look more like a Henry Winkler than a Rick James.
"This will be my next act, my way of repaying the warm feelings," Turner said. "But I'm different now. I'm older and can't do the extreme low-budget thing the same way. Not if it stunts my ability to make what I want. Though if I have to dig into my pocket, I will. Because I do my best with what I have to work with."
Twitter @borrelli


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Civilization creator Sid Meier once famously said that a game is "a series of interesting decisions."
Final Fantasy All The Bravest, a new game that came out for iOS on Thursday, has one interesting decision: How much money would you like to give Square Enix?
All The Bravest, a series of micro-transactions disguised as a video game, tasks you with swiping your finger up and down a screen as Final Fantasy characters jump and attack Final Fantasy villains on Final Fantasy backgrounds while listening to Final Fantasy music. It's kind of fun, in that "I don't know why I'm doing this but it's kind of compelling for some reason" sort of way.
It's also less of a video game and more of a massive middle finger to fans. It should really be called "Final Fantasy Fuck You Give Us Money." I can forgive the premium purchases: you can buy new maps for $3.99 each, which is fine, and you can buy 16-bit Final Fantasy characters for $0.99 each, except they're totally random and you don't know which one you're going to get, which is weird, but also generally an okay form of downloadable content.
No, the biggest problem in Final Fantasy All The Bravest is that when you die in battle—which will happen often, because battles are totally random and there's no way to heal, buff, target enemies, or do anything except swipe your finger up and down as your characters furiously attack—you have to either wait for your characters to revive (three minutes per character, or up to two hours), exit the battle and try again (pointless, since again, there's no strategy), or pay Square Enix real money to revive your party.
Let me repeat that: in order to make progress in the game you just spent $4 to buy, you have to pay more money to Square Enix.
I can only imagine the English translators at Square Enix hearing about this, sighing, shaking their heads, and wondering if anyone will ever get to enjoy their work—which was stellar. Probably not. It's hard to play this game without getting angry.
But Final Fantasy All The Bravest is not an anomaly. This betrayal is nothing new. Square has spent the past half-decade picking away at our passion for their ubiquitous, once-beloved series. All The Bravest is just another limb rotting off the bloated, mangled corpse that was once Final Fantasy.
As someone who grew up with the adventures of Cecil and Terra, I find it depressing to even write, but here we are. It's 2013, and Final Fantasy is on its last legs. The 25-year-old RPG series is a shell of its former self. When we see a new Final Fantasy game, our first reaction is no longer "awesome!"—it is "shit, how are they going to ruin my childhood next?" I've written before about some of the problems facing Final Fantasy, and even drawn up wish lists of things I'd like to see Square Enix try to do, but All The Bravest is yet another piece of disturbing evidence that this company no longer cares about its fans.
It's easy to pinpoint exactly when Final Fantasy started to die. In 2001, not long after the cinematic financial disaster known as Spirits Within, series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi left the company to go off to Hawaii and surf and make games where you surf. A couple years later, Square merged with Enix, and it's all been downhill from there, especially for Final Fantasy, which has had to stumble through a series of awful missteps over the past few years.
It's easy to pinpoint exactly when Final Fantasy started to die.
Final Fantasy XIII was loved by some but hated by many more, Final Fantasy XIV was an unequivocal disaster, and many of Square's other decisions are totally baffling. Why make a sequel to FFXIII, a game that sold well but may have irrevocably damaged this brand forever? Why make yet another sequel to that? Why dedicate so many of your resources to an MMORPG in an age where MMORPGs are all slowly eroding, or going free-to-play when they realize they can't survive on the traditional subscription model anymore? Why make a direct sequel to Final Fantasy IV that does nothing but directly reuse FFIV's images and storylines? Why release a Final Fantasy game without any sound? Why force us to pay so much money for mobile Final Fantasy games?
Well, I guess we know the answer to that one. Cash. Delicious, delicious money that pleases Square's stockholders even as it ostracizes the company's biggest fans. Final Fantasy All The Bravest is currently sitting at #25 on the iTunes top 100 list for paid apps. Sickening. I wonder how many people regret that purchase?
So what's next for Final Fantasy? On the horizon we have Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, a game that continues a story that nobody really cares about. There's Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a game that may or may not actually exist. And then what? Does anybody really trust Square Enix to make another great console RPG? Why does the thought of a Final Fantasy XV fill me with more dread than excitement?
I don't know what the next generation will bring for Final Fantasy, a series I could once rank among my favorite. And nothing will ever diminish or erase my fond memories of sneaking through South Figaro to figure out what the Empire is planning, fighting my way to the moon to take down Zeromus, and getting the CROWN to trade for the HERB to trade for the CRYSTAL to get the KEY to find the TNT that would let me explore the world. Even today, I can replay old Final Fantasy games and have a blast doing it.
But it's time for fans like you and me to accept that Final Fantasy isn't Final Fantasy anymore. The series we once knew and loved is never coming back. We'll have to satiate our craving for great JRPGs elsewhere—and they are still elsewhere! By the end of February, we'll have Ni no Kuni, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and Etrian Odyssey IV, among others—not a bad haul for the first two months of 2013. But our love for Final Fantasy is unrequited. The series has been dying for years now, and money-mongering bullshit like Final Fantasy All The Bravest is a reminder of that.
Final Fantasy might not be dead yet. But it will never be the same.
Random Encounters is a weekly column dedicated to all things JRPG. It runs every Friday at 3pm ET.


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The district court in Mannheim, Germany, has again sided with Apple in a patent suit brought by Samsung Electronics, saying on Friday that the company had not infringed on a second patent asserted by Samsung against the iPhone and iPad.
Last week the court decided that Apple hadn't infringed on the first in a series of mobile patents Samsung has said Apple is using without paying royalties.
Samsung now reiterates what it said after the first loss. The company is disappointed, and will analyze the verdict and decide if an appeal is in order, a spokesman said via e-mail. Samsung still hopes the court will take its side on the remaining patents, and more verdicts will come in the next several weeks, he said.
The patent in question is EP 1,114,528, describing an "apparatus and method for controlling a demultiplexer and a multiplexer used for rate matching in a mobile communication system".
Apple didn't comment on its latest victory.
The two companies are battling in the stores as well as the courts. Apple won during the fourth quarter, selling 37 million iPhones to Samsung's 36.5 million smartphones, according to data from Strategy Analytics.
The data also shows that the smartphone market is turning into a two-horse race.
Together Apple and Samsung had almost 50 percent of the smartphone market during the last three months of 2011, compared to about 40 percent during the third quarter and the whole year.
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Up Close Look at the Wusthof Classic 8-inch Chef's Knife
Here is a quick look at the Wusthof Classic 8-inch Chef's knife. Essential specs and details you should know.
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Here is a look at Wusthof's complete lineup of knives. We will review the Classic, Ikon series, Culinar, Grand Prix, Gourmet, and Professional or Pro series.
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Video game consoles, typically, spend about five or six years in the spotlight, before stepping aside for the next generation. The current cycle, though, is now entering its seventh year — a longevity that many analysts and publishers blame for the malaise that has affected the shares of game makers.
Sony, on February 20, is expected to unveil the PlayStation 4, its entry in the next generation battle. The system is more than the start of a new cycle, though; it's an essential step in rebuilding Sony as a corporation.
"In many parts of the world, [Sony] is bordering on irrelevance compared to where it was 12 years ago," said P.J. McNealy, CEO and founder of Digital World Research. "There's still a core market segment that loves the brand, but that market share is shrinking. They need to raise their base."
Sony president and CEO Kazuo Hirai rose to the top through the PlayStation division — and he has declared the game console as one of the three pillars the company will rebuild itself on (along with mobile and digital imaging).
(Read More: Wii U Sales Tanked in January, Should Investors Worry? )
The PlayStation 2, which made its debut in 2000, is the best selling console of all time – moving more than 150 million units. The PS3 has fallen short of those numbers, though. (Research firm International Data Corporation estimates life to date worldwide sales currently stand at around 77 million.)
"This was a very disappointing cycle for them," said Eric Handler, senior equity analyst of MKM Partners. "They definitely lost market share. … Their whole marketing message at the time was 'we're the most powerful machine' but what the Wii showed us was … people want to buy a console that has the most entertainment value. Machine strength isn't the Holy Grail. So they've got an opportunity here to show they have an interesting, compelling product."
Entertainment value is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in the video game industry. Console manufacturers use it to justify the sometimes-high prices of their systems, arguing that they're much more than game machines. Sony has been particularly fond of it – even as critics howled at the initial $600 price tag on the PlayStation 3.
But with the evolution the videogame industry has gone through this generation (with the rise of mobile gaming as a viable competitor and free to play games), value is something that's bound to be on consumer's minds as they shop for new systems.
(Read More: Things Don't Look So Good for the Video Game Industry )
That puts pressure on Sony to not only demonstrate the new capabilities of the PS4, but to keep the cost at a palatable level for consumers.
"They need to show that they've figured out social, that they've figured out free to play, that they've figured out a value proposition that doesn't start at $600 and they need to figure out what their brand means now," McNealy said.
The initial introduction of the PS4 will impact companies beyond Sony, of course. Nintendo shares could be affected if the system seems to noticeably dwarf the capabilities of the Wii U. And Microsoft investors will be watching closely as that company prepares to introduce its next generation console as well.
One stock to watch also is GameStop. Rumors of Sony (and Microsoft) including technology that could block players from running used games on their new systems have been swirling for months. And while analysts doubt those whispers will prove true, they say it's something investors will be monitoring.
"There are very interesting implications for GameStop and whether we're going to have a gang war between retailers and the console manufacturers," Handler said. "Are they going to put in a stopgap measure so you can't play used games on these consoles? Obviously, that has huge implications for GameStop next week."
(Read More: The Most Anticipated Videogames of 2013 )
The videogame sector as a whole has been climbing slowly recently. And the major publishers – Electronic Arts , Activision, Take-Two Interactive Software and Ubisoft all stand to gain from a fresh console cycle. Handler, though, has a favorite from that core four.
"I like how Activision is positioned," he said. "Call of Duty was the top franchise this console cycle and that should carry over well into the next generation. … But what I really like about Activision is if they can get the Bungie game ['Destiny'] out in time for the holidays, what better way to take advantage of a new console cycle than with a new franchise from a developer that is one of the top three in the business?"
(Bungie is the inventor of the "Halo" franchise — and signed 10-year publishing pact with Activision in 2010.)
Some bears are likely to dismiss the unveiling of the PlayStation 4 as a last gasp of a dying breed. Critics argue that the age of home consoles is coming to an end — pointing to things like the slow start for Nintendo's Wii U and the rise of smartphone and tablet gaming as evidence.
But bulls counter that systems like the PS4 have evolved — and will continue to evolve — into something that's about more than video games. And that, they say, ensures they will continue to find substantial audiences.
"There's a rush to pronounce consoles dead," McNealy said. "But that's just not going to happen. We have at least one more hardware cycle. Just as a phone is no longer just a phone, a console is no longer just a console. These devices will still be worthwhile and it will be a nice package to get entertainment into the home."


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Europe is still lacking real tech giants like Google, Facebook or Amazon, but it looks like things are slowly changing. However, if European companies want to start competing with Silicon Valley, they have to start thinking internationally from the beginning, says BlaBlaCar COO Nicolas Brusson.
BlaBlaCar is a French ride-sharing startup. It has about 20 million users and is active in 18 countries, where its users can offer empty seats in their cars on a trip for a fee, allowing them to save costs while others can arrange a relatively cheap trip.
Brusson, who spent years in Silicon Valley and worked as a venture capitalist before co-founding BlaBlaCar, is responsible for the international growth of the company. At The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam on Thursday he gave fellow European entrepreneurs some tips on how to become a big company.
First of all, European startups have to understand they should use a different scaling model than U.S. companies, Brusson said. The U.S. is a large unified market with a single language and a single culture, which allows companies to grow big before they can start thinking of international expansion, he said.
"In Europe that doesn't work," he said, because France, Germany, the U.K. and other countries are just too small to focus on a single market. "If you define that as your market, you are never going to be able to be a big company."
Quickly scaling internationally worked for BlaBlaCar. The company defined its market as Europe and started looking at Europe as a unified market even though it isn't.
That plan helped it land bigger investments than if BlaBlaCar would have just focused on France as a market, he said.
As part of that quick expansion strategy, BlaBlaCar also acquired other European startups that were offering similar ride-sharing services in Italy, Germany, Poland and the Ukraine, Brusson said. These acquisitions helped enthusiastic entrepreneurs, who had knowledge of the local markets, join the company.
But why should anyone care whether Europe has big tech companies? "The reality is that it is pretty risky to be a small fish," Brusson said. If European startups keep getting acquired by companies outside of Europe, there will be no sustainable startup ecosystem, which is bad for the economy, he added.
The good news is the fish in Europe are getting bigger, with companies like Spotify, Skype, JustEat and payments company Adyen becoming high-profile companies in their fields, Brusson said. European startups looking to do the same should have the same international mindset as these companies, he said.


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November 2, 2017
Pioneering Export Markets with the Cochran Fellowship Program
It's been a busy fall for the FAS Cochran Fellowship Program. In September and October 2017, more than 200 Cochran Fellows from 32 countries traveled to the United States to enhance their knowledge and technical skills. The fellows, many of them...


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With the sudden rise in SSH brute force attacks, securing SSH is more important than ever. In a shared hosting environment, you options are somewhat limited, but if you have a well defined user group, you can really lock down SSH such that brute-force attacks are no longer a threat. Here are a few methods you can employ to further harden your SSH installation.
Default Settings
Before going over the changes, I just want to highlight some of the issues with the default settings. These apply to Red Hat, Fedora, and CentOS distributions.
- Allows Legacy SSH protocol version 1 which has known security issues
- Allows direct access to root via password authentication
- Uses low key strength to secure sessions
- Allows access to all users
Though these items are relatively minor, they can easily be corrected with proper configuration.
Harden SSH
Previously, I commented on some ways to protect S"SH against brute force attacks":https://www.rackaid.com/blog/how-to-block-ssh-brute-force-attacks. For more generally applicable changes such as restricting root login, limiting timeouts, and disabling protocol 1, see my post on how to add protective measures to SSH.
The changes below are designed for systems that have a finite, well controlled user base and go much further to harden SSH.
Default Port
If you scan the web, you will find recommendations on changing the default port of SSH. You will see this justified with statements like:
The vast majority of SSH attacks are directed by compromised zombie machines against SSH servers listening on the default port of "22". By changing this port to something else you greatly reduce the risk of an automated break-in.
*If an automated attack can break into your server, you have security issues beyond what SSH port you are using.*
This approach simple obscures the security problem, such as weak passwords, by hiding it. While you may reduce the number of successful attacks from zombie bots, an attacker or bot doing port-scanning can quickly identify your SSH port.
Changing the default port merely complicates management issues – users must use special configuration, you have to keep track of the port, and security scanners may flag it as suspect.
Protect SSH with a Firewall
One of the best things you can do is start at the perimeter and use your firewall to block access to SSH to unauthorized IP addresses. If you have road warriors, you can then use VPN to provide secure access. This provides a very secure, first layer of security. If you do not have a hardware firewall, you can use IPTables to limit SSH access. This is one of the best measures you can apply.
Restrict Users
You can configure SSH to permit only certain users to log in. By default all users can access SSH. By using the AllowUsers directive, you can restrict access. I like using this as it provides another layer of security. There is also an AllowGroup directive. Using the group option, you can put all approved SSH users into a group and then allow this group.
AllowUsers root admin webmaster
AllowGroup sshusers
Do not Use Passwords
SSH can use keys to provide authentication. If you use keys, you can completely disable password-based logins. Even if the person has the password, they cannot login. Before enabling this, be sure you have your keys configured properly. You don't want to lock yourself out. Many SFTP/SCP clients can also use keys. I'm sure you can find a tutorial on how to use keys with your favorite SSH or FTP client.
To stop password authentication, you simply set this directive:
PasswordAuthentication no
Use TCPWrapper
TCPWrapper provides an additional security layer. If your environment is relatively, stable you can block SSH in your /etc/hosts.deny file and then open up SSH to specific IP addresses using /etc/hosts.allow
/etc/hosts.deny sshd: ALL
sshd: 192.168.1.1, 10.10.0.0/255.255.0.0
This is very easy to configure and while it may be in part redundant to your firewall settings, security in layers is a good thing. For example, what if your firewall was offline for some diagnostics? This would still provide you another level of IP-based access control.
Increase Key Strength
By default, a key strength of 768 bits is used. Current recommendations are for 1024 or 2048 bit strength. While I don't expect this to be an issue, its a simple step. Once you change this, you will need to delete your current host keys and SSH will regenerate them when it restarts.
ServerKeyBits 1024
Check the Defaults
There are several settings which by default are secure but you want to review them. You can find more details on these in the SSH documentation. But quickly:
IgnoreRhosts yes RhostsRSAAuthentication no HostbasedAuthentication no PermitEmptyPasswords no UsePam yes
There's always more ….
I am sure there are more settings and tweaks that can be applied. I've found the methods above very effective in hardening SSH. I don't worry about brute-force attacks on our systems. Using these methods and rate-limiting SSH access with IPtables is a powerful security setup.


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As the convergence of digital technologies drives unprecedented levels of change in global marketplaces, it is very much a reality that a company must, as Bill Gates put it, "innovate or die!" In the race for relevance to future customers, the greater a company's innovation capacity, the greater its chance of success.
So how does a firm build its power and agility in innovation? The answer is simple and, to my mind, obvious – yet, it is not the direction in which most innovation-seeking firms seem to be channeling their efforts. Having designed and managed innovation programs in a variety of settings, I know that a company's innovation capacity comes down to its talent pool, and its commitment to building knowledge and competencies one individual at a time.
I can see how this foundational requirement — good education and ongoing training of people – has been obscured. Innovation is emerging as an industry of its own; an ever increasing number of suppliers provide a wide range of products and services to help companies be more creative, collaborative, and inventive. I've contributed to the development of this industry myself with NineSigma, which is responsible for a large part of how open innovation is practiced today. Indeed, the whole point of open innovation is to encourage and enable companies to look beyond their internal resources and capabilities and engage with external sources of ideas and solutions.
But I am afraid that some company managers have missed the essential point of these products and services – that they are designed to work with a group's basic strengths in innovation. For the most part, such tools assume that a firm has an existing talent pool with the intellectual capacity to generate ideas and turn them into value. Even open innovation requires maintaining a strong internal competency to understand, qualify, and integrate the externally sourced solutions.
Before counting on any innovation offering from a vendor to change their fortunes, managers should therefore invest in two kinds of education. First, they need to ensure that the professionals they employ are current in their fields. Every discipline is experiencing accelerated development, and the rapid knowledge obsolescence that goes with it. Cushing Anderson of IDC puts it well: "Knowledge leak is the degradation of skills over time, and it … can kill organizational performance in as little as a couple of years." While it might have seemed reasonable in an era of slower change to put the onus on the individual to maintain his or her currency, firms today must make it their business to counter this leakage.
Second, organizations should give their people specific training in innovation. Hatching potentially valuable ideas and taking them to fruition is its own competency. It is not, moreover, an innate ability, but quite trainable. As in any subject, developing innovation skills requires learning some fundamentals and mastering them through repetition. But fundamentals of innovation are not usually taught as part of science and technology training. It befalls organizations to train their talent pool accordingly.
Unfortunately, employee education and training can be hard to sustain, because it is an investment in an intangible. In a survey by HCM Advisory Group, close to half of executives (mostly responding from the U.S.) did not characterize their company's learning function as a strategic enabler. About a third of those surveyed viewed that function as a necessary but costly contributor. Worst of all, executives at 1 out of 7 companies viewed learning expenditures as nothing but sunk cost! It's no wonder that learning functions in organizations are not funded at a level commensurate with their importance to innovation. Investments that correlate more directly and instantly with bottom-line results usually win the day.
Some mistaken beliefs on management's part make it even harder to fuel innovation with education. It is a known human tendency that to overestimate our depth of knowledge and the strength of our abilities. I've often thought that this was why, in the first three years of pitching NineSigma to a wide range of companies (from 2000 to 2003), only one management team, Procter & Gamble's, quickly grasped its value proposition and integrated it into its innovation strategy (which it called Connect & Develop).
Sometimes, this overconfidence results because managers know they have hired smart people from the start. They are discounting the danger of knowledge leak. Sheer IQ is not sufficient for innovation, or even as important as current knowledge. In my own case, for example, I know there are many with higher IQs. My ability to innovate in sensor design comes from years of schooling in sensor design fundamentals and a commitment to continuous learning, both independent and collaborative, to keep my skills up to date.
Managers also commonly believe that there is much higher capacity for innovation than there is in the organization, and that it can be tapped through various strategies for quick results. Witness the growing number of organizations that are creating workspaces with techie "Silicon Valley" looks and feels. The underlying assumption is that the innovative ideas are all there, simply needing to pulled out of the woodwork. (More generally, these organizations commit the basic error of mistaking correlation for causation.) Let me say for the record that workplace design, beyond the provision of nice, functional space, has never in my long career of running creativity and innovation projects proved to be instrumental.
What has proved to matter is, again, the building of knowledge and innovation skills, which are much harder and take longer to get in place and maintain. Leading-edge competency in one's area of practice is indispensable; practice at turning ideas into reality is a must. And by the way, on some level, your people know this. Data from employee surveys consistently shows that a focus on talent development is a key factor in whether a firm ranks as a "best employer." Talent recognizes that, while learning is hard work, and the value is not quantifiable, it is the only way to remain valuable in an economy that thrives on innovation. The more you invest in your people's knowledge, the more innovation you can expect to reap. IBM's Founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr. captured it well: "There is no saturation point in education."


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is a long ban another minor spoiler?
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text: Main Content Senate Bill 0751 (2011) rss? friendly link printer friendly Friendly Link: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2011-SB-0751 Public Act 270 of 2012 (Effective: 8/15/2012) Find this PA in the MCL Sponsors David Robertson - (primary)Michael Green (click name to see bills sponsored by that person) Categories Elections: qualified voter file; Elections: absent voters; Elections: registration; Elections: ballots; State agencies (existing): state; Elections; qualified voter file; active and inactive qualified voter files; create, require ballot tracker program to be used by local governments, and require the secretary of state to send notice to an elector when receiving a surrendered state driver license of that elector. Amends secs. 509r, 509aa, 658, 659 & 661 of 1954 PA 116 (MCL 168.509r et seq.) & adds sec. 764c. Bill Documents Bill Document Formatting Information [x] The following bill formatting applies to the 2011-2012 session:- New language in an amendatory bill will be shown in BOLD AND UPPERCASE.- Language to be removed will be stricken.- Amendments made by the House will be blue with square brackets, such as: [House amended text].- Amendments made by the Senate will be red with double greater/lesser than symbols, such as: <<Senate amended text>>. (gray icons indicate that the action did not occur or that the document is not available) Documents Senate Introduced Bill Introduced bills appear as they were introduced and reflect no subsequent amendments or changes. As Passed by the Senate As Passed by the Senate is the bill, as introduced, that includes any adopted Senate amendments. As Passed by the House As Passed by the House is the bill, as received from the Senate, that includes any adopted House amendments. Senate Concurred Bill Concurred bill is the version passed in identical form by both houses of the Legislature, issued prior to availability of the Enrolled bill. Public Act Public Act is a bill that has become law. Bill Analysis House Fiscal Agency Analysis House Committee Summary (04-16-12)This document analyzes: SB0751, SB0752 Summary as Reported From House Committee (05-28-12)This document analyzes: SB0751, SB0752 Senate Fiscal Analysis COMMITTEE SUMMARY (Date Completed: 11-2-11)This document analyzes: SB0751 FLOOR SUMMARY (Date Completed: 2-8-12)This document analyzes: SB0751 ANALYSIS AS REPORTED FROM COMMITTEE (Date Completed: 1-9-12)This document analyzes: SB0750, SB0751, SB0752, SB0753, SB0754 SUMMARY AS ENACTED (Date Completed: 7-10-15)This document analyzes: SB0751, SB0752, SB0753, SB0810, SB0811, SB0823, SB0824, SB0825, HB5059, HB5062, HB5085, HB5086 History (House actions in lowercase, Senate actions in UPPERCASE) NOTE: a page number of 1 indicates that the page number is soon to come. Date JournalAction 10/12/2011SJ 78 Pg. 2335REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND ELECTIONS 12/6/2011SJ 95 Pg. 2724REPORTED FAVORABLY WITH SUBSTITUTE S-1 12/6/2011SJ 95 Pg. 2724COMMITTEE RECOMMENDED IMMEDIATE EFFECT 12/6/2011SJ 95 Pg. 2724REFERRED TO COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE WITH SUBSTITUTE S-1 2/8/2012SJ 11 Pg. 138REPORTED BY COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE FAVORABLY WITH SUBSTITUTE S-1 AND AMENDMENT(S) 2/8/2012SJ 11 Pg. 138SUBSTITUTE S-1 AS AMENDED CONCURRED IN 2/8/2012SJ 11 Pg. 138PLACED ON ORDER OF THIRD READING WITH SUBSTITUTE S-1 AS AMENDED 2/14/2012SJ 13 Pg. 162AMENDMENT(S) DEFEATED 2/14/2012SJ 13 Pg. 162PASSED ROLL CALL # 64 YEAS 27 NAYS 11 EXCUSED 0 NOT VOTING 0 2/14/2012SJ 13 Pg. 176VOTE RECONSIDERED 2/14/2012SJ 13 Pg. 176PASSED ROLL CALL # 78 YEAS 26 NAYS 12 EXCUSED 0 NOT VOTING 0 2/14/2012HJ 14 Pg. 180received on 02/14/2012 2/14/2012HJ 14 Pg. 185read a first time 2/14/2012HJ 14 Pg. 185referred to Committee on Redistricting and Elections 5/22/2012HJ 50 Pg. 902reported with recommendation with amendment(s) 5/22/2012HJ 50 Pg. 902referred to second reading 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1770read a second time 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1770amended 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1770placed on third reading 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1782placed on immediate passage 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1782read a third time 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1782passed; given immediate effect Roll Call # 416 Yeas 65 Nays 44 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1782title amended 6/12/2012HJ 60 Pg. 1782returned to Senate 6/13/2012SJ 59 Pg. 1755HOUSE AMENDED TITLE 6/13/2012SJ 59 Pg. 1755HOUSE AMENDMENT(S) CONCURRED IN ROLL CALL # 509 YEAS 26 NAYS 11 EXCUSED 1 NOT VOTING 0 6/13/2012SJ 59 Pg. 1755GIVEN IMMEDIATE EFFECT 6/13/2012SJ 59 Pg. 1755TITLE AMENDMENT AGREED TO 6/13/2012SJ 59 Pg. 1755ORDERED ENROLLED 7/18/2012SJ 61 Pg. 1849PRESENTED TO GOVERNOR 6/19/2012 @ 11:58 AM 7/18/2012SJ 61 Pg. 1869APPROVED BY GOVERNOR 7/2/2012 @ 11:00 AM 7/18/2012SJ 61 Pg. 1869FILED WITH SECRETARY OF STATE 7/3/2012 @ 11:52 AM 7/18/2012SJ 61 Pg. 1869ASSIGNED PA 0270'12 WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT


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|Can you spot the Arch?
Shoe Box Cities was a program I offered for the school-age crowd on an evening during our local spring break. The premise: come to the library to think about what goes into planning a city or town, then make one to take home.
|I also set out Smarties.
I opened the program by asking the children what they like about the place they live--in our neck of the woods, that can include St. Louis. From there, we made a list of all the things we would include in a city if we were in charge of planning it. They covered transportation, sporting arenas, stores, restaurants, the library... I was very impressed at the depth of thought these kids gave to what they would want in a city.
Then, for the majority of the program, we built. We had a smaller group--14 people total--and we were all seated in a large square. I joined in the building, but every five minutes or so I would circulate to see the cities-in-progress, asking questions and requisitioning specific colors of paint samples as needed. I loved seeing how willing the kids were to help one another, too; when one figured out a way to make a miniature baseball field, he shared the knowledge with other eager sports fans. We also spent our work time talking about the books we'd been reading; I always love these informal book conversations as a means of quietly championing the joys of reading.
By the time the program ended, we had a myriad of interesting, intricate cities. Several children made their dream cities; one made a replica of the street with her school and the nearby grocery store; and one decided to think outside the box and make a shoe box house, complete with bathroom and attached garage.


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Find NHLBI Clinical Trials
Search selected NHLBI-supported and by condition, location, or age group. You can also view the complete list of NHLBI-funded studies at ClinicalTrials.gov.
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Disease or Condition
- Anemia
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- High Blood Triglycerides
- Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
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Showing 1 - 2 out of 2 results
Does your infant have a low platelet count? This study is investigating the safety and efficacy of platelet transfusion as a treatment for infants with thrombocytopenia. Researchers are looking at the positive effects of platelet transfusion against the negative effects, such as the release of inflammatory molecules and the formation of blood clots. To participate in this study, your child must be younger than 6 months old and have a low platelet count (less than 100 × 109/L). This study takes place in Boston, Massachusetts.
Does your infant have a low platelet count? This study investigates immature platelet counts as a marker for bleeding risk in newborns with thrombocytopenia, compared with platelet counts alone. Immature platelets are the most recently produced platelets and may be a better marker of platelet production. To participate in this study, you must have a newborn who is less than 32 weeks' gestational age, has a birth weight greater than 500 grams, and has a platelet count less than 100 × 109/L. This study takes place in multiple locations in the United States, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
All Ages


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Story highlights
A Chinese villager has built six 'survival pods'
The pods are built to withstand tsunamis or earthquakes
The pods were partly inspired by the disaster movie '2012' and the 2004 Asian tsunami
It cost almost $320,000 to build the six pods
A Chinese villager has spent almost $320,000 on constructing six floating survival pods that are built to withstand tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural disasters, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post has reported.
The pods, weighing four tons each and consisting of two thick layers of fire-proof and shock-resistant carbon fiber, sit in Liu Qiyuan's yard in Qiantun, a small village in the northern Chinese province of Hebei.
With December 21 looming, a date when some have predicted the apocalypse would occur, the bizarre contraptions have attracted a huge amount of attention, but Liu told The South China Morning Post that his motivation for building them went further back.
While the Hollywood disaster movie '2012' and the 2004 Asian tsunami were factors, Liu said he ultimately made the decision to build the pods after his village was swept by doomsday rumors in the early 1990s.
Despite assuring his young daughter that the end was not nigh, Liu said the girl asked him to build an indestructible house. Now, Liu is making good on that promise.
The airtight spheres have varying interiors, but they all come with oxygen tanks and seatbelts, and each is equipped to hold about 14 people. They are designed to remain upright when floating in water.
Some people in his village thought he was crazy when he began construction in March, and both his daughter and wife tried to talk him out of the project.
But Liu is hoping that governments and international organizations will adopt his pods and use them in natural disasters.
"Men don't just live to make money," the South China Morning Post quoted him as saying. "My design could be used by cruise ships to save lives. If anyone survives a shipwreck with my device, I will call it a good investment."


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STORM (4) : Gold-Dipped Leaf + Grey Crystal Open Band Ring
The ring to elevate any mood.
A stunning leaf inspired ring featuring a Swarovski stone
- 24kt gold vermeil
- nickel free
- crafted by hand
- Swarovski crystal (other colour options listed separately).
Please leave your ring size in the Notes section at the checkout.
Note: This product has a 15-20 (working) days production time. We will email you approximate timings as soon as you place your order.
If you are not sure how to measure your finger to ascertain your size, just download our quick "Cheat Sheet" here
How secure is your store?
This store uses Shopify Payments via Strip and Paypal. Paypal automatically encrypts your confidential information during the transition from your computer to our site by using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length of 128 - bits (the highest level commercially viable).
Why does every piece take 15-20 days before being shipped?
We are not about fast, disposable pieces. My pieces are not mass produced or made in China. Each piece is made-to-order or custom made for you in workshops in Europe, run by families who have been in the jewellery industry for generations. It's about the whole purchasing process to be something that is savoured as you wait for the craftsman to create their magic on your piece.
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No, you are not required to have a Paypal account to purchase from this store (although if you have a Paypal account you may use it). Shopify payments accepts all major credit cards.
What is your policy for returns and exchanges?
See our section on Returns/Exchanges at the bottom of our Home Page
Are the products pictured the actual size?
Computer monitors vary in size, so it's impossible to show an actual size image on the Internet. For the purposes of viewing details our photos are enlarged. We do however provide measurements where ever possible. However, you can always just send us a message if you want to know more about a specific piece.
How do I measure my ring size?
For help finding your ring size we have a link on every ring page where you can see how to measure your finger or convert international ring sizes. You can also see it here.
How do I measure for bangles?
For help finding your bangle size we have a link on every bangle page where you can see how to measure properly for your bangle size. You can also grab it here
What are your delivery charges?
UK: i) Spend £120.00 or over then shipping is FREE. ii) Spend under £120 then there is a flat rate shipping charge of £6.50 for secured/tracked shipping within the UK.
Europe: i) Spend £120.00 or over then shipping is FREE. ii) Spend under £120 then there is a flat rate shipping charge of £8.50 for secured/tracked shipping within Europe
US/Canada: i) Spend £120 or over then shipping is FREE ii) Spend under £120.00 then shipping is £13.75 for secured/tracked international shipping. Please not there is no tracked shipping from the UK to Canada-only signed for.
Japan: i) Spend £120 or over then shipping is FREE ii) Spend under £120.00 then shipping is £18.50 for secured/tracked international shipping.
Australia/NZ: Spend £120 or over then shipping is FREE ii) Spend under £120.00 then shipping is £22.00 for secured/tracked international shipping.
If you wish your item to be sent by courier please contact me and I will get quotes for you.
STORM (4) : Gold-Dipped Leaf + Grey Crystal Open Band Ring


text: The Fire Fighters Project is a documentation project shaped by a group of artists in San Francisco, CA. The project was created by and is led by Thomasina DeMaio of the ARTSAVESLIVES group. We document fire fighters from the San Francisco Fire Department. The artists include; painters Thomasina DeMaio; photographers Billy Douglas and Steven Pomeroy; drawer Alexander Nowik, with occasion guest artists joining in. The works are exhibited at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center in San Francisco, CA. Shown here are color portraits by Steven Pomeroy and black and white portraits by Billy Douglas, http://www.billydouglas.com.Read More


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Had I taken it too far? Last week, I sent an email to a few of my favorite onsite chefs to see what they thought about tuna casserole. I wrote:
"So I'm working on a story for the March issue about what new and exciting ways you could make, say, a tuna casserole? It's a great comfort food and economic, too, right? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this and possibly interview some of you and/or a chef from your organization."
One of the first responses I got back from a chef was something like, "Whoa, it must be cold in Cleveland! Ha ha, we did this for Veterans Day (implied snicker)." Others wrote back saying that it's not that healthy and (unspoken) not very cool.
I wondered, isn't there room on the comfort food bandwagon for good ole tuna casserole? Was this too extreme, too "out there?" When does a trend become too comfortable, anyway? Is it the use of canned soup that makes it not cool? (This is the only recipe I make at home where I allow myself to use that shortcut) Is it the crushed potato chips on top? But wouldn't that add a cool "rockabilly" element? No?
I had a lot of questions. Luckily, I heard back from chefs who are doing seafood casseroles that are, rest assured, cool. Be sure to read my Menu Mix page in the March issue of Food Management to find out what I found!


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By Teresa Varley
If rookie linebacker Bruce Davis has any questions about life in the NFL, he won't have to go far for an answer. The Steelers third-round draft pick from UCLA only has to pick up his phone and call home.
His father, Bruce Davis, Sr., played offensive tackle for the Oakland Raiders and Houston Oilers, a career that spanned from 1979-89.
"It was the best experience that I could have as a little boy," said Davis. "Every kid wants to grow up being like their dad, and I'm no exception. It just so happens that my dad was an NFL football player.
"He was always there for me growing up. He would help me scout out the guys that I would be playing the next week in college. He has been a great tool to have."
Davis started every game last season for UCLA at right defensive end and amassed a team-high 12 tackles. He also led the Bruins with 15.5 tackles for a loss.
He will make a change in the NFL, though, as the Steelers plan on using him at outside linebacker. It's something that he welcomes.
"I actually played outside linebacker my sophomore year at UCLA," said the 6-3, 252 pound Davis. "I went to the Senior Bowl as an outside linebacker. I feel very comfortable and feel that I have the skills to do so."
And the Steelers feel just as comfortable with him making that move. He won't immediately be earmarked at the right or left outside spot, but instead work on both sides to see if he can be a player who can give the team some options.
"We've got to have somebody that can swing, play the left and right," said linebackers coach Keith Butler. "We think he can do that and we think he can play inside linebacker if he had too. Coach (Dick) LeBeau liked that aspect of him from guys he's had here in the past."
The Steelers have a long tradition of converting defensive ends in a 4-3, to outside linebackers in the 3-4. They did so with Jason Gildon, Joey Porter and Clark Haggans, all of them having success.
"That's a great sign," said Davis. "There is definitely a rich tradition at outside linebacker. It is a great feeling to know that the coaching staff, and hopefully the people of Pittsburgh feel the same way about me. I know the tradition that I have to carry on. Tradition is very important to me."


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When I was looking for a depression-era photo to illustrate a story, I found this site:
with over 160,000 public-domain photos.
They're searchable by keyword, and high-res digital images are available.
There's some great work there--many of these photos were taken by some of the best photographic artists of the day, and since they were being paid a salary for their work by the government, the images they created are in the public domain.
The Flickr site is a big step forward, though. There are downsides to the memory.loc.gov site that a Flickr site won't have. For example, I couldn't figure out a way to get a permanent link back to a specific image. Flickr won't have that problem.


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Saskatchewan Sasquatch Caught on Camera?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on November 7th, 2018
It looks like a bear when on all fours, but then it stands up!
Craig Woolheater
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005. I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films: OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.


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Children Living Apart from One Parent
In 2003, just over 1 million children aged 0–17 years lived with one parent and also had a natural parent living elsewhere. This represented 22% of children in this age group, a similar proportion to that in 1997.
In cases of separation or divorce of their parents, most children live in one parent families for some period of time. They are much more likely to live with their mother than their father and right from birth some children live with their mother only. In 2003, 87% of children with one non-resident parent had a father living elsewhere and 13% had a mother not living with them.
Where lone parents repartner, children can live in step families (with or without children from the step parent). Step families become blended families if the couple in the step family also have natural children of their own.
Between 1997 and 2003 there was little change in the living arrangements of children aged 0–17 years with a parent living elsewhere. In 2003, just over three quarters (77%) of these children lived in one-parent families, 14% in step families and 9% in blended families. The proportions were similar regardless of which of the child's parents lived elsewhere.
In 2003, there were 4.8 million parents of children aged 0–17 years. Just over 10% of these (493,000) were non-resident parents, that is, they had a natural child aged under 18 years not living with them.
Some non-resident parents (175,000) were also parents, guardians or main carers of children aged under 18 years in the household in which they currently lived. These included non-resident parents who had repartnered and either had further children with their new partner or were step-parents to their new partner's children, or lone parents who lived with one or more of their children as well as having children that did not live with them.
Of the 493,000 non-resident parents, the great majority (82%) were fathers. Just over two in five (42%) non-resident parents were aged 35–44 years and just over a quarter(26%) were aged 25–34 years. The age distribution of non-resident parents was very similar to that of parents who lived with their children.
In 2003, the living arrangements of non-resident mothers and fathers differed quite markedly, with a much greater proportion of non-resident mothers living in family households (86%) compared with fathers (60%).
Of the 403,000 non-resident fathers in 2003, 40% lived in a family household in the role of husband or partner, 8% as dependent students or non-dependent children and 6% as the lone parent in one-parent families. Almost one in three (32%) non-resident fathers lived in lone person households and 8% in group households. Those who were living as dependent students or non-dependent children are likely to be fathers who have returned to their parent's home following divorce or separation. Some could also be fathers who have never lived with their child.
Compared with non-resident fathers, the 90,000 non-resident mothers were more likely to be living as a lone parent and less likely to be living alone. Almost one half (48%) of non-resident mothers were living as a wife or partner in a new family and one third (33%) as a lone parent. One in ten (10%) were living alone.
In 2003, the labour force participation rate of non-resident fathers was 4 percentage points lower than that of fathers who lived with their children aged less than 18 years (88% compared with 92%). Non-resident fathers were less likely to be employed (80%) than other fathers (89%) and the proportion employed full-time was also lower (72% compared with 82%). In addition, a higher proportion of non-resident fathers were unemployed (8%) compared with fathers who lived with their children (3%).
There is little information on the life transitions of non-resident parents, so it is uncertain whether their lower employment levels reflect their situation prior to becoming non-resident parents or are related to their separation or divorce.
A 2004 study by the Centre for Population and Urban Research using data from the Child Support Agency (CSA) examined incomes of non-resident fathers prior to registration with the CSA (which in most cases was prior to separation). The study found that, in 1997, a high proportion of non-resident fathers had incomes of a level which indicated that they were likely to be either unemployed or only marginally involved in the labour force.(EndNote 2) This suggests that lower labour force participation and income of non-resident parents may be associated with parental separation.
The study also looked at changes in income following separation. It concluded that while there were some fathers whose income reduced following separation, there was no clear pattern of non-resident parents reducing income following separation. (EndNote 2)
In 2003, just over one half (52%) of the 90,000 non-resident mothers of children aged less than 18 years were employed, compared with 61% of mothers who lived with their children of the same age group. The lower proportion of non-resident mothers who were employed is consistent with the higher proportions of non-resident mothers who were lone parents (33%) compared with mothers who lived with their children (19%).
In 2003, there were 2.5 million families in Australia with children aged 0–17 years. Of these, 645,000 were families where the children had a natural parent who lived elsewhere and 168,000 were families with a non-resident parent (i.e. families where one or both parents had children aged 0–17 years that did not live with them). The families with a non-resident parent were likely to be parenting and providing financial support for children in more than one household. Those who are lone parents in such households may face particular financial and child care difficulties.
In 2003, households with children aged 0–17 years where the children had a natural parent living elsewhere (mainly one-parent families) had much lower incomes than other households with children of the same age, after incomes were adjusted (equivalised) to take account of different household size and structure. Their median weekly equivalised gross household (parental) income was $304 compared with $446 for families with a non-resident parent and $575 for other families with children aged 0–17 years. The income estimates for families with children with a parent living elsewhere include any child support payments from non-resident parents.
Consistent with the fact that families where children had a natural parent living elsewhere had the lowest incomes, a greater proportion of these families depended on government benefits and allowances than the other two types of families. Almost half (47%) of families where children had a parent living elsewhere had government pensions, benefits or allowances as their main source of income, compared with 28% of families with a non-resident parent and 9% of families in neither of these categories. This pattern is closely related to the high proportion (75%) of one-parent families among families with children with a parent living elsewhere. Other families were most likely to rely on wages or salary (71%) or business or rental property income (12%) as their main source of income. Wages and salaries were the main source of income for 61% of families with a non-resident parent and for 45% of families where children had a parent living elsewhere.
As families with children that had a parent living elsewhere had lower equivalised incomes than families with a non-resident parent and other families, children in the former group may be at higher risk of economic disadvantage compared with children in the latter two groups. However, some of the income of many of the families with a non-resident parent may be needed to pay child support and this would reduce the amount of money available to support the resident children.
There can be many factors influencing the frequency of face to face contact between children and their parent living elsewhere. These can include responsibilities of the non-resident parent in their current family that hinder frequent contact with their children that do not live with them. Children and their non-resident parent can be separated by distance and contact might only be feasible at certain times of the year. Conflict between the resident and non-resident parent may also hinder contact. In contrast, a good relationship between parents may enable more frequent contact between the child and their parent living elsewhere.(EndNote 3)
In 2003, 51% of children aged 0–17 years with a parent who lived elsewhere had face to face contact with that parent at least once per fortnight, an increase from 44% in 1997. At the other end of the scale, 26% had face to face contact less than once per year or never, a decrease from 30% in 1997. This 26% with contact less than once per year or never included 6% who had only indirect contact with their parent who lived elsewhere, such as communicating by phone, e-mail or letter.
The frequency of face to face contact varied according to the family type of the child. Children living in lone father families were most likely to have frequent (that is, at least once per fortnight) contact with their parent who lived elsewhere (65%) and least likely to have contact less than once per year or never (14%). This contrasts with children in couple families who were the least likely to see their parent who lived elsewhere frequently (37%) and most likely to have contact less than once per year or never (32%). Just as children whose resident parent has repartnered have less contact with their parent living elsewhere, data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey show that non-resident parents who have repartnered have much less frequent contact with their children who do not live with them than those who remain single. (EndNote 4)
Frequency of face to face contact varied according to the age of the child. The proportion of children who saw their parent who lived elsewhere at least once per fortnight declined as the age of children increased, from 66% for children aged 0–2 years to 39% for those aged 15–17 years.
CHILDREN(a): FACE TO FACE CONTACT WITH THEIR PARENT LIVING ELSEWHERE - 2003
Although contact between children and their parent living elsewhere is usually considered beneficial, overnight visits provide further opportunities for family activities and emotional bonding. (EndNote 5) In 2003, 49% of children aged 0–17 years who had a parent living elsewhere did not have an overnight visit with that parent in that year, a lower proportion than in 1997 when 54% of children did not have an overnight visit. In 2003, a further 21% of children in this age group stayed with their parent who lived elsewhere for less than 10% of nights each year. The number of children who stayed overnight with their parent who lived elsewhere for 30% or more of nights is small, but increased substantially from 1997 (3%) to 2003 (6%).
Once again, there is a strong association between the frequency of overnight stays and the child's family type. Children living in lone father families, a comparatively small group, were most likely to stay overnight with their parent who lived elsewhere for 30% or more of nights (17%) compared with children living in couple families (7%) and children living in lone mother families (4%). This pattern also holds when looking at children who never stayed overnight with their parent who lived elsewhere. Over half (52%) of children who lived in lone mother families never stayed overnight, followed by 44% of children in couple families and 36% in lone father families.
The association between overnight stays and the age of the child was less clear. The age group 0–2 years had the highest proportion of children who never stayed overnight (66%), compared with 51% of the 3–4 years age group and 57% of those aged 15–17 years. Children aged 5–11 and 12–14 years had the lowest proportion who never stayed with their parent who lived elsewhere (43% and 45% respectively.)
CHILDREN(a): OVERNIGHT STAYS WITH THEIR PARENT LIVING ELSEWHERE — 1997 and 2003
1 Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Senate, 2006, Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005, Revised Explanatory Memorandum.
2 Silvey, J, and Birrell, B, 2004, 'Financial Outcomes for Parents after Separation', People and Place, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 45–56.
3 Smyth, B 2004, 'Summary and Conclusions', in Parent-child Contact and Post-separation parenting arrangements, Research Report no. 9, ed. Smyth, B, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Sydney.
4 Headey, B, Warren, D, and Harding, G, 2006, Families, Incomes and Jobs: A Statistical Report of the HILDA survey, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne.
5 Caruana, C and Smyth, B 2004, 'Daytime-only contact', in Parent-child Contact and Post-separation parenting arrangements, Research Report no. 9, ed. Smyth, B, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Sydney.


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Nothing like a big dose of the macabre for the weekend. In 1938, a scientist actually recorded a condemned prisoner's heartbeat as he was being executed by firing squad.
Doctor Stephen Besley was a doctor at a prison. He was, perhaps, not the most sympathetic of physicians, but he was extremely practical. After seeing many prisoners executed, it occurred to him that these were unique opportunities to observe what vital signs were when a person is knowingly waiting for certain, violent death. Wanting to take advantage of it, he began asking prisoners for permission to record their heartbeats as they were being executed.
John Deering gave his permission. This might seem strange, but Deering did a lot of strange things. He had been facing lesser charges in Michigan, but decided that 'the world was better off without him' and sought a capital charge. He confessed to murdering someone in Utah, was moved to the Utah legal system, and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on Halloween in 1938. Deering appeared calm while Besley attached heart monitors to his wrists, and while prison officials attached a target to his chest. Appearances were deceptive. His heart was going three times the normal resting heart rate, and only partially slowed after he had said his last words. He was shot by five executioners, and his heart stopped about fifteen seconds after the shots.
So, we now know that people about to be executed are afraid. Go science.


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By Ginny Cruz
Baby walkers are back in the news.
According to a new study published October 2018 in Pediatrics, more than 230,000 children under fifteen months of age were treated in U.S. emergency departments for injuries related to baby walkers from 1990 through 2014. Most of those injuries were from falls.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has long held the view baby walkers with wheels should be banned from manufacture and sale in the United States. While the number of babies injured from wheeled walkers has decreased since enhanced safety measures went into effect, injuries continue to occur.
When a child tumbles out of a walker, the most common injury is to the head.
Wheeled baby walkers allow the baby to move around the environment much faster than is safe. A child can quickly bump into tables, become tangled in electrical cords, or tumble down stairs. They can fall into swimming pools, go headfirst into a toilet, or fall off a porch and it can happen before the supervising adult can stop it.
When a child tumbles out of a walker, the most common injury is to the head. Concussions, skull fractures, cuts, and brain injury are possible. And all of these can be prevented by not using baby walkers.
Many parents and loved ones believe baby walkers, even exersaucers, help the baby learn to walk faster. They also tend to believe getting the child upright and active is more beneficial than allowing the baby to continue to move around on the floor.
Research has not proven this. In fact, current research indicates babies who are placed in baby walkers or exersaucers demonstrate delays in development of approximately one month in mobility and cognitive skills.
As a child learns to move around in his/her environment, he/she develops muscle strength in the abdominal and lower back muscles, commonly called the core muscles. He needs to see, reach, and touch his feet and lower body. She should learn to crawl well before she walks.
The support provided by a walker or exersaucer allows a child to move around without building adequate muscle strength.
Sitting in walkers and exersaucers prevent lower body exploration. The baby cannot see, reach, or touch his feet. She cannot practice squatting. Squatting builds leg and hip strength.
The support provided by a walker or exersaucer allows a child to move around without building adequate muscle strength. For example, when the child is tired, she can sit in the sling seat and still propel herself. This movement does not mimic walking.
Lack of strength in the core muscles is unhelpful for your child and may cause her difficulties later in life. A child with weak core muscles may have difficulty sitting erect for long periods of time to complete table top activities, such as writing or scissoring. A child with weak core muscles may struggle to ride bicycles, climb playground equipment, and enjoy other common play activities with peers. Lack of participation in these play activities may interfere with social skill development as the child is not part of the group or the activity.
In conclusion, current research findings demonstrate wheeled baby walkers are not safe. Yes, they are safer than they once were, but, they are still not safe. And, the latest studies indicate use of walkers may actually delay your baby's physical and cognitive development.
Contrary to popular opinion, there is no research indicating walkers or exersaucers are helpful to your child's development.
About the Author
Ginny Cruz, PT is a pediatric physical therapist with 30+ years of experience. She has a BS degree in physical therapy from the University of Florida and an MPA degree from the University of West Florida. She currently provides evaluation and consultation services to the Early Steps program in Pensacola, FL. As a Christian writer, Ginny writes to encourage and instruct families in God's ways. You can follow her at ginnycruz.com or see her weekly blog at https://ginnycruz.blog


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Android Build System
Probably the best information about the build system is at: http://pdk.android.com/online-pdk/guide/build_system.html
Basics of the Android Build system are described at: http://source.android.com/porting/build_system.html
Note that "partner-setup" should be replaced with "choosecombo" or even "lunch" in that description.
More information about the Android build system, and some of the rationale for it, are described at: http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/build.git;a=blob_plain;f=core/build-system.html
You use build/envsetup.sh to set up a "convenience environment" for working on the Android source code. This file should be source'ed into your current shell environment. After doing so you can type 'help' for a list of defined functions which are helpful for interacting with the source.