text:
Upgrade your hard drive to gain more storage space!
Cosa ti serve
Loosen the two captive Phillips screws securing the access door to the iMac.
Remove the access door from the iMac.
Citazione da annax:
That is a really, really unnecessarily complex way of fitting a new hard drive. Thanks, but no thanks...
annax, if you can suggest a simpler way we're all ears!
I found this guide to be very useful. The installation was super easy, especially since I've never opened my iMac before. I was able to skip steps 6, 7, 9, 10 and 14. Wish I had one of those long skinny magnetic torx screwdriver's though. I had to use duct tape to hold the screws on the end of the bit for step 12.
I used this opportunity to vacuum out the dust with mini attachments. Much needed after 3 years ;0)
Awesome site!!! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and saving me time and $$$!
Remove the following four screws:
Three 6 mm T8 Torx.
One 8 mm T8 Torx.
Flip your iMac over and lay it stand-side down on a flat surface.
To lift the front bezel off the iMac, simultaneously:
Use your thumbs to press in the RAM arms and hold the iMac down.
Use your index fingers to pull the small bridge of material on the front bezel toward yourself.
Pull the Front bezel up with your index fingers.
Once the small bridge of material has cleared the RAM arms, lift the front bezel by its lower edge just enough to clear the bottom edge of the rear case.
Insert a plastic card up into the corner of the air vent slot near the top of the rear case.
Push the card toward the top of the iMac to release the front bezel latch.
Pull the front bezel away from the rear case.
Repeat this process for the other side of the front bezel.
If the bezel refuses to release, try pressing the lower edge back onto the rear case and repeat this opening process.
Apple uses a powerful magnet to release these latches, but the official tool is not available. If you have access to a few failed hard drives, you can take out the magnets from those, and stack them up to have a magnet strong enough to easily open these latches.
Simply place the magnet on an upper corner of the machine, and when you hear a click, gently pull the corner of the front case forward. Repeat the process for the other upper corner. Use care not to pull on the iSight cables.
Note: Use care when handling the hard drive magnets, they are powerful, and you don't want them to snap together on your fingers. OUCH!
I used two credit cards for extra thickness and the latches released very easily.
The magnetic latches are about 2-3 cm from the left and right edges right at the top edge of the case. I just ran a rare-earth magnet over the from of the bezel in this area. You can hear it click when it disengages. RadioShack has these kind of magnets for $3, the call them "super magnets".
This was a nuisance. Had to really move the card around to get it to finally release.
Be very careful not to damage the metal clips with a credit card. My iMac was very stubborn and I ended up bending the clips in a way they cannot be bent back. The clips do still work and the front bezel does still go back on, however it no longer sits flush with the back of the iMac.
The double credit card worked for me. Have to be persistent. It's a very light latch, no force needed or anything, or any click when it releases.
Lay your iMac stand-side down on a table.
Lift the front bezel from its lower edge and rotate it away from the rest of your iMac, minding the RAM arms that may get caught.
Lay the front bezel above the rest of the iMac.
If necessary, remove the piece of kapton tape(it is ok to toss this) wrapped around the microphone and camera cables.
I was able to skip Steps 6 & 7 entirely. The microphone and camera cables had enough slack to flip the front cover off and lie it flat above the rest of the computer.
Step 4 is completely unnessecary. Just lift the bezel up and wiggle it until the metal clips let go. Then lift the bezel straight up.
Disconnect both the camera and microphone cables.
Make sure the white wire is on the same side of both parts of the connector before reconnecting.
It is possible to reconnect the microphone cable in the wrong/reversed orientation with the connector. The microphone will still work but will be muted and result in a "tinny" sound on the receiver's end.
Can anyone ID these connectors (at least the camera connector) so that I may make an extension (to move the camera out and re-house it myself). I probably have the gear to do the mic already.
Is the camera connector some standard I can order M & F versions online to terminate to an extension cable?
Peel up the lower EMI shield from the rear case.
Inverter cable on 24inch iMac pulls off to the left.
Pull the inverter cable connector straight up off its socket on the logic board.
The inverter connector had a different location for me. It was situated next to the top left corner of the right speaker, just under the display. I didn't figure this out until I actually lifted the display off the computer.
I couldnt get this cable off, so I skipped this step. If you have this problem, just proceed; when you get to step 13, lift the display carefully as this cable will still be attached. You'll now easily be able to grip the connector and remove it.
Peel back the aluminum EMI tape from the two vertical edges of the display.
The above note sounds as if one should peel the aluminum-foil colored tape back from the frame. Do NOT do this; instead, peel the BLACK-colored aluminum tape back from the display frame to reveal the crevice between the display and the case and the mounting screws you are about to remove.
I didn't actually need to peel anything at all. The screws would have been visible had I looked more carefully.
Remove the four 8 mm with 2 mm thick head coarse-thread T10 Torx screws securing the display to the rear case.
If you really want to tackle it without proper tools: with a non-magnetised thin torx loosen the screw till its ready to come out, then wrap a little bit of duct tape (sticky side out) around the head of a spare thin screwdriver, gently push the duct taped screwdriver on top of the loosened screw. The magic tape will lift the screws out.
When re-assembling, it's also a good way to fish out the screws that missed the holes completely when your expert fingers skills are classed as clumsy.
You must have a magnetized Torx 10, 2 to 3 inches in length to safely get these screws out. Fortunately if you have the T10 you can magnetize it with your iMac.
Inside the front bezel are two magnets that hold your apple remote to the case, simply tap the T10 to the larger magnet 3 or 4 times and test it's strength in holding a weighty screw. You are good to go. I did this and the scary lose a screw into the iMac was diminished with a firm hold in both removal and install.
If you don't have a magnetic screwdriver or they are aluminum screws, you can use this old mechanics tip: Use a small piece of paper or celophane tape on the head of the screw, then press the screwdriver into it, this creates a nice snug hold so you can reinstall the screws.
I was able to slightly bend the plastic case to get my driver to seat. This was the most challenging part of the teardown and reassembly because I did not have the proper tool.
Lift the display from its lower edge and pull it toward yourself to peel off the EMI shield attached to its top edge.
Steps 14 & 15; If you remove the top screw, and just loosen the bottom screw you can rotate the optical drive clip out of the way, tighten it, then screw the top screw back in to hold the logic board down for later trying to remove the connector. You also save three more parts kicking around on the desktop.
De-route the bundle of power supply cables from behind the hard drive bracket.
Pull the hard drive thermal sensor connector away from its socket on the logic board.
I think there is no need to mess whit the connector. just peel it off and glue it on. the connector is very week.
thanks for ever ifixit!
My thermal sensor was magnetised. I just pulled it off my old HD and put it on my new one. It sticks perfectly to the metal casing.
Press the hard drive bracket down to free it from the rear case, then rotate the top of the drive toward yourself.
I was applying a considerable amount of force and was not getting anywhere and I was afraid it was going to suddenly release and the resulting jerk would break something else. I noticed that all I was trying to do is get a plastic tap to go past a metal plate. There was plenty of room with no other components around so I stuck a medium screw driver behind the plastic latch and applied a small amount of pressure and it unlatched very nicely. I pried on one side and then the other to release it on both sides. For me this method worked a lot better.
I also struggled trying to get the bracket loose by pressing down. I finally took FlyingMonkey's suggestion about the screwdriver and it came right off.
I too was afraid I would break the bracket. I removed the screws that held the bracket to the hard drive. This allowed the hard drive and bracket to come right out.
Insert a spudger between the SATA connectors and twist it to separate the connector from the hard drive.
Disconnect both SATA connectors.
Remove the two T8 Torx screws securing the hard drive bracket to the hard drive.
To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order.
To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order.
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19 Commenti
It was a fun way to spend a sunday! We didn't have a magnetic screwdriver so we used a glue stick and dipped our screwdriver in the "goop" and used it to secure the screws to the driver for the deep screw section. Fun stuff!
Thanks to this guide and a RAM upgrade my imac has at least a couple more years left on it. I did not disconnect the front bezel or LCD I just laid them aside (the LCD had to be propped up a little to prevent pulling). The scariest part was removing the HD heat sensor. I just went really slow and most of the glue was still attached to the sensor so that all I had to do was press it against the new HD and it affixed just fine. One week later and everything is working great! Magnetizing the Torx driver with the remote magnet is a great idea. I purchased a stand alone magnetizer/demagnetizer myself though.
Very handy guide. I just replaced the internal drive on my iMac and it's working well. Here also is a pretty good video of the procedure:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShY8zuT-w...
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsIU1XEk...
Thanks to this very good description. Now these Mac has 10x more HD-Size than before! (1.5 TB). I wrote this from the IMAc so that you see: it works fine!
Thank you!
Anyone else have really loud fans running all the time after upgrading hard drive?
I put in a 320 GB Seagate 7200, and I now have to turn Pandora up quite a bit to drown out the fan noise.
Suggestions? Workarounds?
Hi Andrew. I generally prefer to work at software rather than the hardware rather. If I am working at the hardware level, I just don't tell my wife haa haa lol!! :)
Buuuuut. As far as tips. If you are willing to open that computer up. It may be worth checking to see if the CPU or any of the vents are getting dust build up in them.
The next general point to bear in mind. It does seem like 7200 RPM HDDs are noisier than their 5200 RPM counterparts. For some reason, it seem more noise equals more speed. If you are puzzled and want to know more detailed info than OS X provides. Maybe try looking into an option for downloading software like TechTool Pro. It can warn of general problems with battery, CPU etc. So in summary. Depending on your personal budget. Consider an SSD. The program from Micromat. Or maybe it is just a problem that needs to be endured. Sorry if it is the last one mate!
Hope one of those pointers help.
I just successfully replaced my dead hard drive with a WD Caviar Green drive in ~4 hours (minus a trip to Ace for a narrower T10 driver), despite being terrified. As a novice, this was difficult, especially removing the front bezel. That took me 30 minutes of trials. I had to use a lot of force in removing that and the hard drive. A couple of times my computer differed from the guide (I have a 2 GHz intel core 2 duo white imac). For instance, my hard drive temperature sensor looked completely different and wasn't labeled, and some other connections were in completely different places than in the demo, so I had to hunt around. I also think I messed up the hard drive thermal sensor when I put it on the new drive because my fan was running at high speed after this, like Andrew describes above. I downloaded hddfancontrol and that instantly fixed it. It took 10 seconds to install and then the fan noise stopped. Regardless, the guide was great-I had no business even trying this but it worked!
Excellent guide which gave me the confidence to give it a try - unlike the YouTube videos which range from comical to plain scary. I didn't have a thin enough T10 screwdriver but managed OK using one with a flat blade which I magnetised first. Only problem came when I tried to install Snow Leopard. When I tried to format my new 1Tb drive Disk Utility said the drive was 7.3 Tb and refused to format the disk, citing input/output errors. I assumed that I had screwed up somewhere and went through the whole process again, only to get the same result. I decided to install the OS to an external drive as a temporary measure and found that the disk was then correctly recognised. After that, everything was plain sailing. If you aren't too sure, give it a try and save some money. Just be painstaking and patient. I'm a Silver Surfer so with no IT skills to speak of. If I can do it, so can you. Many thanks.
I just replaced the HDD in my 7 1/2 year old iMac. Took about 3 hours total from dead WD Caviar 160GB to Seagate Barracuda 1TB including the full restore from Time Capsule (also a Seagate). Went really well, considering I've never changed a drive in a Mac. Have done so on Win PC's that had a lot more room inside of them. Following the instructions here wasn't terribly difficult, though some things were a bit different than the photos showed. Was also surprised that the display was made by LG/Philips, but not surprised by all of the Foxconn parts inside! Overall not difficult, but did have one minor problem that I discovered a day later - it wouldn't past POST, and found out that one of the two memory cards was slightly out of place upon reassembly. Easy fix, and not having any issues with high speed fan running, at least as of yet. Also found a free app that acts very similar to HDD Fan Control.
Did this job in about 3 hours. The hardest part was getting all that tape loose. Great guide!
Great guide. Helped me started in the first step of reviving a quiet machine. Cheers!
Perfect tutorial. Nicely described steps to follow. I did it everithing for less two hours.
thanks but my cd can't eject in the room please help me my email is firstname.lastname@example.com
Worked great! Replaced an old 500GB HDD with 1TB SSD/HDD Hybrid in my parents' iMac Late 2006. It's working faster now and no longer rainbow wheels when I try to open 2 applications at once. Longest part of this process was backing up the data/reinstalling the OS. I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. And as others have mentioned, step 12 was difficult because I did not have a skinny magnetized screwdriver and had to do some hacky workaround. Following this guide took me about 1.5hrs.
I used this to remove a drive I wanted to get my old data from so I did not have to to the reassemble but this was still very helpful. Thanks!


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About The Green Room with Paul Provenza
Comedian and director of the obscenely hilarious hit film The Aristocrats, Paul Provenza invites some of the biggest names in stand-up to sit down and try to beat each other to the punch line. From politics and racism to sex and money, no topic is off limits in The Green Room. Roseanne Barr, Sandra Bernhard, Drew Carey, Andy Dick, Eddie Izzard, Penn Jillette and Bob Saget are just a few of Provenza's friends who show us what really goes on when comedians go off.

subset: commoncrawl


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Adatis - Twitter Analytics for the Media Industry
Adatis harnesses the Twitter hash tag #nowplaying to harvest data generated by music consumers all over the world to better understand global music consumption patterns.Contactar parceiro Veja o vídeo
- Gold Cloud Platform
- Gold Data Analytics
- Gold Data Platform
High Volume Global Data Analysis
Adatis harnesses the Twitter hash tag #nowplaying to harvest data generated by music consumers all over the world, to better understand global music consumption patterns.
The increasing rate at which publicly available information is being produced and published creates opportunities as well as challenges, for data analysts and companies wishing to increase their competitive advantage by exploiting the business benefit locked away in these high volume and high velocity data-streams.
The music business has changed dramatically in the last 30 years moving from LP's to CD's to MP3 and massive piracy, to Streaming. Having a better understanding of what artists and musical genres people listen to in both a historical and real-time basis and across different countries and times of the day has massive benefits for the music industry, from recording companies and music publishers to radio stations and to the artists and songwriters themselves, many of whom are independent:
- Which genres of music are popular at different times of the day and in which countries?
- Which artists are listened to the most, what are the top 10 listened to artists (overall and within genre / country etc.)?
- How many plays occur and how many listeners are there in any given time period?
- Can we forecast play volumes even at an individual artist grain?
A large volume of data was harvested through a traditional Internet of Things (IoT) based Lambda architecture offering benefits of both Real Time and Batch data processing. The single Twitter hash tag #nowplaying was utilised and 'fuzzy' matched to pre-determined list of artists and genres with the processed results stored in a database.
Using Power BI, Adatis transformed this tabular data into a series of exciting and informative interactive dashboards. Allowing users to discover insights that would otherwise not be possible to obtain.
Now users can easily:
- Make sense of a massive volume of data in seconds
- Forecast play volumes across genre / artist / country
- Track where listeners originate
- View the musical genres and artists people listen to in different countries and cities
- Understand how the time of the day affects the kind of music and artists people listen to
- Locate actual listeners and clusters of listeners anywhere in the world
. . . as well as many more useful metrics and insights.
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Os parceiros certificados são uma parte importante da equipa! Encontre novas oportunidades de negócio, estabeleça relações e partilhe os talentos e a experiência da sua empresa com os utilizadores do Power BI em todo o mundo.Inscreva-se
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Levi's Street Fighters Unbutton, Do Battle
Like suiting up for epic battle - or is it un-suiting, this new Levi's commercial evokes...no, that's too fancy a word...throttles an adrenaline-fueled, intense rush for an odd combination of street dancing/jumping/fighting/flying/floating. Prior to all this dancing/jumping/fighting/flying/floating, we get a cooing female intoning, If you undo the buttons, loosen the screws, shake off the ropes...baby...ain't nothin' gonna knock you done."
It's unclear how this sells jean but if, while viewing, you plug in your external speakers and turn the volume up really, really loud, it almost makes you want to run out and buy a pair of Levi's just so you, too, can float around like these "street playas."
At least it's an actual commercial instead of those stupid, fake videos.
Topic: Bad, Commercials, Good, Strange


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SCINI stands for Submersible Capable of under Ice Navigation and Imaging. She is an underwater robot specifically built to complete science missions beneath the frozen surface of the ocean in Antarctica. Learn more about the project, team, and read the "Daily Slog" from the team.
Stacy Kim is a benthic ecologist; she studies the animals that live on and in the seafloor and how they interact with one another in a community. Follow Stacy through blogs, videos, and more via the Ice Stories website.
John Whiteman says that most of his fun comes from thinking about how events outside an animal affect events inside an animal. For his PhD research, he's studying how warm weather during summer can make hunting difficult for polar bears, forcing them to make seasonal adjustments such as living off of their own body fat. He's also investigating how these
From the website:
About the Collaborative
The BEN Collaborative was established in 1999 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) with 11 other professional societies and coalitions. Since its inception, the BEN Collaborative has grown from its original 11 and continues to add new collaborators. The BEN Collaborative mission is not only to provide seamless access to
This book is a message from many of the places where the effects of rapid climate change are being seen and where scientists are studying what is happening. It is also a report on what these changes mean and what we can do about them.
As a witness to climate change, I have stood in the empty rookeries of displaced
Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is an online magazine created to assist elementary school educators teach lessons about the polar regions.
From the website:
This blog is focused on helping elementary teachers become more knowledgeable about the polar regions and providing best practices on how to integrate polar concepts into their teaching. Ideas for connecting science and literacy through literature
Dr. Samuel Bowser is a researcher who goes on expeditions to the Antarctic to study organisms that live there. This site is his personal informational hub.
Taken from website:
Today an international team of scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and supported by its Office of Polar Programs and the U.S. Antarctic Program is researching how penguins are coping with a rapidly changing climate, as well as to equally profound changes caused by commercial fishing.
Researchers have come to Ross Island to study penguin
WHOI is the world's largest private, nonprofit ocean research, engineering and education organization. This site has information on oceans from climate to ocean life to ships and technology.
Mentoring and inquiry using NASA Data for Atmospheric and earth science for Teachers and Amateurs (MY NASA DATA) is a project to enable K-12 teachers and students, as well as citizen scientists, to explore the large volumes of data that NASA collects about the Earth from space. Students use scientific inquiry and math skills as


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This post is part of our International Relations & Security coverage.
On 27 April, 2012 blind Chinese lawyer and activist, Chen Guangcheng, escaped from a remote village surrounded by security forces in the middle of the night. International media widely covered the story, and the events turned out to be a diplomatic headache for both the Chinese and American governments, which were getting ready for their annual summit in Beijing.
Since Chen ran towards freedom, it made sense that he sought refuge at the American Embassy. While at the embassy, however, Chen made a surprising statement: he did not want to leave China, nor did he want asylum. If Chen was a headache for the US, so was the US for Chen.
Debate sparks
Chen's case has reignited a discussion about the pros and cons of exile that has been going on since the aftermath of the Tiannamen protests: Will Chen lose support and influence if he leaves China? And will the government let him come back after flirting with the US?
When he escaped, Chen was an internationally well-known activist. More importantly, he was kind of a hero [en, zh] in the eyes of civic-minded Chinese social media enthusiasts. Despite censorship, comments [en, zh] on Chen flooded both global and Chinese social media.
Support at stake
Roy Berman, from the Mutantfrog blog, argues:
But while it does seem likely that Chen has widespread support, I wonder what good that will do for him in America, other than provide a comfortable life for him and his family. For example, look at how much support the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei received after his own unjust arrest. […] But how contingent is that support on the fact that he is staying to fight? […]
It is hard to imagine how Chen Guangcheng, whose activism so far has largely taken the form of legal action […], would be able to continue his activism in any substantial way after reaching NYU.
M-Bone replies:
Another question is: "Would he even be allowed to do anything 'hands on' in China at this point?"
Chen has been performing a delicate balancing act, to be considered a legal citizen in China while [still] ensuring his safety. Awkward as it may look, Chen asked the Chinese government to investigate the "illegal harm" local officials had infringed on him. Along the same lines, he accepted a legitimate way out when he realized neither him nor his family would be safe in China: leaving for a while to study at the US, "just like any other Chinese citizen," as the government stated.
Tom, from the Seeing Red in China blog, writes:
Chen Guangcheng would never call himself a dissident; he might hesitate to even describe himself an activist. […] he is a man who simply thinks that the laws on paper should be enforced.
The government's promise
The Sinocism blog discusses Chen's studying abroad option:
This outcome appears to be the best one possible under the current circumstances, and probably the preferred (or orchestrated?) one for the Chinese government, as nothing seems to hasten a Chinese dissident's descent into irrelevancy faster than an exile abroad.
Actually, Chen's credibility may have been already damaged by his decision to seek refuge at the US Embassy. Official media, as if to counter support showed on social media, have been attacking him. The Global Times wrote:
Unfortunately, when trying to attract the international spotlight by being violently against the government, Chen became a political pawn and was used as a tool to work against China's political system by some Western forces.
Chen, however, seems to believe the government's promises:
Let's not make assumptions. I think we can see that the central government is letting me go to the U.S. to study. That is unprecedented, regardless of what they did in the past. As long as they're beginning to move in the right direction, we should [encourage] it.
Whether the Chinese government will allow Chen to come back or not, remains to be seen. As Chinese dissident in exile Yang Jianli states, "exile is not freedom. For Chen, as for myself, the true flight to freedom will be made with a return ticket home."


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As of last Friday, over three and a half million people had answered the following question on Facebook.
However almost none of them were in fact answering the original asker, literally meaning that they wanted to remain friends with her. They were just expressing – by overwhelming majority – a general wish not the be unfriended and thus, by extension, not to drop out of the social network.
It's an interesting business, the culling of Facebook friends, especially when it is accompanied by such public announcements. I have never been through the exercise myself, but I assume that those who have might have come to the realisation that their feed had become cluttered, and likely with people who stretched even the famously impoverished notion of friend that characterises this particular platform and its vocabulary.
Another assumption I am willing to make with some confidence is that Facebook is aware of this, and that some of its features were developed in direct response to the problem. After all, it is in the interest of the company's bottom line that we all stay friends. And so over time a series of tools have been introduced to limit the clutter, hence the need to actually shorten your list of contacts. You can for instance hide some of your friends, meaning that the contents of their wall will no longer appear in yours – which is like stealth unfriending, essentially, and just the sort of thing that makes me glad I graduated from high school well before Web 2.0. You can also assign your friends to different groups and choose which of your own status updates and wall postings will be visible to whom, with a potentially baffling level of micro-managed control. (Cue more gladness that I'm no longer a teenager.) But since all of these stratagems require a certain amount of savvy – not to mention actual work – Facebook recently introduced a new default setting whereby the only feeds linked to your wall are those of friends you recently interacted with. You can disable this, but again, the likelihood is that relatively few people will.
The feature may seem benign at first glance, and simply designed to increase your exposure to the most relevant content, but I would argue that it is in fact quite insidious. Firstly, the very objective of uncluttering the feed is tied to the pervasive idea that what we should strive for primarily in our social relations is efficiency, turned here into no less than a default setting. Secondly, and more importantly, the feature defines the relevance of the content of the social exchange – therefore what we could call the intensity of friendship – in terms of its frequency. And this is just wrong.
I am willing to wager in fact that if you ran though the list of your Facebook friends (let us suppose that you are even on Facebook, for the sake of argument) and roughly rated them in terms of how much you actually care about them, and then compared the results to the graph of your actual interactions, you might find that the two pictures don't overlap at all. No, the virtue that the feature selects is simply proficiency in and attachment to Facebook itself: meaning the art of crafting the update or posting the link that will reliably attract the most likes and being a frequent user. The last point cannot be overstated, for Facebook (but the same could be said of Twitter, Google and so forth) cares very much that you use it often, and make it as much a part of your life as possible. It is by sharing information with these services that we increase their value to the advertisers, who are their actual customers.
This is all very obvious, the argument well-worn. But less attention is generally paid to the users of social media who are pushed to the margins of their networks by these algorithms. What Facebook's latest feature says is that unless you visit and contribute to Facebook often enough, you will become invisible to your friends. I'll come back to this.
[Digital divide] tends to be used to refer to a binary black-white racial divide, but it fails to spur dialogue. It's a phrase that Starbucks liberals like to use when overhyping equitable Internet access, while continuing to ignore fundamental issues such as equitable access to education and health care. Johnny can't read, Jane can't run, George has lost his curiosity, and they seem to think it will all be solved by the wonders of the Internet.
Art McGee said this in 2000. The phrase digital divide is not one you hear very often anymore in what we insist to call the developed world, where access to the Internet is estimated to have reached something close to saturation point.
The World Bank includes in fact the number of Internet users in each country amongst its development indicators. According to the bank's latest data, which date back to 2009, Internet users account in New Zealand for 83.4% of the population, versus 78.1% in the United States, 5.3% in India and 27.1% worldwide. Read against the United Nations' recent pronouncement that Internet access is a fundamental human right, the data puts the number of the disenfranchised and underdeveloped at roughly four billion people. But how are we to interpret this proposition? Is it another case of Internet access being overhyped to avoid facing other, far more politically intractable obstacles on the road to social equity?
Wallace Chigona, Fidel Mbhele and Salah Kabanda of the Department of Information Systems, University of Cape Town, conducted a study in 2008, at a time when Internet access amongst South Africans stood at 8.6%. Their aim was to 'evaluate the impact of ICTs, notably the Internet, in helping address social exclusion' (2094). They tackled this task by visiting communities in which government agencies had initiated programmes for broadening access, and asking them to describe and evaluate their own experiences. The responses were at variance with the official reports concerning those communities, especially when the subjects were asked to state whether they were in fact socially excluded, that is to say, disadvantaged from a social, political and economic viewpoint.
Most were of the view that they were not socially excluded even though they did not enjoy nor participate in electronic activities. For example, none of the Bitterfontein participants in this study considered themselves socially excluded. Participants believed they were a part of a normal society even when they did not enjoy the same activities enjoyed in other societies that might not be socially excluded. When BIT 2 was asked if she felt isolated or excluded, her response was:
"I do not feel isolated. If someone tells me that I am isolated I will stand up and tell them that I am not" (2098)
The researchers' conclusion was that the Internet in fact '[played] a very minimal role in eliminating social exclusion, with very few beneficiaries', and that governments in the developing world should consider reprioritising their economic investment towards other spends such as 'healthcare, education and economic resuscitation' (2094). Whether or not one is willing to accept these findings – and in this respect one must at least note the small number of respondents as a possible limitation – the study is notable for its qualitative approach and for the willingness to distinguish between degrees of social exclusion and degrees of Internet access, as well as being open to the possibility that 'provision of access may create new divisions', privileging a limited core of users at the expense of peripheral and excluded users. I'll come back to this too.
From a recent comment by Scar over at Ideologically Impure:
I'd also be careful with prefacing GLBTI with 'MF', as it's going to offend some T and I people.
I'm taking this statement out of a context that may be familiar to some of you, but it's not to pass judgment on the heated discussion that surrounded it, nor to engage in the always popular sport of mocking the taking of offence. I am simply struck by how much meaning is packed in those nineteen words, how much of the pain and labour of our identity wars one can read in it. That five letter acronym – GLBTI – contains a claim not just to equal rights and dignity under the law, but to visibility, to the right to speak and be heard. Facebook by contrast allows you to either be Male or Female, and to express your interest in either Men, Women or both – which in spite of the possible iterations is in fact almost solely of use to MF people, which rather underscores Scar's point.
But this is not to say that gender identity-based discourse could not fit within a drop-down model of self-identification such as the one offered by Facebook – as a matter of fact I would argue that it could, quite seamlessly, at least from a design standpoint. It would also likely provide information of interest to Facebook's advertisers. And so it is intriguing to speculate why the service offers such scant options in this area, whilst at the same time including Jedi amongst the available religions. In fact, under Religion and Political Views you can either choose from a list or create your own unique entry – a model that would seem eminently applicable to one's sexuality and gender-identity. But perhaps that degree of openness would disrupt the social graph, and if people were free to choose who they are at their most intimate, then the whole information gathering exercise would simply cease to be profitable.
Facebook's basic information pages are also notable for what they leave out altogether, chiefest among which anything to do with race and class. Of course nobody prevents you from making statements about yourself to that effect, in your own words – they will just lack their own slot in the company's database. And ultimately that might be a good thing. But I contend that templates are a very powerful thing, and that the unavailability of the labels that define you amongst a series of equal options is a form of exclusion. In aggregate it will skew the numbers, and implicitly sharpen an image of what is normal centred around the narrow range of options available. Default settings are insidious like that.
At the same time, we must recognise that the utility of social networks is creating new divisions in the countries where they have achieved critical mass. Here – by force of the sheer number of users and the networks' increasing uptake of meaningful forms of socialisation – the Internet is proving itself a truly indispensable social tool without having had to demonstrate an actual capacity to mitigate exclusion.
It is the core users who are driving this change, demanding that everybody else acquire a presence and be always available for interaction, or else become invisible; and it is the core users who are reaping the benefits beyond the social sphere alone, turning their online reputations into job offers or other forms of competitive advantage in the knowledge economy. Contrary to hype, Web 2.0 hasn't invented socialisation, and it's healthy sometimes to be reminded that this existed before and continues to exist in other forms and places; but even as its capacity to connect people across time and distance can be exhilarating and inspire change, so too its demands over leisure and attention can warp the social space, and conspire against forming ideas of collectivity based on the equal opportunity to participate.
And so whenever a social media platform tells you that it's hiding people from you but it's a facility, a feature, be suspicious. We have nothing to gain by being invisible to one another.
Wallace Chigona, Fidel Mbhele, Salah Kabanda. 'Investigating the Impact of Internet in Eliminating Social Exclusion: The Case of South Africa.' PICMET 2008 Proceedings, 27-31 July, Cape Town, South Africa, pp. 2094-2101.
With thanks to Jake and Pip - they know why.


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Once again, we welcome Dr. Dole's expert opinion and insight, but this time on an important topic of pharmacy ethics. and Opioid Therapy.
Dr. Ernest Dole is Clinical Pharmacist at University of New Mexico Hospitals (UNMH), Department of Clinical Pharmacy/Pain Consultation and Treatment Center (PCTC); and Clinical Associate Professor at University of New Mexico Health Sciences College of Pharmacy. A comprehensive biosketh appears beneath blog post.
Dr. Dole writes…
Please take a few minutes and read this. It is much longer than the usual blogs posted here, but addresses an important issue to our profession.
Thank you.
Money doesn't talk it swears
Bob Dylan; It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding
Pharmacy has struggled with the nature of its duality; trying to balance the two agendas of being a patient care profession, or a profession driven by business interests. This duality is about to be exposed on a national stage with the business side of pharmacy being epitomized by Walgreens Pharmacy's newly implemented, "Good Faith Dispensing" (GFD) policy.
Appearing as a result of Walgreens selling BILLIONS of doses of opiates in Florida, Walgreens and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) in 2011. Additionally, on fall 2012, the DEA issued an Immediate Stop Order (ISO) at Walgreens Distribution Center Jupiter, Florida because their business constituted an imminent danger to the public safety (1). In response, Walgreens has resurrected a policy that they allege has always been on their books, their GFD policy. Their current enforcement of the GFD policy is an attempt to shift the payment of their sins to the DEA, over to the patient and provider, and to insulate Walgreens by employing the verbiage of patient care. Walgreens maintains that it is a business with patient safety as their main concern. The closest that Walgreens' GFD policy comes to patient safety and patient care is that these words are used in a maneuver to provide the needed window dressing so that their GFD policy appears as if patient safety is the organzations primary goal.
The heart of this policy is Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Section 1306.4 (2) which explains that a pharmacist has a corresponding responsibility to ensure that any prescription for a controlled substance that is dispensed is done so for a legitimate medical purpose (3). This is totally appropriate, valid and justified. This is part of a pharmacist's role. However, Walgreens has warped this concept into a clever marketing action designed to give the illusion of this company's commitment to patient care. Ironically, this policy places patient safety at risk by obstructing the delivery of patients' medication as it requires the gathering of information above and beyond requirements set forth by state and federal regulations before an opiate prescription for chronic non cancer pain (CNCP) may be dispensed to the patient.
It is standard practice for a business to educate its employees on new initiatives prior to implementation of that initiative in order to optimize successful execution of the agenda. Walgreens has, at best, performed sub-optimally in educating their pharmacists as to the goals and objectives of the GFD policy. At worst, their efforts could be construed as a deliberate attempt at mis-information. Walgreens is apparently misinforming patients and providers for the reasons this additional information needs to be collected by telling them any combination of the following: that the DEA has issued new guidelines; that and/or the Board of Pharmacy has enacted new regulations; that the patient's insurance company is requiring this.
Further confusion exists as to the "guidelines given by the DEA" to limit quantities of certain opiates to #120 doses. Per the Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Diversion Control, DEA, (in a personal discussion) the DEA does not issue therapy "guidelines". Additionally, there are reports that Walgreen pharmacies are not only limiting the quantity of an opioid prescription to 120 doses, but then requesting from the provider a second prescription for the remaining balance of the first prescription. It is unclear how this protects the patient, however it does allow the Walgreens pharmacy to collect copay for the first prescription and then requires the patient to pay cash for the second prescription. By implementing such a policy, Walgreens is giving the appearance of protecting the public and fulfilling its obligations to the DEA, and at the same time profiteering in their implementation of a policy that obstructs the delivery of prescribed medication to the public. As a business, Walgreens wins on all accounts. As a company that states patient care is its primary goal, there is a level of hypocrisy.
The most disturbing element of Walgreen's GFD policy is that while promoting the concept of "corresponding responsibility", there is no advocacy for "corresponding accountability" of the Walgreens pharmacists. There can be no responsibility without accountability. The question exists as to how a Walgreens pharmacist is to be held accountable for "prescribing by omission" if there were an adverse event that occurred because a patient's opiate prescription being dispensed was delayed due to their GFD policy.
You've left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care
Jackson Browne; Rock Me on the Water
Walgreens' implementation of its GFD policy and the subsequent risks to the public is a pharmacy profession issue. It is deeply concerning that no State Board of Pharmacy, or pharmacy professional organization has deemed that Walgreens is participating in unprofessional conduct. The ethics of this speaks to the Oath of the Pharmacist that states, "A pharmacist acts with honesty and integrity in professional relationships " and "A pharmacist promotes the good of every patient in a caring, compassionate, and confidential manner"(4). In Virginia, the State Board of Pharmacy ruled that Walgreens' actions appeard to violate no rules or regulations of that state. In New Mexico, the State Board of Pharmacy (NMBOP) defines unprofessional conduct as, "Participation in a plan or agreement which compromises the quality or extent of professional services, or facilities at the expense of public health or welfare"(5). By this very definition it seems clear that Walgreens is engaging in unprofessional activity in New Mexico; just by reading this regulation, the issue seems cut and dry. In an effort to have the GFD policy investigated as engaging in unprofessonal conduct, New Mexico Congress-woman, Michelle Lujan Grisham has sent a letter to the NMBOP outlining her concerns and requesting that the GFD policy be put on hold until these concerns can be addressed. (6).
As the Walgreens GFD policy is a pharmacy issue, it is further distressing that state and local medical groups have moved forward to take action against Walgreens. The California Medical Association, in cooperation with the American Medical Association (AMA), has expressed outrage regarding the GFD policy, yet no action has been taken to date by any California pharmacy organizations (7). Further, the New Mexico Medical Society (NMMS), in cooperation with the AMA, has placed on their website a form for reporting problems with Walgreens handling of patients' opiate prescriptions and a letter to providers outlining the efforts that NMMS has performed to address this issue. (8).
Which side are you on
Florence Reese, Which Side Are You On
There are obviously multiple layers to this issue. There is the fact that there is an epidemic of abuse of prescription opioids; one that is hitting our teenage population especially hard. There is the fact that Walgreens is in a tough position by needing to fulfill the terms of an MOA they made with the DEA. There is the issue of a retail pharmacists having corresponding responsibility with no corresponding authority. But in the end, as a definition of unprofessional conduct, as defined by the NM BOP is," Participation in a plan or agreement which compromises the quality or extent of professional services, or facilities at the expense of public health or welfare", then Walgreens is engaged in unethical practice as evidenced by:
- The delay in dispensing opiate medication to a patient in order to gather data per their internal GFD policy that is above and beyond any state or federal requirements, which exposes patient's to safety risk and compromises the quality of professional services.
- The fact that patients, against their preference, had to change pharmacies in order to get the prescribed amount of opiate medication dispensed to them has compromised the quality of care that Walgreens pharmacies are able to deliver.
- The fact that Walgreens has done at best a sub optimal performance in educating their pharmacists' as to the goals and objectives of the GFD policy, and at worst a deliberate attempt at mis-information as evidenced by the fact that Walgreen's personnel are apparently misinforming patients and providers for the reasons this additional information needs to be collected. This compromises Walgreens' integrity and credibility which compromises the quality of professional services.
- The fact that Walgreens may be profiteering from implementation of their internal GFD policy by asking providers for a second opiate prescription to make up the balance of the original prescription that is greater than #120 doses requiring the patient to pay cash for the second prescription has negatively impacted on Walgreen integrity and credibility and decreased the quality of professional services.
- The fact that there is no "corresponding accountability" for a Walgreens' pharmacist for "prescribing by omission" if there was an adverse event that occurred because a patient's opiate prescription being dispensed was delayed due to their GFD policy has compromised the quality of care.
There is no other health care profession that would allow this. If pharmacy wishes to maintain its integrity both within and outside the profession, it cannot mutually support the position that pharmacists should be federally recognized providers and support the GFD policy Walgreens Corporation is implementing. If the profession of pharmacy wishes to continue its covenant with society, it cannot both support provider status for pharmacists and have pharmacists "prescribing by omission" as Walgreen pharmacists are doing. We are either who we say were are, or we're not. Our words and policies mean something or they don't. Please take some time and act to stop Walgreens Corporation from defining what pharmacy professionalism is! If this is happening in your area, please feel free to copy and utilize Congress-woman Lujan-Grisham's letter to the New Mexico Board of Pharmacy and the New Mexico Medical Society Reporting Forms.
I know that this is a long blog post, but I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this.
- 1. DEA Serves a Suspension Order on Walgreens Distribution Center in Jupiter, Florida. http://www.justice.gov/dea/divisions/mia/2012/mia091412.shtml. Accessed 4.26.13
- Title 21, Code of Federal regulations, section 1306.4.http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/21cfr/cfr/1306/1306_04.htm. Accessed 4.26.13
- Good Faith Dispensing provider letter. Walgreens Company. Received 4.27.13
- Oath of a Pharmacist.www.pharmacist.com. Accessed 4.24.13
- New Mexico Code of Regulations. 220.127.116.11
- http://lujangrisham.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/rep-lujan-grisham-sends-letter-to-nm-board-of-pharmacy
- http://www.cmanet.org/news/detail/?article=walgreens-refuses-to-fill-some-controlled
- www.nmms.org/news/2013/
Ernest Dole, PharmD, PhC, FASHP, BCPS
Dr. Dole is Clinical Pharmacist at University of New Mexico Hospitals (UNMH), Department of Clinical Pharmacy/Pain Consultation and Treatment Center (PCTC); and Clinical Associate Professor at University of New Mexico Health Sciences College of Pharmacy. At UNMH PCTC, Dr. Dole manages ambulatory care patients with chronic pain, as well as participating on an inpatient Pain Service. He received his B.S. in Pharmacy from Colorado, with honors, and his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Tennessee. He completed an ASHP accredited Clinical Pharmacy Practice residency at Memphis VAMC, 1988. Dr. Dole was the ninth Pharmacist Clinician in New Mexico in 1996, was recognized as an ASHP fellow in 1997, passed the Board of Pharmaceutical Specialties Pharmacotherapy exam in 1997, and Certified Diabetes Educator exam in 2000. Dr. Dole has twice been nominated for the NMSHP Pharmacist of the Year. He has been the Chair of American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Section of Home, Ambulatory and Chronic Care Practitioners and has served as a member on ASHP Councils and Task Forces. He has been president of the New Mexico Society of Health-System Pharmacists in 2008-2009. Dr. Dole received the Volunteer Faculty of the Year Award and Preceptor of the Year Award from University of New Mexico Health Sciences College of Pharmacy in 2009. In 2012, Dr. Dole received the Dorothy Dillon Memorial Lecture Award from the New Mexico Society of Health System Pharmacists. This is the organization's highest honor. His research interests include the impact of culture on pharmaceutical care, substance abuse in the elderly, and obtaining federal recognition of pharmacists as healthcare providers. His research interests with respect to chronic pain control include the effect of high opiate doses on testosterone levels, the effect of opiates on sleep apnea, and the use of non-opiate medications in the therapy of chronic non-cancer pain.


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This article contains information pertaining to a fictional micronation, micronationalist or other fictional element of micronational society or culture.
|Federal Status:
|Largest Cities:
|Discontinuity, Gensym, Deep Trouble
|Local Leadership Title:
|Local Government:
|Current leader:
|Ari Rahikkala
|Local language:
|Shirithian English, Straylightian English
|Local Religion:
|Cedrism, Soloralism, Christianity, animism, atheism
Straylight is one of Shireroth's more many-faced and unique subdivisions, although its published cultural development is nowhere near as deep as that of, say, Hyperborea. Since its creation somewhere around 976 ASC by Ari Rahikkala, its legal status has gone from duchy to dissolution, to barony under Brookshire, to another dissolution, to county under Yardistan, to county under Naudia'Diva, and finally to duchy again. Its most constant attribute during this time has been the semi-presence of its founder (except for a brief time when Shyriath was its Baron), relative lack of published culture and great activity (except for that whole Shirlan affair that we're still a bit ashamed about), and the use for tech support. It's only since The Great Consolidation that Straylightian works have started coming out into the public while simultaneously tech support questions have become quite absent - however, Straylight is still not nearly as regularly active as Kildare currently is.
Original Duchy of Straylight
The original incarnation was largely inspired by David Brin's science fiction novel [[w:Startide_Rising Startide Rising], and the many sentient dolphin characters in the book. Founding a duchy in the sea, between Brookshire and Kildare, was unproblematic and provided a free token of cultural uniqueness for the fledgling duchy. Its founder had plans for significantly expanding its culture and connecting it to Modan] ((many of) the sentient dolphins would actually have been Khaz Modanians who had gone into hiding in the form of an (immortal) dolphin from whatever it was that destroyed their culture... but infighting and getting a bit too used to their new form would finally destroy them) - all that he ever actually got around to was postulating some pieces of Technomagi technology, mostly for allowing the dolphins to operate freely on land.
Straylight from the Barony age onwards
Later on, as Ari learned of Seasteading (originally from R. Buckminster Fuller's concept of a floating city), the culture got completely upturned. The dolphins were completely forgotten and a new backstory was drafted.
Straylight, in its current incarnation, is an extremely loose conglomeration of city-states, each of which is built on a floating platform. These cities are called sancts in Straylightian English. Most sancts are built on floating spar platforms, but the largest ones - specifically Discontinuity - are "simpler" constructions with platforms inside artificial or natural breakwaters. Some sancts, most notably Pohjankaupunki, also include a seafloor base as an important (or even dominating) part of the citystate.
Straylightian society is mostly governed by a form of "unenlightened anarchism" - most forms of leadership are ad-hoc, any contact with a bureaucracy might just as likely to be painless as a long race through dark places and traditions of bribery, and vigilante justice is common and generally accepted despite being known to not always be accurate. Obviously, there are exceptions - several sancts contain authoritarian or theocratic enclaves, and ones run by Pohjanvälke generally tend to have largish democratic governments.
The only common thread through the government of all of Straylight is the general adherence to the feudal system. While the feudal system currently basically "stops" at the level of the Duke of Straylight, the will of the Duke of Straylight, of the Landsraad, and of the Kaiser *is* considered the law in Straylight.
In the real Shireroth, the Duke of Straylight is Ari Rahikkala (by tradition). In the fantasy Shireroth, the current Duke of Straylight is Pero Zermelo, a mathematician from the sanct of Incremental Search. Straylightian feudal leaders in the "fantasy" Shireroth are chosen according to the rule that the threat posed by a leader is relative to zir ambition, their power, and their incompetence. People chosen to be Straylight's feudal leader are usually accomplished mathematicians, physicists, or medical doctors. However, businessmen, COSAC members, actors and the occasional athlete have also found their way to the top in Straylight's fictional history.
Since Straylightian culture has had only a couple of hundred years to develop, most of it is directly attributable to influences from the surrounding Duchies. Yardistani influence is strong everywhere in the Duchy, whereas Kildarian culture is very dominant in McCallavre and Deep Trouble.
The most significant work of Straylightian culture are the sancts themselves. The greatest architect of sancts is widely considered to be Dante McCallavre. While some of his creations have had to be scrapped, many of them have been floating on the sea for almost four hundred years by now. Each one is considered to be both a unique work of art and a show of technical and technological brilliance hardly reached even by current state of the arts centuries after.
While there are dozens of smaller experiments and pilot projects by Dante McCallavre moored in bays around every coast of Straylight (this group includes Incremental Search, of course), his most important work is out on the high seas. Sargassum, Much Rejoicing, Deep Trouble and Wave Manifold. While it takes an expert eye to see the original work under all of the rebuilding (and, in some parts, disrepair), each of these sancts is still considered a work of great value to all Straylightians.
There is, however, a component to Straylight's make-up that mostly lies outside the sancts and separate from most of their inhabitants, in the form of the ethnic group known collectively known to others as Sunderspray. Descendants of the Benacians, the Sundersprites generally prefer a more mobile way of life than their fellow Straylightians, and reside and travel mostly on ships and boats. Though numerically small, they make up a considerable proportion of the shipping traffic and seaborne commerce in Straylight.
The word "sanct" was originally technically used only for free-floating cities on the high seas. This is because they actually were sanctuaries: Piracy is rampant in many parts of Shireroth, so much so that places like Norfolk and Port Nevermore are actually famous for their pirates. As piracy fosters in narrow straits and bays that are difficult to navigate, actually placing a city right on the high seas with no navigational hazards and plenty of oversight makes it practically impossible for pirates to operate.
Later on, however, the word has come to refer to every city in the Duchy of Straylight, whether it be a seafloor base, a large city on the high seas, or a small one in a bay or some other area that's safe from the winds.
The economically most important sancts are Discontinuity, Gensym and Pohjankaupunki.
Most of the Straylight sea is quite deep, averaging four kilometers outside of the continental shelves. The only significant exception is the extremely old unnamed [[w:Hotspot_%28geology%29 volcanic hot spot] that has created a series of undersea mountains known as the Porpoise Leaps. These mountains have, with continental drift over millions of years, produced an almost perfect line northward from Yardistan. While none of them actually reach the surface of the sea, they are quite important in that Downtown|Pohjankaupunki] is built on one of them.
The general shape of the map of sancts is a rather obvious "Y". The reason for this is rather obvious: A lot of the long-distance shipping in Straylight is actually handled by relatively small ships that quickly hop from one sanct to the next. The "Y" shape neatly connects Aracigrad (and Nigrad), Novi Nigrad and Musica. While the distance between these cities, especially Musica and Aracigrad, is quite a bit farther along the sancts than right over the sea, the cheap, small ships that can do the job by shipping between sancts are an affordable (if slow) and popular alternative. Discontinuity, of course, benefits from the perks of its central location.
The flag of Straylight
The flag of Straylight, also known as the RGB flag, was not designed. Like the best of them, it was discovered - Ari was playing around with zooming out from different fractals with different colouring options in XaoS, and from some set of choices that he's long since forgotten, this flag just happened to emerge. There's nothing fractalish about the flag, of course - in fact, the file you see was rendered by a little C program written for the task - but the point is that he was not trying to create a flag when he discovered this, and it was only by chance that XaoS happened to make one for him.
Being a discovered flag, the RGB flag does not have any intentional symbolism in it. For instance, the colours represent nothing but their own colour channels, and the shapes are, in a way, accidental. Despite this, it actually symbolises the culture of Straylight very well:
- It's perhaps not immediately recognisable as a flag, but it does follow many of the basic ideas of vexillology - Straylight's strange adhocracy hardly reminds one of an honest government, but the same basic ideas are there.
- The flag has a kind of a primitive symmetry and balance (but no actual axes of symmetry unless you render it in a way that makes it, well, something else than the flag of Straylight)... but despite being a "good idea" in theory, in practise the colours clash in horrible ways. Just like Straylightians often do.
- Still in another way it represents an ideal: If you understand basic colour theory and have in your life seen a plot of the function f(x) = -1/x, you can just look through the flag and see that the 18 different "pieces" of the flag are really made up of only three simple shapes... just as Straylightians believe that with the right knowledge there is a way to see through human nature and really improve and simplify society.
- Finally, the creation of the flag itself has its own symbolism. A flag that's designed would carry its creator's intent and by necessity stifle others' imagination. The RGB flag is free of that concern: What you see in it is your own business. A true Straylightian will seek to never prevent others from making their life what they want it to be. Not that there are all that many true Straylightians in Straylight, of course.


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|View from the class entrance
|View from the rear of the classroom.
Until Next Time...
|View from the class entrance
|View from the rear of the classroom.
Ready, Set, Sew... A New Studio AND Name
Congratulations! Wished I lived closer...that classroom would be calling my name! Great space, location, and teacher!
What a great room, hope to join you some day! Good luck!
Yes, those walls could use some bulletin boards for quilt demonstrations during classes. How to do the squares, or for sure quilts!!
sounds like an awesome building to be in Jackie - so nice to have a classroom I bet - this is just going to be for your workshops I assume and the "store" is still in your house.
Such a terrific new space and super exciting. I know it will be filled. A wonderful place to just sit and sew or learn from a terrific teacher. :o)
It looks amazing Jackie -- Congratulations! Good Luck with your classes too!
Congratulations, your studio is so exciting!
Yhe first thing I noticed was all the wonderful design wall space for quilters. And I like your new name!
Your classroom space looks fabulous! I wish you much success in filling every class! Teaching is so rewarding. Otherwise I wouldn't have stuck with it for 37 years.
Hi Jackie,
Your studio set-up looks great. I know you are very busy getting ready for the big day on Saturday but if you can, would you please check the email I sent you. I tried to order your Farmington class and ran into a problem/question I need you to answer before I complete purchasing it online. Thanks in advance for your help and good luck this weekend.
These chrevron bins are too cute!
This is so cool! And Exciting. :D Just imagine how awesome it will be with people and projects infusing their colors up and down the design walls!
hmm - not sure how that anonymous got there - I'm not hiding. ;D
You've thought of everything--comfortable chairs, big design walls, COOL wastebaskets. It's generous and wonderful of you. Ooh, I wish I lived closer.
What an amazing space you're making available for quilters! So inviting with lots of room, comfortable chairs and cute wastebaskets! I too wish I lived closer!
How totally exciting!!! Congratulations!
Have a great day.
Always, Queenie
Congratulations and good luck on your new venture! Wish I could make it to your classes and quilt-ins. They sure look like a lot of fun!
OH, I can just hear the laughter and chatter of quilters working and sharing and gathering in your new space. Think of all the creativity that will be fostered and encouraged here. I wish you much success and hope that someday I can come and take one of your classes!
What a great space, Congratulations.
Congratulations! I sure wish I lived closer. There are going to be some lucky quilters taking classes at your new gathering place.


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Lynne Cheney: Book Burner?Historians/History
Now, Lynne Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's wife and the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has placed herself in the company of dictators and slaveholders. At her urging, the Education Department destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed to help parents and children learn more about America's past.
Cheney objected to the booklet's reference to the National Standards for History, guidelines for teaching history in secondary schools that were developed at UCLA in the 1990s and that suggest that American history should be taught with an eye not only to America's successes but to its struggles and dark moments as well.
Cheney could learn important lessons from the kind of history she apparently finds so un-American.
One is that the lines between authoritarianism and democracy have never been as sharply drawn as we might think. In his latest novel, The Plot Against America, Philip Roth describes what the United States might have been like if voters had spurned Franklin D. Roosevelt and elected Charles A. Lindbergh, an anti-Semite and admirer of Adolf Hitler, as their president in 1940. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here presented a scenario in which newly elected President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, the demagogic darling of big business and religious extremists, stripped Americans of their rights, destroying the power of the legislature and judiciary and installing a fascist dictatorship.
What was so horrible about the National Standards for History that any reference to them would merit the mass destruction of several hundred thousand volumes of knowledge? According to Cheney, the standards failed to recognize the achievements of America's traditional heroes and focused instead on the accomplishments of women, minorities and radicals such as Harriet Tubman, the former slave who helped found the Underground Railroad. As Cheney wrote in 1994, "We are a better people than the national standards indicate, and our children deserve to know it."
Cheney insisted that the standards focused too much on the negatives of the past, on the presence of such stains on our democratic legacy as the Ku Klux Klan and McCarthyism, and not enough on great heroic figures such as Paul Revere, Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Wright brothers.
What Cheney really opposes is the prominent place that "social history" has assumed over the last thirty years. Known among its practitioners as "history from the bottom up," social historians argue that American history has too often been taught as the history of famous white men, political parties and industrialists.
Far less attention has been paid to the history of the "ordinary" people who helped build our nation. Social historians do not reject the important contributions of the former, as Cheney has repeatedly insisted. Rather, they suggest that there are two American histories worth knowing: the history of the nation and the history of its peoples. The latter is composed of a number of different histories: the history of rich and poor; of employers and employees; of men and women; of blacks, whites, Asians and Indians; of Protestants, Catholics and Jews.
As someone who has taught, written about and studied history for more than twenty-five years, I would suggest that good historical writing tries to help us understand the full contours of the past, paying equal attention to our triumphs and tragedies. Historians should not be afraid to hail the heroic figures of the past, but those should also include the less-than-famous men and women who struggled on behalf of democracy. Likewise, historians should never avoid dealing with the dark stories of our past such as slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and McCarthyism. As our founding fathers understood, democracies are not perfect; they only grow stronger by learning from the mistakes of the past.
Destroying books that disagree with one's vision of history will never take
us closer to truth and freedom. As President Eisenhower warned Dartmouth College
graduates in June 1953: "Don't think you're going to conceal faults by
concealing evidence that they ever existed." His words remain true today.
This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times and is reprinted with permission of the author.
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More Comments:
Ryan Biggs - 2/3/2005
Mark, were you kidding? "Mere accusation not the same as proof"? What were you thinking when you posted that? Classic example of the Republican "I know you are but what am I" tactic.
By now hopefully you know that Lynne Cheney DID DEFINATELY DO THIS. The books were recalled, reprinted, and our tax dollars paid for it.
mark safranski - 10/17/2004
Cutting ege is fine so long as it is based on facts rather than ideological cant and shrill abuse.
I'll address Lynn Cheney when there is some kind of evidence provided that she has done what the author claims she did. A citation, a link, an article or even a credible statement by another public figure. Right now we don't have anything but wild hyperbole.
Who has the absolutist mindset here if you believe that a mere accusation is the same as proof ? Start reading the folks with whom you agree with the same critical eye you reserve for Republicans and you'll get a lot further as a scholar.
Lisa Kazmier - 10/17/2004
Reading the criticisms here, one learns nothing. They don't address the basic issue, the one they cannot avoid. That concerns book burning and Lynne Cheney's absolutist mindset about what should be taught, somewhat like Margaret Thatcher's view of offering "unapologetic" imperial history. Obviously, Lynne Cheney has more influence than Thatcher has had, given her sway over NEH and the like. Duh!
The second person sounds like my fossil-like, now retired MA advisor who still thought New Social history was new or something. Anything "cutting edge" had to be perversely wrong. I guess "fair and balanced" only applies to dead white men and Republican presidents.
mark safranski - 10/17/2004
First a link to some kind of news source might have been nice in an article denouncing a public figure as related to both Nazism and antebellum slave power. I'm sure the author might squeal if I associated him loosely with Pol Pot and Nikolai Yezhov.
The National Standards were wildly unbalanced and partisan - and yes I've read them and I have a copy here at my elbow - because they were an attempt by the Deconstructionist/Multicultural/Pomo academic Left to establish a Howard Zinn-Noam Chomsky interpretation of American history in our public schools. The public school teachers who participated in the process of developing the standards - who were not conservative activists BTW - later complained of being railroaded by an intolerant cabal of professors. The U.S. Senate rejected the standards 99-0 because the bias was so obvious and extreme that even that body's most progressive members looked askance.
Were the standards entirely worthless ? No. There were may useful suggestions therein in terms of teaching methodology to engage students in the public schools in real historical analysis and critical thinking. Unfortunately the agitprop was a little thick for everyone outside of the radical-crit community.
Vernon Clayson - 10/16/2004
And what Lynn Cheney urges is important or noteworthy because???? And what Charles Lindberg might have done had he been president is important or noteworthy because???? And why is their a history of a nation -and-
a history of its peoples -and- why would one think they aren't connected???? And you write a book about working-class Hollywood and think it is somehow reflective of the nation's working class???? India's old caste system, at its worst, was not so divided as the Hollywood caste system. And you've taught and thought history for 25 years, what a confused bunch of students you must have in your wake.
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel


text:
A bald man with a wooden leg gets invited to a Halloween Party.
He doesn't know what costume to wear to hide his head and his leg, So he writes to a costume company to explain his problem.
A few days later he received a parcel with the following note:
Dear Sir,
Enclosed please find a pirate costume. The spotted handkerchief will cover your bald head and with your wooden leg you will make a brilliant pirate.
Very truly yours,
Acme Costume Co.
The man thinks this is terrible because they have emphasised his wooden leg and so he writes a letter of complaint. A week goes by and he receives another parcel and a note, which says:
Dear Sir,
Please find enclosed a monk's costume. The long robe will cover your wooden leg and, with your bald head, you should surely look the part.
Very truly yours,
Acme Costume Co.
Now the man is really upset since they have gone from emphasising his wooden leg to emphasising his bald head, so again he writes the Company another letter of complaint.
The next day he gets a small Parcel and a note, which reads:
Dear Sir,
We have TRIED our very BEST.
Please find enclosed a bottle of molasses and a bag of crushed nuts.
Pour the molasses over your bald head, pat on crushed nuts, stick your wooden leg up your arse and go as a caramel apple.
Very truly yours,
Acme Costume Co.


text:
At Main Street and 18th Avenue in Vancouver, the Palm Dairy and Milk Bar, an old ice-cream shop, was a popular spot for more than 30 years, until it closed in the late 80s. In its place, Mid Main Park speaks to what must be the community's nostalgia for that community gathering place. Landscape architecture firm Hapa Collaborative worked with the Vancouver Park Board and local residents to create a one-of-a-kind park that harks back to that old Milk Bar. This new gathering spot is part of Vancouver's "greenest city" initiative.
The history of the place is found everywhere in the new park. Within the concrete paving are "large, random 'milk bubbles.'"
The trellis looks like giant "bendy-straws." (The trellis itself supports kiwi vines growing fruits locals can snack on).
And, lastly, there are dairy-bar stools set within the park, even with spinning seats. All powder-coated steel elements are painted with Palm Dairy's orange-red color.
The space taken up by Mid Main Park was an "underused slip lane" set within the Main Street right-of-way. It was transformed with curvy seat-walls, earth mounds, layered plants, and lighting schemes. The designers tell Landezine they used rounded paths to take the edge off an awkward triangular site.
The park also has lots of sustainable design features. According to Hapa, permeable concrete paving convey stormwater into a "detention gallery buried in the central mound behind the main seatwall, reducing runoff rate and quantity discharged into the city's storm sewer."


text:
Rem Zolotykh
My name is Rem Zolotykh and I'm from Russia. I specialise in Ruby and Javascript development (Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Emberjs, Backbonejs), I'm fascinated by acronyms like TDD, BDD and OOD, and really curious about iOS development. I'm passionate about web, education and efficiency. At evenings I dance Lindy Hop and Boogie-Woogie, at nights - Argentine Tango, and weekends I love to spend with my family and friends playing board games.


text:
Prior Authorization
Please note, failure to obtain authorization may result in administrative claim denials. Oklahoma Complete Health providers are contractually prohibited from holding any member financially liable for any service administratively denied by Oklahoma Complete Health for the failure of the provider to obtain timely authorization.
Check to see if a pre-authorization is necessary by using our Prior Authorization Prescreen tool.
Expand the links below to find out more information.
As the Medical Home, PCMHs should coordinate all healthcare services for Oklahoma Complete Health members. Paper referrals are not required to direct a member to a specialist within our participating network of providers. All out of network services (excluding ER and family planning) require prior authorization. PCMHs should track receipt of consult notes from the specialist provider and maintain these notes within the patient's medical record.
Some services require prior authorization from Oklahoma Complete Health in order for reimbursement to be issued to the provider. Please use our Prior Authorization Prescreen tool to determine the services needing prior authorization.
Standard prior authorization requests should be submitted for medical necessity review at least five (5) business days before the scheduled service delivery date or as soon as the need for service is identified.
Authorization requests may be submitted by fax, phone or secure web portal and should include all necessary clinical information. Urgent requests for prior authorization should be called in as soon as the need is identified.
Oklahoma Complete Health's Medical Management department hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CDT (excluding holidays). After normal business hours, we have after hours service available to answer questions and intake requests for prior authorization. Emergent and post-stabilization services do not require prior authorization. Urgent/emergent admissions require notification within one (1) business day following the admit date.
We will process most routine authorizations within 72 hours of receipt. If we need additional clinical information or the case needs to be reviewed by the Medical Director it may take up to 14 calendar days to be notified of the determination. Authorization determinations may be communicated to the provider by fax, phone, secure email, or secure web portal.


text:
Luxury-Cashmere-Throws-Colour-Fennel, a photo by KOTHEA on Flickr.
A KOTHEA Cashmere Throw or Blanket is the best you can buy.
Of course we only use 100% Pure Cashmere wool, hand woven by expert artisans. We offer an extensive collection comprising beautiful designs in a range of muted neutral colourways.
Via Flickr:
The best luxury cashmere throws available to trade buyers (architects and Interior Designers) in the UK.


text: Written by Geomancy.Net on 07 September 2016. Posted in Feng Shui Resources. Feng Shui Resources Feng Shui Resource Center Feng Shui Resources Fun with Feng Shui Fun with Feng Shui Tour Site's Objective Introduction to Feng Shui The Landscape The Site The Home Survey Your Home Advance Feng Shui End of Tour Major Feng Shui Theories Shapes & Forms Feng Shui Eight House Theory Flying Star Feng Shui 4 Pillars (Ba Zi) Feng Shui Astrology (Zi Wei Dou Shu) The Oracle (I-Ching) Non-Traditional Theories Feng Shui Articles You & Your Home Home Audit Various Theories Controversial Issues General Interests Feng Shui Advice Feng Shui Cures Feng Shui & Home Feng Shui & Home Interiors Feng Shui Significance Pillars of Destiny Eight House Eight Aspiration Flying Star Feng Shui Books Other Topics Calendar of Events Calendar of Events Major Festivals Minor Festivals Site Review New Singapore Property Review The Tropica Condominium Gardens at Bishan Condominium Yearly Forecast Pictures.Geomancy.Net - Picture Resources Chinese Horoscope Popular Topic Archive Project: Wiki.Geomancy.Net - EARLY BETA Start date of wiki:14 July 2008 Percentage of Resources:Under contruction - 0.00001 percent on-going! Long way to go! Purpose:To build a large reference "encyclopedia" of useful, organized information. - Learn more about this project http://Wiki.Geomancy.Net Hits: 301698


text:
Publishing Agreements Extended to Three Years, Developer Spotlight Unveiled, David Whatley Joins Judging Panel
LOS ANGELES – March 27, 2012 – Atari, one of the world's most recognized publishers and developers of interactive entertainment, today announced several updates to its Pong® Indie Developer Challenge, most notably an extension of the rev-share publishing agreements from one to three years for all winners. The new publishing terms are intended to offer developers larger incentives for participation and increase their potential revenue as a result of their winning Pong submission.
Atari also today launched the Developer Spotlight, an online showcase of contest finalists that will give millions of Atari fans a personal look at each developer's profile and help raise awareness for their contest submission. Additionally, Atari revealed that it has added David Whatley of Critical Thought Games to the contest judging panel. Whatley brings years of game development experience with several App Store blockbusters under his belt, including geoDefense and Tiny Heroes. He joins the judging panel alongside Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Dave Castelnuovo of Bolt Creative and Mike Schramm of TUAW.
"The Pong Indie Developer Challenge is a great opportunity for an indie developer to jumpstart their career by gaining instant recognition for their work and placing high on the App Store charts," said David Whatley. "Pong is a classic IP that audiences far and wide still recognize after 40 years, and the association with that and the Atari brand will no doubt provide a platform for participants to showcase their talent to millions. I'm looking forward to reviewing the developers' efforts and envision a vibrant collection of finalists on the Developer Spotlight."
Entries are now being accepted until April 15, 2012, with up to ten finalists to be selected by the judging panel on June 19, 2012. In addition to featured profiles on the Developer Spotlight, finalists will be awarded rev-share publishing agreements and cash prizes based on final ranking: 1st place will receive $50,000, 2nd place $27,500, 3rd place $15,000, and 4-10th $5,000 each. To view the Developer Spotlight, visit www.atari.com/pongdeveloperchallenge/finalists.
For full details regarding the contest and rules, including how to submit, eligibility, timing of submissions and prizes, please visit: www.atari.com/pongdeveloperchallenge.
For more information about Atari games and the latest news:
– Visit our website: www.atari.com
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– Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/atari
About ATARI, SA
Atari (www.atari.com) is a multi-platform, global interactive entertainment and licensing company. The original innovator of video gaming, founded in 1972, Atari owns and/or manages a portfolio of more than 200 games and franchises, including world renowned brands like Asteroids®, Centipede®, Missile Command®, Pong®, Test Drive®, Backyard Sports®, Deer Hunter®, Ghostbusters®, and Rollercoaster Tycoon®. Atari capitalizes on these powerful properties by delivering compelling games online (i.e. browser, Facebook® and digital download), on smartphones and tablets and other connected devices. The Company also develops and distributes interactive entertainment for video game consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. As a licensor, Atari extends its brand and franchises into other media, merchandising and publishing categories.
Atari has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Lyon and London.
© 2012 Atari Interactive, Inc. All rights reserved.
Atari word mark and logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc.
Media Contact
John O'Leary, TriplePoint for Atari
(310) 587-9200


text:
Research shows that a human protein may trigger the Parkinson's disease
A research led by the Research Institute Vall d'Hebron (VHIR), in which the University of Valencia participated, has shown that pathological forms of the α-synuclein protein present in deceased patients with Parkinson's disease are able to initiate and spread the neurodegenerative process that typifies this disease in mice and primates. The discovery, published in the March cover of Annals of Neurology, opens the door to the development of new treatments that stop the progression of Parkinson's disease, aimed at blocking the expression, the pathological conversion and the transmission of this protein.
Recent studies have shown that synthetic forms of α-synuclein are toxic for neurons, both in vitro (cell culture) and in vivo (mice), which can spread from one cell to another. However, until now it was not known if this pathogenic protein synthetic capacity could be extended to the pathological human protein found in patients with Parkinson's and, therefore, whether it was relevant for the disease in humans.
In the present study, led by Doctor Miquel Vila, from the group of Neurodegenerative Diseases of the VHIR and CIBERNED member, the researchers extracted α-synuclein aggregates from brains of dead Parkinson's-afflicted patients to inject them into the brains of rodents and primates.
Four months after the injection into mice, and nine months after the injection into monkeys, these animals began to present degeneration of dopaminergic neurons and intracellular cumulus of α-synuclein pathology in these cells, as occurs in Parkinson's disease. Months later, the animals also showed cumulus of this protein in other brain remote areas, with a pattern of similar extension to that observed in the brains of patients after years of disease evolution.
According to Doctor Vila, these results indicate that "the pathological aggregates of this protein obtained from patients with the Parkinson's disease have the ability to initiate and extend the neurodegenerative process that typifies Parkinson's disease in mice and primates," a discovery that, he adds, "provides new insights about the possible mechanisms of initiation and progression of the disease and opens the door to new therapeutic opportunities."
Therefore, the next step is to find out how to stop the progression and spread of the disease, by blocking the cell-to- cell transmission of of α-synuclein, as well as regulating the levels of expression and stopping the pathological conversion of this protein.
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease. It is characterized by progressive loss of neurons that produce dopamine in a brain region (the substantia nigra of the ventral midbrain) and the presence in these cells of pathological intracellular aggregates of α-synuclein protein, called Lewy bodies. The loss of brain dopamine as a consequence of neuronal death results in the typical motor manifestations of the disease, such as muscle stiffness, tremors and slow movement.
The most effective treatment for this disease is the levodopa, a palliative drug that restores the missing dopamine. However, as the disease progresses, the pathological process of neurodegeneration and accumulation of α-synuclein progressively extends beyond the ventral midbrain to other brain areas. As a result, there is a progressive worsening of the patient and the emergence of non-motor clinical manifestations unresponsive to dopaminergic drugs. There is currently no treatment that avoids, delays or halts the progressive evolution of the neurodegenerative process.
More information: Ariadna Recasens, Benjamin Dehay, Jordi Bové, Iria Carballo-Carbajal, Sandra Dovero, Ana Pérez-Villalba, Pierre-Olivier Fernagut, Javier Blesa, Annabelle Parent, Celine Perier, Isabel Fariñas, José A. Obeso, Erwan Bezard and Miquel Vila. "Lewy body extracts from Parkinson disease brains trigger α-synuclein pathology and neurodegeneration in mice and monkeys." Annals of Neurology Volume 75, Issue 3, March 2014, Pages: 351–362. DOI: 10.1002/ana.24066