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They might have called it "How to Cosplay the Marvel Way."
After all, Stan Lee and John Buscema's "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" has proved enduringly popular. But "The Watcher" host Lorraine Cink's and Marvel cosplay blogger Judy Stephens' new video series is titled "Marvel Method: Cosplay."
The duo will explore the method to cosplay madness in chapters released every Tuesday and Thursday until Comic-Con, with input from costume designer Carly Bradt, wig specialist Katie Hondrogen and cosplayer Yaya Han. The plan: Choose a character, design and construct the costume, and reveal it at Marvel's booth at the pop-culture exposition in San Diego later this month.
So, which mighty Marvel hero did they choose?
"After considering so many powerful women of the Marvel Universe, we continued to be drawn back to the Scarlet Witch," Cink said in a statement. "Her recent death in 'Uncanny Avengers,' her upcoming appearance in 'Marvel's The Avengers: Age of Ultron,' and her stunning redesign by John Cassaday for the Marvel NOW! initiative all played part in our ultimate decision to build her costume. However, the true linchpin for me was that Wanda Maximoff is one of the most complex, dynamic and powerful players in the Marvel Universe — who could resist the opportunity to be her for a day?"
The premiere episode, viewable above, launched Tuesday on YouTube.
Marvel has been enthusiastic in featuring cosplayers dressed as characters from the House of Ideas (and encouraging them to do so), with "Marvel Method: Cosplay" being the latest expression of that effort. So far, there doesn't seem to be any hex on it.
With just over two weeks left until Comic-Con, time's running out on building an elaborate costume: Keep in mind that Cink, Stephens and company had a couple months' head start on this project.
If you do decide to follow along and build your own Scarlet Witch costume for this year's Comic-Con or a future event, maybe get a friend to be the Vision. And if you don Wanda's famous red duds, don't forget to practice saying, "No more mutants."
– Blake Hennon | Google+ | @LATHeroComplex
Comic-Con: 'Under the Dome,' 'Scorpion,' 'Reign' offer early looks
Comic-Con 2014: Peter Jackson to offer peek at 'Hobbit' finale, George Miller to tout 'Mad Max: Fury Road'
Comic-Con 2014: 'American Horror Story,' 'Salem' and more witchy TV
Warner Bros. TV to tout 'iZombie,' 'Arrow' in addition to 'Gotham,' 'The Flash' at Comic-Con
'Guardians of the Galaxy' trailer: Star-Lord explains his motivations
Original Guardians of the Galaxy back in Dan Abnett's 'Guardians 3000'


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It's a rare kind of research that incites a frenzied panic before it is even published. But it's flu season, and influenza science has a way of causing a stir this time of year.
Epidemiologists have long debated the pandemic potential of H5N1, aka bird flu. On one hand, the virus spreads too inefficiently between humans to seem like much of a threat: it has caused fewer than 600 known cases of human flu since first emerging in 1997. On the other hand, when it does spread, it can be pretty deadly: nearly 60 percent of infected humans died from the virus. For years the research has suggested that any mutations that enhanced the virus's ability to spread among humans would simultaneously make it less deadly. But in a batch of studies submitted for publication late last year, two scientists—Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands—have shown otherwise.
Working separately, they each hit on a combination of mutations (five, in Fouchier's case) that enables H5N1 to spread readily between humans without making it less deadly.
Efforts to publish those findings have been fraught. Critics say that making the methodology or gene sequences widely available amounts to giving would-be bioterrorists an easy recipe. They also worry that these man-made strains might escape from the lab.
Proponents counter that the threat of a global pandemic, were this mutated strain to arise in nature, is far greater than the threat of bioterrorism. Understanding what combination of mutations could transform H5N1 into a human pandemic virus gives epidemiologists a leg up on preparing countermeasures; they can, for example, test existing vaccines against the new strain.
As of mid-December, both papers were being reviewed by the government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). In the meantime, most experts agree that we need a better way.
"Physicists have been doing sensitive, classified work for 70 years," says Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota and a member of the NSABB. "We have to find a way to do the same in the health sciences, without compromising our safety and security."

subset: commoncrawl


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(TheBlaze/AP) — Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a chilling question. The Associated Press summarizes: "Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die?"
Annual health care costs are roughly $96 billion for smokers and $147 billion for the obese, the government says. These costs accompany sometimes heroic attempts to prolong lives, including surgery, chemotherapy and other measures.
But despite these rescue attempts, smokers tend to die 10 years earlier on average, and the obese die five to 12 years prematurely, according to various researchers' estimates.
And attempts to curb smoking and unhealthy eating frequently lead to backlash: Witness the current legal tussle over New York City's first-of-its-kind limits on the size of sugary beverages and the vicious fight last year in California over a ballot proposal to add another $1-per-pack cigarette tax, which was ultimately defeated.
"This is my life. I should be able to do what I want," said Sebastian Lopez, a college student from Queens, speaking last September when the New York City Board of Health approved the soda size rules.
Critics also contend that tobacco- and calorie-control measures place a disproportionately heavy burden on poor people. That's because they:
-Smoke more than the rich, and have higher obesity rates.
-Have less money so sales taxes hit them harder. One study last year found poor, nicotine-dependent smokers in New York – a state with very high cigarette taxes – spent as much as a quarter of their entire income on smokes.
-Are less likely to have a car to shop elsewhere if the corner bodega or convenience store stops stocking their vices.
Critics call these approaches unfair, and believe they have only a marginal effect. "Ultimately these things are weak tea," said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a physician and fellow at the right-of-center think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.
But Gottlieb's view is contested, and the debate rages on in similarly unsettling directions. For instance, some studies suggest that because smokers and the obese often die younger, they may actually cost society less than those who tend to live longer and develop chronic conditions like Alzheimer's disease.
So let's return to the original question: Why provoke a backlash? If 1 in 5 U.S. adults smoke, and 1 in 3 are obese, why not just get off their backs and let them go on with their (probably shortened) lives, the Associated Press asks?
Because it's not just about them, say some health economists, bioethicists and public health researchers.
"Your freedom is likely to be someone else's harm," said Daniel Callahan, senior research scholar at a bioethics think-tank, the Hastings Center.
Smoking has the most obvious impact. Studies have increasingly shown harm to nonsmokers who are unlucky enough to work or live around heavy smokers. And several studies have shown heart attacks and asthma attack rates fell in counties or cities that adopted big smoking bans.
But it can be harder to make the same argument about soda-size restrictions or other legislative attempts to discourage excessive calorie consumption.
"When you eat yourself to death, you're pretty much just harming yourself," S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago's School of Public Health, said.
But that viewpoint doesn't factor in the burden to everyone else of paying for the diabetes care, heart surgeries and other medical expenses incurred by obese people, John Cawley, a health economist at Cornell University, noted.
"If I'm obese, the health care costs are not totally borne by me. They're borne by other people in my health insurance plan and – when I'm older – by Medicare," Cawley said.
From an economist's perspective, there would be less reason to grouse about unhealthy behaviors by smokers, the obese, motorcycle riders who eschew helmets and other "health sinners" if they agreed to pay the financial price for their choices.
That's the rationale for a provision in the Affordable Care Act – "Obamacare" to its detractors – that starting next year allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.
The new law doesn't allow insurers to charge more for people who are overweight, however.
It's tricky to play the insurance game with overweight people, because science is still sorting things out. While obesity is clearly linked with serious health problems and early death, the evidence is not as clear about people who are just overweight.
That said, public health officials shouldn't shy away from tough anti-obesity efforts, said Callahan, the bioethicist. Callahan caused a public stir this week with a paper that called for a more aggressive public health campaign that tries to shame and stigmatize overeaters the way past public health campaigns have shamed and stigmatized smokers.
National obesity rates are essentially static, and public health campaigns that gently try to educate people about the benefits of exercise and healthy eating just aren't working, Callahan argued. We need to get obese people to change their behavior. If they are angry or hurt by it, so be it, he said.
"Emotions are what really count in this world," he said.


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WND Exclusive
Alicia Menendez, host of 'HuffPost Live,' frequent TV commentator, uncharacteristically mum
While Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is fighting for his political life following revelations that he and a wealthy donor are under FBI investigation for Dominican Republic trips the senator took on the eye doctor's private plane as well as accusations he engaged in sex with under-age prostitutes while there, one prominent supporter has been conspicuously silent – his media-star daughter Alicia Menendez, a Democratic Party adviser.
Alicia Menendez is the former co-director of "The Vagina Monologues," an episodic feminist play comprised of soliloquies read by women dealing with matters including sex, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the various common names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. She is a former Harvard gender studies major who is a host on "Huffpost Live" and a frequent guest on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
Known for her outspokenness, even on matters involving her own prominent family, she once wrote that her "gringa" mother claimed to be Dominican in a past life.
Alicia Menendez's mother, the former Jane Jacobsen, teaches sex education in the Union City school district. She and her former husband were divorced in 2005. The divorce documents are sealed.
Alicia Menendez came to fame for being a feminist. It was her 2005 senior thesis on gender studies that got her media attention; The New York Times and U.S. News & World Report gave her work mentions. The 87-page thesis, "To Whom Many Doors are Still Locked: Gender, Space, and Power, in Harvard Final Clubs," decried a culture of male domination at the Ivy League school.
"Establishing yourself as a big man on campus is pretty formulaic, but there's no such woman at Harvard who has done that to a positive capacity [sic]," Menendez told the student newspaper.
"The Harvard campus can be a very lonely place," she explained. "And meeting beautiful, smart, socially adept women here is not an easy task."
She was especially critical of Harvard's men's clubs, which she says relegated women to being "perpetually guests" on the campus social scene.
The thesis, obtained by WND through Harvard's library, is focused on the injustice that the women's clubs don't have their own building.
"Tired of discussing the inequalities of ownership of space in private forums, it became my objective to examine the role of final club buildings and their implications for the men and women who are a part of the final club community," she wrote in the introduction to her "ethnographic study."
She added: "As a woman, as a feminist, as an ethnic minority … I recognize that I am not supposed to be a part of this supposed elitism, but I am," she wrote.
As for her topic on "gendered power and social space," she writes, "I did not choose this subject; it chose me."
The feminist screed about the clubs includes buzzwords and phrases such as "male role models," "homosocial legacies," "male privilege," "single-sex group identification," "objectification," and "Lolita fetishism."
Alicia Menendez continued to write on gender issues after she graduated, ever quick to write on the latest political sex scandal. In 2008 she was fascinated by the prostitution story of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
"As the updates streamed in, I got a good look at how the story was shaping," she wrote at the time. "Eliot Spitzer did something very wrong but fairly ordinary: he hired a prostitute. It's only so extraordinary because of who Eliot Spitzer is and what Eliot Spitzer purports to stand for."
She remained fascinated by Spitzer's sex scandal and others, even going so far as to write whimsical online advice for politicians going through them, titled "What to Do When Scandals Hit":
"Admitting that you've done something wrong is the first step. If you're there, that's half the battle," she wrote. After trying to find a true friend, she enumerated a few dos and don'ts. "Don't give yourself room to lie (any more than you already have). Don't rely on half truths. And please, please don't over share."
That post (and others like it) have been scrubbed from the website that she co-founded. Perhaps she's trying to follow her own advice offered as a candidate's daughter in 2008: "The cardinal rule for candidates' children, whether they choose to hit the campaign trail or not, is the same: Don't do anything stupid."
Repeated attempts to reach Alicia Menendez by email and Twitter were unsuccessful.
Bob Menendez was re-elected to a second term in November, and instantly became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It took his predecessor, John Kerry, 24 years to work his way up to that powerful post. But, at the peak of his celebrity and power, Menendez has spent the last two week embroiled in scandal.
The problem began with his relationship to one of his top donors, Salomon Melgen, a 58-year-old eye surgeon who moved to Florida from the Dominican Republic in 1980.
Melgen and his family have given Menendez, and groups working to help elect Menendez, more than $750,000 in the last two election cycles. Menendez has admitted neglecting to reimburse Melgen for two trips on his private jet to the Dominican Republic in 2010, an "oversight" that Menendez has since rectified. But after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Melgen's Florida practice this week, other questions have surfaced. Though Menendez has distanced himself from Melgen, the Senate Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into several of their ties.
Melgen is being investigated for more than $8 million in Medicare fraud for claiming up to four times the usual worth of a vial of eye medication. Melgen has paid that money back to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid but is looking to reclaim it, saying he followed the guidelines.
Menendez twice in 2009 and 2012 called the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid about Melgen's case, though he denies lobbying or pressuring the agency on Melgen's behalf.
Meanwhile, Menendez encouraged Melgen to partner with a former staffer of his, Pedro Pablo Permuy, to buy into a U.S. security company that held a contract to screen cargo coming in from Dominican ports. Some competing business interests have questioned the contract, worth $500 million, because of Melgen's lack of port security experience. In his capacity at the time as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Menendez pushed the Dominican government to honor the contract and enforce the deal.
A story in the Miami Herald detailed how Melgen often bragged about his cozy relationship with Menendez and used the senator's name to threaten rivals with IRS audits and Medicare investigations. Melgen himself was not only under investigation for Medicare fraud but records show he owes the IRS $10 million in back taxes.
Meanwhile, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the liberal advocacy group that was the first to learn of prostitution allegations against Sen. Menendez in April 2012, added his name this week to its published list of federal lawmakers facing official investigations into their conduct.
CREW listed Menendez for the first time in its periodically updated report, "Under Investigation," noting that the Senate Ethics committee is probing him for "accepting gifts from a donor who flew him to the Dominican Republic on a private jet."
The group did not make mention of an FBI investigation into the New Jersey Democrat, reportedly focusing on the question of whether he engaged in illicit sex with underage prostitutes while in the Caribbean nation.
In a handwritten statement provided last year to a whistleblower, a young prostitute detailed allegations that she slept with Menendez beginning "when I was 16 years old."
"During [one] visit of Senator Bob Menendez to the Dominican Republic, I had intimate relations with him on more than one occasion," the unidentified woman wrote, according to a Daily Caller translation. She is the latest of at least six women purported to have engaged in sex for money with Menendez.
Her claim appeared in a Spanish-language testimonial collected by Peter Williams, a tipster who brought a series of similar allegations to light. He emailed CREW in April 2012 with interviews and testimonials he obtained from women he said he had met in the Dominican Republic.
"I met Senator Bob Menendez at Salomon's house when I was 16 years old," the anonymous note says, referring to Salomon Melgen, the Florida ophthalmologist and major donor to the senator. Melgen flew Menendez back and forth to the island nation at least three times. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reimbursed Melgen for one of those trips. Menendez personally paid Melgen for two more with a $58,500 check in January, more than two years after the flights occurred.
"I spent time with him several times, right there in Solomon's house, and we had intimate relations," the handwritten account continues. "That was in February and March 2009. I also remember on one occasion the senator participated in one of the yacht outings, to which I went various times with Salomon and other girls."
The Daily Caller has also reported on related allegations that a yacht owned by Vinicio "Vinicito" Castillo Seman, the scion of a prominent Dominican political family, was the scene of trysts with prostitutes involving both Melgen and Menendez.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has stood by Menendez, saying last week: "I have confidence he did nothing wrong. But that's what investigations are all about."
Born in New York City, Menendez is a graduate of Saint Peter's University and Rutgers School of Law in Newark. In 1974 at the age of 20, he was elected to the Union City Board of Education and was elected Mayor of Union City in 1986. While he was mayor, he simultaneously served in the New Jersey Legislature from 1988 to 1992. Menendez resigned from both positions when he was appointed to the New Jersey Senate after state Sen. Christopher Jackman died. He represented New Jersey's 33rd District from 1992 to 1993. In 1992 Menendez ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected and served six terms, representing New Jersey's 13th congressional district from 1993 to 2006.
In January 2006, he was appointed to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jon Corzine who was elected governor of New Jersey. In March 2010, Corzine was named chairman and CEO of MF Global Inc., a financial services firm specializing in futures brokerage. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2011 after losing $1.6 billion of customer money and Corzine resigned on November 4, 2011. Menendez, meanwhile, was elected to a full six-year term in the 2006 U.S. Senate election and was re-elected in 2012.


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Merry Meet Again, Family and Friends!
So, if you read my last entry, then you know that when I'd lit the black pillar candle on my altar in honor of my ancestors, the glass surrounding the candle cracked.
My husband, will almost always look for a plausible explanation for the unexplainable! It's very frustrating!
"Tracy, the temperature in the room where the candle was kept the was cold, so when you lit the candle, the heat made the glass expand and it cracked", he said. Ok, well, the room is a bit chiller than the rest of the house, but we really haven't had any cold weather yet. Still what he said made sense and left me slightly disappointed, doubting whether something supernatural had occurred at all.
I left the candles burning on my altar and later in the morning, as I passed by, I noticed that the cracked candle looked strange, as if the glass itself was beginning to melt! "That's not possible", I thought! It's a candle flame, not a friggin' blow torch!!! When I knelt down to take a closer look, I noticed that the wax was beginning to seep through the cracks in the glass and had formed what resembled...
a pair of lips with a knowing little smirk!
I called Ray and the kids to come look and they agreed! Later, as we were making lunch, I told Ray, "You know, that was my sister, right?" Without a moment of hesitation, he said, "Yeah, I know. She always did have a twisted sense of humor." So much for reasonable explanations!
Happy Halloween!
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Things That Crack Me Up!
Merry Meet Again, Family and Friends!
Posted by Tracy ~ The UnOfficial Witch of Ridgewood at 2:17 PM 5 comments
The Doorway
Photo courtesy of Tracy Frasche
The Doorway the 11:11
This can presently be perceived
as a crack between two worlds.
It is like a bridge
which has the inherent potential
of linking together
two very different spirals of energy.
As we unite together as One,
bringing together our fragments of the key,
we not only create the key,
but we make visible the Doorway.
Thus this bridge functions
as an invisible door
or a doorway into the Invisible realm.
The 11:11 is the bridge
To an entirely different spiral of evolution.
Merry Meet Family and Friends!
Have I mentioned that this is my all time favorite holiday?
Today, October 31st, doesn't only represent the traditional celebration of Halloween, but one of the eight major Wiccan Sabbats. Today, we celebrate, Samhain.
Samhain lore tells us that this is the time when the veil between the living and the dead is most thin. This morning, as I do every Samhain morning, I set up an altar to my ancestors, those loved one's who have crossed the veil.
It's a simple altar. I use a black altar cloth embossed with a silver pentacle, two black glass enclosed pillar candles, Samhain incense and photos of my ancestors and pets who have crossed.
This morning, I had an epiphany! I just knew I needed to light the altar candles at exactly 11:11 a.m. I know there are many interpretations of those numbers. I'm not sure which of those I agree with, I just knew that it was important that I acknowledge my beloved dead at exactly that time.
I patiently watched the clock and then lit both black pillars at exactly the right moment. A second or two into this process as I struggled with a particularly uncooperative incense, I heard a resounding snap coming from one of the candles. If you know anything about or have used 7 day pillar candles, they can be left burning, for ya know, 7 days, so obviously they are made to withstand the heat of the flame. At closer inspection of the candle, I realized that the glass enclosing the pillar had cracked! The incense, which I've used before, then began filling the room with the most beautifully ethereal swirls of smoke I've ever seen.
Today, we honor those loved ones who have gone before us, remembering that only our love for them is strong enough to pierce the veil.
Blessed Samhain!
P.S. After this writing, I did some further research on the numbers 11:11 and found the verse listed above, along with this very interesting accompanying website:
Posted by Tracy ~ The UnOfficial Witch of Ridgewood at 11:29 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
5th Annual NJ Witches' Ball
Devyn Joseph Michael Barat and I will be officiating as High Priest and High Priestess for this ritual.
Please click on the Image for full poster!
November 6th, 8PM - 12 Midnight
Halloween Masquerade Dinner and Dance Fundraiser To Benefit PAWS of Montclair
Presented by Mystic Spirit Metaphysical Shoppe and Everything Akasha
At the Church Street Kitchen, 12 Church Street, Montclair, NJ
$50 includes Samhain ritual, DJ music, appetizers, buffet dinner, dessert, coffee, beer and wine.
Samhain ritual performed by The Northern NJ Pagan Fellowship.
Tarot reading $20 for 15 minutes.
Tricky Tray (Raffle tickets $3 each or 5 for $10)
You don't have to dress up but it is highly recommended. Costume prizes.
Must be 21 to drink.
November 6th is the actual cross quarter day of Samhain this year.
Tickets must be bought in advance at Mystic Spirit
Buy your tickets now!
Last year we raised $2,115 to benefit PAWS Animal Shelter.
Check out the pictures from our 4th Annual Witches Ball
Posted by Tracy ~ The UnOfficial Witch of Ridgewood at 12:22 PM 4 comments
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
True Tales For The Season of the Veil...
Merry Meet and Most Blessed Samhain Family and Friends!
Recently, I saw the movie, "Paranormal Activity" and while I won't spoil the fun for those who have yet to see it, I can't say I found it, as promised, the "scariest movie of the decade". Actually, I haven't seen a really scary movie in a very, very long time. Or perhaps I'm just...paranormally challenged.
I will explain by saying that I lived in our family home from birth, until I married at 26 years of age. I can tell you, with absolute honesty, that there was never a moment in those 26 years when I felt comfortable being there alone. I will also admit, that to this day, I can not sleep without some kind of light coming into the bedroom.
I would often listen with a mixture of rapt terror and morbid fascination as my family shared tales of "unexplained phenomenon". My sister took great pleasure, as older siblings often do, in describing the vivid details of her own ghostly encounters. Even more frightening however, was when I'd go to my parents hoping to have them dismiss her stories as fabrication, I'd be met with uncomfortable silences or vague mumblings about there being "no such thing as ghosts". Yet, their own discomfort was palpable. Still, I did my best to convince myself that my sister was just trying to scare me. After all, I'd never seen or experienced any of these things for myself. Yet.
I recall my sister telling me a story of waking in the middle of the night to see a woman, dressed in white, passing by foot of her bed, carrying a candle.
I remember my Aunt telling us of waking to see her sister kneeling at her bedside praying, only to realize a moment later, that her sister was sleeping soundly in her own bed.
One of my first experiences came while I was walking past my parent's bedroom and heard a growling coming from beneath their bed. It was one of the rare occasions that I can remember not having any pets and no one else was in the room at the time. I convinced myself that I was...hearing things.
I would occasionally sense a shadowy presence in the corner just outside my bedroom door. When I told my mother, instead of reassuring me that I was, Oh, I don't know, losing my mind, she hung a small crucifix in the spot where I felt the presence. I never saw it again.
One evening, long after I'd gone to bed, I awoke to hear my sister calling my name. She had just been showering, so I couldn't imagine why she'd be calling. A moment later we were all jolted from our beds by a blood curdling scream. My father, who was very modest around his daughters, was standing in the middle of the kitchen in his boxers. My mother and I rushed in to find my terrified sister, a whiter shade of pale. She said that when she attempted to leave the bathroom, she couldn't open the door. She said she'd felt someone (or something) holding it from the other side. She thought it was me! It wasn't.
I remember one night during a particularly violent thunderstorm, we lost power. Well, with one small exception. The radio we had in the bedroom turned itself on and was blaring at full volume. While my mother went to get a flashlight, I fumbled my way through the darkness to find the radio and turn it off. I found the radio, but despite pressing the button, it continued to play. I felt for the power cord and was about to pull it from the wall when I realized...ooops, it wasn't plugged in.
On another occasion, my Mother had been washing her hair in the bathroom sink when she felt someone tap her on the back. "Gina?", she called, presuming it was her grand-daughter. No reply. Her hair was covered in lather, so she was unable to open her eyes without getting shampoo in them. A moment later, she felt another tap, this time a little more insistent. "What do you want, Gina?", she said, as she felt for around for a towel. Again, no response. This time, the tap was even harder and she spun around, water streaming down her face, only to find that she was alone in the room. She said it was one of the few times she was truly frightened.
The memory of my sister's "bathroom incident" had become a distant one. Then late one evening, after I'd finished getting ready for bed, I attempted to leave the bathroom, only to find that the door wouldn't open. Suspecting that I had just forgotten to unlock it, I turned latch, but the door knob wouldn't turn. I looked down at the lock to realize that the door had already been unlocked! I stood there, my body paralyzed with the shock of white hot fear. I couldn't move, I couldn't breath. When I finally found the courage, I grabbed the doorknob and pushed the door open as hard as I could! I went sailing out into the kitchen and found myself alone. Afterwards, I left the door slightly ajar any time I was by myself in the house.
Shortly before we married and I moved from my childhood home, I woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink. There was door just outside my bedroom which led to the stairwell to my Aunts' apartment on the floor below. It was about 3 a.m. I sleepily shuffled past by the door and as I did, I heard three short, but very distinct...knocks. "Who would be knocking at this hour?", I wondered. Surely it wasn't one of the Aunts. They never knocked! A few steps from the door was my parent's bedroom, with a window that looked out onto the stairwell. I cautiously peered around the corner into their room, praying that I would see a light shining through the window and one of the Aunts standing in the hallway. It was pitch black. There was no way anyone (or at least, ya know, anyone human) could find their way up those stairs in the darkness, so there was no friggin' way I was going to look out the window to see who or what, was knocking! I hauled my ass back to my room so fast I swear my feet never touched the floor, bolting the lock on the door as I flew by!
Despite the supernatural drama, leaving the home I grew up in proved to be bittersweet. After we married, Ray and I rented an apartment on the first floor of an older two family home. It was a lovely place with gleaming hardwood floors and a beautiful working fireplace. The rent was surprisingly affordable and we were thrilled to have found our "perfect" first home.
One night after we'd moved in, I awoke to hear him calling my name from another room. Before I could respond, he came back to bed asking, "what were you doing up?" "What was he talking about", I wondered. I hadn't been up, I told him. He said that he thought he'd heard me in the kitchen. By the following morning, the incident had been forgotten.
A short time later, I woke up during the night to use the bathroom, when I heard what sounded like all the kitchen cabinets and drawers being opened. I suspected it was Ray rummaging for chocolate. "Ray", I called. The house was suddenly quiet. "Ray", I called again. I walked out of the bathroom, to find the cabinets were closed, the kitchen was dark and eerily silent and Ray, was just where I'd left him, sound asleep.
A month or so after we'd moved in, our landlady came by to see how we were enjoying our new home. I casually mentioned what had happened, curious to see how she'd react. I saw her eyes soften and a small, sad smile came over her face. It was then she told us how we came to rent our lovely little place.
Up until recently, the apartment had been occupied by her father, who had just passed away.
As I share these tales, I can still sense the ghosts of my childhood that linger in the dark corners of my mind. Let it suffice to say that I'll be leaving the lights on tonight and the bathroom door slightly ajar.
In Darkness, Light!
Posted by Tracy ~ The UnOfficial Witch of Ridgewood at 7:19 AM 10 comments
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Playing With Matches...
"Do not lay your personal power at the feet of another".
Merry Meet and Happy Morning Family and Friends!
So, occasionally I will cross reference my rune castings with an online divination tool called Graven Image Oracle. It's an interesting site in which you meditate on a card before receiving the answer to your query. And while I take all online forms of divination with a grain of salt, I like this one because inputting your question is not required, which means the outcome isn't being generated by a specific question, word or phase.
Very often, I am warned of laying my personal power at the feet of another. What does that mean exactly?
I think there are many ways that this might be interpreted. Something as simple as agreeing with someone to a avoid conflict, not standing up for yourself or allowing someone to pressure you into doing something out of sense of obligation are some things that come to mind. In my humble opinion, any time you knowingly allow yourself to be taken advantage of, for whatever reason and to varying degrees, you are laying your personal power at the feet of another. That doesn't necessarily mean that there is always malice afoot. At times, we lay our personal power aside simply for the sake of friendship.
There are however, some people who will knowingly try to tap into your personal power. They believe they know you well enough to have insight or control over the outcome of a particular situation, especially if they tend to benefit from that outcome. Not so much.
"With a fool no season spend or be counted as his friend".
There is a simple way to avoid this...it's called, common sense. People who are intentionally looking to take advantage of your good nature or personal power will almost always slip up. Why? Because no matter how adept they consider themselves to be, dependent upon the degree of their personal interest in the outcome, without realizing it, their own impatience will often give them away. Alternatively, at times, they are so convinced of their abilities that they simply fail to keep in mind one of the basic tenets of Witchery...to "Keep Silent".
"Light of eye and soft of touch, speak ye little, listen much"
These are not just nice pieces of poetic literature, folks. They are from the Rede of the Wiccae and probably one of the first things that we learn as Wiccans. Certainly, there are some that would argue that as a result of how much Wicca has evolved over the past 60 years, the Rede has outgrown it's usefulness. Not so much. One of the first things we learn as children is not to play with matches. We may have since learned the way to safely handle the flame, but if we become careless or arrogant, convincing ourselves that we can predict it's reaction, getting burned becomes a reality. Seriously.
I must confess that, at times, I have failed miserably at adhering to the lessons of the Rede of the Wiccae. As the Oracle suggests, I have, indeed, knowingly lain my personal power at the feet of others. That said, I'm a work in progress and like a child playing with matches, I've learned never to under estimate the "personal power" of the flame.
Played with any matches lately?
In Darkness, Light!
Posted by Tracy ~ The UnOfficial Witch of Ridgewood at 10:56 AM 10 comments


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The Mary T. and
Frank L. Hoffman
Family Foundation
and All-Creatures.Org
Letters and Responses
Dear Senator Clinton:
We urge you to please take action to have the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) amended to include birds, mice, and rats. Millions of these smart, sensitive animals needlessly suffer extreme pain in research facilities.
We look forward to your reply and to any questions you may have.
Thank you,
Frank L. Hoffman
Mary T. Hoffman
Return to Letters
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text:
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are edging higher in the early going after strong U.S. earnings and General Electric's sale of its remaining NBCUniversal stake.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 1 point to 14,020 shortly after the opening bell Wednesday. The index rose to its highest close since 2007 on Tuesday following strong quarterly results from builders and retailers.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 3 points to 1,523. The Nasdaq composite climbed 10 points 3,197.
Deere & Co. and Duke Energy are reporting strong earnings. GE is selling its 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal to Comcast Corp. the nation's largest cable TV operator, for $16.7 billion.
The government reported retail sales ticked up 0.1 percent last month. The small increase suggests spending may be weak in the January-March quarter.


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|Episode Description
|Tuesday, Feb 4, 2014 - 3:00 AM
"The Case of the Biological Biosphere"
One of the tree house detectives is about to take a trip to foreign shores and is both excited and concerned. This trip is the chance of a lifetime, and he doesn't want to get sick and miss it. Come help the detectives learn about the human body as they discover that no man, not even a kid, is an island. G
Mountain Time
|More on IDAHO (MT)
|No upcoming shows in database


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NEW DELHI (AP) — Sporadic violence broke out in India on Wednesday as labor unions began a two-day strike to protest rising prices and government policies to open the economy.
Millions of factory and bank employees stayed away from work and public transport was shut down in most big cities after major trade unions called the countrywide strike.
A labor leader was fatally crushed when he tried to stop buses from leaving a terminal in the northern city of Ambala.
Workers armed with iron rods smashed factory windows and set a fire truck and several cars on fire in Noida, an industrial suburb of New Delhi.
Factory owners said police did not come to their aid despite frantic calls to them.
"The windows of many factories in Noida were broken. We called the police but they were delayed, and meanwhile the damage was done," said Pankaj Shah, a factory owner.
In New Delhi, buses and the subway system were crowded as few taxis and motorized rickshaws plied the streets. Banks were shuttered, but most shops were open.
Trade unions oppose government policies to open the retail, banking and aviation sectors to foreign investors in an effort to jumpstart India's sputtering economy.
Labor unions affiliated with the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, the two main communist parties, and even the ruling Congress party-led trade union are demanding that the government roll back its economic reforms, which they say harm workers' interests.
The unions have issued 10 demands, including raising the minimum wage for all workers to 10,000 rupees ($185) a month, controlling prices and providing social security for all workers.
Trade unions say the government's recent moves to open the supermarket sector will hurt millions of small store owners who will not be able to compete against multinational retailers.
Bank employees oppose the government's decision to allow big companies to enter the banking sector and a policy to privatize state-run banks.


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Make:Philly at IndyHall Block Party!
Makers! We. Are. Back.
And what better timing than to coincide with Philly Tech Week and the Philadelphia Science Festival. These two awesome events bring schools, institutions, researchers, technologists, entrepreneurs and the Maker in all of us together for fun and interesting programs in April.
To start, we're invading IndyHall's Block Party on 4/22. Since this is a block party, we'll keep it to a casual meet and greet. Wondergy will be bringing Solar S'mores, and possibly liquid nitrogen. Are you an experienced maker? If you'd like to show off something you made, bring it along! We'll bring extra table space for you. Want advice? Consider this an open Make! We'll also have photos from past meetings, and a preview of our next full meeting topic - the Potato Chip Challenge.
IndyHall, or Independents Hall, is a the membership based coworking space and community in OldCity. IndyHall members are designers, developers, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, small business owners,telecommuters, marketers, videographers, game developers, makers, and more. It all seems so fitting for a Make:Philly get together.
Please RSVP at http://anyvite.com/events/home/wymuphismv
The IndyHall Block Party is Sunday, April 22, 1pm – 7pm,
Location: the EZPark lot at 20 North 3rd Street Philadelphia, PA
Can't wait to see you there!
Most Recent Meeting (March 2nd)
We're having just 1 meeting this Spring and we're making it count. Check it out:
If you are interested in product design and design thinking in the context of a startup this is the meeting for you...
We are tremendously thrilled to be welcoming the award winning designer, Peter Bressler of Bresslergroup as our guest speaker. He will be giving a talk entitled "Product Design in Entrepreneurial Ventures" in which he will explore the following questions: What is the value of design to an entrepreneur? How should an entrepreneur use design? Can an entrepreneur afford design? In the process he will share experiences and case studies from his over 30 years of design experience spanning the consumer, medical, and industrial spaces.
Peter's expertise includes user research, human factors application, manufacturing processes and innovative criteria conflict resolution. Peter has authored or co-authored over 60 design and utility patents and has received over 40 national design awards. He is a Past President of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).
Date: Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
Time: 7PM sharp!
A staple of all our meetings is Open Make -- an opportunity for you to share with the group a project you recently completed. If interested in presenting email us at makephilly@gmail to reserve your spot.
During the second half of this and every meeting we break into teams and build something to meet the objective of the 'maker challenge'. *All skill levels welcome.* In the spirit of our guest speaker's talk, the maker challenge will comprise designing and building an innovative product prototype.
Aug 8th: Annual Make:Philly BBQ featuring Wondergy!
Make:Philly / Wondergy BBQ
Solar Smores and water bottle rockets? This is not your ordinary BBQ. Make:Philly and Wondergy are joining forces for a novel and explosive public BBQ in Fairmount Park on Sunday, August 8th, 2010. All are welcome.
For this year's BBQ, Make:Philly has teamed up with Wondergy, an Philadelphia-based science educational entertainment company. Wondergy is a team of scientists who love to play with the world around them. They put interactive science education in unexpected places like Phillies games, Skatebaording competitions, concerts, corporate meetings, birthday parties, and of course, BBQs.
Wondergy is infusing science-based fun into this year's BBQ with
several exciting new additions including "Solar Smores", in which
attendees will use the power of sunlight to set marshmallows ablaze
under giant parabolic mirrors. The heat from the sun (and some
liquid nitrogen) will also create an explosion which will launch a trash
can 20-50 ft in the air, as Wondergy recently presented live on NBC TV.
Be sure to also make and bring your own water rocket! Never made one? No worries, water rockets are easy to make! They are just water or soda bottles which are filled half way with water, pressurized with a bicycle pump and then launched. For visual instructions on how to make one, check out this instructable: http://www.instructables.com/id/Water_Rocket/ . Pimp your water rocket with some stylin' colors! We'll bring the launcher.
ABOUT WONDERGY - Based in University City, Philadelphia, Wondergy is a
team of scientists who create exciting and understandable science
educational entertainment programs and events. With over 7 years of
experience making science hands-on and fun, Wondergy has strong track
record of client, faculty, and participant satisfaction. Wondergy has
developed a wide range of science educational products, from small,
up-close programs suitable for birthday parties or corporate retreats,
to school-wide assemblies and full-year school curricula, to
custom-developed programs to explore the science behind new technologies
and community events. www.wondergy.com
April 18th: "How to make a watch. And how to recyle it."
Featured in TechCrunch, Geekadelphia, CoolMaterial, and other sites.
We have a fantastic meeting lined up for this Sunday, April 18th! Vanja Buvac, the entreprenuerial and engineering force behind the rapidly growing Cadence Collective company, will provide an unprecedented inside look into how watches are designed, made, distributed, and sometimes recycled.
Date: Sunday, April 18th, 2010
A staple of all our meetings is Open Make -- an opportunity for you to share with the group a project you recently completed. If interested in presenting email us at makephilly@gmail to reserve your spot.
During the second half of this and every meeting we break into teams and build something to meet the objective of the 'maker challenge'. *All skill levels welcome.* In the spirit of our guest speaker's invention, the maker challenge will comprise designing and building a creative recyling project using old watches Vanja is donating MakePhilly.
March 24th: "From Idea to Success: Philadelphia Innovation Resources Abound"
We're excited to help promote this event of the American Society of Inventors of Philadelphia which will feature a presentation by Les Anderson, CEO of Euthanex and Medico International. Les will share how he took his ideas and understanding of his customers' needs, and turned them into successful businesses
The American Society of Inventors has pulled together many area organizations to produce this event including The University City Science Center, NextFab, The Hacktory, Make:Philly, Hive76, Breadboard, The Esther Klein Gallery, IndyHall and the Nikola Tesla Inventors Society. Sponsored by Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney, the event's activities include: A tour of NextFab at 6:00pm; networking and light refreshments from 6:30 - 7:00pm; Les Anderson's presentation and Q&A until 8:00pm, and group introductions and networking until 9:00pm.
When: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 6:00 PM
Tickets: Free
Registration required here.
Most Recent Meeting - Feburary 14th
We are thrilled and honored to welcome back Slavko Milekic, M.D., PhD as guest speaker. Dr. Milekic will update us on his development of a "cheap webcam-based eye-tracker." His invention is software that transforms a regular webcam into a sophisticated device that can follow the eye movements of someone at a computer so that they in turn can control the computer without a keyboard or mouse -- just by using their eyes.
Since he last spoke at MakePhilly over two years ago he has successfully completed development of a functional prototype of a webcam eye-tracker which has been accepted for an international conference this April. Dr. Milekic's presentation will explain how his device works and will explore the potential impact of such a device on our everyday experience with computers. For example, he will explore such questions as: "What can you do if your computer knew exactly what you are looking at? What kind of games would you design? What kind of educational applications? What about mind reading software?"
Dr. Milekic is an associate professor of Cognitive Science & Digital Design at the University of the Arts,
Date: Sunday, Feburary 14th 2010
A staple of all our meetings is Open Make -- an opportunity for you to share with the group a project you recently completed. If interested in presenting email us at makephilly@gmail to reserve your spot.
During the second half of this and every meeting we break into teams
and build something to meet the objective of the 'maker challenge'. *All
skill levels welcome.* In the spirit of our guest speaker's invention,
the maker challenge will be to build a device with which you can write
"hi" behind your head through remote mechanical control.
MakePhilly Builds Giant Operation Game For Franklin
BODY WORLDS 2 hosts OPERATION Game Tournament at The Franklin Institute
Saturday, January 30th @ 11AM
BODY WORLDS 2 teamed up with MakePhilly and Hive76 to produce a life size version of Hasbro's OPERATION game featuring Ben Franklin. Read more here: http://www.tango-echo.com/articles/thebigoperation
Here's some pics from the event:
Check out all of MakePhilly's past meetings here!
Join MakePhilly!
Welcome to Make:Philly. We are artists and engineers; DIY'ers and DIY wannabe's; geeks and visionaries. We're here to create. We are Makers.
MakePhilly In The News
Test Your Operating Skills
Do you have what it takes
to save Ben Franklin?
By Katharine Gray
Steady, steady, steady -- buzz.
That's how many of us found out we weren't going to grow up to be surgeons. But if you happened to be a pro at Operation, then here's the chance to win your title.
That's how many of us found out we weren't going to grow up to be surgeons. But if you happened to be a pro at Operation, then here's the chance to win your title.
Make Philly, Hive76, The Franklin Institute and Body Worlds 2, an exhibit of real human bodies that have been turned into plastic to improve the education of medical students and the general public, have teamed up to bring you something much less scary sounding than that -- an Operation Game Tournament... [Full Article]
January 2009
Scene But Not Nerd
Geeks in Philadelphia make their mark.
by Steven Wells
"...A typical Make: Philly event: In a room at the University of the Arts on Broad Street, around 60 real–life MacGyver "deeks" (DIY geeks) listen to a lecture about research into snakelike self-reassembling robots from Penn professor Mark Yim. Then a deek takes the stage to show off his own borderline-insane invention: a body board nailed to an office chair."
September 2008
Geek Safari
"I come expecting freaks with enormous heads and pocket protectors
and slide–rules and homemade Dr. Octopus–style exoskeletons. But this
looks like a pretty normal bunch of people. Two hours in their company
will change that perception.
April 2008
Grassroots groups nurture creativity
Philadelphia Business Journal - by Peter Key Staff Writer
Like many area entrepreneurs over the years, Blake Jennelle is proud to have attorney Steve Goodman represent his company. That doesn't mean, however, that he lets Goodman attend the meetings of Philly Startup Leaders, which Jennelle founded last September. The group is for people starting companies and he doesn't allow service providers, other than potential investors, to attend its gatherings. "They've pretty much decided that they want it to be entrepreneurs only and I deeply respect that," said Goodman, who co-chairs Center City law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius' global emerging technology and life-sciences practice.
Philly Startup Leaders is one of three organizations that members of what sociologist Richard Florida calls the creative class have created to make Philadelphia a better place for people like them.
MakePhilly, which holds meetings at which people make things ranging from musical instruments to computer-controlled devices, has been around about two years. Earlier this year, it opened the Hacktory, in Philadelphia's Spring Garden section, to provide work and meeting space and classes...


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Wireless technology is constantly evolving, and wireless design and test require a flexible and more cost-effective approach.
NI uses high-performance FPGAs and CPU-based processing power to deliver measurement speeds that are up to 10X faster than traditional test equipment.
You can adapt to future requirements with modular, flexible, and powerful design and test systems featuring NI hardware and software.
You can quickly prototype next-generation wireless systems, from the next 802.11 revision to 5G, using NI software defined radio systems.
To test smart devices, organizations are transitioning from traditional ATE and box instruments to a platform-based approach.
Qualcomm WLAN kept costs low and test accuracy high while reducing characterization times as device complexity grew by tracking an increasing number of wireless standards.
Nokia Networks is paving the way for next-generation wireless communications by working with NI to investigate mobile access in the mmWave frequency spectrum.


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by Amanda Ondrick
Czech artist, Jaroslava Brychtová, was invited to come to Seattle, Washington, to share her glass art with the attendees of a forum held by the Glass Art Society in conjunction with the Pratt Fine Arts Center. Participants had the opportunity to discuss the sustainability of glass as well as the role of women in glass and to take part in the filming of a documentary recorded by the Museum of Glass.
This article was originally published on page 42 of the Winter 2010 issue of Profitable Glass Quarterly.


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Enfolding Perspectives
and other little collections
by Simran Singh Gleason
The "Hows," my experiences in putting this show together.(April, 1994)
I do hope you've enjoyed the show.
- I first heard of the idea of an Internet Art show on the phone with Dave Wheeler of the band Phreeworld (He had "discovered" Mosaic the previous day, as had I). He was looking at John Jacobsen's Strange Interactions show and gave me the URL. I was very excited to see that. Really, it blew my mind to think of putting an art show out (for free!) where anybody (with access to the technology :( ) could see it. After thinking about it awhile, I decided to put my work out "on the net."
I started with the idea of just doing a photocollage show, since I felt my photocollage work to be more "mature" than my pastel and charcoal drawings (I've already had a museum show of my photocollage, but hadn't shown many of my drawings). I also wanted to have a show "on the wall" somewhere, and the photocollages would work best for that.
Then I decided that I could segment the show into several mini-shows (since I'm constantly trying to categorize my work around little themes). This way I have a forum for putting out my "projects" without having to worry if they're big enough to fill a whole venue.
From there I contacted John Jacobsen. He was very encouraging, shared some of his experiences putting together "Strange Interactions," and even offered to let me use his artist statements in my quest to convince places to let me hang my artwork.
Finding a network service provider
- Basically, after I decided to do a show jointly on the net and on the wall, I needed to find two things: a place to put the pictures on the net and a place to put them on the wall. Eventually I decided to go with netcom for the on-the-net location, since I have some friends who have netcom accounts. I signed up & then tried to figure out how to put some html pages up for world-accessibility.
It turns out that netcom does not have an http server, but I was able to get an anonymous ftp account and use the "file://" protocol. (slower than "http://" but it gets the job done).
Finding a "physical" venue
- The next task was to find a gallery, restaurant or cafe that I liked, and that would hang my work (withing a reasonable time period). My initial choices were La Di Da cafe in Half Moon Bay, California (they have great art & good music!!), St Michael's Art Cafe in Palo Alto (great art & better music!!), and various restaurants. The first restaurant I wandered into was Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant on Emerson in Palo Alto. I immediately fell in love with the place. Large expansive walls with very nice artwork on them, good food, etc. (I heard rumours that the place used to be a theater, I'll check it out). I whipped together a portfolio and a proposal for a joint show in cyberspace and physical space, and submitted it to the manager. He seemed to like my work, ran it by his art consultant (the manager at the San Jose store, who is also an artist), who called me up one day and said "how about next week." Well, there was no way I'd be able to put the show together (with all the publicity, etc) in that amount of time. Of course I said "YES!" And then I hung the show last Sunday (May 23, 1994).
Putting the show together
- By the time the Gordon Biersch show actually materialized (sorry, it wasn't really as easy as it seems in the paragraph up there :), I had most of the online show already together and out on netcom, with people accessing it from as far away as silicon valley, i.e. down the street, and as close as Sweden and Finland (there seems to be a bit of a bi-modal distribution in my ftp logs).
Digitizing the artwork
- I tried several different methods of digitizing the artwork to get them into the show.
First I tried scanning originals. Each required four scanner passes, and stitching together the results in photoshop. This process was very time consuming and prone to error. (not to mention getting the scanner all smudgy). I ended up doing this for two pastels.
Second I scanned in some 3x5 photographs of charcoal drawings, using a greyscale scanner. This method is how most of the pictures in "Some self portraits in charcoal" were done. I found this quite adequate for these pictures, given that I had the photographs at hand.
Third, I happened to have a number of slides and negatives of my work, since I had already taken pictures of my work for portfolios (before I had even seen my first "Internet art show"). I tried a slide scanner to capture the image, and photoshop to modify the image. This process turned out to give me the highest quality, since I could set the levels on the scanner at scan-time, but it was very time-consuming. "Mist Dancers," "Raining on Mondays," and my self-portrait photocollage were done this way.
Finally, on suggestion from Gabriel Unda from UC Davis (I met him at a digital imaging seminar at Stanford), I sent in my remaining slides and negatives to get them put on a photo CD (yes, that Kodak thingy). Since I didn't really have access to a free slide scanner by this time, the dollar and a half per image turned out to be the best price around. (slide scanning from a service bureau runs $5 minimum around here). It took two weeks (way too long for li'l ol' impatient me) to get the photoCD back, but when it came it had eighty teeny little thumbnail images on the cover (really cute!). To get them in the show I put the CD in a CDrom drive on a macintosh, loaded the images in photoshop, cropped, sized and adjusted the levels to get good contrast.
Once I had the pictures I ftp'ed them to netcom, used xv to make the small thumbnail pictures for the inline images, and linked them into the html files.
Difficulties I ran into.
- lots & lots, you may be sure!
Some of the Issues
- Copyright: Here I am, giving my art work away for free. Yeah, they are copyrighted (by default and according to my copyright notice), but still, how can I enforce anything half a world away? Kind of disturbing thought, at first. Finally, I decided that what I really want is people to see my work, and that's more important for an artist than getting way too much money for it. (Not that I'd really mind, mind you).
The images here are downloadable for free, and people are free to print them out. There isn't really enough resolution to end up with a very high quality print. Using a dye-sublimation printer and pixel interpolation software, you can get a nice 8x10 (inches) print for $10 to $20. If people do that and put my artwork on their walls, I will be quite thrilled. I got the idea that art can be like shareware, and would like to encourage anybody who does something like this to send the artist a small contribution.
I won't be happy to see my images in advertisements. That, I think, is a bit beyond the spirit of a show like this.
Future directions
- More collections: I would love to put Wild Desert Flowers, a collection of poems and drawings, on the net. I'm also working on a book of poems I call Chinese Painting Poems. I think it would work well in this show, together with some of the paintings (my own and my Lao Shr's) that inspired the poems. (Some of the poems have been posted to rec.arts.poems in years past).
Album covers: I'm currently doing a cover for Phreeworld, and would love to do work for other bands I enjoy listening to.
Collaborative net.art: Wotta concept! Someday when I have more time...
And of course there's always my medium-term goal to integrate my artwork better with my job (right now I'm a "straight" software engineer at Sun Microsystems).
Simran Singh Gleason.
Simran Singh Gleason


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As cotton farmers prepare to plant their 2004 crop they might better keep one eye on the weather and the other on the futures market.
"If December 2004 futures rise to the 69 cents level before June, be ready to price some, maybe most, of your cotton," advises Texas Extension cotton marketing specialist Carl Anderson.
Anderson offered a marketing outlook at the annual Southwest Crops Production Conference and Expo in Lubbock recently and said increases in U.S. and world cotton acreage likely will cause price reductions. "A 10 percent increase in U.S. acreage this year may produce an 18 million to 20 million-bale crop," he said. Coupled with anticipated increases across the cotton-producing countries, carryover stocks could increase "sharply to around 6 million to 7 million bales, similar to 2001/2002. The price would be less than loan rate.
"The extreme market uncertainty along with a restructured market environment is a strong signal for growers to develop marketing and pricing strategies early to reduce exposure to sudden adverse price moves," he said. "The farm program provides a reasonable safety net."
He said growers could do better than loan rate, however, if they work the market. "When growers intend to plant around 10 percent more cotton worldwide, chances are good for a season with more cotton and at least a 10 cents to 15 cents drop in December futures."
That drop would bring cotton from the mid-60-cent level in mid-winter to the low 50-cent range and near the 52-cent loan rate by October or November.
A 10 percent acreage increase would push world production from 92.65 million bales from the 2003 crop to 99.5 million bales in 2004. Added to a 32.36 million-bale beginning stocks, total supply would be more than 131 million bales. Anderson said the "A" index price would fall to around 59 cents a pound, a steep decline from the near 71 cents index on the 2003 crop.
He said world production in 2003 was up by 4.4 million bales compared to 2002. Consumption dropped by just less than 1 million bales, but ending stocks also declined by 4.3 million bales. The "A" index rose 15 cents per pound.
Anderson said farmers find an "export-driven market hard to predict. We could see a $100 per bale price swing between contract high and lows. Expect roller coaster dips and rallies, as the market will tend to move too high or too low.
Anderson said producing high quality would take some of the uncertainty out of the market.
"Look for better varieties that produce better quality cotton and higher yields," he said. "Look for something that consistently brings at least 4 cents per pound over the 52 cents loan value."
He said the market wants 35 staple and higher, 28 to 32 grams /Tex. "At 25 grams/Tex expect a big discount. Mic should be around 4.3."
Anderson said China remains the market catalyst. "Chinese cotton warehouses must be empty before mills get licenses to import. A spurt of buying should be a trigger if the United States has cotton to sell."
He said a 70-cents per pound range "is as high as I can see it going. We'll export 11 million bales from the 2003/2004 crop. We'll use 6 million and we can make 19 million bales. A 2 million-bale carryover will push prices down."
Anderson said mill buyers could look to build stocks while markets "are on a slide. That could mean a rally of 5 cents on the old crop, maybe 4 cents on the new."
He said bad weather could result in a stable crop for 2004. "Falling stocks would result from a disaster and that's unlikely. The possibility is strong that stocks will increase and prices will drop."
Anderson said options trading offers growers an opportunity to reduce price risks. "Just after harvest, farmers should think about the year ahead. If they work smarter and not necessarily harder, they can make money in the cotton market."
He said buying a December 2004 put at 62 cents a pound would cost about 2 cents a pound. If the price drops to 50 cents, the option value increases from a 2 cents cost to a 12 cents advantage. The gain for the farmer would be 10 cents per pound. If the price drops to 55 cents, the gain would be 5 cents.
"In an uncertain export-driven market, cotton options are likely to be used more to insure price," he said.
Anderson offered three rules for cotton marketing: 1) "Markets are not going to give you anything. 2) "You have to take pricing opportunities from the market. 3) "Develop year-round plans to price commodities favorably."
Anderson said from January 6 through February 10 of this year "cotton prices dropped one cent per day. The market can flip at any time, so farmers have to be quick."
e-mail: [email protected]


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School Bus Drivers Test Road Skills In Competition
ARDEN HILLS (AP) - Fifty Minnesota school bus drivers are putting their skills to the test - in hopes of advancing to a national competition this summer.
The drivers are participating in a statewide competition on Saturday in Arden Hills. As part of the course, they'll show a panel of judges how they manage turns, railroad crossings, student stops and more. They'll also participate in a knowledge exam.
In order to qualify for the School Bus Safety 'Road-eo', the drivers had to drive a route for at least 60 days of the school year, and be collision-free for the school year.
The judges will include state patrol troopers and representatives from the state Driver and Vehicle Services. The top four drivers will advance to the national competition in July in Tulsa, Okla.


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SALEM, Virginia - Defensive end Chris Mayes (Waldorf, Md./Westlake) and linebacker Mike Asiedu (Yonkers, N.Y./Gorton) led six Wesley College football student-athletes on the Division Three Football Senior Classic Preseason All-America Team.
The duo was chosen to the South First Team Defense, while a trio were named to the All-South Second Team. Tackle James Buettner (Dundalk, Md./Patapsco) earned a place on the second team offense, while linebacker Jeff Morgan (Vineland, N.J./Vineland) and defensive tackle Paul Gilstrop (Lindenwold, N.J./Paul VI) were named second team defenders.
Quarterback Shane McSweeny (Bensalem, Pa./Bensalem) was picked as a South Honorable Mention.
Only 2011 seniors are eligible for the Division Three Football Senior Classic All-American Team.
In 2010, Mayes notched 17.5 sacks and 32.5 tackles for loss in 13 games to go along with 45 solo tackles and three forced fumbles. Asiedu made 78 stops, batted down 10 passes and had 10.5 tackles for loss. Morgan ended the year with 82 total tackles, 13 tackles for loss, 7.5 sacks and three interceptions. Gilstrop made over 60 tackles, including 11.5 for loss. Buettner was instrumental on the offensive side of the ball, blocking for a unit that produced a 1,000-yard rusher, a 1,000-yard receiver and allowed just 1.15 sacks per game. McSweeney was lost for the season on just the second play of the year's first game, but was the ECAC South Player of the Year as a junior.
So far this summer, Mayes has also been named to All-America teams by D3football.com, The Sporting News, Lindy's and Consensus Draft Services. Asiedu and Morgan joined him on the D3football.com and Lindy's squads, while Asiedu, Gilstrop and Buettner were also honored by CDS.
Last season, Wesley advanced to the NCAA Playoffs for the sixth straight year and moved on to the national semifinals for the fourth time during the run. The Wolverines, who won the Lambert Meadowlands and ECAC Team of the Year Awards, also picked up their sixth consecutive ACFC title and ninth overall, finishing the year with a 12-1 record.
Wesley opens the 2011 season when East Texas Baptist visits Scott D. Miller Stadium on September 3.


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- Home
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Wednesday September 19, 2018; 02:44 pm EDT
As temperatures and food supplies drop, mammals hunker down to hibernate
Seen enough of the groundhog, which experts, admirers and detractors alike agree was the Mystery Creature who so fascinated Bay Weekly readers?
Good thing. Because whatever you call him, her and them — groundhogs, woodchucks or whistle pigs — these omnipresent neighbors are ending their season above ground.
"Groundhogs are especially fat at this time of year, in preparation for a long winter's sleep," writes John Taylor of Edgewater, the naturalist, artist and author of Chesapeake Spring. "Any time now, he will make his descent underground, sometimes as much as six feet. Often he will bury himself alive, closing off his sleeping chamber with soil."
Groundhogs are not our only hibernating mammals, according to Pete Jayne, who specializes in fur-bearers at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Groundhogs, chipmunks, bats all hibernate, but not just yet.
Hibernation is dependent on both temperatures and food supplies and, at least for now, food is still ample and temperatures warm. By early December, conditions will change, beginning the season of hibernation.
Chipmunks — which are quite common in Maryland woodlands though we might not see them in our back yards — and groundhogs burrow in the ground for their hibernation. Bats hibernate in old trees or buildings, attics and caves.
Bears are Maryland's biggest hibernators. Pregnant sows go to sleep first. In our four western counties, they go to den in the last two weeks of November. Males follow shortly thereafter. Dens, says Jayne, "are almost anywhere you — or they — can think of, including under buildings and porches as well as rock outcroppings and dense thickets of rhododendron."
They and the other hibernators will likely sleep until April or May. Unlike squirrels, which might hunker down in their leafy nests during a really cold spell, true hibernators can't wake up for a couple of hours and then reenter the lowered metabolic state.
Groundhogs don't read calendars, so they're likely to hibernate right through Groundhog Day on February 2. That's the earliest stage of their breeding season, however, so, Jayne says "a few early birds could be out there."�


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Topout produce and provide the World's market-leading oxygen delivery system
They say that it's not the winning but the taking part that counts but not on Everest. We don't nearly climb Everest, we 'Top Out' or we fail. I failed twice before I used TopOut. It wasn't 3rd time lucky, it was having the best equipment possible, equipment that to date has a huge success rate.
On Everest, it's the getting back that counts, and if you can get back having been to the top then you are a winner. To win you have to have the best: the best attitude, the best gear and most importantly the best oxygen. TopOut is the difference between winning and simply taking part and will turn pain to pleasure; well it could! TopOut will enable you to enjoy Everest instead of feeling as if every breath is your last.
This new high altitude oxygen delivery system has been designed and developed by me, Ted Atkins while climbing the mountain. I was, until recently, a serving RAF Aerosystems (aircraft) Engineering Officer. The system was designed and has been built specifically for climbing Everest using aerospace standards that I employed with the RAF. This is the only system built specifically for climbing Everest by an aerosystems engineer who has climbed Everest in the process of testing the prototype. No other system has this pedigree.


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October is Texas Wine Month! The busiest time of the year at the Texas Hill Country Wineries is of course harvest…the busiest time of year for wine events in the Hill Country is Texas Wine Month. The Texas Wine Trail is offering a lowered cost on their trail tickets. Texas Wine Month is about showcasing the delightful wines of the great state of Texas. Each of the 27 wineries will be offering a minimum of 1 and up to 3 complimentary tastes of wine. This is an opportunity to discover over 4 dozen award-winning wines throughout the month. Wineries will also be offering a 15% discount on 3 bottle wine purchases. Visit the wineries, taste delicious wines, and take home your favorites to enjoy!
Book at the Blair House and you will be placed in the middle of the wine trail. We have open reservations for the month of October. Just call or book online!
Tags: Hill Country wineries, October, Texas wine, Texas Wine Month, Texas Wine Trail


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Set of Trinity Ranch Large Cowhide Partial Leather Concealed Carry Zip Top Shoulder Bag Tote Purse And Western Styling With Matching WalletBlack Black -
This partial leather handbag has the front panel which is designed with a hair on the front (bag color and hair may vary with each purse since it is genuine leather, which is natural). Back of purse has vertical zipper to hold concealed weapon. Top zips closed for safety and containment, and inside of bag has a central zippered compartment. This pocket is accented with silver berry concho and saddle stitch with antique silver embellishments.
Inside of bag includes a zippered pocket and 2 open pockets and metal feet on the bottom of the bag serve to protect the bag and stablilize. Double handle strap for secured carrying. A smaller zippered pocket on the inside back of the purse keeps small items secure. Bag color may vary from the pictures sample since each hide is not exactly the same as the other and no dye is used to make them similar. Color variations are natural with genuine leather.
Measures 12 in high by 17 in long and 4 in wide. You can carry the whole families stuff for them with this bag, and it won't get lost. You have a pocket for everything. Silver tone hardware keeps the bag looking great for going out or just shopping. And you are not concerned about safety when you are carrying your weapon.
Faux leather on trim and backing for you to use, a zippered pocket on the back for concealed carry measures 9.5 in by 5.5 inches and a pouch on the back measures 6x5 in.
A zipper enclosure for the entire wallet and single compartment divided by a medium zipper pocket. Made of faux leather and denim, this western secretary wallet style has pockets on the inside for ID, credit cards, cash, and more - measures: 7.5 x 1.25 x 4.75. Open with long card slots and zipper closure on the back with single compartment divided by a medium zippered pocket. Lots of function to this wallet.


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Message Board
R.K. Mortenson Message Board
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Mortenson has written!
Author Mortenson's Book Reviews
Landon Snow And the Auctor's Riddle
Landon Snow, a boy from Minneapolis, is a thinker. He wants to know how things work; he wants to have explanation for everything. This leads him to love books. Reading becomes his favorite activity. When a trip to his grandparents is scheduled, Landon is happy because there is a great library in their town. He can't wait to go there. However, when he arrives all the plans are messed up by his grandfather getting injured in an accident. Landon learns that...
Landon Snow and the Island of Arcanum
Book 3 of the Landon Snow series is a water / island adventure. Landon, a twelve year old boy, has had two journeys into the fantastic world of Wonderwood, using a passage he discovered at the library in his grandpa's hometown. When he and his two sisters go to visit grandpa again, Landon is looking forward to yet another adventure. However, things are different this time. Landon and the girls go to the library at daytime, not at night as they did before...
Landon Snow And the Shadows of Malus Quidam
This is book 2 of the Landon Snow series. In the first book, a boy named Landon Snow had discovered a secret passage in his grandfather's study that leads to the town's big library where books come alive at night. One of the books also serves as a passage � a passage to Wonderwodd inhabited by Odds, a small, dwarflike creatures. In this second book, Landon makes another trip to his grandfather. Naturally, he wonders whether he would be able to get to Won...


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|Is it time to start up again
Dec 23, 2001
Dear Dr Cohen:
Thanks for all your help. I wrote you several letters last year about taking an STI and your info was very helpful. I am now thinking about starting up again on medications.
I was on an Efaverenz/Combivir regime and took a break for a few reasons: I was going to be travelling and would find it hard to keep on schedule; also I was very worried about some side effects from Efaverenz (mantal vagueness). When I stopped meds CD4 was 600+, V/L was >40 (over 1 year).
I've had blood tests every 2 months. Ater the first my cd4 went down to 393, V/L up to 90,00. However, since then things have remained stable: last weeks results were V/L 93,000 and CD4 was 416. According to the lab where blood tests are done 405 is "normal."
My dr wants me to start up on meds, but I'm not so sure. Admittedly V/L is higher than I'd like but then CD4 are also much higherthan I'd anticipated. More importantly I'm feeling great: I've been exercising, eating well and feel better than when I was on the neds (the side effects were really an issue).
What do you think?
When I do start meds I do not want to go back to Efaverenz. DO ou have any ideas about a substitute? I was very happy with the clinical results but I prefer to be able to think clearly!
Response from Dr. Cohen
Hey Mark. Glad the prior info was of help. Let's try again.
You describe the common outcome from med interruptions of this type - an initial drop in the CD4 counts - and return of the viral load. So now you are back in the dilemma that others are who have never taken antivirals at all - when to start/restart?
And, like with treatment interruptions in general, and treatment overall, there are no simple answers without controversy and disagreement. It is however fair to say that we have info to suggest that you could safely restart now, but you can safely defer if you prefer to do so, especially if you are feeling well.
Despite a "higher end" viral load (and anything above 100 thousand is often consider "higher"), we have examples of others who have done well off antivirals - deferring starting/restarting until some lower CD4 count. This line in the sand of when to restart differs among practioners - a CD4 count somewhere between now and a count closer to 250 is about where everyone is. Sounds like your clinician is more comfortable at the higher end. And there are good reasons for that decision. Since more virus usually just creates trouble in time...
But, sounds like you are simply not yet ready, nor convinced. And that is one of the key issues in helping know what the right time is - since if you are not ready, odds are good that you may not do the best you can at pill taking. And since you can wait, perhaps the key issue for now is a discussion with your clinician about what you want to use as triggers to restart. Like any early symptoms of not feeling right. Like some lower counts as well perhaps. The viral load is mainly a measure of how fast Cd4 counts will drop - but we can only generalize from our info - your response is ultimately something we can tell only by monitoring.
This issue is so central a discussion - how long to wait versus how soon to start/restart - that the NIH in the US has started a trial being done at 20 sites across the US and Australia to address this. The trial is called SMART, and the web site is www.smart-trial.org . One group will be assigned to start meds now - get that virus under control with the best feeling meds we can find... since who wants 90thousand copies of HIV floating around every milliliter of blood anyway? And this approach might include brief interruption of 7 or fewer days based on what we're learning about the time to viral rebound for those whose viral loads are <50 copies.
The other group will be assigned to wait. Like you are now. In the study, the triggers to restart are either a Cd4 count of 250 or less, or any symptoms suggesting you need to restart sooner. There are some other keys such as cd4 percent that can be used as well. But to wait - allowing you to have as much time off the meds as possible, delaying the use of meds, delaying the side effects from meds... until your body needed the help. And then when your cd4 count rose somewhere above 350 again - you could stop again. Minimizing time on meds, and hopefully staying as well for years to come - as you apparently feel now... with fewer total days on meds.
So no wonder we don't know what to recommend yet - this trial and others like it are only just beginning Jan 02... and it'll be a while before we expect to see a difference. Because for the past few years we know that people can stay on. And people can stop. And people can do well, and not so well, with either approach.
As for what to take when you do restart - you certainly can avoid efavirenz/sustiva if you need to. It is about the only med in the group that has the mental vagueness issues. What to use instead in part depends on other factors, like any other prior regimens before this one, and any other potential side effects that may limit or direct our choices one way or another...
Good luck. Hope that helps a bit.
Sustiva and drug testing
How to stop long-lived med like Viramune?
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NC mom charged with DWI for 2nd time in month
8-year-old child was in car, police say
NC mom charged with DWI for 2nd time in month
8-year-old child was in car, police say
Authorities in Gastonia have charged a woman with driving while impaired involving her children for the second time in a month.
The Gaston Gazette reports police said 36-year-old Elizabeth Cher Drawdy was involved in a wreck with her 8-year-old child in the car on Thursday. An officer said she was unsteady on her feet and smelled of alcohol.
Drawdy is jailed under $10,000 bond on charges of DWI, misdemeanor child abuse, failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident and driving with a revoked license. It's not known if she has an attorney.
In August, Drawdy was charged with DWI and contributing to the delinquency of a minor after police say she and another mother went out drinking and left their children and other youngsters home alone.


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Most people who played Mafia have heard of the popular mod for Mafia called "Modern Mod". Well i downloaded the mod a couple of months ago and i got started putting more content into it and more and more. Soon i put some of the files from Crantell City mod into the modern mod and now i got a mod that looks like a fully real modern city. I just want to share my creation with all of you. Here are the mods i used. Modern Mod v2.0- A mod which brings Mafia:City of Lost Heaven to modern times. The authors are the "Modern Mod Team". Cantrell city mod- a mod which brings the city to modern times with a new story and all. The author is ESAUL. Mafia Trees Project-Changes trees from 2d to 3D author is fOWNER So with these mods i was able to make the city of Lost Heaven go from the 1930's to the 2000's!!!!! I give all the credit to the people who made the original content a few years back when those mods where released.
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Recalcitrant lawmakers should explain to voters why they refuse to get behind the federal fight against domestic violence and sexual assaults. http://nyti.ms/wgrw9P
Thursday, February 9, 2012
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Peabody-award winning journalist Doug Levy covered medicine for USA TODAY and other major media for more than 10 years. On this blog, he posts observations, commentary and quirks on the road or from his home base in San Francisco. For more about Doug, visit douglevy.com. For Doug's commentary about food and wine, visit wineandfoodworld.com.