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CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Convention Watch shows you the 2012 political conventions through the eyes of Associated Press journalists. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.
She spoke of quiet moments, of a relationship's early days — of a man who, seen through her eyes, is not a world leader but a husband and a partner.
Michelle Obama gave a remarkably personal account of her husband and their marriage in her speech to the Democratic convention. In a voice often soft, even girlish, the first lady talked about things like the quiet hours in the evening when the president sits hunched over a desk, worrying about people who are facing troubles. She talked about how he would check their baby daughters' breathing at times just to make sure they still were alive.
Now that they are older, she said, he patiently explains world issues to them at the dinner table and strategizes about middle-school friendships. She got a rueful, friendly laugh from the crowd when she described how, when they first dated, he had so little money that the rust on his car had eaten a hole through the passenger-side door.
Like Ann Romney's speech at the Republican convention last week, the first lady's remarks focused almost exclusively on deeply personal stories. They may well have been true, but they were also precisely calibrated — a nationally televised attempt to humanize a man who some voters have found aloof, even arrogant.
Obama has spoken of more inward things on several occasions in recent months, from his admission that he got a shellacking in the 2010 elections to his recent grading of his own handling of the economy as "incomplete." But he rarely speaks openly about personal vulnerabilities or provides much insight into his feelings.
On Tuesday night, his wife did it for him.
— Sally Buzbee
Michelle Obama had a sly rebuke for Republicans who've been making hay of her husband's "you didn't build that" remark.
Mitt Romney and his supporters say President Barack Obama's comment shows he values government over entrepreneurs struggling to build their own businesses. The president says he was talking about the importance of teachers, roads and other government works that businesses rely on.
Mrs. Obama, in her speech to the Democratic convention, gently revisited the issue as she talked about lessons she and her husband learned from their families.
"We learned about gratitude and humility — that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean — and we were taught to value everyone's contribution and treat everyone with respect," the first lady said.
She also responded indirectly to her rival Ann Romney's criticism of Democrats who've attacked Mitt Romney's success in business.
"Our families weren't asking for much," Mrs. Romney said. "They didn't begrudge anyone else's success or care that others had much more than they did — in fact, they admired it."
— Connie Cass —Twitter http://twitter.com/ConnieCass
Julian Castro paid tribute to his late grandmother Victoria and his mother Rosie with a memorable line.
"My mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone," the keynote speaker told the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night.
The San Antonio mayor recalled his "unlikely journey" from the son of a Latino activist to the convention stage. He said Victoria cleaned other people's houses so she could rent her own. His mother was the first in the family to graduate from college. That legacy of hard work propelled him to a prime-time speaking slot at the convention in Charlotte, N.C.
Castro said he was proud of his mom, and he thanked her.
— Donna Cassata — Twitter http://twitter.com/DonnaCassataAP
She never mentioned Mitt Romney's name, but Michelle Obama worked in some not-too-subtle digs against the GOP nominee in her prime-time speech Tuesday.
The Obama campaign has worked hard to portray Romney as a rich Wall Street operator who has been able to amass his wealth in part by taking advantage of tax loopholes not available to the average Joe.
Mrs. Obama reinforced the message when she talked about the values that she and her husband, the president, learned when they were growing up.
"We learned about dignity and decency — that how hard you work matters more than how much you make, that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself," she said. "We learned about honesty and integrity — that the truth matters, that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules, and success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square."
— Stephen Ohlemacher — Twitter http://twitter.com/stephenatap
"Today, after so many struggles and triumphs and moments that have tested my husband in ways I never could have imagined, I have seen firsthand that being president doesn't change who you are — no, it reveals who you are." — First lady Michelle Obama, on her husband.
The man who succeeded Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts delivered a fiery message to Democrats — show some backbone.
Gov. Deval Patrick, who took the helm in Massachusetts in 2007, energized the delegates Tuesday night with a harsh attack on Romney's record in the statehouse. He dismissed Republican policies and implored Democrats to help President Barack Obama secure another term.
"If we want to win elections in November and keep our country moving forward, if we want to earn the privilege to lead, my message is this: It's time for Democrats to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe!" Patrick said to a roar from the crowd.
"Quit waiting for pundits or polls or super PACs to tell us who the next president or senator or congressman is going to be. We're Americans. We shape our own future. Let's start by standing up for President Barack Obama."
— Donna Cassata — Twitter http://twitter.com/DonnaCassataAP
One thing is noticeably missing from Democrats' speeches at their convention so far: discussion of how to pay for the programs they are urging.
Many speakers have called for more investment in higher education, more money spent on infrastructure, more for early childhood education. But few of the Democratic speakers have focused on the country's budget deficit or how they would rein it in. That of course was a big focus of the Republican convention last week, even though the Republicans were short on specifics.
One of the rare speakers who did address the question was San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. He spoke of the longtime Democratic position that wealthy people in America should pay a greater share of the nation's taxes. Republicans want to keep taxes lower across the board. The fight over whether to retain President Bush's tax cuts is one of the main differences between this year's candidates.
— Sally Buzbee
"The Romney-Ryan budget doesn't just cut public education, cut Medicare, cut transportation and cut job training. It doesn't just pummel the middle class_it dismantles it. It dismantles what generations before have built to ensure that everybody can enter and stay in the middle class." — San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, Tuesday night's keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
Mitt Romney's past use of a Swiss bank account is getting a lot of notice at the Democratic convention.
First, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland criticized the Republican nominee for what he called a lack of economic patriotism, citing his overseas accounts. Romney has investments in Cayman Island-based funds and previously held a Swiss account.
Shortly after Strickland's talk, Lilly Ledbetter, a women's activist, talked about inequality in pay between men and women doing similar jobs. Women earn just 77 cents for every dollar men make, she told the crowd. "Maybe 23 cents doesn't sound like a lot to someone with a Swiss bank account," she told the crowd to roars. But, she said, it means a lot to average women.
Democrats have long sought to gain advantage by highlighting Romney's wealth and his refusal to release more of his tax returns. Romney has said that he has been forthcoming about how he earned his money. Republicans went out of their way last week at their convention to highlight his charitable and humanitarian acts, including giving 10 percent each year to his church.
— Sally Buzbee
Basketball recruiting comes in many forms — phone calls, letters, text messages, emails — but not usually from the podium of the Democratic National Convention.
Oregon State men's basketball coach Craig Robinson, the brother of first lady Michelle Obama, used a convention speech along with President Barack Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-ng, to put in a plug for the Beavers, who finished 21-15 last year.
Said Robinson: "Any seven-footers out there, gimme a call!"
— Ken Thomas — Twitter http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas
What a difference four years can make. During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, Hillary Clinton tried to raise doubts about Barack Obama's readiness to be president by wondering how he would handle an emergency call in the middle of the night. Could he handle that 4 a.m. call signaling a global crisis?
This time around, Obama is the incumbent president, a veteran of four years of crises in the Iraq and Afghan wars, drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen, and the decision to launch a Navy SEALs attack on terror leader Osama bin Laden.
So it was unsurprising — but certainly an interesting echo — when Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, suggested that this time around, voters should worry about Republican Mitt Romney's lack of experience on foreign affairs.
"Now, one thing I know with absolute certainty .... is that in the next four years, an unforeseen crisis, challenge or conflict is going to seize the country," said Emanuel, now Chicago's mayor. "Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?"
Times have changed, indeed.
— Sally Buzbee
Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is channeling Midwestern populism and heaping on some humor as he lays out the Democrats' "case against Romney."
"If Mitt was Santa Claus, he'd fire the reindeer and outsource the elves," Strickland says in one of a series of sharp quips aimed at the Republican nominee for president.
Strickland argues that Americans shouldn't trust the former Massachusetts governor — a multimillionaire private equity firm founder — because Romney has held some of his investments in overseas accounts and refuses to release all of his tax returns.
"Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps," Strickland says.
He says any person who aspires to be president "should keep both his treasure and his heart in the United States of America."
Polls indicate that many voters feel Romney does not understand their day-to-day financial problems.
— Sally Buzbee
Kal Penn, he of "Harold and Kumar" and "House" renown, brought down the latter at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night with a good-humored speech filled with far too many quips for us to transcribe in real time.
He juxtaposed gay marriage and the death of Osama bin Laden in the same sentence. He joked about what the Twitter hashtag on his speech would be (his recommendation: "sexyface"). He recounted a variety of experiences that he said showed him that change under Barack Obama had indeed been change he could believe in.
And Penn, who has volunteered or worked for Obama since 2007, asked for continuing voter engagement — particularly from the nation's young people, particularly online.
Which manifested itself this way: "I ask all of you young people to join me. You don't even have to put pants on."
Now is that a campaign slogan for the 21st century or what?
— Ted Anthony — http://twitter.com/anthonyted
Look who's tweeting from the floor of the Democratic convention: Sean Spicer, the communications director of the Republican National Committee.
A week after Obama adviser Robert Gibbs showed up at Republicans' get-together in Tampa, Fla., Spicer is venturing into the center of the opposition in Charlotte, N.C.
So far, Spicer has noted his thoughts on the size of the convention floor — "much smaller than our convention in Tampa" — and posed good naturedly with Jennifer Crider, spokeswoman for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
He jokes that Crider believes "(at)mittromney is the man 2 lead country and get people back to work."
Not so, Crider shot back: "Showing him ... how (at)BarackObama is going to win."
— Henry C. Jackson — Twitter http://twitter.com/hjacksonap
"If Mitt was Santa Claus, he would fire the reindeer and outsource the elves." — Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, on Romney.
Amid the nods to America's red, white and blue, attention at the Democratic National Convention has been paid to gray — as in the noticeable change in 51-year-old President Barack Obama's hair since taking office.
Obama has chalked it up to genetics over stress. But Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak told delegates Tuesday that it's a testament to his toughness.
"President Obama has earned every gray hair on his head, fighting for the middle class and every American," Rybak said.
— Brian Bakst — Twitter http://twitter.com/Stowydad
President Barack Obama is staying home for Michelle Obama's convention speech. Vice President Joe Biden is not.
Biden arrived at the Democratic convention hall Tuesday night and made small talk with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in the luxury boxes. Other leaders of organized labor were there as well, posing for pictures with Biden before Mrs. Obama addressed the delegates in the hall and millions watching on television. The president said he would watch Mrs. Obama from the White House.
Labor leaders were frustrated with the choice of Charlotte, N.C., as the convention's host city. There is not a single unionized hotel in the city and North Carolina has the lowest percentage of unionized workers. Some labor groups stayed away and threatened to stay on the sidelines.
Biden, who is the administration's ambassador to labor groups, was dispatched to calm those frustrations as the convention got under way. He spent Monday in Detroit rallying workers on Labor Day and planned to continue a pro-union message in his campaign speeches.
Biden and Obama are set to accept the Democrats' nomination on Thursday.
— Philip Elliott — Twitter http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott
Jill Biden is on the floor of the Democrats' convention.
Vice President Job Biden's wife is meeting with delegates in the aisles as the convention gets under way. Supporters are tripping over themselves to shake hands with Mrs. Biden, a professor who has made community colleges her issue. She and her husband arrived at the Charlotte, N.C., convention hall Tuesday ahead of Michelle Obama's speech.
The vice president and President Barack Obama are set to speak on Thursday.
Philip Elliott — Twitter http://twitter.com/philip_elliott
Former President Jimmy Carter delivered a 4-minute video address to the Democratic convention, saying Obama offered a "clear choice" for voters. As Carter's image beamed into the arena, Republican Mitt Romney's campaign issued a news release declaring, "Welcome Back, Carter!"
Republicans have tried to tie Obama to Carter, comparing the current unemployment rate of 8.3 percent to the economic "malaise" of the late 1970s. A Romney spokesman said by choosing Carter to appear on the opening night of the convention, Obama "chose a fitting surrogate."
In the video address, Carter credited Obama with helping middle-class families, saying he "always put the interests of middle-class Americans above those who often, with the larger wallets, have an ever louder voice."
— Ken Thomas: http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas
A gauzy video tribute to former Sen. Ted Kennedy included some vintage footage of the Massachusetts Democrat debating Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney during their 1994 Senate race.
Republicans didn't find it very funny.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus took to Twitter just minutes after the video ended to rip Democrats for including the clip, which includes a couple of classic Kennedy lines from the race with Romney, including, "I am pro-choice. Mitt Romney is multiple choice."
"Classless Dems use tribute video of deceased Ted Kennedy to attack Mitt Romney," Priebus tweeted.
— Henry C. Jackson — Twitter http://twitter.com/hjacksonap
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid again challenged Mitt Romney on taxes Tuesday, saying: "When you look at the one tax return he has released, it's obvious why there's been only one." Reid went on to say, "We can only imagine what new secrets would be revealed if he showed the American people a dozen years of tax returns like his father did."
But Reid did not repeat earlier accusations that over the past 10 years, that there had been some years in which Romney had no tax liability — a claim Romney has said is false.
"Mitt Romney says we should take his word that he paid his fair share," Reid said. "His word? His word? Trust comes from transparency, and Mitt Romney comes up short on both."
— Tom Raum — http://twitter.com/tomraum
Just as the Republicans brought out the words and images of their deceased icon, Ronald Reagan, at their convention last week, the Democrats on Tuesday unspooled video of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., but with an extra little twist: They showed the liberal standard-bearer debating Mitt Romney in 1994.
The montage of footage depicted Kennedy on the attack, thundering against Romney on the issues and calling him someone who changes his mind far too often. Then the video zoomed forward 14 years, showing Kennedy in the final presidential political season of his life endorsing Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
It was yet another example of an event unique to the era of video mashup — an orchestrated political appearance and endorsement by an icon who has passed on. And by couching the politics — Kennedy explicitly opposing Romney and supporting Obama — in a music-backed tribute video, they adeptly juxtaposed partisanship and high nostalgia.
Kennedy died in 2009, eight months after Barack Obama took office. He was introduced by his great-nephew, Joe Kennedy III, a candidate for the U.S. House from Massachusetts.
— Ted Anthony — Twitter http://twitter.com/anthontyed
"He has done it all in the face of bitter, unyielding, in fact unprecedented partisan opposition." — former President Jimmy Carter, enumerating at the Democratic National Convention (on video, not in person) what he calls Barack Obama's victories in the past four years.
The women's vote is crucial to Barack Obama's hopes in 2012. So the party created an image designed to appeal to female voters early in its convention Tuesday night: eight women running for re-election or election to Congress standing shoulder to shoulder across the stage.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led them, and each said a few words about topics including equal pay for equal work, women's health, violence against women, women in uniform, and "the power of moms in the economy."
— Connie Cass —Twitter http://twitter.com/ConnieCass
The first lady takes the stage tonight as the most popular figure in this year's presidential campaign. Michelle Obama earns higher favorability ratings than her husband, his Republican rival, the other contender for first lady or either candidate for the vice presidency, according to the latest Associated Press-GfK poll.
In the poll, conducted before the Republican convention began, 64 percent of Americans said they had a favorable view of Mrs. Obama. President Obama came in at 53 percent favorable, Mitt Romney landed at 44 percent and his wife Ann Romney stood at 40 percent. Joe Biden earned a 42 percent favorability rating; Paul Ryan, 38 percent.
Views of Mrs. Obama tilt favorably among independents and women, two focal points in her husband's campaign for re-election. She garners favorable reviews from 56 percent of independents and is viewed unfavorably by just 18 percent in this group.
Among women, her ratings soar to 72 percent favorable, compared with 55 percent among men. The gender gap is particularly pronounced among Republicans (26 percent of GOP men have a favorable view of the first lady, 52 percent of Republican women do) and married people (75 percent of married women view the first lady favorably compared with 50 percent of married men).
— Jennifer Agiesta — http://twitter.com/jennagiesta
With all respect to Clint Eastwood, some Democrats want Betty White to make their day.
Some Democrats are leading an effort to bring in the actress to speak at this week's Democratic National Convention — essentially to serve as a counter to the role that Clint Eastwood played last week in helping to introduce Mitt Romney at the Republican convention.
A petition at the website change.org says that Eastwood "gave a bad name to older Americans everywhere with his absurd and awkward-to-watch introduction of Governor Romney."
"Governor Romney can have Clint Eastwood and his improvisational skills because President Obama has the one and only Betty White!" the petition said.
Supporters of the effort are encouraged to go to a Facebook page entitled "Bring Betty White to the DNC." More than 33,000 people have liked the page so far.
White told The Associated Press in May that she normally stays away from politics because she doesn't want to alienate fans, but this year she wants to see Obama re-elected. There's no indication yet that the efforts to recruit White will bear fruit.
— Kevin Freking — Twitter http://twitter.com/APkfreking
Campaign 2012 is all about jobs.
The next unemployment report from the Labor Department comes out Friday morning, but President Barack Obama typically gets a peek the night before.
So will the president be privy to that closely watched data when he addresses the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night?
White House and campaign aides say they don't know.
Here's what to expect either way: Economists believe the report will show job gains of around 135,000 or so, but they expect the unemployment rate to hang at 8.3 percent. Anything under 100,000 new jobs would raise concerns that hiring is slowing as the economy sputters. Or the president could get a post-speech bounce if the figure tops 175,000.
There will be two more jobs reports before the election: Oct. 5 and Nov. 2.
— Christopher S. Rugaber — Twitter http://twitter.com/ChrisRugaber


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St. Johnstone Football Club is renowned for first class facilities, fully equipped conference suites, exceptional food and bespoke event service. Our impressive portfolio of regular customers believe us to be ideally located within Perth and Scotland. Our conference facilities are versatile, we have plentiful free car parking and our friendly staff offer exceptional customer service and peace of mind to allow the organiser to enjoy the event as much as their guests.
With nine conference rooms available for hire, from the spacious and versatile Centenary and Muirton Suites with banqueting & dancing capacities of 80, through to the exclusivity of our 12-capacity Boardroom and Chairman's Suite for intimate celebrations. This, combined with our unique and spectacular backdrop of one of the first purpose-built all-seated football stadiums in the UK, seating 10740, presents a corporate and special event venue... with a difference.
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©Copyright 2008 - 2018, all rights reserved.
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Unless otherwise stated all photographs on this site are © Perthshire Picture Agency and may not be used without permission.
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Play BP Offshore Oil Strike
70s board game family fun
In the 1970s, an obscure board games publisher called Printabox collaborated with BP to design a game called BP Offshore Oil Strike.
Will You Strike Oil, Dry Hole or Hazard?
Here are some rules (courtesy of Boardgamegeek):
Two to four players compete at exploring for oil, building platforms, and laying pipelines to bring the offshore oil back to the player's home company. Players take on the roles of either BP (Hull), Amoco (Bergen), Chevron (Rotterdam) or Mobil (Dieppe) in their quest for oil. As with other games focusing on offshore oil exploitation (e.g., Omnia's North Sea Oil), there is also the risk that storms will reduce production on, or eliminate, one's oil platforms. The first player to make $120,000,000 in cash is the winner.
It could be yours - at least two copies of the game are for sale on eBay UK. You too can enjoy:
"The Thrills of Drilling,the Hazards and Rewards As You Bring in Your Own Offshore Oil Strike."
This doesn't sound like a game you can afford to lose. We think we'll pass for something less rewarding.
Hat tip to Enzo


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text: URMC / Encyclopedia / Content Arginine Other name(s): a-amino-d-guanidino-n-valeric acid Unsubstantiated claims Please note that this section reports on claims that have yet been substantiated through scientific studies. Arginine is claimed to improve fertility in men. It does this by increasing sperm count. It may also help stimulate the output of human growth hormone (HGH). Plus, it may increase collagen in connective tissue (found in every organ in the body). Arginine may help reduce fatigue and increase muscle mass. It may also help wounds heal. It may also help treat diabetes and liver disease. There are some indications that arginine may help fight cancer. It may also aid in treating HIV and AIDS. Recommended intake Amino acids (AAs) are available as individual AAs or in AA combinations. They also come as part of multi-vitamins, proteins, and food supplements. The forms include tablets, fluids, and powders. Note that by eating enough protein in your diet, you get all of the amino acids you need. There are no conditions that increase the requirements for arginine. However, newborns have higher requirements than adults. Side effects, toxicity, and interactions Using a single amino acid supplement may lead to negative nitrogen balance. This can decrease how efficient your metabolism is. It can also make your kidneys work harder. In children, taking single amino acid supplements may also cause growth problems. You should not take high doses of individual amino acids for long periods of time. If you have diabetes, liver or kidney problems, or an electrolyte imbalance, talk to your healthcare provider before using arginine. It may cause high potassium levels in your blood. This can be life-threatening. The following people should not use arginine supplements: Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding Children and teens People with an active herpes infection Medical Reviewers: Poulson, Brittany, RD Wilkins, Joanna, R.D., C.D.


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Manchester school budget heads to finish lineBy BILL SMITH
New Hampshire Union Leader
June 23. 2013 10:48PM
MANCHESTER — Members of the Board of School Committee will be asked tonight to approve a budget that includes hiring 10 new teachers and filling vacancies left by 14 retiring teachers — a reversal of fortune for a district that a year ago had to fire 76 teachers and leave dozens of positions unfilled in order to pay its bills.
The board will hold a public hearing tonight on a proposed $156.7 million school budget, after which it is expected to vote on school spending for next year. The spending proposal includes $1 million in additional school funding approved by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen a couple of weeks ago.
The school board also must balance some newly discovered budget savings with newly discovered expenses.
Superintendent Thomas Brennan, who today begins his final week on the job, late last week sent board members his revised budget recommendations.
Brennan proposes spending $484,000 to hire 10 new teachers, and another $678,000 to fill the 14 retirement vacancies. The superintendent also included $55,000 to pay for the committee's decision to make the district athletic director position full-time.
The district will save $190,000 from the unexpected retirement of eight employees whose replacements will earn less. The district also saves $544,000 in its new contract with unionized paraprofessionals.
The unexpected savings, however, are offset by some steep last-minute costs. The district has been hit with a dramatic increase in health care costs, which means a half-million dollar cut in the amount of left-over money — so-called expendable trusts — that was going to be used in next year's budget.
The district is also facing a bill for retirement costs that is nearly $67,000 higher than expected.
The 10 new teaching jobs are fewer than the 41 school board members requested in a $160 million "school approval" budget that members claimed was needed to meet state education requirements.
However, after a year in which cuts in the teaching staff led to a court battle over crowded high school classrooms, the ability to add teachers is a welcome change for some board members.
"I'm happy to be getting ten additional teachers," said board member Kathy Staub. "I wish we were getting more additional teachers, but you get what you get and have to do the best that you can."


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What we mean by "let's just be friends" is that we don't want to deepen and develop the relationship toward a particular end. Instead we want to go off in search of someone else with whom we can be more than friends. We won't really give our all to the friend. We want to save that for that special relationship, in which we will travel together toward a particular end. We save ourselves.
I think we are missing the boat. There is nothing more precious and beautiful than a true friend. I received a card today from a true friend. She wrote Thank you for all that you are and have been to me this year. I loved. I laughed. I learned and I grew. You are important to me.
I don't know where my relationship with this true friend "will go," but wherever it goes or doesn't go, I will be thrilled with love, laughter, learning and growth as the basis of the friendship. Wouldn't you? In fact, about how many of the relationships you thought were ""going somewhere"" can you say were a communion of love, laughter, learning and growth? Most are about the strain and tension and subtle coercion of trying to steer it in the direction of ""somewhere.""
We spend a lot of our time in these relationships working on the relationship, helping it to go somewhere. We constantly evaluate the relationship and estimate the progress towards ""somewhere."" When things don't go the way we had hoped, we'll call up one of our friends and invite them out for lunch. Then we talk with them for hours about our ""relationship."" We can often more easily share love and laughter, learning and growth with our friends. Of course, these friendships aren't going anywhere, are they? Then, if our relationship doesn't go where we want it to, we'll say to that person, who had formerly been a person with whom we were going to go somewhere, that we want to just be friends.
Is there something wrong with this picture?
I know most of us long for a special companion with whom we can share life's adventures. We do want to open ourselves and be intimate and revealing, without fear of rejection or criticism. We may want a mate with whom we can have a family. But can we go shopping for such a person? Has it worked for you?
Personally, I'd rather embrace another as a friend, and if I can do so, if the bond between us is natural and mutual and of love and laughter and learning and growth, I will be infinitely blessed and grateful. I don't want to hold anything of myself in reserve. I want to give all I have to my true friendships: they are rare enough. I don't know when another will come along. I certainly don't know when a "special" person will appear, but I won't want them to be anything less or different than a true friend. We may share certain experiences, like living together and having a family. This will happen naturally and by mutual consent. We won't have to make it go anywhere. The relationships we try to make go somewhere, don't.
I think we will enrich our lives tremendously by seeing the beauty of a true friendship. We ought to give everything we are to our friends. These people are gifts with whom we can share and deepen the most noble and uplifting of qualities: love, laughter, learning, and growth. I think that these friendships are the road to our own enlightenment, to the recognition of our most perfect and truest self.
Sometimes, life reveals an extraordinary facet of itself and of our place in it. This moment may come as we peer into the transition we call death; it may come in a stunning and secret moment of self-transcendence. What is revealed is wordlessly precise: life itself asks nothing but that we love, laugh, learn and grow. This is life itself. These are the mark on the target. This is how we are to live. We need not pursue anything else because this is the all.
Whenever we can experience with another this essence of life, we ought to go into it without pretense or fear or withholding. These are the sacred relationships. They will have different shapes and dimensions and experiences, but the underlying bond is of life itself. These rare people are those with whom we find the truest fulfillment, in love and laughter and learning and growth.
If a true friendship is a means by which my life is enriched with enlightenment, I'll settle for that. I don't want it to go anywhere else. That place will be fine enough for me. Whenever a friend appears in my life, I will try to give my all, to be worthy of that person's love, to love them back with everything I am. I will cherish that beautiful gift. I will hope to become my most perfect self through friendship, and I will hold my friends as their perfect selves, radiant and abundant and full, now. There is no need to go anywhere else.
May everyone be at peace, in love, and know their most perfect Self.
Robert Rabbin is an author, speaker, and advisor. He can be reached via e-mail at email@example.com, or by writing: 2629 Manhattan Ave., Ste. 192, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. His new book, The Sacred Hub (The Crossing Press, ISBN: 0-89594-837-0), is available in bookstores or from the publisher at (800) 777-1048.
His new book, The Sacred Hub (The Crossing Press, ISBN: 0-89594-837-0), is available through the bookstores nationwide.


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Career Technical Education
Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs are those offering individuals a sequence of courses that have challenging academic standards, provide relevant technical knowledge and the skills necessary to prepare for careers in current or emerging fields by attaining a certificate or associate degree. Skyline College offers relevant career programs in a variety of fields taught by experienced, award-winning faculty. Choose from an array of programs that allow students to begin a career in two years or less.


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This is a portfolio worth going through the link to have a looksee, though think there would be far more response if one or two were physically posted on the site.
...Thanks for the kind words of encouragement. I'm still learning the "best practices" of participating in this forum, and had some trouble on figuring out how to post images. Well i finally figured it out!


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Why: ARM Cortex® CPUs power 95 percent of the world's smartphones and tablets while Mali GPUs are the IP of choice for Android devices today, including smartphones, tablets and DTVs. As the number of global smartphone and tablet users surpasses the combined total of those with PCs and game consoles, game designers will face increased pressure to develop mobile games that replicate more traditional gaming experiences and provide more realistic visual effects.
Where: GDC 2014, Moscone Convention Center – 747 Howard St. San Francisco, CA. 94103
When: ARM and its Partners will present a number of technical sessions at GDC 2014, including:
Who: ARM® is at the heart of the world's most advanced digital products. Our technology enables the creation of new markets and transformation of industries and society. We design scalable, energy efficient-processors and related technologies to deliver the intelligence in applications ranging from sensors to servers, including smartphones, tablets, enterprise infrastructure and the Internet of Things.
Our innovative technology is licensed by ARM Partners who have shipped more than 50 billion Systems on Chip (SoCs) containing our intellectual property since the company began in 1990. Together with our Connected Community, we are breaking down barriers to innovation for developers, designers and engineers, ensuring a fast, reliable route to market for leading electronics companies. Learn more and join the conversation at http://community.arm.com.
ARM and Cortex are registered trademarks of ARM Limited (or its subsidiaries) in the EU and/or elsewhere. Mali is a trademark of ARM Limited (or its subsidiaries) in the EU and/or elsewhere. All rights reserved. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders.
"ARM" refers to ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM and NASDAQ: ARMH) and members of its corporate group as constituted from time to time.
None of the information contained in this document may be adapted, republished, or reproduced in any form except with the prior written permission of the copyright holder, but links may be posted directly to this document from other websites, and the whole of the document correctly attributed and unmodified may be shared freely, unless the copyright holder at any time withdraws these permissions.
This document is intended only to provide information to the reader about the relevant product(s) described or mentioned. All information is provided "as is" and without warranty. ARM makes no representation as to the product(s), and ARM shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising from the use of any information in this document or any error or omission in such information.


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Received this in an E-mail - if ya interested!
The Sourcefire VRT has learned of vulnerabilities affecting hosts using Sendmail and has identified additional attack vectors for
vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft HTML Help Workshop.
A race condition exists in versions of Sendmail, this vulnerability may
allow a remote attacker to execute code of their choosing on an
affected server. A programming error in the way that Sendmail handles
asynchronous signals may allow an attacker to overflow a fixed length
buffer by supplying a large amount of data in an email header.
A rule to detect attacks targeting this vulnerability is included in
this update and is identified as sid 5739.
HTML Help Workshop fails to properly validate file contents before
reading and putting information into a fixed length buffer. A malicious
file may contain information that could overflow the buffer and execute
code on the affected system.
Rules to detect attacks targeting this vulnerability are included in
this update and are identified as sids 5740 and 5741.
A detailed advisory as well as a complete list of modified and deleted
rules is available at
Download Rules:
These rules will be available to subscribers only until Monday, April
3, 2006. Subscribers can download the rules at


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Plastic-wrap, Altitude, Flours, oh my!
Hi all,
Love the site, excited about baking better bread.
I moved to rural Kenya in the past few months to teach music at a high school and have been frustrated by the lousy bread (mostly wonderbread, or a whole-wheat version thereof). I grew up in a French city and I love to cook, but my bread-baking has been limited to basic loaves from the Joy of Cooking. Now I'm trying to elaborate (the white loaf is a little boring), and I want to take a stab at the Rustic Bread (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/rusticbread) found on this site. I have a few questions:
1) I'm at fairly high altitude (about 7,000ft). Do I simply reduce slightly the amount of yeast I use?
2) The only yeast I can find locally is Instant, either in tiny packages or in 1KG packages (much to my surprise). Will this do? Should I be springing for the large packages (only thought here is that larger quantity implies bakery usage and therefore better quality).
3) I've found all-purpose and whole wheat flour, but many people here use a corn flour (maize flour) to make an "african cake" called ugali (it's a firm, gluey texture, just flour and water cooked). Can anyone suggest recipes that might use that flour? Can I mix it into regular bread recipes?
4) Is plastic-wrapping the Preferment necessary? I understand this is likely to seal in the moisture, but plastic-wrap would likely require a trip into Nairobi to find. Part of the reason baking my own bread is appealing is due to the fact that I can be a bit self-sufficient, so if I can avoid importing plastic-wrap I'd like to. Can I cover with a towel? Or cover with a plastic bag cut open with an elastic band around the edge of the bowl?
Thanks. I look forward to sharing my experiences and learning from yours! Now if only I could figure out how to import a copy of "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" ...


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Aone extreme, data storage is all about dealing with exploding quantities of digital landfill, such as the hundreds of employee mailboxes containing the same PowerPoint presentation everybody has forgotten about but keeps anyway, just in case.
At the other extreme, it is about mining a rich and previously undiscovered seam of information, which, if used properly, is the crucial business intelligence an organisation needs to help drive better performance.
And to complicate the extremes, there is the new push for improved corporate governance and compliance, which has major implications for data storage. Some regulators are even demanding the retention of phone calls.
The collective corporate memory, as embodied in an organisation's data, cannot be wiped, and needs to be protected from tampering. Preserved data might need to be interrogated at some future time on the digital witness stand, so needs as much memory as possible to get its story straight, and protect the reputation of the company.
Mountain climbing
Finding the right way through the data mountain is yet another dilemma for the organisation's IT infrastructure and involves so much more than making sure there is enough storage capacity available.
Most of the data, after all, is earmarked for the dump. Gartner estimates that 80 per cent of corporate data is never accessed again after being stored for more than seven days. But at the same time, some stored data comprises the organisations' crown jewels, which needs to be protected and kept under conditions of utmost security.
As if CIOs didn't have enough to keep them awake at night, they have to think about the links between their data storage and business continuity, disaster recover and security strategies.
"The challenge is to find what you are looking for in the morass of storage," says Barry Moore, the newly appointed CIO for travel operator Flight Centre.
"The task is to get rid of that stuff which is littering up the place, and identify the stuff you think is important so you can store it and retrieve it effectively."
Up until now, for us at least, it's been we need more storage, more storage and more storage; and we are yet to work up that strategic approach and squeeze some more efficiencies out of our infrastructure rather than just adding to it ad hoc."
Flying towards ROI Moore admits storage has largely been an exercise with "little or no return on investment (ROI). "
Flight Centre, he says, is forming a dedicated team to revisit the company's "entire IT infrastructure and how we do business." This will allow the organisation to take a fresh, and holistic approach to the storage issue, and come up with a solution that not only saves money, but takes a selective and strategic view of data.
Double trouble In Melbourne, Monash University CIO, Alan McMeekin, gives a typical estimate when he says his organisation's data storage is now doubling every two or three years.
It's a figure consistent with the rhetoric of the storage vendors, who say the amount of information hitting an organisation is increasing at 50 per cent per year. According to Hewlett Packard (HP), 85 per cent of that data is created by email, the dominant business trail.
"Previously we would put in a server for a particular application and then buy disk capacity for that, and allow some extra capacity for expansion," says McMeekin.
"But we've gone down the route of Storage Area Network (SAN) technology, where we have shared storage and just make that available to a whole range of applications and servers."
Archive and integrate
McMeekin says Monash's SAN was deployed "in a production sense" for the first time last year, after the university took about two years going through the procurement and evaluation process.
Monash has a dedicated archivist with responsibility for defining storage policy and separating wheat from chaff, and McMeekin says his task and that of his IT team is to reflect those policies. SANs, he says, are a "very effective solution" which will see the university through for the next few years.
"We have deployed a number of applications systems and they have their own databases, so we also have integration strategies, which ensure that as much as possible our databases are consistent," says McMeekin.
"But we also need to draw the data together in a way that possibly has never been done before, and to satisfy the information needs of various decision-makers."
Storage in the wilderness But not all organisations feel they need the SAN solution. Forestry Tasmania is a state government organisation with just under 600 employees, and CIO Sean Collins says that while he has evaluated the business case for SAN implementation, it is not stacking up quite yet.
"We've kept pretty much to directly attached storage, with each file server having its own drives, so we haven't gone down that SAN path," says Collins.
"Each time I look at it I weigh up the pros and cons and the thing which is making me think more about it is email and the need to archive it, but it's not [yet] at that point.
"We always look at it when we have to think about what's going to happen with one of our big servers, and that's about 12 to 18 months away."
Collins says he has implemented one anti-spam solution, which is catching about 20 per cent of the incoming mail, and plans to implement another soon through the organisation's ISP, which will lift the percentage to around 40 per cent. He has also introduced email quotas.
To make sense of the data, Collins says he and his team have developed a "home-grown digital dashboard", which delivers regular reports to management on issues such as the state of the organisation's main assets, the forests.
"The nature of our business isn't that we need snapshots every day or second day, so we've been able to get by with a dashboard as a series of reports which run against transactional data every month," he says.
The reports are run overnight and do not impact on the transactional systems. "We couldn't do that if our requirements were heavier of course, we'd have to look at some sort of data warehouse."
Mining issues
Keeping it simple and cost-effective is not so easy for all organisations, though. When it comes to mining stored data, problems vary depending on the size of the company, amount of storage used and volume of data collected.
Analyst Graham Penn, IDC's director of Asia Pacific storage research, says a problem for organisations that want to use intense data mining tools is that they "require heaps more storage" and replicated versions of databases.
"You need to take a database and replicate it and do your analysis on that replicated version rather than the live version, which you need for continual updates," says Penn.
"For most working databases there tend to be eight or nine copies, and if you go down the data mining path you can easily understand how that can happen."
Penn notes the trend towards centralised storage, and the "de-coupling" of storage from servers, and says it is only going to continue. This, however, is only part of the solution.
Building Value "Mostly, storage is an expense but the smart organisations are starting to use the data to build business value," says Penn.
"Organisations which are just continuing to store the information and treat it as only a cost are getting further and further behind their smarter competitors."
The advent of RFID (radio frequency identification), for example, means a large amount of new information will start to be generated by companies using the technology.
"It is tracking information as the product moves through the distribution chain but it can also be used for other purposes in the data mining area to improve business processes," Penn says.
Smart organisations, he says, are looking at data storage holistically as a contributor to organisational value. And while some organisations, such as Qantas, are happy to outsource their data storage, most still want to do it in-house. Penn says data storage can be the critical repository which helps drive an organisation's vision of the future: "So the why of storage is more important than the what."
Get smart
Penn estimates organisations have to "get smarter by about 45 per cent per annum to be able to handle the growth in data."The vendors are already tapping into this need. HP, for example, has almost ditched the concept of data storage and is now talking about information life-cycle management (ILM), the management of information 'from cradle to grave'.
California-based Jean-Luc Chatelain is HP's ILM technical director and "chief evangelist" - an official title. He says effective ILM delivers the holy trinity of reducing cost, enabling compliance, and boosting efficiency and performance. "Just think about people's mailboxes... They are full of PowerPoint and Excel and we all have 12 copies of the same spreadsheet and PDF, and that creates a lot of duplication for the IT department to back up."
A single solution Chatelain preaches that with proper ILM technology, companies can do single instancing, meaning only one central copy is kept, which staff have a link to, but it looks exactly the same in their mailbox. Effective ILM practice, he claims, can cut up to 70 per cent off the total cost of email management. Not only that, but it stores data according to established policy.
"In the past we were managing storage in a void without understanding what the application was doing with it," says Chatelain. "But now, there is a tight link between the data, the application and the policy, and that is the link which helps transform data into information and intelligence."


text:
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Rooms and suites show a gentle use of simple lines and almost imperceptible curves, creating a perfect blend of innovative setup style combined with classic elegance.
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Opened in 1889, the Majestic is located on the Via Veneto near the Villa Borghese Gardens, the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps.
Deluxe king/twin up to 35SQM w/Via Veneto or surrounding street views
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Clothes definitely make the man at Brioni, known for the impeccable craftsmanship of its handtailored men's suits and the timeless elegance of its prêt-à-porter line of shirts, trousers and accessories. Via Condotti 25/A. (39-6) 485-855; www.brioni.it.
Located in picturesque Piazza Farnese and open only for dinner, this restaurant serves superb Italian specialties in an elegant setting. Piazza Farnese. (39-6) 6874927; www.ristorantecamponeschi.it.
The two museums, Museo Capitolino and Palazzo dei Conservatori, that flank Piazza del Campidoglio were designed by Michaelangelo and house the greatest collections of classical sculpture in the world. Via del Campidoglio 1. (39-6) 8209-9127; www.museicapitolini.org.
Rome's museums and churches are full of Caravaggio paintings, but almost no one knows about his only mural, "Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto," painted on the ceiling of Casino di Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi. Via Lombardia 46. (39-6) 483-942.
At this hip but romantic bar-restaurant you can sit beside the Tiber and enjoy a spectacular view of the illuminated dome of St. Peter's silhouetted against the night sky. Via dei Soldati 25. (39-6) 6830-1192; www.hdo.it.
Chef Angelo Troiani and his team use the finest regional and seasonal organic products to create memorable Italian cuisine served in a lovely dining room in a historic building. Vicolo dei Soldati 31. (39-6) 686-9432; www.ilconviviotroiani.com.
This secret, elevated passage was built in the 13th century by Pope Nicholas III to connect Vatican City with Castel Sant'Angelo and was often used as a papal escape route in times of danger. Enter from Castel Sant'Angelo, Lungotevere Castello 50. (39-6) 681-9111.
The extensive ruins of Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and preserved for centuries beneath lava, provide a fascinating glimpse of a prosperous ancient city. www.scavidipompei.it.
Savelli on St. Peter's Square has been selling Rome's finest selection of religious items—rosaries, chains, charms, mosaics, even holy-water fountains—for more than a century. Via Paolo VI, 27. (39-6) 6830-7017; www.savellireligious.com.
Scornful Romans call it "the wedding cake," but his grandiose white-marble monument to the first king of unified Italy, completed in 1935, maintains a commanding presence in the heart of Rome. Piazza Venezia. (39-6) 678-0664.
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text:
What's the stickiest SQL Server problem you've ever solved? Send a 600-800 word description of your tough database admin, development, or business intelligence problem and how you solved it to [email protected] by Friday, September 24th. Your entry will be posted on SQL Mag's Database Administration blog where SQL Mag readers can vote on their favorite story October 1–8th. The two stories with the most votes will win Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN subscriptions, courtesy of SQL Mag author Derek Comingore. All entries must be real-life, SQL Server–related stories and include both the problem and solution. We will contact the winners by October 15th. Good luck!
Also, Derek asks that you check out www.destinyofachild.com/about-us.aspx.


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greyhoundtom wrote:jcjordan wrote:
Mind you I am also a fan of aging tires, especially tubs, for at least 12 months before use.
With all the different compounds being used these day's in the manufacture of tyres, would aging a tyre still have the same effect of making them wear better as it did 10/15 years ago?
Based on my experience it still matters. I have a substantially better time against punctures when the tire is aged.


text:
General Mills has added another flavor of gluten-free Chex to its lineup: Apple Cinnamon. This addition makes six flavors (Honey Nut, Rice, Corn, Chocolate, and Cinnamon) that are gluten free and on supermarket shelves around the country.
Apple Cinnamon Chex Has:
- No artificial colors or flavors
- Sprinkled with real apple and cinnamon
- 8 grams of sugar per serving
- 9 grams of whole grain (at least 48 grams recommended daily)
When the first batch of gluten-free Chex cereals were released I had more luck finding them at Walmart than at the grocery store, but if you just can't wait to find them locally you can order them at Amazon.com and at GlutenFreely.com online where they are on sale now. Read More »


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The FBI has raided the office of a Florida doctor who is a longtime ally of Sen. Bob Menendez.
FBI agents hauled several vans of evidence from the office of Dr. Salomon Melgen in West Palm Beach late Tuesday, according to the Miami Herald.
Investigators are believed to be probing the eye doctor's finances and alleged trips the senator made to the Dominican Republic, including claims made by purported prostitutes there. Menendez has denied the allegations. A spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment on the raid.
Ties between Menendez and Melgen first made news in November, when Tucker Carlson's conservative Daily Caller reported the claims.
Last week, a dossier of emails about the allegations, purportedly between an FBI agent and a tipster, began circulating.
Menendez told the Daily Caller on Monday that those reports are "fallacious allegations."
Melgen is also a contributor to Menendez and other politicians.
The doctor owns a private plane and frequently travels between Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, according to the Herald. Menendez has flown on the plane at least once, but his office has said he did nothing improper.
Contact Emily Babay at 215-854-2153 or firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow @emilybabay on Twitter.
Contact the Breaking News Desk at 215-854-2443; firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow @phillynews on Twitter.


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Sienna's New Mum Glow
Sienna covers the Harper's Bazaar UK January issue with a 60s-style photoshoot and interview. A few excerpts have been released and of course the quotes grabbing the most attention are about her mothering style, her "post-baby body" and thoughts on having help.
I'm seriously digging Sienna as a mom: first the nude portrait, and now this feature. She does have an almost child-like candor in her interviews -- she says a lot but is probably not meaning to say a lot. As she tells Harper's, "We are going to get a nanny, but it felt first important to learn for myself who I was as a parent." When do you really know who you are as a parent? I have no idea but it doesn't sound like she does either.
But her admission that yes, they will have help, is out of step with most actresses. "I don't have a nanny" is the celebrity motherhood equivalent of a tween pop star declaring, "I'm staying a virgin until I get married." Looks good in print, but quite unrealistic in the real world.
Why the nanny shame? I know actresses love to talk about bringing their kids to set like it's a giant daycare, but it is work. They are being paid a lot of money to do a job, and at the end of the day I'm sure the producer/director doesn't give a flying f-ck who is watching your kid, as long as you are on set and ready to go.
Most celebrity moms won't say they want or will get a nanny; few admit that they have a nanny (or three). And that's the right word - "admit" - because it's like confessing to something unsavory. Being photographed with a nanny? Unthinkable. The key message has to be, "I don't want someone else raising my children."
Well no kidding, I don't imagine there are many people who get pregnant and think, "Can't wait for the nanny to raise this thing!" But there's perception and reality: if both parents work, childcare is essential. Yet the MiniVan Majority has made it clear that a nanny is an indulgence, like having a full-time eyebrow waxer or nipple tweaker. Hiring help means the spoiled mother is not sacrificing enough for her kids and she's preoccupied with something other than total devotion to her family.
It's the ultimate judgment moms from any walk of life can pass on a celebrity: she probably never sees her kids ergo I'm a better mom than her even though she is rich/thin/beautiful. And when a star does motherhood "right" -- is photographed dropping them off/picking them up at school, appointments, pumpkin patches etc. -- we get to say, "Oh she's so great, we would totally be friends in real life." That's a manufactured view of motherhood that we've come to see as desirable and acceptable and a nanny totally ruins that narrative for us.
The payoff of snowballing mommy culture is that it's an outlet for judgment without consequence: we get to be as righteous as we want without being mean to our peers face-to-face. You can turn to any mom in almost any social situation and say, "How many nannies do you think Angelina Jolie has?" and you have 20 minutes of "I know, I know!" agreement. It's a national pastime.


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Mainers Among Best Drivers in United States
Mainers are among the best drivers in the country, according to a new study.
Maine ranks sixth among states in the survey by the website carinsurancecomparison.com. The report compiled statistics from several sources including National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Motorists Association and Mothers Against Drink Driving.
Northern New England states fared well in the report, which ranked Vermonters the best drivers in the country, and New Hamsphire the third best. The worst drivers in the country live in Louisiana, with South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas and Alabama rounding out the bottom 5.
The report gave each state a ranking in five categories:
- Fatalities Rate per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled
- Failure to Obey (Traffic Signals + Seat Belts)
- Drunk Driving
- Tickets
- Careless Driving
Perhaps contributing to Mainers' cautiousness on the roads is the fact that they're more likely to get a ticket here than almost anywhere else in the nation. Maine ranked fourth in that category.


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(Reuters) - Rhythm and blues singer Stevie Wonder said he will not perform in Florida until the state discards a "stand your ground" law that played a prominent role in the defense of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman who was acquitted in a racially charged murder trial.
The black Rock and Roll Hall of Fame enshrinee made his comments at a concert on Sunday in Quebec City, Canada, according to a video posted on YouTube.
"For the gift that God has given me, and for whatever I mean, I decided today that until the 'stand your ground' law is abolished in Florida, I will never perform there again," Wonder said to applause.
He did not mention the Zimmerman trial by name in the video-clip posted online.
A jury acquitted Zimmerman, 29, on Saturday of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the 2012 shooting death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. The verdict touched off demonstrations in major U.S. cities.
Prosecutors said Zimmerman, who is white and Hispanic, wrongly suspected Martin of being a criminal because he was black. Defense lawyers argued Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense.
The Florida law, which was approved in 2005 and has been copied in some form by about 30 other states, allows people fearing for their lives to use deadly force without having to retreat from confrontation, even if it is possible.
"For wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state or in that part of the world," Wonder added.
Wonder, 63, has no future concert dates listed on his website. He is expected to perform at the Global Citizen Festival in New York's Central Park in September.
Representatives for the "Superstition" singer did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Mary Milliken and Mohammad Zargham)


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Wouldnt existing 35mm lenses produce a 43mm circular image on such a double sensor? That circular image could be cropped to square as well as the traditional 35mm in either portrait or landscape orientation and other aspect ratios without rotating the camera body! (Would existing full frame 35mm lenses then be considered to have a 1.4 crop factor when used on the doubled sensor?)
Would it be possible to combine two full frame 35mm sensors (nominally 24x36mm) to get 48x36mm and use that double sensor in a new camera that would accept existing 35mm lenses as well as a series of new (double full frame) lenses? ...By using two existing (or already developed) sensors, there should be some economies of scale as well as savings in developing a new, larger sensor.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80691\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
No.Look at it this way: this is an obvious idea that has been floated in forums many times over the years, so if it worked, Kodak and Dalsa would have thought of it and done it years ago, greatly reducing the cost of their MF sensors.I conclude that it cannot be done, at least not with good results.(In fact I beleive that is has been tried, sort of, with a beam splitting mirror to spread the light over two sensors side-by-side but with a gap between them, asneeded to connect their wiring. The product did poorly, and the idea has not been tried again.)[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80722\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
did you ever see a mf sensor? if so you easily can see that they are stitched.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80816\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
This is done on the silicon wafer during each processing step. If you will, it's like printing several negatives across a big sheet of photo paper: Click, move paper, click, and so forth. You only develop and fix once regardless of the number of exposures onto the sheet. The comparison is appropriate: The process is called photolithography.Edmund[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80817\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
these parts of the sensors can be read out by different electronic amplifiers. this is probably what leaf does with its new faster sensors. also the sensor stitch is which elads to the "centerfold issue " of the dalsa sensors,- although it can be removed electronically as sinar and brumbaer are doing,- leaf already hasnt found the code therefore....[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80825\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
-----Yair: I actually wonder whether the chip couldn't be used in single-readout mode by changing the firmware. This would mean a slower readout, no problem for people who do architecture and wide angle work - they don't care about speed.If it can be done with the current hardware design, this might be a quick and permanent fix for the centerfold problem - if not maybe it should be incorporated as an option in the next camera hardware iteration. It might even make economic sense as it would be able to "save" some chips with faulty or severely mismatched readouts and sell them as slower units.could you pass this message on to the dev team please ?------Rainer, You are right that pixels are moved to the closest edge for readout, but AFAIK this is done for speed and noise limitation, it has little to do with the mask stitching itself. However you are also right that the multiple readouts are probably what creates the centerfold issue. This issue must be clearly known to the chip designers, because it's obvious that readout amps located at the periphery will mismatch on such a huge chip - if only because of external temperature gradients. Hence they must have considered that for chips in certain tolerances the mismatch can be compensated by software. Readout mismatch issues are not new, Canon (the original 1D) and Nikon have seen similar problems on some models. I hope that at some point some expert will come in to explain the design tradeoffs; in the mean time, full technical documentation of the Aptus chips is available on the Dalsa site. Edmund[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80831\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Alright I'll try to explain it one more time:The centrefold issue has NOTHING to do with multiple readouts. If fact the readouts on the Dalsa sensors are located on the short side.Using a single readout will for sure slow the capture rate but will not resolve this issue.We currently have a working software solution for correcting this issue. I promised to post an official statement last week and I will do so as soon as it is ready for posting, should happen in the next 2-3 days.ThanksYair[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80832\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
alright Yair, and what is then causing the centerfold issue, if it isn't the multipl readout? I am really curious to know this.thanks,Aon[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80851\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The sensor is a single "chip".The sensor is designed as a portrait sensor, the number of "active pixels" is 4992 x 6668.Thanks for this precise and clear answer! It's appreciatedAon


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Originally published on March 28, 2013 9:18 am
Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Here's a digital fairytale. In 2007, a young woman lost her camera scuba diving off Hawaii. Last week it was found by a China Airlines employee thousands of miles away on a beach in Taiwan. China Airlines offered the owner a free ticket to come pick up the camera. The memory card still has pictures on it. And who was the good fairy in this story? It was Facebook. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Make America Great Again
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Mitt Romney
It's obvious from the get-go that Romney was probably never going to get my vote. I'm a Democrat, I've always really liked the President and mostly approved of the job he's done, and I'm liberal. There's not a ton Romney offers me that I'm terribly interested in versus the horse I'm already backing -- except perhaps Olympic-caliber fancy dancing.
And originally, I never even liked the guy. I always felt like Romney looks like an experiment somebody conducted to turn a gigantic mutli-national corporation into a human being. In his appearance to his smooth professionalism to his occasional woodenness (his awkward, soul-less laughs during the Republican primary debates were amazing), all just looked like he'd been constructed in a lab by some corporation.
I'd liked the job he did as the governor of Massachussetts, obviously. His accomplishments there deserve praise. Massachussetts is always a nation-leader in healthcare, education, quality of life, combating poverty -- but he actually improved the state on all those fronts by becoming essentially a center-left governor. I've always got a soft spot for guys who can appreciate the other's point of view, and Romney's time as governor demonstrated that to me. He wasn't a flawless governor, but so few are. He was a strong governor in a state largely favored by his political opponents.
Of course, the Romneys of the '08 and '12 GOP primaries, really the Romney for the past seven years, had been deafeningly offputting for me. In the '08 primaries, you learned that Romney once ran as a straight-up liberal Republican a decade ago against Ted Kennedy. And now he was singing a completely different tune, and running against the absolute worst combination of candidates for that kind of record: McCain, who had decades of pretty consistently standing by his principles on his record, and Huckabee, a superbly charistmatic, silver-tongued debater who constantly exposed Romney's flip-flops while making him look completely unlikeable. (The best anti-Romney line to this day remains Huckabee's: "I trust a change of heart more on its way to Damascus than I do on its way to Des Moines.")
To make matters worse, all the things Romney did in the first place to make him so appealing to me, he blatantly ran away from -- he should have stood by Romneycare, and treated it as the greatest accomplishment he's made in his professional life. Instead, he ignored it and let Huckabee frame it on the campaign trail.
To go from hard liberal, to center-left, to hard-right just reeks of opportunism, bald ambition and careerism to me, and it didn't make matters better when he spent the next three years basically popping up on Fox News to argue that whatever Obama did at any time was the opposite of the right thing (except for murky, difficult issues like the Libyan intervention, in which nothing but radio silence was heard from his camp). Even while it was things Romney himself had once worked for and endorsed: the stimulus package, Obamacare, etc.
All the while, doing, well... nothing. He wasn't in office, he wasn't really running Bane anymore, he was just traveling the country, amassing donors for his next, inevitable run. And there's nothing less inspiring than simply running for President not because the moment demanded your service (as he was running for President in 2012 since January 21st, 2009), but simply because you have the financial and political infrastructure in place for it.
The Romney in 2012's primaries was less offensive to me in a way, primarily because he was the second-best candidate in the field behind Jon Huntsman. Romney and Huntsman displayed an ability to at least see what the other half the country was saying. But Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann, Perry, Santorum.... what an atrocious, inflexible field of folks who just hate roughly half the country. But at the same time, it was more offensive. The Republican Party had merged so crudely with the Tea Party wave at that point that Romney's only way forward was to go even further to the right of his 2008 persona, which for my money was "simply" hard-conservative. Now Romney had embraced reactionary regressivism, a point of view squarely at odds with my own, with so much of the Republican Party's pre-Tea Party history.
He endorsed Ryan's budget. He called the Arizona immigration law a national model. He threw away his time as a left-leaning governor and bragged about being a "severe conservative." He ran as the CEO of Bain, a company which served the interests of those running other companies, often times to the detriment of the workers. He favored huge, massive tax cuts for the wealthy on top of the huge, massive tax cuts they are already getting. He said he wasn't concerned about the very poor. He became a jingoist, exclaiming that any admission of America's missteps to others is apologizing for it. He's argued that we should treat Israel as the 51st state. He argued that the President should defer to his generals. Most damning to me: he argued that he would refuse 10 dollars in spending cuts for 1 dollar in additional revenue.
This Romney, of course, I detested. He seemed less detestable than Gingrich et al, but that's not exactly raising the bar.
Of course, he's since developed into a center-right candidate the past month. But that brings me to the very center of my dislike of Mitt Romney: despite this most recent evolution, I am genuinely concerned that he is a rightwing reactionary, or at least has developed into that guy the past five years.
And to everybody who wants to argue that there's no way Romney can be this guy, that he was a successful governor of a blue state, that his positions in the past month are the "real" him... I have several rebuttals.
1. There's just no way to know. There isn't. He's now run as a hardcore liberal and as a reactionary regressive. He's made pitstops at every location in between. There is absolutely no way to know which Romney is the real Romney, or how he will govern as President since he so frequently omits details and then reverses himself on key, fundamental issues like the federal budget and healthcare. It's entirely possible he emerges as the centrist figure his record as governor indicated. But given his blind ambition, it's also possible he was just doing in Massachussetts whatever he could to succeed so he could get to the next level and be more true to himself.
Reactionary, regressive policies would be absolutely damaging to this country at this time in its history. We're climbing through purgatory out of the 7th circle of hell that was the 2008-09 global recession. Income inequality is brutal, and devastating. The fundamental restructuring of how American companies operate in an ever-more-global economy will put even more Americans in underemployment or on the government dole. Class mobility is getting worse. As is, sadly, geographical mobility for a lot of Americans.
I am of the belief that the deeply regressive policies will put these people behind the eight ball even more than they are today. It is heartbreaking to think about. Any realistic chance that Romney could genuinely espouse these policies is a backbreaker for me.
2. Paul Ryan. Romney's embrace of the Ryan budget and the author behind it make me genuinely believe this is a man who holds Ryan's deeply regressive policies at the heart of his political considerations. Ryan's budget has been modified a few times to be slightly less insane, and Romney's embrace of it since winning the GOP nomination has weakened.
But selecting a running mate is the only Presidential decision non-incumbents make in an election. It's the only one with lasting consequences into your Presidency. And the fact that Romney chose to elevate Ryan to potentially being a heartbeat away from the Presidency is shocking, considering Romney once was the left-leaning governor of Massachussetts. I believe Mitt Romney has simply evolved.
3. The forty seven percent remarks. It's so hard to tell what Romney really believes from h is public statements, that the hour-long tape behind closed doors in a confidential conversation with big money donors obviously seems incredibly damning. I really do know what conservatives felt like in 2008 now, when Obama's "clinging to guns and religion" remark emerged behind closed doors. It felt like your worst fears of a candidate being vindicated on every level.
It's not remotely possible he was inarticulate, as he's since argued -- that excuse would work if just a sentence or two was being snipped out of a tape, but in this case it was a several-minute diatribe. It's more feasible that Romney was just full of shit and telling his fatcat donors what they wanted to hear. Wouldn't be the first time a politician did that.
But his construction of the argument sounded exactly like the author of the Ryan plan would sound. That these public programs were not worthy of the vast majority of the people receiving them. That the less fortunate are dead weight that we have to tolerate. That they don't care about shit other than getting more money from richer people. That they aren't thoughtful, and that they all reflexively back the bigger hander-outter. This is a disdain for the poor, or at least a total lack of consideration for the less fortunate, that has fueled so many Romney gaffes and show why he no longer cares about the successes he fueled for the poor a decade ago.
I've come around on Romney, personally, over the past few weeks. Moderate Mitt works for me, if it were the pitch I'd received all along, though my vote would probably still be with Obama. He doesn't seem like a corporate tool anymore to my eyes -- he seems incredibly engaging, very intelligent and nuanced in his thinking, and I've even seen some charm eke out of him the past few weeks. His performances in all three debates were strong, showing he's dead serious about the tasks at hand. (And I do actually love that he's a Mormon, but that's more of a reflection of my satisfaction that America is thisclose to being comfortable enough with one to make him President.)
But that's Dr. Henry Jekyll. The guy I'm genuinely concerned about, the guy I am vehemently opposed to even getting a glance at the Oval Office, is Mr. Edward Hyde, a.k.a. Regressive Mitt.
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The rest of the points in your post are all well taken, however.
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I agree with you that it's human nature to be reluctant to change these strongly held opinions. I don't consider it a downfall (although Flopnuts might). That's the point.
The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something theyre not. - Hillary Clinton
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The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something theyre not. - Hillary Clinton
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I voted today, I have never seen as many people turn out for early voting in my life as I did today in the small town I live in... It took over an hour wait with 15-20 voting machines to vote today and most of the people were elderly...
I predict a landslide for Romney
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You took THAT many words to state the obvious?
You must think pretty highly of yourself to write down (and sniff like perfumed farts) your own meandering thoughts (farts) that can be summed up with
durrrrrp I guess Mitt seems OK lately but I am still gonna vote democrat.....hurrrp
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HARTSVILLE, S.C. – The stakes will be high Wednesday (Feb. 5) night when the Coker men's basketball team welcomes the Bears of Lenoir-Rhyne University to the Timberlake-Lawton Gymnasium for a South Atlantic Conference matchup. The season is slowly winding down and the two teams are anxious to improve their current positions in the tightly contested SAC standings. Tip-off is scheduled for 8 p.m. with a live webcast available at www.cokercobras.com.
The Cobras enter the game 10-8 overall and 7-7 in conference, which is currently good for a two-way tie for seventh place with Queens University of Charlotte. Julian Nelson's 17.6 points per game leads five players averaging double figures for Coker this season. Over the last seven games Nelson has averaged 22 points per outing. Larry Felder and Teon Beckett have averaged 12.7 and 10.7 points, while pulling down 5.7 and 6.2 boards per game, respectively. Trey Marshall and Errick Bethel average 10.7 and 10.1 points per game off the bench, respectively.
The Bears enter the game 10-8 overall with a 9-5 record in conference play. Lenoir-Rhyne's current three-game winning streak has propelled them into a four-way tie for third place in the SAC. R.j. McClure and Will Perry will be the focal point of the Bears' offense as the duo averages 18.8 and 12.3 points per game, respectively.
Tickets for Wednesday night's game can be purchased at the door for $5 dollars for adults, $3 dollars for students, and are free to all Coker students, faculty, and staff. It will also be Hartsville High Night, with all Hartsville High students, faculty, and staff receiving free admission to the games with proper school ID.
Release written by: Sharod Williams, Coker sports information graduate assistant.


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Brad Pitt Is Grinning Ear to Ear Before Make It Right Gala!
Brad Pitt waves to fans from his home balcony on Saturday (May 17) in New Orleans' French Quarter, La.
The 50-year-old actor is in town to attend the Make It Right Gala tonight. Stay tuned for pics!
PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Brad Pitt
Earlier in the week, Brad flashed a smile while dropping by the Sugar Mill, which is the venue where the gala will be held.
In case you didn't know, the Make It Right Gala will highlight the communities Make It Right is helping across the country, such as Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans, disabled veterans in Newark, New Jersey, underserved families in Kansas City, Missouri and Native Americans on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana.
10+ pictures inside of Brad Pitt smiling on his balcony…


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But the movie I really wanted to talk about was Prometheus. I was extremely interested before I popped it in, and even more so throughout the first 2/3s or so of the film. It was a cool concept and the visuals were great. They did a good job of setting a tense scene and filling your head with questions, but when the final act hit, it did nothing to answer any of them.
There were so many issues it's tough to even remember them all, but here are a few:
Why would you take your helmet off on an alien world? I don't give a shit if the gaseous makeup is just like Earth. If we could breathe in that environment, then there are bound to be some airborne alien pathogens.
How come the geologist, who brought the damn area-scouting drone ball thingies, got lost inside the structure; but the others of the group, with limited time and under duress, were able to make their way out within 15 minutes before the storm hit? He should have been the one most qualified to find his way out, but they just needed some dumbass plot device to get a couple of them to stay behind and get killed.
How come, on an alien planet with mounds of dead, 9 foot tall humanoids, when the captain notices a "ping" on the machine indicating an active life form, he doesn't seem the least bit intrigued? Hey, guys, you're trapped in a totally unknown structure with unknown origins, surrounded by the bodies of some unknown things who appear to have been eaten alive from the inside (chestbursted); I've been picking up an indication of something alive in there with you, but, uhhhhhhh, sleep tight...
Continuing on with that, why did the one guy decide to play with the mutated worm thing? You're a ****ing biologist, dude! You've found several dead bodies of one species but not a single trace of anything else. It should be reasonable to assume that whatever killed them could still be in there with him, yet he decides to pet the first cobra-like worm he encounters.
What exactly was the black goo and why did it act so inconsistently? It completely disintegrated the engineer at the film's start within seconds but subsequently spawned the human race, turned the maggots into mutated killer worms with acid blood, looked to be slowly killing Holloway, gave birth to the largest, octopussiest facehugger ever in that chick, and turned Fifeld (sp?) into a deranged, psychotic, super-strong, Hills Have Eyes-like madman.
Why did the engineers want us dead? According to the cave paintings dating back to 35,000+ and showing up in different civilizations, separated by continents and thousands of years, it's obvious that they had to have had an active presence on our planet. But why would they draw us maps to find them when they were just planning on coming to kill us anyway? Apparently there was some event that took place 2000 years ago that they never got around to explaining..
There's even more that I know I'm forgetting about but whatever. It was entertaining for most of the film, then just kind of got lame when the engineer got woken up and started murdering everyone. I'll watch the second one on Redbox in the hopes that they'll answer these questions but from the looks of it, they may just pile more on top of the ones I already have.
The alien at the end was kind of cool. It had no tail, a point on it's head, and a second jaw instead of that little mouth so it has to be either some variant of the Aliens or maybe they're going with some sort of ancestor-ish deal. Also, it popped out as a full grown Alien and not the traditional chestburster look so maybe there's something to that too. There's no way it was the first Alien though. When they first went to the tomb with the giant head, their was a mural on the wall that looked just like an Alien so they had to have been around beforehand in some form.
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