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Our new purpose built teaching rooms boasts eight comparison microscopes and associated equipment. We hope that these new facilities combined with our excellent teaching staff will allow us to offer an exceptional service and a valuable source of information to the forensic science community in the UK and overseas for many years to come.
Scanning Electron Microscopy – SEM CamScan MX2500
The CamScan instrument is a research-grade analytical SEM capable of reaching 100,000 x magnification. High-resolution images of biological samples, metal surfaces, particles, fibres and material surfaces can be achieved with this instrument. This system also has EDX capabilities (above Z=11), whereby elemental analysis or chemical characterisation of a surface can be performed.
Microscopic Evaluation
Cold light is supplied by fibre optic cable directly to the components under examination. The examination of bullet striations for close up evaluation is normally associated with the comparison microscope, it is also used to compare firing pin indentations, extractor markings and toolmarks from the breech face.
The Criminalistic Comparison Microscope…
has a split-screen viewing facility with a dividing line between the two part images. The two samples are viewed on a computer monitor, when positioned to show a match, the frame can be held in the computer memory and recalled when required for the preparation of a report.
Microscopes available at Helston Gunsmiths
Zeiss Epitechnoscope, 48174, Low power binocular zoom microscope with stand and integral light source.
Leitz low power binocular microscope with 2 objectives and stand.
Nikon stereo microscope and stand 20 x magnification.
Leitz Dialux 20, High power binocular microscope with 1 objective, L10/0.22.
Leitz Metallux 11, Hi power binocular microscope.
Leitz Ortholux 11, Hi power microscope.
Leitz ballistic comparison microscope c/w x-y positioning tables and CCD colour camera.
Leitz SM-LUX laboratory microscope, zoom 4×0.12 – 10/0.25, 40/0.65.
Kyowa microscope on stand, zoom 10x/23.
Leitz Dialux 22 laboratory microscope, zoom 10x/0.22.
Leitz Ortholux 11 microscope with 2 objectives, 10/0.30, 25/0.55 and light source.
Leica Z45V low power stereo laboratory microscope with integral light source.
Leitz Dialux 22 laboratory microscope, zoom 10x/0.22.
Leitz laboratory microscope with 10/0.22 objective and light source.
Nikon stereo microscope and stand, 10xmagnification.
Camscan MX2500 1999, 134, scanning electron microscope with "edax" x-ray micro analyser, automatic gunshot residue packaging, large sample chamber, 100×100 stage movement, vacum pump, cooling system, monitors, printer and sun operating system.
Leitz Ortholux 4426, binocular training microscope with 3 objectives, NPL Fluotar 10/0.30, NP140/0.65 and 4/0.12 with single light source.
Nikon SMZ 2B, stereo microscope on stand.
Weztlar stereo microscope on stand c/w light source.
Leitz HD-Lux,5612, high power binocular microscope with 3 objectives 50x/0.75, 20x/0.35, 10x/0.20.
Nikon 102732 low power binocular zoom microscope with stand.
Nikon SMZ 2B stereo microscope on stand.
Nikon stereo microscope on stand, zoom 10x/22.
Nikon 65517 low power microscope with universal stand, zoom 8x – 40x.
Leitz ballistic comparison microscope, zoom 2.5x/10x/25x/40x, positioning table and 2 light sources, CCD camera.
Nikon V-12, 58501, profile projector with Nikon CM-65 digital counter.
Leitz double ballistic comparison microscope, zoom 80mm with double rotation tables and schott light source type KL1500T and CCD camera.
Leitz double sided special microscope with CCD camera and polaroid camera attachments, 2 rotation tables and light source.
Leitz Dialux comparison microscope c/w X-Y positioning tables and light source.
Leitz Dialux laboratory microscope zoom 4X/10x/25x/40x.
Leitz Ortholux 11, 977095 & 977253 comparison microscope with micrometer stages, 4 objectives, MPL Fluotar 10x/25x/40x and 2.5 PL white light sources with power supply.
Leitz Dialux laboratory microscope zoom 4x/10x/25x/40x.
Leitz Ortholux 11, 63743, comparison microscope with micrometer stages, 4 objectives, NPL Flotar 40/0.70 EF 25/0.50, NPL Fluotar 10/0.30, PL 2.5/0.08 with light sources.
Leitz Ortholux 11 high power comparison microscope with objectives 40x/0.65, 10x/0.25, 4x/0.12, 25x/0.50, 10x//0.25, 4x/0.12, 40x/0.65 with UV and white light sources.


text:
Shipping and Returns
There is a flat rate of $13.95 for all domestic shipments (excluding Hawaii and Alaska). All shipments will be fulfilled and sent out within 2 business days of purchase from our Metro Detroit facility. If for any reason shipping dates or priorities are changed you will receive an email from our shipping department.
Delivery times are not guaranteed and can be subject to changes beyond our control. These elements include delayed shipping by the delivery service, inclement weather and clerical errors. Items which arrive damaged must be reported to the delivery service that fulfilled the order. That company can be found by checking your delivery confirmation email received directly after purchase.
Return and Refund Policy
We want all customers of Hype Stew Sneakers to be happy, which is why we offer free returns for all new items. The return will be issued upon passing inspection to ensure the item is in the same condition as it was during the time of ship. We urge all customers to check their sneakers at the time of receival as our refund policy covers the item within 30 days.
There are no returns on used items as they are sold as is. Ample descriptions and photos are used to depict actual condition. We pride ourselves on being honest and ethical in the handling of your business, return customers and referrals are what fuel our sales. Trust that we stand behind all our products. If it isn't of sound quality, it will not make it to our shelves.
Return request should be sent to email@example.com within 72 hours of delivery. If after inspection it is found that the item did not pass refund standards the buyer will have 2 options, have the order delivered back to them at their expense, or have the item relisted for consignment with a 20% fee. Contact our customer service with any disputes and we will do everything we can to find a happy resolution.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Search Constraints
You searched for:
Remove constraint Format: GeoTIFF
Historical geography
Remove constraint Subject: Historical geography
Administrative and political divisions
Remove constraint Subject: Administrative and political divisions
Composite map
Remove constraint Subject: Composite map
South Asia
Remove constraint Place: South Asia
1 entry found
Search Results
1. (Composite of) A new map of Hindoostan from the latest authorities. Chiefly from the actual surveys made by major James Rennell, Surveyor to the Hble. East India Company, of the Bengal Provinces, and of the countries lying between them and Delhy; the whole exhibiting all the military roads and passes, as well as the most accurate division of the British possessions in the East Indies. London, Published by Laurie & Whittle, 53, Fleet Street, 12th May, 1794. 2nd editn. corrected 1804 (Raster Image)
1804. Rumsey, David, 1944-. This layer is a georeferenced image of a map of South Asia, including India and Pakistan, originally created by J. Rennell, T. Kitchen, R. Laurie, ... Cartography Associates.


text:
Hawes Spencer
Hawes Spencer is the founding editor of the Hook. He arrived in Charlottesville in 1989 to co-found C-ville Weekly, but after an unplanned departure in 2002, he quickly launched the Hook, which won dozens of journalism awards under his leadership. In addition to his voluminous editing, writing, and photography duties, he created award-winning ad campaigns, oversaw the Hook's website, and served as one of the four owners of the parent company of both the Hook and C-ville until he sold his stake in the company at the end of 2012.
He maintains a Twitter feed and a subscribable Facebook page, and– even though he's no longer connected to this newspaper– he doesn't mind letting you know his phone number: 434-960-9343.


text:
Son of slain Sikh will challenge Paul Ryan for Wisconsin seat
The son of a slain Sikh temple president plans to challenge US Rep. Paul Ryan in next year's congressional election, in a Wisconsin district where support for the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee has been strong but slipping.
Amar Kaleka, 35, told The Associated Press he'll file paperwork Wednesday to form an exploratory congressional committee. He plans to formally announce his candidacy as a Democrat next month.
Kaleka said he wants to bring accountability and transparency back to Washington. He blamed the government shutdown on Ryan, who's the House Budget Committee chairman, and his GOP colleagues. He said citizens are tired of career politicians who care more about staying in power than serving the people.
"There's a fever in the nation, and specifically in this district, for our leaders to stop playing politics and do their jobs," Kaleka said. "All I want to do is bring democracy — a government of, for and by the people — back to America."
Kaleka's father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, was a small-business owner who founded the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee. On Aug. 5, 2012, a white supremacist walked into the temple and opened fire, killing Kaleka and five others before taking his own life. The FBI was unable to determine a motive.
That was a turning point for Amar Kaleka, who grew up in Milwaukee and has been making documentaries in southern California for the past four years. He won an Emmy for his 2010 direction of Jacob's Turn, about a 4-year-old boy with Down syndrome who joins his first T-ball team.
He said he used to dream of running for public office when he was in his 50s or 60s but decided after his father's homicide to seek office sooner.
Sympathy and cash donations poured in from around the globe following the Sikh temple shootings, and several federal officials expressed their condolences. First lady Michelle Obama visited the temple to comfort the families and Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at the funeral.
But President Barack Obama, who has visited sites of other mass shootings, never came. His absence bothered Kaleka, an Obama supporter who hoped the president's presence would help advance the cause of stronger gun regulation.
Kaleka suspected that Obama stayed away to sidestep a controversial issue during an election year. To Kaleka, that meant the president was putting politics before people — a trend he saw repeated by other lawmakers every time he visited Washington, D.C.
He cites polls showing that 90 percent of Americans favored stronger background checks for gun buyers, yet even then Congress failed to act. That disgusted him.
"They're more concerned with the groups, the corporations that are giving them money than with what the people want," he said.
Kaleka knows he'd be taking on a formidable candidate. Ryan has so much political clout that he raised $1.7 million in the first six months of the year, nearly three times more than any other member of Wisconsin's congressional delegation.
Kaleka hopes to counter in part by tapping into the wealthy Indian and Arabic communities that he said encouraged him to run in the first place. If he can demonstrate his fundraising chops he expects the national Democratic Party, which he said supports his candidacy, to step in with another $1 million to $2 million.
Ryan, an eight-term congressman, has been popular in his district that covers the southeastern corner of the state. But his support declined last year.
He won every congressional race since 2000 with at least 63 percent of the vote, including 68 percent in 2010. But last year, after he gained prominence for drawing up an austere budget blueprint that would reshape Medicare, his support dropped to a career-low 55 percent. However, that year he had to balance his congressional campaign with his vice presidential run.
A message left with Ryan's congressional office Monday was not immediately returned.
Ryan's opponent last year was Rob Zerban, a former Kenosha Board supervisor. Zerban has formed another exploratory committee this year but hasn't said whether he'll take another run at Ryan.
The death of Kaleka's father — and the way he died — continue to weigh on Kaleka. He said he's running in his father's memory, but he wants people to vote for him not out of sympathy but because of his position on the issues.
"I'll agree my father's death has put me in a position where people listen to me more. But it's not that I'm taking advantage of that situation," he said. "I'm trying to further his dream of building the community and leading in a way that's very democratic. That's what drives me."


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See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception
Madeline Schwartzman
Black Dog Publishing
Madeline Schwartzman, American architect and professor, has captured the present in this text. Exploring the relationship between the body, design and technology, the book is perplexing and thought-provoking.
Taking the different functions and diverse conceptual patterns of sensory projects into account, Seeing Yourself Sensing is organised into five easy-to-navigate sections.
Surveying the work of both established and upcoming artists – including internet sensation Daito Manabe whose innovative experiments in synching up the face to music via electrical stimulation have gone viral on the web, Olafur Eliasson's interior microclimate, The Weather Project (2003), installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern and Erik Hobijn's Delusions of Self-Immolation (1993) which allows one to burn and survive, this book offers a wide commentary on experimentation in art and design. A bizarre and, at times, disturbing read, this is a relevant text for anyone with an interest in design, art and technology.
Florence Wright


text:
The usual searches indicating offbeat sexual tastes (i.e., "Dorothy Hamill naked") have been bumped off the top of the charts by this sort of thing:
- free men's sweater pattern
- man sweater quick knitting
- man's hat quick knit
- knit man's sweater quickly
- fast sweater knitting
- sweater seamless quick
- I help need to finish a sweater
You with the hat, there's hope for you, unless you're knitting seven hats for seven brothers.
As for the rest, if that sort of search has brought you to me, I'm afraid all I can do is suggest giving gift certificates, power tools, or a pony. I can't tell you how to finish a partly completed sweater by Christmas–let alone start one now and have it under the tree by December 25.
You could of course give the sweater "on the needles" if it's well begun. That's the traditional IOU of knitting and acceptable to most recipients. For a sweater not yet begun, you might at least show them the yarn and the photograph in the pattern. If you don't have a pattern or yarn, see note above about gift certificates, power tools, pony.
The status of my own Christmas knitting has improved considerably since this entry, with the finish line well in sight and the results looking as I had hoped. I'm absolutely gasping to show you one of the pieces, in particular, but it'll have to wait until after the recipients see it.
Buddha Claus
This being my first Buddhist Christmas, I'm amused at the number of my friends who have asked me, "Does this mean I shouldn't get you a Christmas present?"
That is correct. No self-respecting Buddhist accepts Christmas presents. We prefer cash. A nice little stack of twenties and fifties is customary. For Mahayana practitioners, a neat parcel of real estate is also an option, especially if it's a couple of waterfront acres in Amagansett or a small adobe on Acequia Madre in Santa Fe.
Just don't use fancy wrapping paper. It offends our sense of simplicity.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my culture with you. Viva diversity.


text:
Members of Citizens for an Alternative Alexandria Waterfront Plan shot back at City Hall Tuesday, calling officials "uncompromising" about a week after city staff released a largely negative review of the group's competing blueprint.
"We seem to be in a situation where citizens don't seem to have an effective way of engaging elected officials," said CAAWP co-founder Andrew Macdonald during a press conference held in Market Square. Several other CAAWP members, echoing his critiques of the city's proposal, joined Macdonald despite the dreary weather.
Three privately owned sites along the Potomac slated for redevelopment under the city's plan have become the focal point for a contentious, roughly two-year long public debate. The Alexandria City Council is expected to vote on the controversial blueprint on January 21.
The final decision will come after the waterfront work group, a committee of residents handpicked by Mayor Bill Euille to reconcile the city's plan with resident opposition, makes their recommendations to city council.
Though rhetoric on both sides had cooled following the work group's creation in the summer, the debate has grown contentious again as CAAWP members defend their dueling waterfront plan. Where the city hopes to foster boutique hotels, CAAWP's plan – released in late October – calls for more open space and museums.
Acting City Manager Bruce Johnson panned the group's proposal in a conference call with reporters several days before Thanksgiving, describing CAAWP's ideas as fiscally and legally "indefensible."
In turn, Macdonald said city officials were ignoring the positive long-term economic impact of CAAWP's proposal in favor of quick tax revenue. He called on officials to begin talks with Robinson Terminal Co., a subsidiary of the Washington Post Co., about possibly selling or donating two of the sites at the debate's center.
"We think there is a plan out there that will be better for the city and the river," he said.
CAAWP held the conference hours before they were scheduled to appear before the city's standing waterfront committee for a fact-finding meeting. Members of the committee – a separate body unconnected with the waterfront work group – questioned city officials and CAAWP members alike on their dueling proposals.
Though the dialogue threatened to boil over at times, at least one member of the committee called on officials and residents to strike a balance. Former planning director Engin Artemel said he saw no reason not to include hotels and museums in the plan's final draft.
"We can have – possibly – our cake and eat it too," he said. "We can have hotels and museums and open space."
The meeting came as CAAWP leaders raise the possibility of filing a lawsuit to keep the city from moving forward with their plan. Macdonald confirmed last week that the group was exploring their legal options, but said nothing had been decided.


text:
Photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country
I fly out of town for business approximately once every month. There are many different ways to get to the airport from my home downtown. I normally take public transit, but will occasionally take a taxi if I am running late or if I have an early morning flight.
I have been longing to ride my cargo bike to the airport every since I purchased it back in May. My luggage fits perfectly in the cargo box and I could certainly use some extra exercise since I have gained about 15 pounds since I returned from living in China in May.
I looked at a few different routes to the airport, and decided that safety and comfort would be my number one priority. I ended up choosing a route that added about 5 kilometres to the trip, resulting in a total distance of 27 kilometres.
My flight was scheduled to depart at 9:35PM, so I figured giving myself two hours for the trip would be plenty of time.
I left my house at 6:40PM and headed down the bike lane from my home towards Toronto's waterfront bike path.
Leg 1 – Waterfront Trail (km 0 to 8)
As I pedalled along the waterfront, the sun was setting in a spectacular fashion, the rays of light sparkling on the lake, and the shapely clouds hovering just above the waterfront buildings with a bright orange backdrop.
The waterfront trail was extremely pleasant, smooth, and fast. Cars were nowhere near me, there wasn't a single pothole, and there were no intersections that required me to stop for the entire first 8 kilometres.
Photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country
Leg 2 – Traversing Residential Neighbourhoods (km 8 to 16)
After departing from the wonderful waterfront trail, I ended up riding in a bike lane on the wrong side of the road (The Queensway). There was no way I could have crossed to the right side of the road without backtracking a couple kilometres unfortunately, so I stuck with it for about a kilometre.
Luckily, it was one of the few bike lanes in Toronto that had a painted buffer between the bike lane and the cars.
I then ended up traversing through some neighbourhood in Etobicoke and then rode along a narrow bike lane on a generally comfortable street (Royal York) for about 5 or 6 kilometres.
This leg was generally fairly comfortable aside from having to ride the wrong way briefly at the beginning.
Leg 3 – Eglinton Dedicated Bike Path (km 16 to 24)
This next leg of the trip was extremely pleasant. I pedalled along the relatively new dedicated bike path along Eglinton Ave.
This path is completely separated from the suburban road with fast-moving cars and it provided another smooth and quick ride; not too unlike the wonderful ride along the lake.
Back in 2010 – before I become a father and had a bit more time on my hands – I posted a video featuring this path and how it was so close to being an example of a great suburban bike route.
The smooth, dedicated portion of the path eventually ended and it turned into a pedestrian/bicycle shared path for the remaining couple kilometres. Although this portion was a bit bumpier I still wasn't forced to ride on the busy road or on the sidewalk.
Leg 4 – The Final Sprint (km 24 to 27)
The final 3 kilometres proved to be, as expected, an uncomfortable end to an otherwise pleasant journey.
I stuck to the sidewalk along the road that approached the airport. There wasn't a lot of space, cars were moving fast, and the sidewalks were completely empty. It was dark outside and I assumed drivers wouldn't be expecting to encounter a bicyclist near the airport, so I took this precaution to stay safe.
I could smell the jet fuel from the airplanes as they flew very low over my head as I became closer to the airport. I felt so close, but I knew I was still about three kilometres away from my terminal.
The sidewalk suddenly ended, and I was forced to ride in the right lane on a narrow two-lane road. When cars approached from behind I would pull over on to the soft gravel shoulder. I wasn't about to take any chances.
The soft shoulder eventually turned into pavement which provided a comfortable ride, but the closer I got to the airport, the worse the traffic and roads became.
The problem with the roads near the airport is that cars are just getting off the highway, so I seemed to be the only one travelling less than 80km/h.
In order to get to my terminal I had to cross four lanes of fast-moving cars. I felt like I was playing a game of Frogger, but fortunately I wasn't in a hurry so I waited long enough until there was enough of a gap for me to cross.
Then as I was approaching my terminal something bad happened. I was riding on the right shoulder when all of the sudden the road I was on merged with another two-lane road to my right.
I was now stuck in between two roads with dozens of cars racing past each side of me. I now had a choice: Stop and back up, shit my pants, or take control.
I opted not to shit my pants. That wouldn't make for a very pleasant flight. So I stuck my right arm out as far and as assertively as I could, and forced two lanes of cars to stop for me. Fortunately the drivers were very polite and applied their brakes and then flashed their lights for me to proceed.
So I crossed those two lanes of traffic and got over to the right shoulder where I continued to ride right up to my terminal while shaking my head at the airport for providing such a terrible experience for bicyclists. Shame on them, I thought to myself.
I couldn't help but think about the bike lane that I saw leading to the Vancouver airport and wished Toronto had the forethought to provide this as well. If not for passengers, then at least it may encourage the thousands of employees to ride to the airport.
I found a quiet corner near the entrance of the terminal and parked my bike there, locking the rear wheel and using a cable lock to tie it to a railing.
The bike of course drew some attention so after having a conversation with a security officer about the bike, I asked him to take a photo of me.
I made it through security in less than 10 minutes and ate some food before proceeding to my gate.
Aside from the incident near the end of the trip, I very much enjoyed the trip and will happily do it all over again in the future.
Photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country
The numbers:
Total time: 1 hour and 48 minutes
Total distance: 27.07 kilometres
Average speed: 15.04km/h
James D. Schwartz is a Transportation Pragmatist and the Editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at firstname.lastname@example.com or follow him on Twitter.
Related Articles:
- My Ideal World (Aug 2012)
- The World Has Changed. So Can You. (April 2011)
- Human Power Around The World (April 2012)
- No Cars. No Traffic Signals. No Deaths. (June 2011)
- We Are Addicted To Automobiles (May 2011)


text: Home / Signage / Fire Hydrant & Hose – Angled Fire Hydrant & Hose – Angled Angle Location Sign Plastic PVC 200mm x205mm Category: Signage Product ID: 2596 Reviews (0) Reviews There are no reviews yet. Be the first to review "Fire Hydrant & Hose – Angled" Cancel replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Your rating * Rate… Perfect Good Average Not that bad Very poor Your review *Name * Email * Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Related products Fire Hose Reel & Extinguisher – Angled Read more Fire Hose Reel – Angled Read more


text:
Get a jump start at PRCC. Attend Orientation. Choose a date, pick a time, and call to reserve your spot today. Call 601-403-1197 to pre-register. Space is limited, so call today!
Pick a Date and Time! All new students must attend orientation at the campus they plan to attend in the fall.
Hattiesburg – July 9, 15, 23, 30. 8:30 or 1:00. Check in at the Multipurpose Room
Poplarville – June 6, 11, 13, 18, 27. July 11, 18, 24. 8:30 or 1:00. Check in at the Cafeteria
Attend an orientation session to register for classes, obtain access to your student email account, and learn more about financial aid.
Students must complete the admissions process before attending orientation.


text:
If his critics are to be believed, isn't every pass Tim Tebow throws a Hail Mary pass? And shouldn't he make every two-point conversion?
AP photo
Random rantings and ravings about the Los Angeles Dodgers, written by a small consortium of rabid Dodger fans. With occasional comments on baseball, entertainment, pop culture, and life in general.
I'm going to get my ever-lovin' ass kicked this week. Damn bye week!
Tebow believes in you, Dusty!
Dusty's complaining about his team! Take a shot!
How is Dusty doing in the league, guys?
Undefeated. Apparently, self-depricating is a sound strategy.
Thanks for not starting Greg Olsen, Josh.
The Saints really suck today.
Tell me about it.
We're both suffering the backlash, Josh.
*looks at league scoreboard*
Everybody sucks!
Brees is being outscored by the Giants' kicker.
Still glad you stole him from me, Josh?
Most weeks, yes.
Like I said, this week I will get my ass handed to me.
Steven Jackson came up big time today.
Ain'ts, I mean Rams BABY!
Bottoms up!
It just means the Rams can't get Luck.
Ok, what does it mean "Hail Mary pass"?, have to ask because I'm starting Tebow today.
and Josh, my team doesn't suck so far
A Hail Mary Pass is when the quarterback is kneeling down in prayer while he passes the football.
@DB: You had me worried for a little bit with the start Matt Moore had.
Thank you Czar!
don't want to jinx myself, but I've had plenty of sophomore luck because I do way much better than my knowledge of this sport.
I feel bad for Mr. C. He put a lot of eggs into one basket when he took Peyton Manning in the draft.
@J Steve
Isaac Redman is not the future of my fantasy team!
Hmm. I have a pulse all of a sudden.
Ray Rice made me so happy today!
That's what all the ladies say about Ray Rice.
I say that about garlic fried rice.
in the other hand, if I lose this game, it's Tim Tebow's fault. He sucks so much, I'm missing Tarvaris jackson
MLASC hasn't scored a point in like 3 hours, but I can't capitalize.
Leaving the Dusty-centric universe of checking fantasy scores, I just now looked at what is going on around the rest of the league. Good god this is a raggedy-ass league!
That may be the only time we'll ever hear someone say they miss Tarvaris Jackson.
i was hoping for an MB beat down on Spank but this will suffice.
Where is Spanky today? Still recovering from last night?
$50 says Spanky is at Barry Manilow's place.
MDIL just got a new LG LED 47" TV w 3D. $50 says I ain't leaving her sofa the rest of the night.
I only have to make up 61 points with the two remaining players I have in this week. No problem, right?
Take a shot!
Is it Daybreak?
It's daybreak somewhere in the world.
No, it's Cliffhanger.
Get it to Deshaun Jackson already! I need 50 points from him!
1 point from deshaun and it's nearly halftime. Only 60 to go, DB!
I made up a huge point already! Watch out, J Steve, I'm going to have a monster second half!
I have to admit I got lucky not having to face you at full strength, DB.
That's the way the ball bounces sometimes, J Steve.
Especially when there are bye weeks Ina league where there are 78 teams.
4/3 vs. SF (W, 5-4): Sax
4/15 vs. WSH (L, 4-6): Dusty, Orel, Sax
5/6 vs. MIA (W, 6-3): AC, Sax
5/16 vs. CIN (L, 2-7): AC, Sax


text:
Walk into most hospitals in the United States today, and you observe a true logistical anachronism. Patients arrive in the admissions area at 5:00 in the morning, only to wait two hours before they are checked in and two more before someone preps them for surgery. At lunchtime, the traffic jam spills over into the operating rooms, where patients routinely arrive late because of the admissions delays. The surgeons, anticipating this, come later than scheduled for operations in order to avoid wasting time. By midafternoon the bottleneck has shifted to the recovery area and the intensive care unit (ICU), forcing groggy patients to wait back in the operating rooms. Frederick Winslow Taylor was worrying about inefficiencies of this kind in factories a century ago.
To understand why such problems persist in health care, you must go back at least to the mid-1980s. In those days, insurers still paid whatever fee hospitals demanded, and federal and state governments still subsidized the expansion of capacity by adding a "capital pass-through" term to their Medicaid and Medicare payments. Although much of US industry was applying modern logistics techniques, hospitals—like many service providers—felt no competitive pressure to do so.
Hospital care becomes a commodity
In the late 1980s, managed-care organizations began negotiating lower fees and sharper incentives. Medicaid and Medicare followed this lead—a transformation that culminated in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. In reaction to this more austere environment, the $400-billion-a-year hospital industry made almost every large-scale change it could think of, from mergers and acquisitions to slash-and-burn cost cutting. A few hospitals even launched their own insurance plans. But none of these measures worked very well. Mergers in particular neither improved the productivity of hospitals nor helped them achieve enough local-market bargaining power to offset the influence of either the mammoth health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or the essentially bargain-proof federal and state governments of the United States. Meanwhile, at least in many of the hospitals we have seen, reimbursement rates per unit of activity dropped markedly in the latter half of the 1990s (Exhibit 1).
Competitive prices were accompanied by price structures that rewarded fast turnaround times. No longer would HMOs and the government pay hospitals on a "per-patient, per-night" basis; instead, they began paying largely by the illness. That and other related changes led to a sharp decline in the proportion of patients who spent the night in a hospital bed and to shorter stays for those who did (Exhibit 2). This shift in patient activity to the front end of the process placed huge demands on those parts of hospitals that deliver acute care: the emergency rooms, the operating rooms, and the ICUs. Such demands led in turn to the bottlenecks and long delays those departments endure today.
Once upon a time, the chief executive officers of many hospitals would have responded by expanding capacity: new operating rooms, for instance. But these days, many hospitals are already losing money on ongoing operations, so CEOs naturally shy away from capital-intensive expansion for fear of losing still more. The few who want to expand find that debt markets are far less welcoming to hospitals than they were in bygone years. Just in the past 18 months, the ubiquity and seriousness of these problems have become clear to people in the industry. The average US hospital runs its operations in the red, suffers from overcrowding in critical areas, and can't expand without ratcheting up financial risk.
What will help hospitals escape this quandary? The answer is the one cure that their CEOs have been too distracted to attempt: detailed, day-to-day attention to operations and logistics. Like it or not, hospitals are being reimbursed in pretty much the same way that commodity sellers are and, like them, will rise or fall largely on the strength of operational performance. Stocks and flows, queuing theory, just-in-time processes—all of the notions associated with the factory floor—are exactly what modern hospitals most sorely need. Manufacturing industries have used these ideas for decades. More recently, service industries such as retail banking, fast food, and telecommunications have followed suit. Now it is time for hospitals to start sweating the details.
The rewards can be great. In less than a year, a hospital can increase the number of patients it serves by as much as 20 percent while eliminating lengthy wait times—gains that can be achieved just by implementing the basic end-to-end process improvement tools that Ford and GM used in the early 1980s. In most cases, this much growth in volume suffices to restore a hospital's long-term financial viability and requires no new expenditures on buildings, equipment, or employees. Everything results from deploying current assets more effectively.
A simple model goes a long way
As the experience of many industries shows, end-to-end processes of all kinds—the flow of patients through a hospital or of visitors through an amusement park—are no better than their weakest link. If too few nurses work in the ICU, for example, patients will be stuck in the operating rooms waiting to get into it, and this problem will in turn delay the preparation of the operating area for the next patient, thus throwing off the surgical schedule, and so on. The cardinal task of an operations manager is thus to identify potential bottlenecks—places where the system is subjected to greater demand than it can handle—and to alleviate them by balancing the components of the process, smoothing demand as far as possible and shifting capacity during peak periods.
Improving the process efficiency of a hospital begins with identifying the main stages in a typical patient's visit. (Of course, the stages may differ for each major category of patient.) The list need not be very detailed. A surgical in-patient, for instance, might pass through four or five stages: scheduling and registration, preoperative care, the operation itself, recovery in the ICU, and perhaps several nights in a general medical unit.
For each stage, the manager must analyze the demand for services, the system's ability to supply them, and the variations associated with both, measured in the number of patients per unit of time. Demand, which can be reduced to the arrival rates of patients, might involve some day-to-day (and hour-to-hour) uncertainty or variability. Capacity means the number of slots open for service at a given stage of the process. To find the capacity of that stage, you must know how much time is needed to finish it, and this too may vary from one case to the next.
In general, both demand and capacity are functions of just a few gross parameters, such as the number, type, and arrival rates of cases, as well as the number of beds, nurses, and doctors available in various departments. Starting with these basic ideas, you can predict the maximum patient flow throughout the day and identify bottlenecks under various assumptions. Whenever demand outstrips the available capacity, a bottleneck occurs (Exhibit 3). The challenge is to anticipate these events.
Running such a model repeatedly exposes one of the basic features of end-to-end systems: the exponential relationship between capacity utilization and waiting times (or cancellations) at any stage of the process. Consider a highway at rush hour. In theory, the amount of traffic could be maximized if, say, there were only a one-inch gap between cars and each car traveled at 65 miles an hour. But with disruptions such as on-ramps, off-ramps, and finite reaction times, traffic grinds to a halt—just as it does in many hospitals today. When capacity is strained, tiny variations ripple through the whole process (Exhibit 4).
These problems are almost certainly not caused by a few negligent employees or by the failure of any individual department to make itself efficient. Indeed, one of the main causes of bottlenecks in hospitals is the insistence of these semi-autonomous departments on optimizing their own throughput—the number of patients or procedures per hour—without considering how their actions affect the performance of upstream or downstream departments. In many cases, it would be better to sacrifice local speed for global predictability. When a doctor, anticipating upstream delays, shows up 15 minutes late for surgery, the doctor's personal productivity may well rise. But the patient may be only 10 minutes late, so by hindering upstream improvements, the tardy surgeon or anesthesiologist contributes to the vexing delays.
Ten years ago, a certain amount of logistical communication among departments was undertaken informally by senior charge nurses, who each oversaw several hospital departments. These nurses served as traffic cops, discovering incipient bottlenecks and redeploying resources to smooth out the flow of patients. But charge nurses didn't care directly for patients and thus were often among the first casualties of the cost-cutting efforts of the mid-1990s. Without these nurses, a system that was already poorly coordinated became even more so.
We like things nice and smooth
As the example of the highway illustrates, the archenemy of process control is variability. Walk into a modern, hyperefficient automobile factory, and you will observe this principle in action. Everything is calm, orderly, highly choreographed. Automotive companies have spent years—and billions of dollars—wringing variability out of their systems and balancing their lines.
The less the variability at a given stage of a process, the closer the utilization of capacity can come to 100 percent. Obviously, a hospital isn't an automobile factory, and people—especially sick ones—are less predictable than car parts. Nevertheless, hospitals, which usually have far fewer discrete stages to worry about than do major manufacturers, can often reduce their variability a good deal.
A simple model of the supply and demand at each stage of the process is often enough to identify the sources of variability most likely to cause bottlenecks. On the demand side, the important thing is variability in the number of patients arriving for service at a given time. A hospital can control these variations by such means as changing the schedule of its operating rooms. On the supply side, variability often boils down to poor deployment of people and resources—for example, inconsistencies in the times when doctors conduct patient rounds or poor estimates of how long it takes the housekeeping staff to turn over a patient room.
Once it becomes clear where the problems lie, it is usually possible to eliminate them solely through better planning. Even a little bit of it goes a long way, since hospitals can often eliminate much of their idle capacity by reducing the variability of just three or four parameters in the system.
Know what is really happening
One particularly low-cost way of reducing variability is to look for patterns in what seem like random fluctuations. When we examined the hourly arrival rate of patients to an emergency room over a 90-day period, we observed significant variability. But when we organized the data by time of day, much of it disappeared: at a given hour, the rate was largely predictable (Exhibit 5). The hospital could manage this variability by adjusting staffing levels over the course of the day to match the expected demand.
Similarly, when we measured the time needed for triple-bypass operations at a hospital, we found that they took from 283 to 368 minutes. But when we grouped these data according to the particular surgeon performing the operation, the variance fell significantly. Some surgeons take longer than others, and the hospital, recognizing this reality, began to schedule more time for those who needed it, dramatically reducing the unused capacity of the operating rooms.
Other, less intuitive, forms of systematic variability might come to light only through a multistep model of the process. One hospital saw large spikes in demand for cardiovascular surgery on Fridays, for example, with all of the attendant bottlenecks and costly overtime staffing. The problem, it turned out, really originated not in the operating rooms but back in the cardiac-catheterization lab—the part of the hospital that diagnoses heart problems that often lead to surgery. The lab processed an unusually large number of cases on Wednesdays and Thursdays, probably because people who have mild chest pains over the weekend first see their primary-care doctors on Monday or Tuesday and arrive for testing two or three days later. Since bypasses tend to occur about a day after the diagnosis of arterial blockage, this pattern created the Friday operating-room bottleneck. The hospital eliminated it by moving catheterizations that could safely be rescheduled to early in the following week, thus spreading out demand for the operating rooms more evenly.
Set limits, but carefully
In addition to reducing variance through these process-oriented techniques, a hospital can also apply systematic, policy-oriented methods. It might sometimes want to establish narrower windows of time for physicians' rounds or discharges of patients, for example, since limits of this sort help contain the more high-variability processes, making it less likely that they will spill over into other parts of the system. A firm upper limit on the length of time allotted to cleaning operating rooms and to preparing for the next patient can also reduce variations in their turnover times—variations that may not be large but are certainly disruptive. One hospital created "swat teams" to clean and sterilize any operating room in danger of sitting empty for more than 30 minutes.
Of course, such measures must be implemented with care. Constraining doctors' rounds to ridiculously brief periods may eliminate some variability but will also annoy doctors and lead to lower admissions rates and, possibly, to inferior care. Nonetheless, a great deal of variability can be eliminated without producing such outcomes. Less variability means shorter waiting times, and that alone is a great boon to patients and doctors alike. In fact, another good reason to improve logistics is the manifest desire of patients to save time: in a recent survey of 75 people, respondents said that they would drive farther, pay more (in the form of higher co-payments), and even switch doctors if it meant getting faster service.
In any case, if medical care is largely a commodity, quality of care will only rarely distinguish a particular hospital, at least within a class of competing institutions in a given region. Any major teaching hospital in New York City, for instance, is capable of performing a triple bypass competently. It is benefits such as short waiting times and fast turnarounds that can distinguish one hospital from another.
Inverting the pyramid
Competing on the basis of logistics may require a radical change in the attitudes of hospital executives. In the past, hospitals followed a strict hierarchy. Doctors were treated with kid gloves. Managers occupied the next level down, followed by nurses. At the bottom of the pyramid were semiskilled workers such as those who check patients in and out, clean their rooms, get them positioned in X-ray machines, and transport them around the hospital. The work of these employees was thought to have little strategic importance for the organization.
Redesigning the process stands that traditional pyramid on its head. For identifying and eliminating bottlenecks, the most important people are those closest to the patient and information flow: the frontline workers. In some cases, they may be physicians, but more often they are less-specialized employees at the bottom of the hospital pecking order, who can often provide keen insights into the detailed process-improvement opportunities that are the lifeblood of logistics.
As any manufacturer can tell you, logistics problems are never fully solved: you find an approximate accommodation and then continue to make improvements as conditions change and better information comes to light. To make the detailed adjustments that are needed to avoid bottlenecks, frontline employees must therefore not only record a hospital's demand and capacity information but also use that information to troubleshoot operations. In addition, it is important to give the frontline the authority to solve problems before they even occur. No longer can the hospital treat these employees as mere ciphers.
In redesigning the processes of hospitals, their managers will have to create new positions that are likely to become pivotal in improving hospital operations. One of them is akin to the job of a production manager in the industrial sector: a person who has a good overview of the entire process and can quickly redeploy resources to solve day-to-day logistics problems that defy more systematic solutions. This person plays the "traffic cop" role that once fell, informally, to the senior charge nurse. Another key employee is the process analyst, who in a manufacturing setting might be described as an industrial engineer: an operations expert who oversees the evolving computer model of the hospital's end-to-end processes and continually recommends changes that might improve the system.
Survival of the fittest
Often, these changes involve information technology. For instance, a new system called "bed tracking" keeps tabs on which beds are vacated and when, thus making the entire process much more transparent. Whoever removes a patient for discharge starts by dialing a number on the room telephone. That number automatically pages a housekeeper, whose activities are logged on the computer, and so on. In this way, the computer displays each room's current state: "empty" or "occupied" and "clean," "needs cleaning," or even "taking too long to clean." Emergency room staffers can follow the process on-screen and adjust their own work accordingly. If a room is about to open up, they know that they can prepare the patient for admission. Under the current system, by contrast, the emergency room staff calls admissions to ask for an open bed, admissions calls a particular floor, the floor supervisor pages a nurse, and the nurse walks down the hall to see whether the bedroom is clean.
These decades-old processes are a luxury that hospitals can't afford at a time when, like banks and insurance companies, they provide a largely commodified service, in the sense that marginal increases in the excellence of medical techniques rarely deliver much competitive advantage. What can deliver it—and will ultimately divide the hospitals that survive from those forced to exit the market—is the efficient use of assets. And that means drastically improved operations.
The prospect may sound daunting, especially to hospital executives whose heads are still spinning from a decade of mergers and cost reductions. But if these executives spend a few hours in their emergency rooms, they may become more sanguine, for they will find almost unlimited room for improvement.


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Parents who have convinced their children that alcohol and tobacco are bad for them are likely struggling next with how to talk with their teens about marijuana — especially as it has become legal for adults to use recreationally in Colorado.
The perceptions many teens — and often, their parents — have about pot are not only wrong, they can be dangerous, say medical and treatment professionals.
An ongoing study of the behaviors and attitudes of teens and young adults has found that while teens aren't necessarily reporting higher use of marijuana, they're less likely to consider it "risky." The 2013 Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that from 2005 to 2013, the percentage of high school students seeing great risk from being a regular marijuana user has fallen among eighth-graders from 74 percent to 61 percent, and among 12th-graders from 58 percent to 40 percent. This concerns members of the medical community who say that pot is bad for developing brains.
We asked a few professionals in Colorado to address some of the questions teens often ask about pot.
Pot isn't addictive — is it?
"No scientist in the field would have any qualms about it being [called] addictive," says Dr. Paula Riggs, director of the Division of Substance Dependence at the University of Colorado-Denver's School of Psychiatry. "It has a similar effect on the brain reward system as other drugs of abuse like heroin or cocaine."
When pot use interferes with daily life, those effects point to the drug's addictive qualities, says Riggs, who recently appeared on "The Dr. Oz Show" to talk about the topic.
She suggests asking these questions: "Does a person have difficulty cutting down on his use of pot? Have there been negative consequences with family members over its use? Has he been kicked out of school or continued to use despite such consequences? Have they increased the amount of time they spend using and cut other things out of their life?"
"The studies are clear that one out of 11 adults who try marijuana will become dependent or addicted, while one out of six adolescents will become daily or near-daily users," Riggs says.
Isn't it basically harmless?
There's a perception that marijuana is fairly benign, but medical professionals say it is bad for brain development, which can last until people are in their mid-20s.
Riggs, who has recently begun a program treating students for substance abuse at Adams City High School, says ongoing research shows that pot is neurotoxic, or disruptive to the brain and other parts of the nervous system.
THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, binds to sites called cannabinoid receptors on brain cells. When the CBRs are overstimulated, their function is altered, and it can lead to addiction and withdrawal symptoms when use stops, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
Among the research Riggs cites is the Dunedin Study, in which more than 1,000 people were tracked over a 30-plus-year period. Those who used pot regularly as teens and young adults permanently shaved 6 points off their IQ scores.
Isn't it safer to drive while high on pot than on alcohol?
"I clearly tell teens it's not safe to drive when you are high on marijuana," says Sheryl Ziegler, a counseling psychologist who runs The Child & Family Therapy Center at Lowry. "Concentration is difficult; your coordination is in jeopardy; it's hard to judge distance, speeds or identifying sounds. In combination with alcohol, it's worse."
Riggs notes that the effects can last longer than alcohol. "You can have a couple of cocktails, and while you might be impaired for a time, you can drive perfectly fine tomorrow," she says. But the THC in marijuana stays in the system longer. For people who have smoked several times over the course of a day or night, it results in "reduced reaction time, impaired balance and interference with memory and decision-making."
Pot is medicine, so it's OK, right?
"This is not about interfering with those who have diseases and needs for it," Riggs says of medicinal marijuana used for pain or nausea relief. But just because it's used to treat some conditions doesn't mean it's for everyone.
For example, Riggs and others worry about young pregnant women thinking it might help them with morning sickness since medical marijuana is used by some cancer patients as an anti-nausea drug. That's dangerous because research has shown the developing child's brain is affected as well as the mother's, Riggs says, citing a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
My parents smoked pot when they were growing up, so why shouldn't I?
Parents may be afraid that if they say they admit to using it as youths, they're giving their children permission to use it as well, Ziegler says.
"I tell parents to think about how their children may use that information," she says. "I don't encourage lying," she says, but the parents have to decide how much to reveal about their past.
And it's important to get the topic on the table, she says. "Being open and engaged with your kids is important."
Also important to know: Much of the marijuana available today is more potent than it was in the past, so the potential exists for it to have more intense deleterious effects on the user. "We are seeing more emergency room visits with [excessive vomiting], and with adolescents, there is greater risk of psychosis and delirium."
Pot doesn't cause cancer, does it?
A Mayo Clinic report published in 2006 and reported on in procon.org found that "marijuana smoke contains 50 percent to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke and has the potential to cause cancer of the lungs and respiratory tract. Marijuana smoke is commonly inhaled deeper and held longer than is tobacco smoke, increasing the lungs' exposure to carcinogens."
Isn't pot a good way to chill out?
Teens often think they're OK as they start to use, but when it becomes habitual, problems develop, Ziegler says.
"I talk about how it's associated with school failure, motivation, attention and learning. They get lower grades, are more likely to drop out and have lower salaries and job success."
Using pot also increases the rates at which people engage in risky behaviors, such as unplanned sexual activity, and use of other intoxicants like alcohol and other drugs, Ziegler says.
Pot use might also keep an important medical condition from being identified. "They might have an anxiety disorder, for example," Ziegler says. "There's a high correlation between ADHD and marijuana. They like to use it because it gives them a short-term release from their condition. But then if they start using it daily, it will no longer be calming. They can become paranoid."
Everyone is doing it, so why shouldn't I try it?
In the 2011-12 Colorado Healthy Kids Survey, 32 percent of 12th-graders reported using marijuana in the previous month. That means 68 percent didn't.
"It's about prevention and building self-esteem so that kids as young as fifth and sixth grade know how to say no and stand up for themselves," Ziegler says.
Dr. Christian Thurstoneagrees that avoiding pot is the best policy. He runs a program at Denver Health for those 12-21 years old, called the Substance Abuse Treatment Education & Prevention Program, or STEP.
"[Parents] shouldn't just throw up their hands," Thurstone says. "I encourage pro-social activities that build self-esteem — sports, chess, youth group, debate or other interests. You can also set forth expectations and norms."
Suzanne S. Brown: 303-954-1697, email@example.com or twitter.com/suzannebro


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This months Daring Bakers challenge was cheesecake lollipops. I was looking forward to making this months challenge because, well, its cheesecake, covered in chocolate, on a stick! What a great idea!
Cheesecake is one of my favourite desserts and I have made it a few times. This cheesecake recipe was different than the one that I usually make and I was looking forward to seeing how it turned out. The original recipe called for five bricks of cream cheese which was way too much for me so I reduced it to three. Unfortunately I did not have a pan that was big enough to hold my 8×8 inch baking pan so I was not able to bake it in a water bath. I was kind of looking forward to seeing how baking a cheesecake in a water bath would work out. Next time maybe. It worked out fine without the water bath and the cheesecake tasted great!
Assembling the lollipops was kind of fun. I could not find lollipop sticks so I used some small straws. They were ok but they really couldn't hold the weight of the chocolate cover cheesecake. That was ok because once you picked them up they disappeared quite quickly. 🙂 I also forgot to pick up the vegetable shortening that the original recipe called for when I went grocery shopping. I tried using butter instead but the chocolate just did not get runny enough so I added some cream. It ended up being a chocolate ganache coating. It worked and that was what mattered. I decided to coat my chocolate covered lollipops in coconut, chopped almonds and chopped pistachios.
Given that I have made cheesecake and chocolate ganache before this challenge was came together fairly easily. It took a lot of time though with all of the cooling, chilling and freezing though. The results were well worth it. The chocolate covered cheesecake lollipops were really good! My favourite were the pistachio covered ones and they disappeared quickly. Overall I really enjoyed this challenge and its yummy results. It's not too early in the morning for a chocolate covered cheesecake lollipop…
Chocolate Covered Cheesecake Lollipops
- 1 batch cheesecake (see below)
- 1/2 pound chocolate
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- * lollipop sticks
- Cover the cheesecake in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for several hours to overnight.
- Scoop 2 ounces of the cheesecake, form it into a ball and place it on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
- Insert a lollipop stick into the cheesecake ball.
- Freeze the cheesecake pops until very cold, about 2-3 hours to overnight.
- Melt the chocolate into the butter and heavy cream over a double boiler and turn off the heat.
- Dip the frozen cheesecake lollipops into the chocolate ganache and then into any decorations that you want and place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
- Refrigerator overnight overnight.
- 3 8 ounce packages cream cheese (room temperature)
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons flour (rice flour for gluten-free)
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 3 eggs
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- Beat the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt in a large bowl until smooth.
- Beat in the eggs and egg yolk one at a time.
- Beat in the vanilla and cream.
- Pour the batter into a greased 8×8 inch baking pan.
- Bake in a preheated 325F/170C oven until the cheesecake is slightly golden brown on top, about 45-55 minutes.
- Let the cheesecake cool.


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Which, predictably, elicited the following comment:
Anonymous said...
Wildcat, out of respect, admiration and, what the hell, love I have to say that stem is too long. Your scranus must draft nicely, but no one wants to see it jutting out. I doubt you were measured for the frame and stem set up.
March 10, 2013 at 11:00 PM
Firstly, I love you too. Secondly, you're absolutely right, I was not measured for the frame and set-up. In fact, I was not measured for the frame and set-up on purpose, because if I had been then some Fredly doofus might have told me that I should use this stem instead of that, make my top tube Ycm long instead of Xcm, move my saddle that way instead of this way, put my levers here instead of there, use these cleats instead of those, and so forth. The end result of this would have been that I would have had exactly the bike I didn't want. Instead, I would have had exactly the bike some Fredly doofus wanted me to have, and moreover I would have paid him for the privilege.
Believe it or not, after riding numerous skinny-tire bikes set up numerous ways over the years, I've discovered that what makes me happy on a going-fast road bike is exactly the top tube and stem length as pictured above. I suspect the reason for it is that the first road bike I started racing on "seriously" was set up this way, and even though I'm 95% retired from bike racing anything else has felt wrong since. Even so, what's the difference? I guess if I was using a stem with a measurement so odd that it had to be custom made I'd think about changing things, but as it is it's a perfectly common stock size.
I begrudge no Fred for forking over a bunch of money to have a fellow Fred point lasers at his crotch. Hey, if you need to feel that the act of putting yourself on a bike should require as much calculus as that of sending a rocket into outer space then feel free to indulge. It does tie in well with the Strava and the wattage and all the other forms of "off-foffing" roadies seem to like so much. As for me, I'll keep riding exactly the way I always have until my body tells me otherwise, in which case I'll make the appropriate adjustment.
By the way, we would all do well to remember that there's a little thing called "personal style:"
If James Brown had been a cyclist then a bunch of Freds would have taken him to task for not wearing a body suit that was tested in a wind tunnel.
Speaking of bicycle set-up minutiae, I recently came across the following blog post from "Bicycling" magazine's test director via Bill Strickland's Twittering account, which gives considerable insight into their bike testing process:
I particularly appreciated the disclosure that pretty much all these bikes are the same:
I've noticed that a lot of your reviews sound the same.
I'm aware of that and I do try to avoid repeating myself. In my own defense, however, I often feel like I'm riding the same bike over and over. Despite the logos and paint, most of the road bikes I review are made out of the same material (and often built in the same factory), with geometry that varies only a few millimeters, and built up with the same, or very similar, parts. Additionally, almost every bike is built to satisfy the same requirements: low weight, high stiffness, responsive handling etc. So, perhaps it's not surprising that a lot of bikes feel familiar.
I do honestly think that the strong majority of the bikes I ride are excellent and will serve any rider well. Really.
Having joined in on a "Bicycling" magazine Editor's Choice bike testing orgy a couple years back (note they have not invited me again since) this was certainly my experience. Really, the only way the various brands managed to screw up a bike was by incorporating weird, fussy, or proprietary features, which a surprising number of them seem unable to refrain from doing. For example, what's the point of a seatpost with an expander wedge, apart from giving the rider another maddening creak to chase? So quill stems are totally "out," yet quill posts are apparently "in?" Presumably it's to keep people from over-tightening their precious crabon, in which case you should expect quill stems to make a comeback under some new name like "The Interna-Torque® Integrated Expanding Wedge Cockpit System Concept."
I did, however, disagree with his assessment of the phrase "laterally stiff and vertically compliant:"
What's your take on 'laterally stiff and vertically compliant?'
Ah, LSVC. Here's how I view it: just because it is obvious and overused, doesn't mean it is not true. Example: if 100 people described Coca Cola, how many of them would not use the word 'sweet'? Go ride a bunch of modern carbon bikes: most of them are quite laterally stiff and vertically compliant.
I see his point that this phrase refers to a property that's inherent in pretty much every sporting bicycle (after all, they're all the same, as he points out) though I'd argue it's less like calling Coca Cola "sweet" and more like calling it "orally savory and lingually unsour."
Anyway, it's worth pointing out that for many months now I've been using a certain pair of 23mm tires on my above-pictured bicycle with the apparently gargantuan stem, and the bike has ridden awesomely. Then, last week, I put on the exact same make and model of tires except in 25mm, and it now rides like a completely different awesome bicycle.
So next time you're thinking about getting a new bike, change the tires instead.
Meanwhile, the New York Times wants you to relax because New York City drivers kill fewer people than actual murderers:
When events like this happen sequentially, taking on the cast of epidemic, it is reasonable to ask just how safe walking really is in New York. According to newly released data from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a nonprofit group that works to reduce car dependence, there were 451 pedestrian fatalities in the city between 2009 and 2011, fewer than the number of homicides in 2011. Although you are much more likely to be struck by a vehicle on Park Avenue and 33rd Street — which has been considered among the city's most dangerous pedestrian intersections — than you are to get stabbed to death there, over all, murder is still more prevalent than vehicular death, despite the drastic reductions in crime that have distinguished the city's past two decades.
First of all, the 451 person figure is "pedestrian fatalities," and doesn't count all the other people killed by reckless drivers, such as cyclists, other drivers, or their passengers. Second of all, I'd argue that the fact that drivers are killing as many pedestrians in three years as murderers are killing in one is actually pretty horrifying. After all, murderers are actually trying to kill people, whereas drivers are theoretically just trying to get to work or the store.
By the way, if you look at all those homicides in 2011, there were 515 in total, and 38% of them were the results of disputes or acts of revenge. That's about 196 people. Meanwhile, there were 237 traffic fatalities by December 27th of that same year--and this was touted as an all-time low.
In other words, by the same stupid logic by which the New York Times says pedestrian deaths compare favorably with murders, you could also draw the equally stupid conclusion that ripping off a drug dealer is less dangerous than crossing the street.
In fact, the only reasonable conclusion to draw from any of this is that the New York Times is about to endorse a mayoral candidate who's going to rip out all the bike lanes. (Which is obvious, because this describes all of the mayoral candidates.)
Lastly, here's an impressive bike spotted by Mike in Vancouver:
That's both sweet and laterally stiff yet vertically compliant.


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- City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
- Dubai 04:04 05:28 12:18 15:42 19:03 20:27
New York City's "Don't Honk" signs are coming down, but it's still against the law to blow a car horn unnecessarily.
The city Department of Transportation says all the signs will be removed by the end of the year.
According to The New York Times, city officials say the decision is part of an effort to de-clutter the streets of signs that generally go ignored.
Unnecessary honking carries a $350 fine but is rarely enforced.
The DOT says complaints about honking have declined 63 percent since 2008.
But City Councilwoman Gale Brewer said in a letter to the DOT: "I can't tell you how many requests I get for `no honking' signs."
The signs were introduced during Mayor Ed Koch's administration.
(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)
Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.


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Good advice...
My mom sent me this email which had some good advice. Thought I'd pass it on…
1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Talk to God about what is going on in your life. Buy a lock if you have to.
3. When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement, 'My purpose is to __________ today. I am thankful for______________'
4. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants/factories.
5. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon,broccoli , almonds &walnuts.
6. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
7. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
8. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
9. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
10. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
11. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
12. You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
13. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
14. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
15. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
16. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years, will this matter?'
17. Forgive everyone for everything.
18. What other people think of you is none of your business.
19. GOD heals everything - but you have to ask Him.
20. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
21. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch!!!
22. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
23. Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements: I am thankful for __________. Today I accomplished _________.
24. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
25. When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You'll be smiling before you know it.


text:
About one out of five (19%) of the nation's households owed student debt in 2010, more than double the share two decades earlier1 and a significant rise from the 15% that owed such debt in 2007, just prior to the onset of the Great Recession, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data.
The Pew Research analysis also finds that a record 40% of all households headed by someone younger than age 35 owe such debt, by far the highest share among any age group.
It also finds that, whether computed as a share of household income or assets, the relative burden of student loan debt is greatest for households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum, even though members of such households are less likely than those in other groups to attend college in the first place.2
Since 2007 the incidence of student debt has increased in nearly every demographic and economic category, as has the size of that debt.
Among households owing student debt, the average outstanding student loan balance increased from $23,349 in 2007 to $26,682 in 2010. Most debtor households had less than $50,000 in outstanding student debt in 2010, but the share of households owing elevated amounts has increased. In 2007, 10% of student debtors owed more than $54,238. By 2010,
10% of student debtor households owed more than $61,894 (all dollar figures adjusted for inflation and in 2011 dollars).
While every income group had more total student loan debt in 2010 than in 2007, the increases were greatest at the two extremes of the income distribution—households in the lowest fifth of households by annual income and in the highest fifth—than in the middle three-fifths.
In 2010 the least affluent fifth of households owed 13% of the outstanding student debt, up from 11% in 2007. Similarly the share of the outstanding student debt pie owed by the richest fifth of households rose from 28% in 2007 to 31% in 2010.
While those at the upper end of the income scale are more likely than others to owe student loan debt, when one considers the resources that households have at their disposal to meet their debts, the relative burden of student loans is much greater for those at the lower end. In 2010 outstanding student debt was nearly a quarter (24%) of the household income of the lowest fifth of households by annual income. By comparison, households in the ninth decile of household income owed only 7 cents of student debt for every dollar of household income received, and those in the tenth decile (90 percent and higher) owed just 2 cents of student debt for every dollar of household income.
Because outstanding student debt has been rising and household incomes have been falling since 2007, outstanding educational debt has risen as a share of household income for all income groups considered. The outstanding student-debt-to-income ratio nearly doubled for the richest fifth of households from 2007 to
2010, but it remains the case that in both years the ratio of student debt to income was markedly higher for the lowest fifth of households by income. Student debt represented 15 cents of every dollar of household income for the lowest fifth of households in 2007. Even with the recent run-up, educational debt represents a much smaller share of household income for the richest fifth of households in comparison to the lowest fifth of households by annual income.
Leverage ratios, or comparing the outstanding student debt to the household's assets, tell a similar story. The outstanding student debt in 2010 was 2.2% of the total value of the assets owned by the lowest fifth of households by income. The student debt was only 1.1% of the assets owned by the richest ninth decile of households and a mere 0.2% of the assets owned by the richest tenth of households.
Rising student debt burdens can also be evaluated in light of the other debts owed by households, such as property-related debt, credit card debt and all installment debt. Student debt is a growing share, rising from 3% of outstanding total debt owed by households in 2007 to 5% of all debts in 2010. This reflects growing outstanding student debt and the fact that households have reduced their other debts. Average household indebtedness fell from $105,297 in 2007 to $100,720 in 2010.3
The decline in total indebtedness in spite of rising student debt burdens has not been shared by all households. The average total indebtedness of the lowest fifth of households by annual income rose from $17,579 in 2007 to $26,779 in 2010. Total indebtedness for households in the middle and upper fifths of the income distribution either remained unchanged or declined. The lowest income households have mounting debt obligations in addition to mounting student debt obligations, while the nation's higher income households have declining other debts in the face of mounting student debt obligations.
About the Report
This report examines outstanding student loan debt in the context of the debtor household's other debts, assets and other measures of economic ability to handle the student debt. It is based on the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), a triennial survey of the financial characteristics of U.S. households sponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve with the cooperation of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The most recent SCF is 2010. The SCF questionnaire has undergone only minor revisions since 1989, and this report analyzes SCF data from 1989 to 2010. The SCF is the nation's foremost source of data on the wealth or net worth of the nation's households and use of financial services (as well as the demographic characteristics of the households). Numerous data sources provide detailed information on college student borrowing and its relation to other components of students' financing their education (for example, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, or NPSAS). The value of the SCF is that it sheds light on the role of student debt among persons no longer enrolled in postsecondary education as well as the other debts, assets and wider economic context of student debtors.
"Student debt" or "college debt" in this report refers to outstanding education-related installment debt and includes loans that are currently in deferment as well as loans in their schedule repayment period.
"High school graduate" comprises those who graduated with a regular diploma or its equivalent, such as a GED, but did not obtain any college education. The educational level "some college" refers to those who do not have a four-year college degree, but have completed some college credits, including those who received associate degrees. "College graduate" refers to anyone with at least a bachelor's degree, including those with a graduate or professional degree.
"Wealth" is the difference between the value of assets owned by a household (such as home, stocks and savings accounts) and its liabilities (such as mortgages, credit card debt and loans for education). The terms "net worth" and "wealth" are used interchangeably in this report.
Dollar amounts are adjusted for inflation and reported in 2011 dollars unless otherwise noted.
See Appendix A for additional details on the SCF and definitions of net worth, household income and household economic groups.
This report was written by Richard Fry. Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center and director of its Social and Demographic Trends project, assisted the writing of the overview and provided guidance on the structure of the report. Research assistant Seth Motel provided expert assistance with the preparation of charts and formatting the report. The report was number-checked by research assistant Eileen Patten and Motel. The report was copy-edited by Marcia Kramer.


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Список изменений патча 4.2 PTR от 24 мая
25 мая 2011
Компания Blizzard Entertainment установила очередной билд патча 4.2 на тестовый сервер MMORPG World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, сообщает официальный сайт проекта. Также был опубликован список произошедших изменений, с которым можно ознакомиться ниже.
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Dungeons & Raids
Bastion of Twilight
- The damage modifier on Normal has been reduced for Arion, Elementium Monstrosity, Feludius, Ignacius, and Terrastra.
- Removed one of each type of Bound elemental from the Ascendant Council chamber.
- Arion
- Chain Lightning damage has been reduced.
- Cho'gall
- Health, melee damage, Health of Corrupting Adherent, Depravity damage, Corrupting Crash damage, Flaming Destruction damage, and Unleashed Shadows damage has all been reduced by 20%.
- Corrupting Crash and Depravity
- Halved the amount of Corruption they give to 5 from 10.
- Corrupted Bite effect caused by Blood of the Old God reduced.
- Damage Taken from Corruption of the Old God per Corrupted Blood has been reduced from 3% per stack to 2% per stack.
- Debilitating Beam damage has been reduced by 20% to 6,400.
- The duration of Twisted Devotion has been reduced by 25%.
- Dragon Siblings
- Health, melee damage, Twilight Meteorite damage, Devouring Flames, Blackout damage, Unstable Twilight damage, Twilight Zone damage, Twilight Blast damage, Fabulous Flames damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
- Elementium Monstrosity
- Electrical Instability damage has been reduced.
- Feludius
- Damage due to being Frozen while Waterlogged has been reduced.
- Halfus
- Health, melee damage, Fireball/Fireball Barrage damage, Furious Roar damage, Scorching Breath damage, Shadow Nova damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
- Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Time Warden, and Orphaned Emerald Whelp health has been reduced by 20%.
- Shadow Nova base cast time has been increased.
- Ignacious
- Rising Flames now increases damage by 3% per stack, down from 5%.
- Terrastra
- Harden Skin now increases Physical damage dealt by 20% (down from 100%.)
Blackwing Descent
- Atramedes
- Health, melee damage, modulation damage, Roaring Flame Breath damage, and Searing Flame damage has all been reduced by 20%.
- Modulation no longer causes Sound in normal difficulty.
- Sound given by Sonar Pulse has been reduced to 3 (from 5.)
- Chimaeron
- Health reduced by 20% and melee damage reduced by 10%.
- Chimaeron will now only cast two caustic slimes per 30 second cycle, at second 17 and second 23.
- Drakeadon Mongrel
- Time Lapse no longer stuns.
- Frost Burn silence is now 3 seconds
- Dwarven Kings
- Whirlwind no longer drops threat.
- Execution sentence now deals damage only.
- Shield of Light absorption now reduced.
- Magmaw
- Damage and hit points reduced by 20%.
- Lava Parasites have been diminished
- Lava Spew damage, Magma Spit damage, Massive Crash damage, and Infectious Vomit damage have all been been reduced.
- Mangled Lifeless no longer instantly kills, and damage has been reduced.
- Parasitic Infection has been decreased.
- Maloriak
- Health, damage, Aberation health/damage, Arcane Storm damage, Prime Subject damage, Flash Freeze/Shatter damage, and Scorching Blast damage has all been decreased by 20%.
- Aberration stacking damage buff decreased.
- Prime Subjects no longer fixate, and are no longer immune to taunt.
- Nefarian
- Animated Bone Warriors take 33 seconds to fall over, (down from 50.)
- Blast Nova cast time increased.
- Chromatic Prototype Health reduced 20%.
- Electrocute damage reduced 30%.
- Fewer Animated Bone warriors spawn.
- Magma Stacking debuff effect reduced 75%.
- Nefarian health and melee damage reduced by 20%.
- Nefarian''s Shadowblaze cast frequency cannot increase beyond 1 per 15 sec.
- Onyxia health and melee damage reduced by 20%.
- Shadowflame Barrage damage reduced 20%.
- Tail Lash damage reduced 50%.
- Omnotron Council
- Barrier absorb amount increased by 100%.
- Increased the cooldown on Power Conversion (Converted Power chance).
- Health, Melee damage, Electrical Discharge damage, Lightning Conductor damage, Health of Poison Bomb, Incineration Security Measure damage, Arcane Annihilator damage, has all been reduced by 20%.
- Flamethrower damage has been reduced by 40%.
- Static Shock caused by Unstable Shield damage and Poison Bomb damage has been decreased by 50%.
Throne of the Four Winds
- Al'Akir
- Acid Rain now stacks every 20s (up from 15s.)
- Electrocute now pulses every 1s (up from 0.5s.)
- Feedback duration increased to 30s (from 20s.)
- Health, damage, and Wind Burst damage have all been reduced 20%.
- Lightning and Lightning Rod recast time has been increased.
- Lightning Strike friendly chain damage has been halved.
- Will no longer use Static Shock on normal difficulty in phase 1 or phase 2.
- Conclave of the Four Winds
- Gathering Strength cast time has been increased
- Ice Patch slow is now 5% per stack, up to 10 stacks (down from 10% per stack, up to 30 stacks), damage reduced by 20%.
- Rohash, Anshal, Nezir melee, Ravenous Creeper health/damage, Ravenous Creeper toxic spores damage, Hurricane damage, Sleet Storm damage , Permafrost damage , Slicing Gale, and Wind Blast damage have all been reduced by 20%.
- Wind Chill damage decreased by 20%and now increases damage taken by 5% per stack.
Classes: General
- Dodge: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%.
- Parry: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors now receive 27% of their Strength bonuses as parry rating, up from 25%. This conversion still only applies to Strength above and beyond their base Strength.
- Pyroblast: The version of this spell cast when Hot Streak is not active did slightly less damage than the Hot Streak version. Its damage has been increased so that both versions of Pyroblast now do the same amount of damage.
- Spellsteal mana cost has been increased 100%.
- Impact: When Living Bomb is spread via this talent, it will only be spread to two additional targets. The net effect is that if the Mage's most recent Living Bomb target is the same as their Impact target, that target will no longer lose the Living Bomb effect. If Living Bomb is active on multiple targets when the Impact effect is cast, Living Bomb will remain active on the most recent Living Bomb target, and will be added to two other nearby targets.
- Deep Freeze and Ring of Frost will now cause diminishing returns for each other.
- Ring of Frost now has a 1.5-second cast time.
- Spellsteal now has a 6-second cooldown.
- Seal of Righteousness – now can be proc'd by any melee ability, not just single target melee abilities. This adds Hammer of the Righteous (the physical component) and Divine Storm to the list of abilities that can proc it. In addition, Seal of Righteousness procs can now crit.
- Walk in the Light now improves Word of Glory healing by 30% in addition to its current effects.
- Guardian of Ancient Kings now uses the 'Assist' pet stance functionality.
- Seals of Command: This talent now makes Seal of Righteousness hit an unlimited number of melee targets, instead of only 2 additional targets.
- Glyph of Seal of Truth: The expertise bonus granted by this glyph now also works when Seal of Righteousness is active.
- Shadowfiend now uses the 'Assist' pet stance functionality.
- Sin and Punishment's Vampiric Touch backlash Fear effect no longer has diminishing returns.
Tier 11 Set Bonuses
- Restoration druid Tier 11 2-Piece: This set bonus has been redesigned to work with the new Restoration druid mastery. Druids with this bonus now receive the bonus to Spirit while the Harmony mastery bonus to periodic healing is active.
Tier 12 Set Bonuses
- Hunter 4P: The effect which makes Shots cost no focus now also makes Kill Command cost no focus.
- Mage 2P: This set bonus can now also be triggered by Frostfire Bolt.
- Mage 4P: The portion of this bonus referring to Arcane Missiles have been removed. Instead, the set bonus now makes Arcane Power reduce the cost of Mage spells by 10% instead of increasing their cost.
- The Ring of Valor has been added to the Arena rotation once again.


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This competition is open to entrants living in Australia only.
This competition is open from now until 7 December 2012 12pm Australian EST.
The winner will be announced on this blog, Face Book and Twitter and I will contact you, as long as you have left a valid means. You have 5 days to respond, otherwise the prize will be redrawn.
I was not paid to write this post, but I received a cake pop maker to review. Clearly I liked it.
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