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Few teams were as active this offseason as the Timberwolves, who brought in new rotation players Brandon Roy, Andrei Kirilenko, Chase Budinger and Greg Stiemsma, along with another two (Dante Cunningham and Alexey Shved) who could also contribute. There are still holes to fill, but Minnesota was able to stock up on players who address their need for better perimeter defense and better 3-point shooting, and veterans like Kirilenko and Roy figure to add leadership to a young group.
For star forward Kevin Love, who has lamented the team's shortcomings in the past, all of this is a big deal. He is, though, well aware that if the Wolves are to improve and make a push into the crowded Western Conference playoff picture, it will all have to start with one body part in particular—the ACL of point guard Ricky Rubio.
"That's something that we're all obviously the most concerned with," Love said. "We were a very good team when Ricky played but when he went out, we didn't really get that back. So we need him to be healthy and doing all of the things he needs to be doing to get back on the court."
The good news is that Rubio told the Spanish newspaper Sport that he is targeting a December return to the Wolves, which will put him out for at least 15 games. He suffered his injury on March 9, and following that much time off, would probably need some time to work off the rust. Even then, allowing just nine months for an ACL injury might not be enough, and there is a chance that Rubio won't be 100 percent for a while longer.
Rubio's health is the one thing tamping down expectations for Minnesota this year. In 41 games last year, Rubio's overall play was stellar. He averaged 10.6 points with 8.2 assists, adding 4.2 rebounds and 2.2 steals. He also proved somewhat of a better shooter than many expected (or feared), knocking down 34.0 percent of his 3-pointers. Rubio made 31 starts for the Timberwolves, and they were 18-13 in those games. They were 8-27 when he did not start.
The additions Minnesota has made will go a long way toward masking his absence, though, and veterans Luke Ridnour and J.J. Barea are returning. There is also Love, who averaged 26.0 points and 13.3 rebounds last year and figures to continue his ascent, especially after his performance with Team USA in the London Olympics.
"For all of us, it is going to be a big year," Love said. "No one likes to lose and we know now we have guys who know how to win and know how to get us to the playoffs. There is no reason we should not be able to put it all together on the floor now."

subset: commoncrawl


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KINGSVILLE, Texas - Arkansas Tech limited University of the Incarnate Word to only 10 points over the last 18 minutes of the first half, but had to hold off a late comeback charge as the Golden Suns picked up a 52-51 win over the previously unbeaten Lady Cardinals in the 8th annual Turkey Day Shootout at the Steinke Center Saturday afternoon.
Tech (3-1) did recover somewhat from a cold-shooting previous day loss to St. Mary's - hitting only 26 percent in the second half and losing by 10 points - by knocking buckets down at a rate of 40 and 53 percent in the two halves against Incarnate Word, which suffered its first loss of the season after four wins.
Free throws were actually the difference in this one for the Golden Suns, who found themselves outscored from the field by a bucket (19-18). Tech canned 16 of its 27 foul shot attempts (59 percent), while the Lady Cardinals hit only 9 of their 19 tries (47 percent).
Incarnate Word, whose home base is San Antonio, struck in a hurry by dropping in eight points on consecutive three-point buckets and a layoff off a steal - all in the first 1:58 to build a stunning 8-0 gap.
But after a time-out discussion with Coach Carin Pinion-McNabb, the Golden Suns came right back with some old-fashioned defensive tactics while outscoring the Lady Cardinals 24-10 during the remaining 18 minutes.
Back-to-back jumpers by Ginger Murphy to start the second half helped the Golden Suns get off to a 9-6 start as Tech's advantage was stretched to nine points at 33-24.
But Incarnate Word took advantage of some Tech turnovers and hustled back to get to within three points (33-30) and finally as close as one point (36-35) with 8:30 left to be played.
Robin Chastain then gave the Suns some breathing room with back-to-back buckets, and Sarah Hart's bank from the left side shoved the score to 50-43.
The Lady Cardinals answered with a trey by Morgan Bridges and a rebound tip by Erika Pink to crawl back to within 50-48 at the 1:06 mark.
Tech then managed to burn some time off the clock before getting a turnaround jumper by Alisa Wright with 33.1 seconds remaining. But Amy Mueller canned a three-pointer with 17.8 seconds showing to get Incarnate Word to within 52-51.
On the ensuing throw-in, the Lady Cardinals immediately fouled Natalie Garey, who missed both of her free throw attempts, and Incarnate Word took control with 16.3 seconds remaining.
The Lady Cardinals then isolated Lindsey Perez inside the lane, but her 6-foot jumper bounced off the rim and Katie McCormick pulled down the defensive rebound with 1.6 seconds showing and the Golden Suns held on for the one-point win.
McCormick led Tech in scoring with 11 points, followed by Wright with 9 and Garey and Chastain with 8 points each.
Mueller paced the Lady Cardinals with 14 points, Pink had 11 and Bridges 10 points.
The Suns finished the afternoon hitting at a 45 percent clip from the field (18-40), compared to only 31 percent by Incarnate Word (19-of-62).
Tech had a wide 45-31 edge on the boards, with Brittney Eickhoff pulling down a game-high nine. Hallie Morris had seven and Garey and McCormick six rebounds each.
The Suns will now head into the deep South to Georgia for a meeting Wednesday evening with the Albany State Lady Rams.
Arkansas Tech (52): Murphy 3-5 0-0 6; Wright 4-6 1-2 9; Garey 2-7 4-8 8; Morris 0-6 3-5 3; Eickhoff 1-3 1-2 3; McCormick 3-4 5-8 11; McClure 0-0 2-2 2; Hart 1-1 0-0 2; Chastain 4-8 0-0 8. Totals: 18-40 16-27 53.
Incarnate Word (51): Dahl 0-6 0-0 0; Bridges 4-16 1-2 10; Pink 4-9 2-5 11; Mueller 4-14 4-6 14; Wolf 1-4 0-0 2; Baker 2-2 1-4 5; Denoux 0-0 0-0 0; Perez 3-10 1-2 7; Warren 1-1 0-0 2. Totals: 19-62 9-19 51.
Halftime - Arkansas Tech 24, Incarnate Word 18. Three-point goals - Arkansas Tech 0-3 (Murphy 0-1, Morris 0-2); Incarnate Word 4-17 (Mueller 2-8, Pink 1-1, Bridges 1-2, Dahl 0-3, Perez 0-2, Wolf 0-1.) Rebounds - Arkansas Tech 45 (Eickhoff 9, Morris 7, McCormick 6, Garey 6), Incarnate Word 31 (Pink 6). Assists - Arkansas Tech 13 (five with 2), Incarnate Word 8 (Pink 4). Total fouls - Arkansas Tech 19, Incarnate Word 22. Fouled out - Incarnate Word, Baker. Attendance - 73.


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Rate the quote above you 1-10 and state your reason behond the rating, then post a new quote to be rated.
From last thread
It would be awesome if his orange guitar made love to my yellow accordian!
This one was actually uttered by me in conversation I had with a friend. Don't ask... Rolling Eyes


text:
In a room at the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View, a dozen students are hard at work drawing comics.
"There's all different genres: a personal science fiction story, a spy thriller, a folk tale, a good action adventure, a fantasy and monsters kind of thing," said teacher Andy Gouveia, showing off his middle school-aged students' work.
"I like seeing their creative ideas. This one is a spy thriller, with these super soldiers. One funny detail is there's a painting on the wall of just framed cherries, isn't that funny? You couldn't make that up -- it's totally funny."
He pointed to another frame on the table: "This guy does an upper-cut and jet packs another character out of the atmosphere."
The class is one of many after-school classes taught at Mountain View's CSMA, a beneficiary of the Voice's annual Holiday Fund, which provides art and music classes to all ages and most persuasions. (The Voice is a sister paper of the Palo Alto Weekly.)
CSMA has programs in 31 area schools, including all of Mountain View's elementary schools, and several local preschools for low-income families, which would not have arts education if it were not for CSMA. The school on San Antonio Circle was founded in 1968 and is now the region's largest nonprofit provider of music and arts education.
On a recent afternoon, student Juliet Ablaza was putting images from her imagination on paper: a comic about a boy who secretly has a robotic arm.
"I thought about how some people accidentally get paralyzed, so I just wanted to think of a solution," Ablaza said. "It's a robot arm -- I don't know if science could actually do that, but I thought it was cool."
On the other side of the room Claude Ferguson was teaching a group of younger students comic book illustration.
"What I do is a show them a couple of things, mostly techniques for animating the characters, developing the characters and finally, the storytelling," Ferguson said.
A character developed by Ferguson's student Trevor, is "an evil granny and she has an evil army of gnomes," the boy said. "On her lawn she has a sign, it says, 'Private property, violators will be eaten.' I think that gives you an idea of who granny is." The "vampire gnomes" lure in human victims, and riot over who gets to eat.
If the character illustrations are only a few steps above stick figures, Ferguson says that's quite fine for elementary school-aged kids.
"I found that over teaching for several years, when students have a story, they can develop technique as they go," Ferguson said. "I like to hear their stories, different twists and plots, in the end they have a nice little plot they are usually pretty proud of. I'm not a stickler for technique at this point. At this age you want them to draw, draw, draw."
Ferguson also teaches a class where students make instruments from found objects and perform with them. "It's hilarious actually," said CSMA marketing director Sharon Kenney, who recalled "a bagpipe made from a rubber glove."
Ferguson has also performed jazz with the "Parhelion Ensemble" -- several young musicians who learned jazz at CSMA and drew a packed house at Red Rock Coffee for a recent performance.
CSMA director and jazz fan Vicki Scott Grove -- who joined CSMA over the summer -- said its programs reach over 20,000 students a year. Scholarships and financial aid are available for a wide range of art and music classes for all ages.
"We see ourselves as really a gem of a community resource here," Grove said. "We did have a bit of a (financial) loss last year. We are very dependent on individuals and foundation and corporate support," she said. Cuts in support can impact certain scholarships and financial aid, she said.
Currently on display at CSMA is an exhibition of quilts made by members of Mountain View's Day Worker Center, and CSMA is in the middle of a free concert series, which runs until June 26, featuring everything from Harlem jazz to Mozart to sounds completely improvised. The shows are performed in CSMA's Tateuchi Hall.
"When you come to a concert here, you can talk to the artist afterward," Grove said. "We make it very, very accessible."
Info: The Community School of Music and Arts is at 230 San Antonio Circle in Mountain View. Go to arts4all.org for more information.


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Hello there, I am trying to do .md3 file loading so I can load and then convert .md3 models. I have been using the tutorial from www.gametutorials.com on .md3 loading. I have almost successfully made the load work, i.e information about the model is correct (# vertices, #triangles, header, bone, tag information all correct, i opened the model in milkshape to check this information). However the actual values for the x, y, and z coordinates of the triangles are bogus and I'm not sure how I'm readiang this data wrong. I have scrutinized my code and compared it with the gametutorials' code, but I'm not sure where I've gone wrong. I know that when working with file streams doing one thing wrong can throw everything off.
anyway here is just the code that does the reading of the files. THis is from a console app I did to just read in the file and print to the screen the values (also writes it to another confirmation text file which should exactly mirror the jibberish found in the .md3 file).
I am posting as little code as I possibly can. The defines are from the md3.h file found on gametutorials.com. I don't really expect anyone to reply to this post because I have hardly seen conversations on .md3 file loading.
I've probably made tons of stupid errors, but if you could please help me out I would be very happy.Code:#include "Md3.h" #define Header tMd3Header #define Mesh tMd3MeshInfo #define Tag tMd3Tag #define Bone tMd3Bone #define Triangle tMd3Triangle #define Face tMd3Face #define TexCoord tMd3TexCoord #define Skin tMd3Skin vector<Mesh*> Meshes; vector<Skin*> Skins; vector<Face*> Faces; vector<TexCoord*> Textures; vector<Triangle*> Triangles; int VectorIndices = 0; Header pHeader; Mesh pMesh; Tag *pTag = NULL; Bone *pBone = NULL; ................................................ fread(&pHeader, 1, sizeof(Header), filePtr); pBone = new Bone[pHeader.numFrames]; fread(pBone, sizeof(Bone), pHeader.numFrames, filePtr); delete[] pBone; pTag = new Tag[pHeader.numTags * pHeader.numFrames]; fread(pTag, sizeof(Tag), pHeader.numTags * pHeader.numFrames, filePtr); long offset = ftell(filePtr); for(int index = 0; index < pHeader.numMeshes; index++) { fseek(filePtr, offset, SEEK_SET); fread(&pMesh, sizeof(Mesh), 1, filePtr); //READ IN ALL OF THE MESH INFORMATION Skin *pSkin = new Skin[pMesh.numSkins]; Face *pTriangle = new Face[pMesh.numTriangles]; TexCoord *pTexCoord = new TexCoord[pMesh.numVertices]; Triangle *pVertices = new Triangle[pMesh.numVertices * pMesh.numMeshFrames]; Meshes.push_back(new Mesh); Skins.push_back(new Skin[pMesh.numSkins]); Faces.push_back(new Face[pMesh.numTriangles]); Textures.push_back(new TexCoord[pMesh.numVertices]); Triangles.push_back(new Triangle[pMesh.numVertices * pMesh.numMeshFrames]); fread(pSkin, sizeof(Skin), pMesh.numSkins, filePtr); fseek(filePtr, offset + pMesh.triStart, SEEK_SET); fread(pTriangle, sizeof(Face), pMesh.numTriangles, filePtr); fseek(filePtr, offset + pMesh.uvStart, SEEK_SET); fread(pTexCoord, sizeof(TexCoord), pMesh.numVertices, filePtr); fseek(filePtr, offset + pMesh.vertexStart, SEEK_SET); fread(pVertices, sizeof(Triangle), pMesh.numVertices * pMesh.numMeshFrames, filePtr); Meshes[VectorIndices] = &pMesh; Skins[VectorIndices] = pSkin; Faces[VectorIndices] = pTriangle; Textures[VectorIndices] = pTexCoord; Triangles[VectorIndices] = pVertices; Confirm(pSkin, pTriangle, pTexCoord, pVertices, pMesh); getch(); //THIS IS WHERE WE ASSIGN THE OBJECTS TO GLOBAL VARIABLES SO WE CAN THEN CONFIRM REAL DATA //strncpy(Skins[VectorIndices]->strName, pSkin->strName, 68); //STRNAME = 68 BYTES delete[] pSkin; delete[] pTriangle; delete[] pTexCoord; delete[] pVertices; VectorIndices++; offset += pMesh.meshSize; }


text: > > Hrm, no, VMI 2.0 doesn't require neither THCA-3 nor HPC Gold CD (whatever > > it is ;)). > The NCSA site for VMI says "Infiniband device is linked against THCA-3. > OpenIB device is linked using HPC Gold CD distrib". What does it means ? I believe this HPC Gold CD is a tested version of the Linux 'OpenIB.org' drivers which have been tested by Mellanox. Unfortunately this is all I know currently about these OpenIB drivers as I've only used the products from TopSpin (who is a customer of Mellanox.. as they I believe are now the sole IB Silicon provider) in the past. > I must install VMI for Opteron + SuSE 9.0, there is no such binary RPM, > i.e. I must install VMI from the source. I thought that I must use software > cited above for building of my bibary VMI version. > I beleive that Software/Driver THCA Linux 3.1.1 will be delivered w/Mellanox > cards. OpenSM 0.3.1 - I hope, also. > But I don'n know nothing about "HPC Gold CD distrib" :-( -Mike -- hanulec at hanulec.com cell: 858.518.2647 && 516.410.4478 https://secure.hanulec.com EFnet irc && aol im: hanulec _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf


text:
At least 41 people have died in a suicide car blast that targeted an army vehicle Monday in a market area near Pakistan's northwest Swat region, The Associated Press reported.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast in Shangala district, which comes after a week of bombings elsewhere in the country by the Pakistani Taliban. On Monday, the Taliban confirmed responsibility for a brazen siege on an army headquarters that killed 23.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's military pounded the Taliban by air in the South Waziristan region along the border with Afghanistan ahead of a planned ground invasion there, The Associated Press reported. The assault reportedly killed at least eight extremists.
The latest attacks occurred as President Obama is weighing whether to send more reinforcements to neighboring Afghanistan or to step up military operations along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Get more: MSNBC


text:
On the latest Players Talk show, Kansas City Royals second baseman Mark Grudzielanek discusses the players he looked up to as a child, what it was like coming up through the Montreal Expos organization, and how he was able to manage the transition from shortstop to Gold Glove-caliber second baseman.
Grudzielanek, who signed a one-year extension with the Royals on Monday, has been incredibly consistent over his Major League career, and this year has been no different. He's batting .303 with 41 RBIs and provided veteran leadership on a very young Royals club.
In addition to his offensive talents, Grudzielanek has become a dominant defensive player in the latter stages of his career, taking home his first Gold Glove Award in 2006. The 37-year-old says that being honored with a Gold Glove was one of his proudest moments in professional baseball.
"It was something that was a real personal goal of mine," Grudzielanek says. "You work hard and you do everything you possibly can to get to the elite class -- you want to be the best when you play Major League Baseball and I accomplished that last year."
This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


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Discussion in 'Gaming' started by TheGodBen, Sep 9, 2012.
Much better at the game then i am.. lol
About time.
Congratulations! I must commend your resolve, landing safely on Mun without having the quicksave feature isn't something I even dared to try when I played the demo.
Now get them home safely to Kerbin.
By the way, if you're planning on getting the full game, it's better to get it sooner than later. They increase the price with every major update, and it went up by $5 the other day because they released version 0.18. It's worth it though, the latest release is amazing and finally allows you to dock ships to one another, and it allows you to build unmanned spacecraft. It completely redefines how I play the game.
This is a space station I started work on. I used an unmanned tug to bring it into a 200km 45° orbit, then the tug undocked and crashed back into the ocean.
Next up, I added the first solar array to power the station.
The latest addition is a crew module.
My rough plan for the station involves eight more trips to complete construction, and two additional trips to add crew.
Indeed. I seemed like it was cheaper a few weeks ago. I thought maybe I saw it wrong. But now i see i need to get my ass in gear and buy this game. Also, if i remember right you get free updates.. So buying now gets you a full game for cheaper.
Quick question though.. Do you need "in game "money"" to buy parts? Or is it sandbox mode for building and launching?
Did they change the art style? those last 3 images look much less cartoonish and more Like NASA concept images.
When you start a new game in the retail version you are presented with a choice between sandbox mode and career mode, but right now you can only pick sandbox mode. So even when they finally add the career mode, you'll still have the option to play in sandbox mode with unlimited funds and parts.
And yes, if you buy it now you'll get all future updates for free, up to and including version 1.0. I'm not sure if they'll continue to add features after that point like Minecraft does, but that's so far away that I'm not even sure if the devs know what their plans are. The next couple of updates sound very exciting though, they're planning to add minable resources and colonisation features. Longterm, they've discussed a desire to add additional solar systems and a procedurally generated galaxy the further out you go, sort of like Minecraft's infinite world. That may be pie in the sky thinking, but it would be incredible if true.
Yes, they updated the textures on most of the parts in the latest update, and the old engines and fuel tanks from the demo had a major makeover. The planet Kerbin also changed considerably in appearance. The Kerbals themselves are still quite cartoony, but that's rather fitting considering they're a race whose space program is based on trial and error and expendable astronauts.
LOL, just downloaded the demo. my first rocket had 3 big engines on the first stage with 3 tanks of fuel each. the second stage had the smaller engine with 2 fuel tanks. Launched and they ended up in deep space. time to read some tips and tricks.
See, it's easy to design a rocket capable of getting to the moon, the complicated bit is figuring out how to get there. And the really complicated bit is figuring out how to get there without smashing into it.
My space station is coming along. I attached another crew module, another solar array, and a docking hub, as well as sending a ship up to transfer two new crew members aboard. Sadly, you can't transfer crew internally yet, so they had to get out and spacewalk.
I'm getting better at docking, but there was a bit of a mishap with that second solar array. I somehow completely lost control of the tug and found myself careening towards the station. I managed to regain control at the last moment and fired RCS thrusters to change course. I flew past the station at high speed, missing it by only a meter or two. That's when I learned to stop attempting to take shortcuts while docking.
^pretty neat.
I've broken down and purchased the game. It's fun. I am more of a builder and get frustrated with the timing and orbital mechanics stuff, so I've installed mechjeb and working on installing ORDA to automate what I can.
I've considered getting MechJeb, but I've heard stories of people that have used the autopilot so much that they've forgotten how to fly altogether, so I've stayed away from it. I would like MechJeb's info displays to be added to the vanilla game, however. Being able to see how high my orbit is without constantly having to switch to the map view would be convenient.
Indeed, i've seen those on the KSP board as well. Get so used to the game taking care of anything for you that you can't do it on your own. However, to be fair I can't see any NASA pilot getting a shuttle into stable orbit without the computer. But shit who knows..
I had a hell of a time getting ships up in "orbiter" till I started using the auto pilot and watching what it did when. Only then could i do it without auto.
The game still seems quite buggy to me (version 0.18.1). Editing your vehicles in the VAB often suffers from weird glitches and other annoyances. Currently, I'm struggling to understand why all my RCS thrusters now stop working when I'm less than 50m from the target with which I want to dock. It's also a pain that vehicle design is centred around capsules - it would be much better to be able to design lift vehicles and payloads separately and then mate them in the VAB. I'd also like to be able to choose the crew complement - I don't necessarily want a vehicle to be manned (kerballed?) on a shake-down flight.
Anyway, I'm sure most of these bugs will get sorted out. Looking good...
Use probes on your unmanned cargo trips.
As for thrusters, are you out of monopropellant? Are you out of battery power? If you are switching to the docking mode, your rotational controls become lateral controls, so you need to stop pressing IJKLHN.
That's a fair argument, and even Yuri Gagarin didn't have manual control over Vostok 1 when he went into space. But at the same time, I'd imagine that the controls in KSP are considerably easier than those on a real spacecraft.
Version 0.18.1 is pretty buggy as it was rushed out to fix a major bug with docking. There'll probably be a version 0.18.2 out soon enough. I've not experienced any bugs with the RCS system though, I've docked a dozen or so times and never had a problem with it.
I think there's a mod for that, but that functionality is definitely is something they should consider adding to the vanilla game. When building my space station, I had a set launch vehicle and tug arrangement and I would just alter the payload manually.
I think they're planning something like that for career mode, along with some sort of skill and experience system for the Kerbals, but nobody knows when that will be. Right now, I'm just happy they've added unmanned vehicles at long last. I can finally send missions to the worlds I have yet to visit without having to worry about the return journey.
I finished construction of my space station. I nearly gave up on it because it had gotten so big that I started to suffer major FPS issues when I got close to it, and the final construction flights were like a slideshow. But it's finally done and I can move on to other things.
You can't swap capsules without rebuilding the whole damn rocket - that's my main beef with the interface. I'd like to have a set of, say, three basic launch vehicle configurations, and a larger number of payload types. ***
I have pretty much 100% monopropellant and I'm aware of the mode toggle (R) between rotational/lateral controls. In fact, sometimes the jets fire, most times they don't. Sometimes I even get lateral movement from QWEASD and rotational from IHJKLN without mode switching. Sometimes the jets fire on the other damn spacecraft. I think I'll try reinstalling or maybe wait for the update.
TheGodBen - gotta say, that space station is awesome - you are a master at this. I'm just a fumble-fingered n00b.
*** Actually, you can swap capsules by editing the save-game file. Should be an in-game feature though.
Get Payloader. It's great.
I've seen the bug were the ship stops responding. A work around I have found for it is to go to the tracking station and then assume control of the ship again from there. Seems to re-initilize whatever the bug is.
My rocket of choice right now uses 9 LV-t30 engines clustered under one of the big orange jumbo tanks as the core and then I asparagus crossfeed 6 of those cores around the central core. 63 Engines firing at once! Most launches the central core makes orbit with a full load of fuel plus whatever payload I have thrown on top. The last launch I tried using this vehicle managed to put up 15 of the hitchhiker pods and the various equipment needed to hold it all together and keep it powered and maneuverable.
Payloader looks promising, although there seems to be quite a lot of faffing around involved. I might give it a go if I feel sufficiently frustrated. Baby steps at the moment...
There's a Youtube video where Scott Manley exploits a 0.16 bug that allows you to go anywhere in the Kerbal system using only a small capsule, a fuel tank, and an aerospike engine. I think it basically exploited a truncation error in computing the fuel usage at low thrust or some such. I'm guessing it's been fixed. Some people have way too much time on their hands.
I think you'd need an Orion nuke-powered spaceship to do similar in the real world.
What kind of rig are you running? thats one thing i fear. I dont want to buy this game only to find the epic shit i wanna build will kill my mac. I'm running an iMac--3.6GHz/i3/4gb/ATI-HD4670. The demo runs great.
The R key doesn't toggle between rotational and lateral controls, that just turns the RCS thrusters on and off to save mono-propellant fuel. The space key is the default to switch between rotational and lateral controls in docking mode, and I think you actually have to click on the button on the bottom-left to enter docking mode.
I wouldn't say I'm a master, I've just become proficient at one element of the game; docking things together. It was useful practice, though. It will probably come in handy if I get a ship stranded somewhere.
My PC is pretty old at this stage, 3GHz dual-core, 4GB of RAM, GeForce 9600GT with 512MB of VRAM. The game runs really well unless I build a ship with around 200 parts, that's when I start to experience FPS problems, but it's still playable. The biggest thing I ever built was my space station in 0.17, it was 333 parts at launch and too big to take off from the launchpad, so I had to launch from the runway. But I still managed to get the monstrosity into orbit.
Ah well, I guess there's something definitely up with my installation as I find that I can't use the lateral controls unless I press R - when the controls are working anything like correctly, that is. I'm tempted to write my own orbital rendezvous and autodocking algorithms for MechJEB if I can work out the details of the coordinate system and how to manoeuver with RCS. That's actually more of an interesting challenge to me than jabbing at keys until I feel like I'm going loopy. However, at the moment I have a stinking head cold so the prospect of doing the coding will have to wait for a few days.
Separate names with a comma.


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Amazon has fully committed itself to its effort against
the collection of sales taxes, and it continues to prove this dedication over
and over as it cuts ties with state after state.
cutting ties with states like Texas, where Texas State Comptroller Susan Combs
charged Amazon $269 million in unpaid sales taxes,
and Illinois, where Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to introduce a bill that
would force Amazon to collect sales tax called the Main Street Fairness Act, Amazon is now
looking to turn its back on California as well after Governor Jerry Brown
signed a bill that would enforce the collection of online sales tax.
"We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive,"
said Amazon in an e-mail to Californian affiliates. "It is supported by
big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to
harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. As a result, we
will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in
the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law
becomes effective."
Amazon also noted that these sales taxes "spur job and income
losses." But Amazon has to do what it
feels it should do, and with this bill in place, Amazon won't think twice
about cutting ties with its 10,000 California-based sales affiliates.
Amazon is the largest online retailer with more than 90 million registered
buyers and $34 billion in annual sales. In recent times, it has encountered
increased pressure from certain U.S. states to collect online sales taxes since
the retailer's affiliates operate within those states. In addition, some U.S.
states see an online sales tax on Amazon purchases as a way of digging
themselves out of large state budget deficits.
But Amazon refuses to back down. Last month, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the
U.S. states' demands were unconstitutional, citing
a 1992 Supreme Court decision that excuses Amazon and other remote sellers from
having to collect taxes in U.S. states that do not have the company's employees
or warehouses operating within its borders.
As of right now, Amazon collects taxes in Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North
Dakota and Washington. In other U.S. states where Amazon does not collect sales
taxes, customers are to document and pay tax on out-of-state untaxed sales, but
rarely do because they either don't know about this or just don't care.
Brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart retaliated saying that
Amazon has an unfair advantage due to its lack of sales tax collection in other


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Audio and slide presentation from the Oct. 18 Campus Master Plan Open Forum with Dennis Hawley, associate vice president for facilities; Tom Kearns, Shepley Bulfinch; and Shavaun Towers, Towers/Golde.
The following links are virtual breadcrumbs marking the 27 most recent pages you have visited in Bucknell.edu. If you want to remember a specific page forever click the pin in the top right corner and we will be sure not to replace it. Close this message.


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Green Planet Yarn: Socks Lite on Circular Needles
This event has already passed
Green Planet Yarn in Downtown Campbell is pleased to present the class Socks Lite on Circular Needles. This class, held on three successive Sundays (September 23rd, 30th, and October 7th), is for beginning knitters.
This class is for individuals who want to learn how to make a sock. In this three-session class you learn how to make small child-size socks on your choice of either two circular needles (two different lengths recommended) or one circular for magic loop (minimum length 32"). Skills learned will include working in the round, turning the heel, forming the toe and kitchener stitch. Students wishing to use double-pointed needles should sign-up for the Socks Lite class using the double point needle technique. Students will be given instructions to make adult size socks on worsted weight yarn at the end of the third session.
REQUIREMENT: Students need to bring to class a worsted weight yarn in a solid light color and appropriate circular needles (US 5-7).
The staff at Green Planet Yarn will be happy to help you pick out your supplies. Instructor will distribute pattern at the beginning of the first class.
Fee: $75, pattern included. Note tax is charged for the pattern. Yarn, needles and other supplies additional. Payment required in advance. Space is limited. Please phone the shop for more information and to reserve a spot, 408-871-9196.


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CHI's Acquisition of St. Luke's Episcopal Health Detailed
Houston's St. Luke's Episcopal Health System says it will "transfer" into Catholic Health Initiatives, giving the sprawling not-for-profit health system a new footprint deep in the heart of Texas.
In exchange, CHI will transfer more than $1 billion to create an Episcopal Health Foundation to serve the area's underserved population. CHI will transfer another $1 billion for future investment in the health system, the two systems announced jointly.
"The relationship with Catholic Health Initiatives ensures the Greater Houston area will retain one of its great healthcare institutions, while best preparing St. Luke's to meet future changes in healthcare," Kevin Lofton, president/CEO of Englewood, CO-based CHI said in prepared remarks.
The name of the combined system will be shortened to St. Luke's Health System. The combined entities include all of St. Luke's: the Texas Medical Center campus, and suburban hospitals in The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Pasadena and The Vintage, the health systems said.
CHI will maintain all physician models and all employees will remain employees of St. Luke's. CHI will continue St. Luke's affiliations with Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Heart Institute, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Texas Children's Hospital and MD Anderson Cancer Center, the health systems said.
The deal is expected to be completed this summer after regulatory approvals.


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Interview: Stephen Stills Reflects on His Youth, Box Set and CSNY ReunionIn 2013 Stills formed a new band — the Rides — who released their debut album and played several dates across the country. He also reunited with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young for two shows at Young's annual Bridge School Benefit concerts.
Stephen Stills On Obama Vs. Romney: "Blazing Saddles""At least Bush was affable," Stills writes. "I don't care if it's a debate and you're running for office. It's not right to be that rude to the President of the United States, let alone anybody else. Also, you don't get offended when you get corrected."


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Darkhorse Johnson eyes rotation spot with Bucs
By Tom Singer / MLB.com
BRADENTON, Fla. -- If you can never have too much pitching, as the saying goes, you definitely can't go wrong if much of that pitching is left-handed. Southpaws are the gold standard of baseball. And so it is that the Pirates have assembled a deep roster of candidates to complement Wandy Rodriguez as a second lefty in their rotation.
There's Jeff Locke, who has gotten a head start the past two Septembers. Justin Wilson is another product of the farm system. Francisco Liriano was a headlining free-agent signing, and Jonathan Sanchez was a lower-profile get on the market. Andy Oliver came from Detroit in a minor trade.
That leaves only perhaps the darkest horse of them all, but all the same one that might be in the middle of the pack as they turn into the stretch: Kris Johnson. Yes, the same Johnson who, since being a the No. 40 overall Draft pick of Boston in 2006, has logged zero innings in the Majors and 782 2/3 in the Minors.
But wait: This is also the same guy who in 2012, his seventh year in the pros but first in the Pittsburgh organization, finally got it; and kept getting it in the Dominican Winter League.
"I think I've kept doing the same things. Guess it all kinda came together," Johnson, 28, said.
Perhaps it was simply a Red Sox thing. As a Boston farmhand, Johnson compiled an ERA of 5.10 until his mid-2011 release. He hooked on with the Kansas City T-Bones of the independent American Association for the rest of that season, and posted a 3.23 ERA in 16 starts. That got him a shot with the Pirates, and he had a 3.19 ERA in splitting '12 between Double-A Altoona and Triple-A Indianapolis.
"Every time he pitched," manager Clint Hurdle said, "somebody would say, 'Who is that guy?' So you watched him. He's been challenged in the past, and he's grown into himself."
That introduction to the Pirates was still a mere tuneup for Johnson's run with Dominican champion Escogido that read like a typo: In 11 games, including nine starts, he allowed 37 hits -- none of them home runs -- in 59 1/3 innings, with an ERA of 0.91 and 50 strikeouts to 13 walks. That highly-competitive winter league included numerous big leaguers and the cream of the native talent.
"And Johnson dominated in every game," said Dominican teammate Starling Marte, who himself starred for Escogido and was named MVP of the playoffs. "His control was amazing, and nobody could hit him."
"It definitely builds your confidence when you do well down there," Johnson said. "There was a lot of great competition against some Major League mainstays. I loved it."
"He went down there and was more than competitive," Hurdle said. "He pretty much dominated the last few weeks. He made pitches, he controlled bat speed, he pounded the zone and executed to finish pitches. There wasn't a lot of hard contact [off him]. His confidence has never been higher."
Nor, one must assume, have his chances of making a big league staff. Considering how Johnson has grown to trust his stuff in the strike zone, the Pirates are hoping to have another one of those traditionally slow- and late-developing left-handers. That runs in the southpaw family: Certainly not to make comparisons, only a point, but Randy Johnson did not post double-figure wins until the season in which he turned 27, and Kenny Rogers didn't become a regular big league starter until 28.
"You gotta like the perseverance and the resiliency he's shown," Hurdle said of Johnson.
Puzzlingly, Johnson can't pinpoint his turnaround, other than reasoning most of it has been mental, since he altered neither his approach nor his repertoire.
"Maybe it was just the accumulation of having seen a lot of pitching coaches, and picking up something from each," he said. "My strikeout-to-walk ratio with Boston wasn't great, and it all changed last year, especially in winter league. I focused on command instead of just trying to throw the ball by guys.
"And when I saw the success I was getting with that, it became a matter of trusting your training and your body and your stuff."
Another thing that changed last year was the manner in which Johnson was deployed. Between the two stops in the chain, he made 13 starts and 22 relief appearances. Previously, he'd predominantly been a starter, with only 10 relief outings mixed with his 119 starts as a Red Sox prospect.
"I did a little bit of both last year. It's always nice to have a variety of things you can do," said Johnson, who came to camp to make the team, not to talk about how he preferred to do that. "Whatever the team needs. If it's, 'Hey, we need you to go get this lefty,' fine."
The Pirates got this lefty, and they are intrigued to see how far he can go get 'em.
Tom Singer is a reporter for MLB.com and writes an MLBlog Change for a Nickel. He can also be found on Twitter @Tom_Singer. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


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Ticket price is $30 for Grandstand seating and $40 for stage floor seating. Ticket price includes one free gate admission into the 2012 Kansas State Fair when purchased through August 24, 2012. Beginning, August 25, 2012, gate admission is NOT included with the ticket purchase. Gate admission is required to enter the Fairgrounds to attend a U.S. Cellular Grandstand event. If you need assistance placing an order, please call 1-800-362-3247 or 620-669-3618.
Parking for patrons with disabilities is located east of Plum Street in Public Parking Lot C. We recommend that you enter the U.S. Cellular Grandstand from either the North or South gates.
A handling fee of $3.50 per ticket is charged. Anyone two years of age or older requires a ticket to attend a ticketed U.S. Cellular Grandstand concert. Limit of 10 tickets per concert for internet sales. Please call the Kansas State Fair Ticket Office to purchase more than 10 tickets per concert. All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges. For additional information visit, http://www.kansasstatefair.com/pagedescription.php?id=4&pages=sf.


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Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill, former Sabres coach Lindy Ruff discussed vacant coaching position; serious talks could be coming
The Stars have talked to former Buffalo Sabres coach Lindy Ruff about their open coaching position, according to an NHL source.
New Stars general manager Jim Nill, who is in Toronto this week for the NHL draft combine, had a talk with Ruff in Ontario, according to the source. The two could have more serious discussions as the coach search progresses, but the Stars are expected to take their time in going through the interview process.
Others expected to be interviewed are former Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault and Texas Stars coach Willie Desjardins.
Ruff, 53, was fired in February after coaching 1,165 games with the Sabres. He had been the Sabres' head coach since 1997 and had a 571-432-162 record for a .559 winning percentage. He took the Sabres to the Eastern Conference finals four times and is most remembered by Stars fans for coaching Buffalo to the 1999 Stanley Cup finals before losing to Dallas in six games.
Nill said last week that he would have casual conversations and official interviews with coaching candidates while in Toronto.


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Pacific Southwest, Region 9: Superfund
Serving Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands, and Tribal Nations
Raytheon Corp.
Superfund Site
Technical Document
You will need Adobe Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.
|Title / pdf File
|Proposed Plan for the Vapor Intrusion Pathway (updated to fix Table 3 title to Future Buildings)


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1977 Miss America Pageant
Pageant Results > Miss America Pageant > 1977 Dorothy Benham
Miss America 1976 Dorothy Benham, Miss Minnesota
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OAKLAND, Calif. — A group of about 10 reporters engulfed Al Alburquerque, sticking microphones and iPhones in his face, hoping for a usable sound bite a day after the Detroit Tigers reliever gave what is for now the most infamous kiss in baseball.
But the juicy sound bites came from about 12 feet away when fellow reliever Octavio Dotel started shouting as loud as he could.
"What's the big (bleeping) deal!?" Dotel yelled. "So he kissed the (bleeping) ball. Hey, Alburquerque, if you keep getting (bleeping) outs, you can kiss the ball every (bleeping) time!"
When Alburquerque fielded a comebacker hit by Oakland A's slugger Yoenis Cespedes on the final play of Game 2 of the American League Division Series, he puckered up and kissed the baseball before tossing it to first base for the final out of the top of the ninth inning. Detroit won in the bottom half and claimed a 2-0 advantage in the best-of-five series.
Video: Alburquerque kisses ball
Just as Dotel finished his rant Sunday, Tigers ace Justin Verlander inspired a second one when he reminded Dotel that Oakland closer Grant Balfour is not opposed to screaming and yelling when he finishes off an opposing team.
"Oh, yeah!" Dotel shouted. "He can (bleeping) do it and it's not a big deal, right? (Bleep) that, Alburquerque! Keep kissing that (bleep)."
It made for a comical scene in the Tigers clubhouse Monday afternoon, but down the twist and turns of a dank hallway under Oakland Coliseum, the A's weren't laughing in their clubhouse.
"If they lose three games here, then it comes back to bite them," Balfour said.
Johnny Gomes, one of the faces of these incredible A's, is relying on the baseball gods to balance the scales of justice.
The Linemakers: MLB playoff odds and picks
"That type of stuff I don't deal with," Gomes said. "Those are baseball gods, they deal with that kind of stuff. Obviously he doesn't believe in baseball gods, but I do. I'll let them handle that."
When Alburquerque was able to speak between Dotel's shouts, he softly said he didn't mean to offend the A's or Cespedes and apologized if he had. He also said that as a professional, he would never purposely show up another player.
After Game 2, Cespedes said that if he ever hit the ball hard against Alburquerque he would kiss his bat. He backed off that statement a bit Monday, but still was clearly unhappy about the incident.
"That's his problem. That doesn't bother me," Cespedes said. "I said (I would kiss the bat) but I won't do that. I'm a professional."
For the A's, a team with plenty of rallying points and motivation, the kiss seen all around the baseball world is just more fuel for them to try to rally back from the brink of elimination.
"We've had about six season-ended losses," Gomes said. "Game 2 was just another one. We don't care about that, we don't care that he kissed the ball. We just have to win."


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Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by Goliath, Oct 20, 2010.
I went to Austria to do some shopping today. I got pants and some presents for other people.
Got Rough Beasts of Empire this morning. I also managed to get hold of Knights of the old republic 1
Got a jumper from next for £5, nearly went mad and almost brought a bag that had been reduce from £120 to £55, but lucky notice it had a mark on it and the only other bag in the back was a different colour.
Trying not to look for this bag on the net.
I have just ordered these dolls
I should receive them in about two weeks.
It's a good thing he did too. Imagine going to weddings, parties, sporting events, movies, shopping and work in your underwear for the last several years.
Bought pizza for the kiddos yesterday and lunch for hubby and I today.
So glad to be back home.
Basic groceries and an extra couple of things for New Year's Eve.
My first two Little Travellers, that I think I mentioned in this thread when I ordered them, arrived today. This are little dolls that are made by women affected by HIV/AIDS in South Africa and for many of the women these dolls are their only source of income.
I have shrunk the picture I have taken of them so they appear the same size in the photo as they are in real life.
It is a little silly but I am slightly disappointed that their dresses are almost the same colour. I have just ordered another two and I hope they will be other colours.
- 1Password for Mac
- 1Password for iPad
- 2011 subscription to MLB.TV
- Trek novels on Kindle: Dark Mirror, Federation, Q-Squared
- Philip K. Dick novels on Kindle: Counter-Clock World, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Lies Inc.
Go away.
Today I bought my favourite frankfurters. Lots of 'em.
Bought a new glass vase from Habitat in their sale as I broke an old one some months ago and never got round to replacing it until now. Then bought some roses to put into it.
Did some grocery shopping and filled up the car too. Was surprised to notice that the cost of V-Power petrol is now up to 134p per litre.
Syriana on Blu-ray Disc.
^LOVE the movie.
Today, I bought a 12-pack of throwback Dr. Pepper, some frozen pizzas (for a friend's pizza-party) and a 12 inch turkey sandwich from Subway. That covered lunch and dinner for me.
I just bought myself one of these off eBay.
Except mine doesn't have a hole, unfortunately. However I have seen on UK eBay that does have a hole and I will buy that next payday. Sometimes these things have two holes i.e another hole at the bottom of the handle.
I wonder how many people here know what these things are used for?
I picked up a copy of Star Trek: Typhon Pact #3: Rough Beasts of Empire this afternoon.
I know what it is, and what it's for. But were you aware the name of the item is in the title of the picture, so that all you have to do is click on it and it tells you what it is?
Oops, I should have thought of that. Silly me.
Anyway it has been identified by you in the "What is it" thread so I don't need to change the name of the picture's title.
It has been a long time since I used a lucet but they are very easy to use so I should pick the skill up again very quickly.
just bought the 'band of brothers' box set. Will start on them once I've finished my thunder birds box set got for christmas
It's the first day of the sales, so I bought new shoes, 2 sweaters and a t-shirt.
Oh, and some cool martini glasses.
Separate names with a comma.


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Music Spaces Hit Hard By Sandy – Here's How You Can Help
November 8th, 2012 by Justin Colletti
Music community spaces including WFMU, The South Sound, Norton Records, New Amsterdam Records and Tape Kitchen were devastated by hurricane Sandy last week. Find out what you can do to help.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the eastern seaboard last week, it brought with it 90-mph winds, 40-foot high waves, and Read more...


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No Hidden Fees - No Credit Card Surcharges - Low Shipping Rates
Images shown may not be an exact representation of the actual product.You may contact us if you have questions about the exact specifications of this item.
Strong, Durable, Dependable, and Versatile. New Model Single-Six® revolvers are the perfect small bore single-action revolver for plinking, small game hunting or serious competition. Chambered in either .22 LR, .22 Magnum, or .17 HMR, these great single-action revolvers come in a variety of barrel lengths, finishes, sights, and grips.
Single-Ten™ models feature a ten-round capacity and Gunfighter style grips. Convertible models come with two cylinders (one in .22 LR and one in .22 Magnum) for increased versatility. Hunter models are equipped with an integral barrel rib for rigid mounting of Ruger scope rings (supplied at no extra charge).
Catalog Number: NR-9L | Model Number: 10624 | Caliber: .22 LR
Once we have a copy of their license, we can ship the gun to your local dealer, you then drop by their place, fill out the required paperwork/background check, and take the gun home. We can walk you thru the procedure and help you locate a qualified dealer- just call or email for more information.
Our customers generally find this process quite easy and we will help thru each step.
Impact Guns is the gun shop for all your shooting needs. We offer a wide selection of firearms, including: handguns, shotguns, rifles, ammunition, rifle scopes and optics, as well as collectible machine guns and other NFA/Class 3 guns. Impact also services the needs of law enforcement and military with our wide variety of tactical weapons and accessories. Shop online through our 256-bit Secure Sockets Layer encrypted online gun store 24 hours a day!


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At this time of year we think back on those deserving of our thanks. Circulation Services would like to recognize our wonderful volunteers who over the years have given so generously of their time to phone our customers when reserve items are available at the library. On December 8th, the library expects to go live with a new intergrated library system and for the first time all Ramapo Catskill libraries will have the ability to deliver holds pickup information via an automated calling system. Our customers will be part of this new and exciting experience.
Your message will include the last date the item is being held and the name of the library that is holding it. When placing a request you will be able to select a pick up location, choosing any RCLS library. This is a convenient option for those who work in Orange County or near another Rockland library. As now, titles are not available on a phone message. You can access all your account information from our website. If you normally receive pickup information by email, there should be no interruption of service; you will still receive title information, due date reminders and Fine Print, our monthly newsletter. Those who get only text messages will experience a period of no service. We will try to contact you the week before we go live.
So thanks to our callers for their time and dedication to the library. We hope the transition to the new software system will be seamless, but please be patient as we all get used to the new technology.


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The agreement would tap local, regional, and federal funding to leverage hundreds of millions of dollars in HSR matching funds for investment in electrification and modernization of Caltrain, using an incremental approach favored by many rail advocates, including some within the rail supply industry. "The result is a modernized, electrified Caltrain far sooner than previous estimates," Caltrain claims.
Once the system is electrified, Caltrain will be able to operate lighter-weight electric [multiple-unit, or EMU] vehicles with significant performance advantages compared to the existing diesel rail technology," the agency said. "Electrification will mean faster, cleaner, quieter, more efficient rail system, more frequent service to more stations, significantly increased ridership, and will prepare the system to accommodate future job and population growth in the region."
Modernizing Caltrain is a significant step in stabilizing the rail agency's long-struggling finances; the agency notes Caltrain is one of the few transit agencies in the country that does not have its own, dedicated tax base or source of revenue.
"Electrification is an essential improvement that is critical to the future of the system," said Executive Director Mike Scanlon. "This is an enormous step forward that prioritizes these improvements and delivers early benefits to the Caltrain system, its riders and surrounding communities."
Caltrain has been working to electrify its system for more than a decade, but until now adequate funding had not been identified. If approved, Caltrain could be electrified as soon as 2020, over a decade before it is assumed in the most recent version of the High Speed Rail Business Plan.
The agency notes it has "expressed opposition to a four-track system" originally envisioned as part of a shared rights-of-way design with CHSRA. Caltrain says the " agreement specifies that future improvements would be limited to support blended high-speed and commuter rail operations on a system that is primarily two tracks."


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Empowering deserving military families with educational support and opportunities.
only in golf
I am glad for Barber. He is the only person who knows, in his mind what is right in the game of golf. If he thinks he moved the leaf, then he most likely did. It takes a strong person to administer a penalty such as this, and certainly a costly one...I hope he gets a break soon and moves on.
Thanks for sharing the link to this story.
Truly a class act. My late grandfather always reminded me that golf was a gentleman's game.
OH, if only some of our every day or weekend golfers could act as sagely.
Genuine character shining through along with attaining peace of mind....He will be rewarded for being a true player !
That was a nice read. Thanks, Randy!
Old people used to say, "a clear mind is richer than a cluttered wealth."
Blayne Barber exudes pureness in his golf's heart and inner soul. . . I hope to hear more about the kid. He is an interesting young man.
wow.....that's why golf is the sport it is. a lot of people don't understand why someone would do that. and i tell them that's probably why they don't enjoy golf.
Thought it was a great story. Got to give the kid a lot of credit. Imagine in football if a lineman calling a 15 yard holding penalty on himself.
A story like this is always nice to hear.
HOWEVER...that rule drives me nuts. Club grazes a leaf in the sand...no advantage is gained...if anything, it could be more of a hindrance than anything, and all of a sudden, add 2 strokes? Happened to Carl Pettersson this year and it arguably cost him the PGA Championship. If you can hit the ball with a leaf in front of it and still get a good shot off, more power to you!
A classy move by someone who will be paid back tenfold in this strange game of golf....
Another bad golf rule. Classy kid to call it after six days.
Have alot of respect for him, especially when it's to reach a goal or a dream of yours and you call a penalty on yourself to put that on hold!!! Mad respect!!


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RHINEBECK, N.Y. -- In another era, you wouldn't find 19-year old Kevin Ackerman on duty as a volunteer at Northern Dutchess Hospital, or any other hospital for that matter.
In another era, Lillian Oyen-Ustad would be wearing a pink-and-white pinafore over a white dress as she went about her volunteer duties within the hospital's walls.
While the days of the all-female candy striper brigade of volunteers may be gone, junior volunteers -- as they are now called -- play an increasingly important role in the life of the hospital, and nowadays as many teenage boys as teenage girls volunteer at Northern Dutchess Hospital, said Trisha Napolitano, the hospital's volunteer services supervisor.
"There are things that simply would not happen unless our volunteers were here," said Napolitano.
"At the Thompson House (the hospital-run nursing home) they play board games, bake cookies, do (the residents') nails," she said. "At the hospital they do everything from patient transports to filing and clerical work. They are in just about every department in the hospital."
Napolitano said that each year she solicits applications from high school students interested in serving as junior volunteers at the hospital. She said this year she chose 15 students,� although has had as many as 30 in the program, which runs throughout the summer.
Ackerman began volunteering at Northern Dutchess Hospital earlier this year, working two days a week in addition to the two days a week he spends as a volunteer at St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie.
A 2012 graduate of F.D. Roosevelt High School who has set his sights on becoming a doctor, Ackerman said the time he has spent as a junior volunteer has reinforced that decision.
"Just being in this whole setting made me realize that this is what I want to do," said Ackerman.
Napolitano said that because Ackerman is a premed student, she has "bounced him" around different jobs in the hospital so he could get a real sense of hospital life.
"I wanted to give him everything he could handle," she said. "He actually got to shadow one of our emergency room doctors."
Ackerman said he volunteers wherever Napolitano asks him, including working at the hospital's front desk greeting people and providing patient transports.
But the time he spent in the emergency room, Ackerman said, has piqued his interest in emergency medicine.
"It's definitely a possibility," he said. "I don't know enough about all the fields, but there's a lot of excitement (in the emergency room) and you never know what's going to walk through the door."
Like Ackerman, Oyen-Ustad has her sights set on a career in medicine.
"My parents put me in front of the television ... at age 3 and I fell asleep watching the surgery channel," the 16-year old laughed. "I've always wanted to help people."
Oyen-Ustad, who just finished her sophomore year at Rhinebeck High School and will be heading to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in the fall, started volunteering at the hospital to fulfill community service requirements for the National Honor Society.
She volunteers in the hospital's gift shop and at the Neugarten Birth Center.
Before working as a junior volunteer, Oyen-Ustad said she had her sights set on a career as a neonatal specialist.
But, she said, after spending time in the hospital, she's no longer sure that's where she'll end up.
"I've been toying with quite a few (specialities)," she said. "Maybe cardiovascular or orthopedics.�
"It changes like the seasons," she laughed. "I'm 16, so I don't know what I want to do with my life."


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"Kaylee Wiedower for three," was called for the last time on March 10 when Russellville lost 50-31 to Little Rock Parkview in the Class 6A state championship game.
Area coaches also called out her name one last time as they voted her the 2012 Tri-County Girl's Player of the Year.
"It's really exciting to get an award like this, and to know other people know and recognize how hard I've worked the past three years in high school and that we were really successful this year," Kaylee said of her award.
"It makes me very proud," head coach and father Steve Wiedower said of his daughter's honor. "I know how much work she put into it. Like I said, as a father I'm very proud. But just being able to be a part of this program here at Russellville and seeing her grow as a person, not just as a player, makes you appreciate the opportunity that she had."
Kaylee wasn't necessarily dominant this season, racking up 17 points and 4.5 rebounds a game while she shot 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from the 3-point line and 74 percent from the charity stripe. No, what made her so special was her consistency on the court and her improvement on the defensive end of the floor.
"She really worked hard on her shooting and she was probably one of the best shooters in the state, no doubt about it, because you could just depend on her when she was open she could hit a shot," Steve Wiedower said. "Of course, there was a lot of parts of her game that she really had to work on — rebounding and defense and things — and get better at, and she did. She's improved in all the aspects of the game, not just shooting. It's meant a lot for her to come in and the girls play together and learn how to play as a team. You have to give all the girls a lot of credit on that."
High praise from a coach who, over the years, has done a masterful job of managing the difficulties that comes with coaching one's child. Not once has he shown favoritism towards either of his daughters — Kenzie is a freshman this season — on the court.
Kaylee won't take all the credit for her success this year, though. She was one of a group of six seniors who helped change the culture of the Lady Cyclones basketball program. Fellow seniors Natalie Shockey, Mary Carol Davis, Susan Taylor, Sarah Prochazka and Lindsey Glover all have left their mark on Russellville. This season, all six seniors led the team in scoring at one point, which takes pressure off a scorer like Kaylee.
"It's so much a relief to know that if I'm having a game where I can't hit a basket, someone can step up and lead the team in scoring," she said. "It's just so much easier on all of us that we worked together and created stuff for each other."
Kaylee was in the running for the player of the year in 2011, but lost to a talented player from Pottsville, Michaela Talley. She had some competition this year from Alexus Elmore of Danville and another talented Lady Apache, Jessie Van Es. But area coaches saw what many Lady Cyclones fans have seen for the three years they've watched Kaylee — a special player.
Area coaches aren't the only ones who have seen her worth on the basketball court. Harding University head coach Tim Kirby saw enough to deliver a scholarship offer that was accepted by Kaylee with pride.
"I'm really excited about playing with them [Lady Bisons]," she said. "Coach Kirby had told me before I signed that they were looking for somebody to come in and be a shooter for them. I would consider that one of my strongest parts of my game, my shooting ability. I'm looking to go in there next year to be a scorer for them, somebody they can dish it out to and can hit the three and be an offensive threat for them."
Though the Lady Bisons are a conference rival of the hometown team, Arkansas Tech, Kaylee said she's more excited about playing against them than anything else.
"I've thought about that [playing the Golden Suns], and you know, I'm kinda excited about that," she added. "My friend Jaimie Long is at Tech, so I'm going to get to play against one of my best friends. I guess you could say it's going to be awkward, but I think I'm more excited about it than dreading it."
No matter where she plays her college basketball, Kaylee Wiedower has left her mark on Russellville athletics, and has been rewarded by the people who know the most about the game.
How they voted
Kaylee Wiedower, Russellville — 10
Alexus Elmore, Danville — 2
Jessie Van Es, Pottsville — 1
Addition to the Tri-County Girl's Team
Junior Hope Moore, Danville — 9 pts., an excellent defender, will be one of the better players in the River Valley next year.
Senior Kaytelin Derrick, Danville — 12 pts., the Little Johns leading scorer. Was a consistent, well-rounded player.


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Secondary Sources: Fed Communications, Labor Force Participation, China
A roundup of economic news from around the Web.
–Fed Communications: Tim Duy reads into Janet Yellen's speech yesterday. "Yellen delivers a dovish speech, siding with Evans and Kocherlakota who had previously advocated explicit inflation and unemployment guidelines for policy change. The Fed is moving in this direction, promising to further lock-in a program of aggressive large scale asset purchases. But is this the end of the road for policy? "Open-ended" sounds much like "unlimited." And unlimited sounds like the end of the road. If the economy stumbles, will the Fed pull a new trick out of its policy bag, or is that bag finally empty? And if that bag is empty, then we will need to turn to fiscal policy if the economy stumbles. This is worrisome given the expected path of fiscal policy – tighter, just degrees of tighter. Which means for the moment we just cross our fingers and hope the economy gains traction on the back of housing and accelerates as 2013 progresses."
–Labor Force Participation: Kathy Ruffing looks at why labor force participation is shrinking. "Our findings support the conclusions of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and analysts at the Federal Reserve banks of Chicago and Kansas City, who find that an aging population accounts for an important piece of the recent drop in labor force participation. Those experts generally conclude that about half of the drop in labor force participation since 2007 (the start of the economic downturn), and about a third of the drop since 2000 (when the rate hit its all-time high), stems from an aging population. That's only part of the story, of course; CBO notes that "the economic downturn [and] weak growth in output during the recovery" have also dampened participation. In other words, the downturn and lack of job opportunities have driven many people from the labor force and reduced the important employment-to-population ratio. As we've written, stimulus measures could improve labor force participation by boosting job creation. Getting Americans back to work would raise incomes, reduce poverty, enhance retirement security, and lessen pressures on disability insurance and a host of other programs. But, given the aging of the population, we're unlikely to get back to the high participation levels of the late 1990s even if the economic recovery grows much stronger."
–China: Peter Orszag says China's new leaders face an economic challenge. "The opening of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China this month, which will usher in the presidency of Xi Jinping, has been accompanied by a variety of indicators that the Chinese economy is strengthening a bit. But there's reason to worry that Xi will not enjoy such good economic news throughout his tenure. A growing body of academic studies warns that economic growth in China might slow substantially in the years and decades to come. One crucial reason is that, in the past, it has been driven disproportionately by workers moving from farms to factories. That method of raising productivity may now be largely exhausted — because most of the workers who could successfully make the transition already have."


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Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by captcalhoun, Dec 22, 2011.
I'm reading Mission of Honor by Vince Flynn
Started in on The Hobbit and getting a serious case of the Tolkein-bug. I'm trying to avoid a full-on reread of LotR right now because of time, but I'm tempted to finally give The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales a shot.
A little unsure where I'll head next, reading wise though. I have a LeCarré book I'd like to tackle and Neil Cross's Luther tie-in. Hmmm... Anyway, got about half of The Hobbit to go.
Just picked up FROZEN HEAT by "Richard Castle" at the library. Not sure when I'll find time to read it . . ..
Having finished the last four Star Trek: Vanguard books, and inspired by having seen the film Lincoln, I've taken up reading the second half of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Conquistador, by S.M. Stirling
I reviewed the first book (HEAT WAVE, I think?) for Curled Up With a Good Book, back before I knew what Castle was. I didn't get the gimmick behind it at all. Thankfully, my editor inserted a few sentences here and there and added an intro that saved my butt from too much embarrassment.
You were not alone. I can't remember the thread, but we were discussing this recently and some bookstore employees confirmed that there are readers out there who don't realize that "Richard Castle' is a fictional character on a TV series.
I just finished reading Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Should I read Dracula or Dune next?
Reading 'The Vulcan Academy Murders' by Jean Lorrah
I begun reading Dracula but have taken a break from it. Will finish it over Christmas. The characters are interesting and I like the setting. This being 19th century literature however, it is incredibly drawn out and looooong. No sense of brevity back then. I haven't read Dune, only seen the miniseries on TV years ago.
Just finished:
Ferenginar: Satisfaction is not Guaranteed (German edition)
Currently reading:
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Felicia's Journey
Just begun:
Star Trek: Invasion! First Strike (punishing myself with Diane Carey but I want to read the whole Invasion! series)
I'm reading a Tos Novel Chain of attack by Gene Deweese.
I haven't read Dune in decades, but as I recall, it's far from compact itself. Although that's probably more true of the sequels than the original.
If you think Dracula is long-winded, stay away from Varney the Vampyre. It makes Dracula seem like a lean, mean, fast-paced thriller . . ...
Varney the Vampire - newest entry on my virtual "I am never going to read this" list. Thanks for the warning!
Right now reading paths of disharmony since a bit behind on the Typhon pact books
I'm reading Blink of an Eye by Ted Dekker.
Just picked up the new ARCHIE comic guest-starring George Takei!
I generally have two or three books stashed at different places to read at different times during the day...
Right now, I'm reading:
The IDIC Epidemic (TOS #38) by Jean Lorrah,
Probe by Margaret Wander Bonanno,
and Titan: Over a Torrent Sea by Christopher L. Bennett
Over the weekend, I finished up
A Singular Destiny and Demons of Air and Darkness (Gateways Book 4) both by Keith R. A. DeCandido.
I think Dune may actually be longer than Dracula. I don't have any actual stats to back that up, but that's what my gut tells me.
And believe me, if anyone thinks Dracula is representative of the lengths Victorian literature is capable of...they've never read the book I'm finishing up (see signature)!
Separate names with a comma.


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Hine Ma Tovarr. Lon Beery - Shawnee Press
Hine Ma Tovarr. Lon Beery - Shawnee Press
Two popular Jewish folk songs are joined in this creative medley based on a poignant text, which speaks of dwelling together in unity and harmony. A cello part is provided for the TTB voicing, while a violin part has been included for the three-part mixed and two-part settings. For any occasion with a unity or brotherhood theme, this is guaranteed to be a rewarding experience for your singers and audiences! Highly recommended!
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text: Drinking Iced Teas Are More Beneficial Than You Think! Steven Popec (0) As you probably know, tea has numerous health benefits. Green tea especially is loaded with a plethora of health benefits. It's a powerhouse for your body and your immune system. And one doesn't have to drink hot tea. You can have it iced, and it's just as delicious, with many health benefits. Nothing is more satisfying on a hot summer day than a delicious, tall glass of iced tea. And iced tea is still one of the healthiest drinks you can enjoy. It's healthier by far than sugary, processed soda pop or fruit drinks, and it's quite tasty.Adds To a Healthy LifestyleMaintaining a healthy lifestyle is important to maintain a strong immune system, a healthy weight, and to help boost your metabolism as well. Exercising regularly and eating healthy are all a part of it. But tea can add to a healthy lifestyle. Adding some brewed tea, hot or iced, to your daily experience is a very easy way to add a glass of health to your life. It can have a huge impact on improving your health in many ways, as tea is packed with antioxidants and vitamins and minerals. It's a delicious drink that's just loaded with health benefits such as boosting your immune system, giving you energy, and helping to fight off illnesses and even cancer.Loose LeafBuy and brew some loose leaf tea. Loose leaf is by far superior to flavorless tea bags. Loose leaf tea has been maintained in its natural state, and in the brewing the water is able to circulate around the leaves. This brings out the flavor of the tea. Loose leaf tea has also been processed naturally most of the time, which means that it has retained the naturally occurring antioxidants and vitamins and minerals. It's healthier by far as it is still packed with nutrients. There's really no competition between loose leaf and tea bags. Loose leaf is the way to go.Have Iced Tea All WeekThere are also many flavor pairings that can enhance the natural flavor of the tea as well. After brewing some tea leaves, wait for the tea to cool off and you can even refrigerate it for days and have delicious iced tea all week long. Just add some ice and drink up. Iced tea is delicious and is a far better choice than soft drinks or concentrate juice. It's absolutely delectable, and yet also has nutritional value and health benefits.Health BenefitsCertain types of tea, such as green tea, have a myriad of health benefits. It can help fight off cancer, improve your memory, help with those trying to lose weight, and can even help to prevent cavities. It has been shown to lower cholesterol and increase the "good" cholesterol, which improves heart health. And tea helps fight off infections and illnesses. It reduces inflammation and also gives you energy and boosts your metabolism. Avoid using sugar in your tea. There are alternatives such as stevia or xylitol which are much healthier to add to iced tea. facebook twitter google+ email


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Quote:iev only been boxing for a few months and im going to fight my friend whos been taking gung foo for 4 years. I dont even think im going to try to stand up with him. we are both the same height and im a little bit heavier then him. I lift way more then him, i think im just going to charge in like a bull and ground and pound his ass lol.
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Josef Hoffmann was born in Austria in 1870. At the age of 17 Josef Hoffmann started studying classic architecture in Brunn. From there he studied architecture under Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer at the Academy of Fine arts in Vienna. At that time, von Hasenauer was one of Europe's most popular architects. After von Hasenauer's death, Otto Wagner, Europe's most famous 19th century architect took over the class. Josef Hoffmann went onto work for Wagner later in his career. Two of Hoffmann's enduring furniture designs, the Hoffmann Cubus and Hoffmann Velvet Chair, have gone onto to be very popular into the 21st century.
The Josef Hoffmann Velvet Armchair was developed 1911 for the "House Kohler." Josef Hoffmann based the Velvet Armchair design off of a previous design from the Palais Stoclet's vestibule in Brussels (1905-1911), and this piece represents an iteration of that model. The Velvet Loveseat we see here differs from that model primarily in how Josef Hoffmann was more liberal in his use of decorative border, in this case the stripped piping. This design also includes the derivations of the armchair and three seat sofa, as you see here.
Made In Italy.
Dimensions: H 36 1/4" D 32 1/4" W 62 1/4" SH 16"; ArH 26"
Material: Velvet upholstered two seat sofa with striped piping. Hardwood frame covered with expanded foam. Velvet available in a variety of colors.
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text: OK, im from the UK with no intention of playing college tennis but I read a lot of thread on here and have no idea what you guys are talking about sometimes. I had a bunch of questions and I compiled the best answers in this thread! Can a D3 team get promoted to D2 though? Are the best D2 schools better than some of the weaker D1s? What age are students when they first begin at US college? What would a 4 start recruit be in terms of UK ranking or rating? How much do guys and girls train each week? Who do the different colleges play and how often do they play? Is it college leagues or cup competitions? Is there much individual competition? What do these players do in terms of tennis after college? Is there a league system in the US for the top adult players which don't make the cut for ATP or futures level or is it all individual (or doubles) competition at that point beyond college? Whats the NAIA and how does it fit in


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Paul Schrader
Review by Evan Kindley
Posted on 17 December 2008
Source 35mm print
A writer is a voyeur par excellence. I came to detest this position.
Yukio Mishima
On November 25th, 1970, the writer Yukio Mishima committed seppuku in the office of a lieutenant general of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces; in keeping with ancient samurai tradition, he disemboweled himself with a sword, after which he was beheaded by one of his followers. This ritual suicide, for Mishima, was the summation of a lifelong effort to unite "art and action," the aesthetic and the ethical, his work and his life. Like much of what Mishima did, it was both elaborately planned and deeply enigmatic, at once a social protest, a private decision, and an aesthetic performance. Fifteen years later, Paul Schrader – screenwriter of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and director of a few films of his own, notably American Gigolo – secured funding from Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas to make a film about Mishima's life: an uncommercial subject, but for someone with Schrader's interests (in masculinity, violence, and ascetic self-discipline) an irresistible one.
Mishima valued structure and discipline above all, and Schrader responds by toning down his usual ferocity and making a very controlled, very careful, very Japanese film. Cowritten with his brother Leonard Schrader (who worked in Japan in the 60s as a literature professor), Mishima clocks in at exactly 120 minutes, and is presented, as the title tells us, in four chapters: "Beauty," "Art," "Action" and "Harmony of Pen and Sword." Each of these, with the exception of the last, is further subdivided into three sections which are intercut with one another: a straightforward narrative of Mishima's life from childhood up to maturity, a reenactment of the author's infamous final day, and compressed adaptations of three of his novels.
This last device is Mishima's real innovation; while it seems like an obvious enough idea, I can't think of another biopic that makes such extensive and imaginative use of it. The advantage of the technique is that, unlike many other movies about writers, Mishima is able to present a great deal of its subject's own prose directly, without resorting to anything too uncinematic like having characters read aloud from a book. For instance, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, based on Mishima's 1956 novel, tells the story of two young Zen acolytes who use their physical disabilities (one is "frog-footed," the other stutters) to seduce women. The dialogue in this story is near perfect, conveying a realistic sense of the characters' agonized faith while also being studded with lapidary epigrams: "Guys like us are just like beautiful girls. We get sick of always being stared at," or, even better: "Beauty is like a rotten tooth. It rubs against your tongue, hurting, insisting on its importance. Finally you go to a dentist and have it pulled. Then you look at the small bloody tooth in your hand and say, 'Is that all it was?'" The crystalline purity of Mishima's style, and his Western-influenced fondness for metaphor, tell us more about him than we could learn from a dozen biographical incidents.
The adaptations are also the most beautiful parts of the film, visually. The gorgeous sets by designer Eiko Ishioka, each with its own story-specific color scheme, are modeled on Noh theater (which fascinated Mishima); at times they also recall the similarly artificial backdrops for Coppola's One from the Heart, also filmed at Zoetrope Studios. (Eiko later went on to work with Coppola on Bram Stoker's Dracula; she also did Tarsem's The Cell and Björk's "Cocoon" video.) Faced with these ornate tableaux, cinematographer John Bailey favors slow diagonal pans, letting the camera move from one corner of the stage to another; sometimes he plays those movements off against some horizontal phenomena – a gust of vermilion leaves sweeping across the frame, for example – in a fitting complement to the narrative's elegant symmetries. (Indeed, the visuals in the adaptations are so sumptuous as to flirt at times with Orientalism, a vice that it has to be said the film generally avoids.) The other two stories, Kyoko's House (about a young actor's sadomasochistic relationship with an older woman) and Runaway Horses (about a group of reactionary conspirators) are only slightly less beautiful, but relate more directly to the events of Mishima's biography; taken together, they provide a contrast to their author's life as well as a comment on it. Mishima would be worth seeing if only for these segments, each of which stand as short films in themselves, and which have the added effect of making you want to search out their source material.
In the more straightforward biopic sections, the loss of aesthetic richness is compensated for by the performance of the great Ken Ogata, who plays Mishima with just the right mix of charisma and steeliness. These scenes, shot in black and white, have some of the relaxed subtlety of Schrader's idol Yasujiro Ozu (about whom he wrote, along with Dreyer and Bresson, in his 1972 book Transcendental Style in Film). Unlike Ozu, though, who was always interested in his characters in the context of changes within a broader Japanese society, Schrader is single-mindedly focused on Mishima, whose singular personality is allowed to completely define both the film's formal limits and its thematic concerns. Schrader presents Mishima throughout as an extreme version of a Wildean aesthete, obsessed with masks and self-presentation: the vain young actor in Kyoko's House, on deciding to take up bodybuilding (as Mishima himself did in 1955), explains that "then my whole body could be my face." This familiar Western fixation on physical beauty is given a distinctively Japanese turn by being connected to the samurai tradition of seppuku, or suicide with honor: "Even the most beautiful body is soon destroyed by age," another character in Kyoko's House says. "Where is beauty then? Only art makes human beauty endure. You must devise an artist's scheme to preserve it. You must commit suicide at the height of your beauty."
None of this is an unfair characterization of Mishima or his philosophy; indeed, most of it comes straight from the writer's own works. But starting with the second chapter, "Art," Schrader begins to work the self-creation angle a little too hard. For one thing, from the evidence of the stories' psychological complexity and even some of the behavior in the biopic sections, there's more to Yukio Mishima than this. At times, he even seems to loosen up and be funny, as when he tells reporters one moment that his favorite author is Thomas Mann, and the next that the person he'd most like to be is Elvis Presley. How this impish Mishima, who longs above all to be translated in the West, squares with the consummate aesthetic perfectionist is not really explained by Schrader's constant emphasis on self-fashioning and the writer's life and body as a work of art. (Mishima's homosexuality is also underexplored, though this was in part the result of constraints placed upon Schrader by the author's family.)
In fact, one begins to wonder at times if Schrader isn't idealizing Mishima – as I think he does Ozu in Transcendental Style – imagining that he had fully solved problems that Schrader himself remains obsessed with. If Mishima is, as Roger Ebert has recently suggested, Schrader's "ultimate man in a room," and thus in the lineage of the obsessive protagonists of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver,1 then it may be that, in trying to give us Mishima in all his purity, has made him a little too monomaniacal. Weren't there moments when Mishima didn't know exactly what to do, how to shape his life in accordance with his intention? Schrader might have brought to his idol a little of the spirit of sacrilege that animates his script for The Last Temptation of Christ, rather than holding him up as a paragon of the transcendental aesthetic life. In one interesting scene, Mishima claims that he is "consciously calculating," thinking over the themes and aims of his fiction, until the moment he actually begins writing, at which point his unconscious takes over. There's no similar moment of release for Schrader in Mishima: he lets everything stay precise and controlled at all times, with only the vaguest sense of the powerful counterforces being held in check.
This becomes increasingly evident in the third section, "Action," which moves us into the late 1960s, when Mishima began to move to the far right. Wanting to bring back the spirit of old Japan that he feared was being wiped out by modernization, Mishima formed the Shield Society, a nationalist paramilitary organization which pledged to "assassinate the leaders of capitalism [and] restore power to the Emperor." (Not that this was ever a realistic possibility, and Mishima himself admitted to believing more in the Emperor as a symbol than in Hirohito as an actual political leader.) While we can understand how Mishima's love of personal discipline might lead him to this quasi-fascist position, the fact that he got close to a hundred young men to enlist in his private army, and four of them to assist him in his final act, begs large questions that Schrader's tight focus on Mishima's terminal uniqueness can't answer. For instance, what was going on in Japanese society at the time? We do get an interesting scene of Mishima trying to gain the support of the student left, whose opposition to capitalism and Westernization he shares, but from a conservative rather than a radical progressive point of view. Further examination of these tensions might have allowed Schrader to make something like a photo negative of Godard's La Chinoise, which also attests to the link between a certain Orientalism, a moment in the history of youth culture, and political radicalism, although from the opposite side of the political spectrum. But Schrader isn't really interested in the political situation Mishima was responding to, even as he indicates that it affected the author very deeply. In particular, a little more exploration of the relationship between Mishima and the younger generation of Japanese might have stretched the bounds of the Schraders' narrative frame, but it would certainly help in making sense of the final chapter.
Especially since here Schrader goes and wrecks everything anyway, with what is by far the least convincing section. In "Harmony of Pen and Sword," we finally finish the story that has been running all throughout the film: Mishima and his young followers gain an audience with the lieutenant general, tie him up and gag him, demand that Mishima be allowed to address the corps, which he does (inaudibly) before finally returning to the general's office and committing seppuku in front of him. Stylistically, Schrader is closer to Scorsese territory in this part of the film than he is to Ozu or one of his other "transcendental" masters: a frantic nervous energy, quite unlike what's gone before, takes over as you sense Mishima trying to bring order to the highly unstable situation he has created around him. If anything, then, this section has the opposite problem to the rest of the film: whereas chapters 1-3 were too close to Mishima, letting him dictate the film's aesthetics, ethics and dramatic structure all at once, this final chapter is too far outside him, as if Schrader were making the comment that Mishima's obsessive search for perfection was really impossible after all. But if this is so, it's just as reductive as saying that Mishima was in fact perfect; it's still playing by his rules, but just saying he's lost the game.
Unfortunately, this is not just a matter of blowing the ending, despite the undeniable power of much of what has come before. The problem posed by "Harmony" is the problem of the film as a whole, one that Schrader manages to evade in the earlier sections by letting Mishima speak for himself at such unusual length. That is, how should we regard Mishima, and what he did? Can we accept suicide as an artistic action, or do we have to think about it differently from the way Mishima (and, in a sense, Schrader) is asking us to? Of course the easy answer is that we in the audience should "decide for ourselves," and that Schrader is to be commended for just presenting what happened rather than editorializing about it. But if the film is more than a tribute to Mishima and his work, if it has some claim to be a work of art itself, then it should give us a little perspective, even at the risk of reducing its subject to a case of something (but of what?). All throughout Mishima, Ogata's voiceover narration – much of it taken directly from Mishima's 1968 autobiography Sun and Steel – gives us various impeccably phrased philosophical justifications for his personal synthesis of Hellenism and bushido, but one always senses Schrader's mixed feelings, even as he dutifully reproduces what his hero wrote and believed. Clearly Schrader wants to stay away from moralizing, and he admires Mishima deeply even as he can't quite bring himself to glorify him. Probably this essential distance – which is not just the distance between American Calvinist heterosexual director and Japanese Buddhist homosexual writer, though there is that – was inevitable, given the extremity of Mishima's final act. But I don't know that it serves Mishima so well for Schrader to pretend that it doesn't exist.
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters opens in a limited engagement on December 17 at Film Forum.
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