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Dads, a new sitcom, premieres tonight on Fox. Its co-creator, Alec Sulkin (a.k.a. @thesulk), can be found primarily on Twitter, where he is widely regarded as the king of comedy. At the very least, no one cracks as wise as Sulkin does in 140 characters or less. For instance, on Sunday, he tweeted: "Fox has really gone above and beyond with marketing. Went down on my girlfriend and there was a 'Dads' billboard mid-bladder." Playboy first profiled Sulkin in its May 2012 issue. Enjoy the story in its entirety, and to read every article the magazine has ever published—from 1953 until today—visit the complete archive at iplayboy.com.
Since this story was published, I've quit Twitter*. My feed started to feel like a quaking box of cacophonous, attention-seeking demons. I shuddered at the thought of checking it. Looking back, I can't help but think that immersing myself in the Twitter universe so that I could write what follows is what soured me on the whole deal. (The lesson here: Don't examine something too closely unless you're prepared to begin hating it.) Anyway, life without Twitter is much better. And I'm sure that @thesulk is still a really nice guy and probably as funny as ever. I just wouldn't know for certain. —Jesse Pearson
* I've also quit Facebook and eating meat. I'm insufferably pure now.
We're in Los Angeles on a Saturday afternoon in a penthouse apartment 26 stories above the Miracle Mile. A man named Alec Sulkin sinks into an expansive couch. Clad in jeans and an aging New England Patriots hoodie, he alternates between fiddling with his iPhone and watching the Dodgers beat the Rockies on the TV in front of him. He has the floppy, basset-hound handsomeness of a Rubber Soul–era Beatle and lives in what looks like a hotel suite that has been squatted by a lassitudinous college-age stoner. Modern Stormtrooper is the predominant interior design motif. The cannon fodder of the Galactic Empire looks down upon him from various posters and prints. Competing for pride of place are images of Peter, Brian and Stewie Griffin—understandably so since Sulkin is a staff writer and producer on the Fox animated series Family Guy.
The 39-year-old Sulkin peers at his iPhone with a momentary flash of purpose. He opens the Twitter app, taps out a few words, thinks briefly, taps a little bit more and hits the tweet button. The following piece of pith goes up on his Twitter account: "Just once, I'd like to trigger an explosion while walking away from it." Instantly, his followers read it. There are 365,309 of them—an ever-shifting mass of strangers, friends, celebrities, stalkers and detractors. Within seconds, their responses begin to roll in. More than 340 followers retweet the joke (or, in Twitter vernacular, RT it). Another 248 followers favorite it. "More mentions than minutes is a good rule of thumb," Sulkin says with a whiff of mantra.
Sulkin doesn't remember the day he joined Twitter. All he knows is that he signed up at some point in March 2009 only to let his account languish, as many people do. Mainly, he was unsure how to make Twitter a part of his life, as many people are. He does know, however, the exact moment he got serious about Twitter—a quick, unconsidered moment at home alone: "I was watching The Net, with Sandra Bullock, which is a movie I've seen many more times than it deserves. I was looking at her weird 1990s khakis, and I tweeted about that." The exact tweet, for historical purposes: "Sandra Bullock sports an unreasonably high-waisted pair of khakis in The Net. (I'm back!)"
Such was the inauspicious beginning of Sulkin's perfection of a new and strange sort of celebrity—Twitter stardom. The first wave of followers was composed of people around the Family Guy office—fellow writers whom Sulkin respects—who joined the site just to follow @thesulk, his nom de tweets. One of them, Gary Janetti (@GaryJanetti, 59,348 followers), is the boyfriend of stylist guy Brad Goreski from the Bravo series It's a Brad, Brad World. At some point, Goreski (@mrbradgoreski, 173,942 followers), who had something like 20,000 followers at the time, #FF'd Sulkin (that's Twitter shorthand for recommending another user to one's own followers). And presto, the next wave of followers for @thesulk. Over the next few months—through a combination of the right time (the dawn of Twitter), the right place (strategically perfect #FFs and RTs) and the right guy (Sulkin is deeply, naturally funny)—@thesulk found himself getting very, very popular. And that popularity has little to do with Family Guy or the fact that until recently he was having sexual relations with Sarah Silverman. Today, Sulkin is legitimately famous because of Twitter.
Writing a good tweet can be vexing—you try being memorably funny and cogent in 140 characters or fewer—but comedians seem adept at it. If nothing else, Twitter, a place where humor needs to be honed into a small, diamond-sharp shiv, reminds us that one simple joke can be vast in its relevance and depth. Look at some of the best aphoristic humorists and you'll see how much can be said in just a few words. S.J. Perelman: "To err is human; to forgive, supine." (36 characters.) Oscar Wilde: "One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards." (61 characters.) Dorothy Parker: "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." (84 characters.) The same goes for the Borscht Belt comedians of yore, whose bam-bam-bam lines would have been RT'd like crazy. As Don Rickles (@DonRickles, 70,626 followers) recently told me via e-mail, "If Henny Youngman were alive today he would be having a field day with Twitter." Rickles is right. One of Youngman's more famous lines—"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading"—is a modest 58 characters. All the Borscht Belters kept it short and sweet. To wit, Jackie Mason: "Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe." (73 characters.) Or Joan Rivers: "A man can sleep around, no questions asked. But if a woman makes 19 or 20 mistakes, she's a tramp." (98 characters.)
Sulkin alternates between a few comedic approaches on Twitter. There's the blue material: "Not to be a dick but jizz! Jizz! Jizz! Drip. Piss." There are lame puns: "Wrote a paper on big 90s boobs, but I was never totally satisfied with my Tiffani-Amber Thesis." (Annoyed friends have told Sulkin they are sure he suffers from Witzelsucht syndrome, a rare neurological disorder characterized by excessive, compulsive punning.) And then there are my favorites—the brutally self-deprecating put-downs: "Hiding weakness is one of my strengths." And "I disgust myself but I don't surprise myself."
"I have a lot of shitty months," he says, which is fine by me because the anxious, neurotic stuff is where Sulkin not only clambers to the top of the Twitter heap but also becomes a torchbearer of classic Jewish comedy. (Another of my all-time favorite Sulkin tweets: "Every time my Dad blows his nose, I kinda get why there was a holocaust.") Sulkin's wildly varied repertoire stems from his worry about being pigeonholed as a one-note comic. "Woody Allen is a great example of someone who has smart jokes and silly jokes," he says. "He pays homage to Groucho Marx, but a lot of his other jokes are incredibly sophisticated and nuanced. Some of his movies are barely funny. They're tragic. I try to do that in some of my stuff. If I'm feeling sad, I'll tweet something sad. I don't care that it isn't a joke."
Allow me to humbly propose a theory about comedy on Twitter: We have become too immersed in postmodern humor—mockumentaries, shows within shows, unreliable comedic narrators, knowing glances to the camera. Comedy has become like one big William Gaddis novel. And that's great: It's advanced; it makes us sophisticated. Yet where does the simple, pure joke live in that jungle of referential complication? All this cleverness risks suffocating the kernels of stupid truth that are at the heart of everything funny. But not on Twitter—a wildlife preserve for one-liners, puns and double entendres. At its essence, Twitter is a mode of comedy that resists too much cleverness. And comedians, as in real-life comedians, are thankful for it. "Meta-comedy is so goddamn annoying," Norm Macdonald (@normmacdonald, 365,258 followers) told me not long ago. "Comedy isn't important enough to be meta. To me, the best joke ever is 'Take my wife, please.' It's a three-word setup and a one-word punch line."
Even meta-comedy masters like Garry Shandling, the co-creator of It's Garry Shandling's Show (Old Testament meta) and The Larry Sanders Show (New Testament meta), are enlivened by Twitter (@GarryShandling, 168,256 followers). His feed is full of odd spellings, inventive grammar and nonsensical thoughts. It's warty and only occasionally funny, but it's weirdly compelling. He treats his followers as if they were the manifestation of a Hydra that follows him around his house. He frequently says good night on Twitter, and his fans say it back to him—kind of like a twisted, digital version of The Waltons. Meanwhile, he still manages a hysterical gem now and again (e.g., "eHarmony matched me up with a gun").
"Some of my tweets are just silly," Shandling explains. "They don't make sense on the surface, but my followers start to sense this punchy guy. That's hilarious to me. Sometimes they'll go, 'Are you drinking tonight, Garry?' The answer is always no, because I don't drink. But I get loose, and I think they're not used to people being so loose on Twitter. I work Twitter like it's a big room. A comedian working a nightclub can lose the room, but on Twitter you can actually lose the whole world."
The first published jokes to spring forth from Sulkin's mind appeared in a much more analog venue—The Circle, the more subversive of the two newspapers at his tony Massachusetts prep school, Middlesex. The humor, while not dripping with nuance, at least attempted to push buttons. "We once published 'The Top 10 Worst Things About Our School Librarian,'?" he tells me. "It was mean—things like 'You're old, and your life is sad.'?" The piece caused such a stir that Sulkin found himself standing before the school's headmaster, treading carpet and begging forgiveness. Later, during Sulkin's senior year, the school appointed a new headmaster, an Asian American woman. Again, he published a list—this time of "names one shouldn't call" the new hire. Each was a ridiculous Wild West insult ("Lily Liver," "Chicken Gizzard"). Among the gags was "Yellowbelly." A PC shit storm ensued due to the headmaster's ethnicity, and Sulkin spent graduation day in a disciplinary meeting facing bizarre charges of racism, which were later dropped.
He spent the next four years at Connecticut College, where he majored in pot smoking. "I'm sure the classes and teachers were great," he says. "But I never went." (Sulkin's love affair with THC continues today, and some of his best tweets have been about weed—e.g., "Kids, don't smoke pot. Unless you want to be like the Beatles" or "Kids, never mix pot, alcohol and vicodin unless you want a severe case of the fucking wonderfuls.") As a senior, Sulkin scored an internship at Saturday Night Live. "Chris Farley was there," he recalls. "David Spade was there. It was the remnants of the Adam Sandler–Mike Myers era." After graduation, he parlayed the internship into a job as a writers' assistant. Mainly this meant gofering, but from time to time he put actual words to paper. "I sometimes would write those little ads with that week's host saying, 'Hi, I'm so-and-so. I'm hosting Saturday Night Live, with musical guest so-and-so.' Then they would do a quick joke, which was mine. It was exciting." Norm Macdonald, who was still doing "Weekend Update" at the time, remembers Sulkin, though just barely. "He hardly ever spoke," Macdonald says.
After being replaced at SNL by Regis Philbin's daughter (weird), Sulkin drifted into stand-up comedy. Though he professes to have hated every minute of it, he continued to tell jokes before a live audience for the next three years, dragging himself on stage to somnambulate his way through a set of static material for minuscule crowds who didn't give a shit about him. "I remember all my terrible jokes," he says. "It was around the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta so I did something about the Jewish Olympics with events like the 'oy vey-vault' and the 'shot-put that down before you hurt yourself.'?"
Salvation came in 1999 when he was asked to audition for a writer's position on The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn. (Remember him?) After getting the morning paper and quickly submitting 50 jokes about the news contained therein (an exercise not unlike Twitter), Sulkin got the job. Also on Kilborn's staff was Wellesley Wild, an old friend from Sulkin's Marijuana U days at Connecticut College. "Wellesley and I decided that we would partner up," says Sulkin. "We mainly wanted to get into sitcoms because you can only make a certain amount of money writing for late-night television, thanks to union rules." One of their early spec scripts landed them on the 2003 Fox series The Pitts, which had the lifespan of a mayfly. But the show's writing staff included Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Guess where that led.
But first, the Sarah Silverman part of the story. On Christmas Day 2009, Sulkin was sitting in a New York City hotel room when he got an automated e-mail that read, "Sarah Silverman is now following you on Twitter." It was immediately followed by a note. "She sent me a direct message that said, 'You're funny,'?" Sulkin remembers. "I started writing her back right away. Initially, I was a little bit of a dick. I was kind of like, 'Oh, you're famous. I can't talk to you.' She bristled at that, so I realized it wasn't the way to go. Within two days, though, we were exchanging dozens of messages. I was still in New York, but I felt that something was going to happen. One night soon afterward, I was back in L.A. and Sarah sent me a direct message saying, 'I'm not feeling well. Will you come over and feel my forehead?' I went to her house instantly. That was the night before New Year's Eve, and from that day forward, we didn't spend a night apart for months. It was really intense and great for a long time."
Over e-mail, I ask Silverman why she felt compelled to contact Sulkin. (They have since broken up—very amicably, thank you.) "I read his tweets, and they were so funny, dark and beautiful. He's like this sardonic, honest, hilarious poet." As for why she thinks Sulkin is so good in 140-character nano-quips: "Twitter isn't based on politics or selling yourself in a room. It's straight-up talent. No one owns it. There are no notes or executives; there is just one cook. And Alec baring his cynical soul is undeniable greatness."
Another undeniable result: All the cynical soul baring has turned him into a veritable Twitter crush. Female followers randomly send him messages like "ur the only man id ever let put it in my bum. i trust u being my soul mate so much im willing2sacrifice my sacred hole." "There are times," Sulkin says, "when I get an @ message from someone and I blow up their avatar photo and think, Is the person who wrote this suggestive thing hot? And do they live in Los Angeles? And are they over 21?"
Most likely, anal virginity is being offered to Sulkin because of his fame and relative fortune—as opposed to the hoary chestnut about women being attracted to a man's sense of humor above all else. But there is something going on with Twitter, a new kind of star-to-fan relationship that allows a person's followers to feel closer to him than they would a guy who was just a successful writer or comedian. "Twitter is an intimate thing," Sulkin says. "When I read a Steve Martin tweet, it's like I can hear his voice. And if you read my stuff carefully and you're smart, I think you could figure out a lot about me. More people now know me from Twitter than have ever known me for anything else. It's insane how many people are following me. I feel like the biggest part of my existence is spent trying to continually feed these people."
I've started to believe that tweeting well is a form of seduction. You can't come on too strong, but at the same time, you have to give the object of your desire (your needy, fickle followers) the right amount of attention. They want to feel special and feel like they're part of something when they follow you. All the while, you don't want to seem desperate. These days, Sulkin's life is scheduled around striking this delicate balance. "It sounds ridiculous," he says, "but if I know I'm going out for the night, I'll tweet right before I leave. Then I know I'll have at least a three-hour cushion to do whatever the fuck I want. It's like clearing space in my schedule."
The headquarters of Seth MacFarlane's animated comedy empire are next door to the building where Sulkin lives. ("Less than a one-song walk door-to-door," he says.) The windows of Sulkin's corner office are tinted to thwart the perpetual L.A. sunlight, and his walls are bare save for a corkboard. In one corner, a framed, signed Larry Bird jersey leans against the wall. In another corner, there's a guitar. On this day, three other Family Guy writers are gathered inside. Two of them—Artie Johann (@DearAnyone, 52,042 followers) and Shawn Ries (@shawnries, 15,564 followers)—are prolific tweeters themselves. The third, a very funny man named Ted Jessup, should be on Twitter but is not. He tells me, with a weary sigh, that he fears it would become another "onerous obligation."
Their task is to figure out how to close out a scene in which the show's lovable ESL housekeeper character, Consuela, has somehow found herself directing traffic at a busy intersection. "Okay," Sulkin says, looking down at the script in his hand, "I guess we're good through when she says, 'No, no, no, no!' We can do whatever we want after that."
To get in the right mind-set, everyone starts channeling Consuela by quietly repeating her catchphrase—the word no in a heavy Spanish accent with a teasing falsetto. "We could have her stop to squeegee someone's windshield," Ries says.
"One of those hot-dog trucks could come by. The guy could give her a hot dog while saying 'That's $2' and she could say, 'No!'?" Jessup offers.
"Maybe she does four 'nos' and then says to the next car, 'Sí, you come,'?" Sulkin suggests. "When it comes forward, she could say, 'You give me ride home?'?"
The idea is met by laughter and starts to branch off into a more developed riff. "So she gets in the car," Sulkin continues, "and the guy sighs and goes, 'Okay, where do you live?' And she says, 'I don't know.'?" Now, the other writers pitch in again, each speaking in Consuela's voice.
"….is by Enterprise Rent-A-Car."
"….is by check-cashing place."
"….is by the check-cashing Chinese food restaurant."
"Have you seen that place?" Sulkin asks the room, placing the riff on hold. "When you come back from the airport, there's a place that's check cashing, Chinese food, chicken wings and doughnuts." A mini-discussion of racial stereotyping in the urban retail world begins. More tangents bloom, until eventually we're so far off topic that Jessup is explaining—in quite an erudite way—the American buffalo's path to extinction and the etymological origin of the phrase You're fired!
As they wind down, I check Twitter on my phone and see that Sulkin tweeted just a few minutes ago, apparently using sleight of hand. (The tweet: "?'You from LA?' 'Yup. Bored and bred.'?") Later, when I ask him about it, he tells me, "I'm constantly monitoring Twitter." He pays close attention to how many followers he's gaining or losing at any given moment and how many people are mentioning him. "I'm tweeting all the time—at work, in the middle of the day, whenever." Johann tells us that, for his part, he keeps a Stickie on his computer desktop where he logs potential tweets. "I looked at it the other day," he says. "It was all dick stuff."
The tweet-heavy work environment doesn't seem to bother their boss, Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane, 1,962,406 followers). "For me, Alec completely legitimized the whole idea of Twitter," MacFarlane says. "Each medium has its own style and its own requirements, and Alec invented his own writing style for this medium. When I read Alec's Twitter account, I thought, God, this completely changes things.
"Most Twitter feeds are strings of gobbledygook—oftentimes they don't even make sense. But it's a perfect format for Alec because he has an observational mind that's unparalleled. I was watching reruns of the old Dick Van Dyke Show the other day, and it occurred to me that Alec is a modern-day Morey Amsterdam. He's the guy who just stands in the room and reels off strings of impossibly quick and impossibly clever one-liners. He really is the 2012 version—in his hipness, relevance, progressiveness and edginess—of the old-style Jewish comedian."
On a Thursday night in West Hollywood, I meet Sulkin at a bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. A variety of stand-up routines are scheduled to begin shortly in the bar's back room. Sulkin, wearing a blazer-and-tie combo that gives him the look of a down-at-the-heels prep school English teacher, had told me beforehand that the Twitterati (his phrase) will be out in force. Now, he introduces me to a bunch of them as they stand in a scrum in the middle of the room. Their faces mean nothing to me, and as we shake hands, neither do their given names. But when they tell me their Twitter handles, there is a jolt of recognition. They are, in no particular order:
@GuyEndoreKaiser, 26,711 followers, comedy writer. Sample tweet: "Taking an Italian person to The Olive Garden is like taking a black person to 1864."
@DearAnyone, 52,042 followers, Family Guy's Johann. Sample tweet: "I'm just smart enough to be frustrated with how dumb I am."
@DamienFahey, 42,234 followers, one-time Carson Daly replacement on MTV's Total Request Live. Sample tweet: "The worst iPhone app ever would be one that sends you a text message anytime your dad gets a boner."
Though I'm meeting them for the first time (excepting Johann), I already know their senses of humor. And if any of the great psychological theories on humor are to be believed, I therefore could easily extrapolate their deepest anxieties and fixations. That's partly why I'm so interested in Twitter users who aren't necessarily professional jokesters—my personal Twitterati. (Every Twitter user has such a list.) The comic musings of the everyday tweeter serve as a sort of prism into their lives. It's a kind of compelling, hilarious autobiography, and it makes other people's mundanity totally interesting. Take, for instance, @tracy_marq, 10,611 followers, a 20-year-old cashier from the L.A. suburbs. Sample tweet: "Someone go downstairs and see why my mom was crying for two hours and then get me a granola bar and bring it upstairs." Or @IamEnidColeslaw, 35,972 followers, a mysterious and vulgar 26-year-old clerical worker from Chicago. Sample tweet: "Just ate McDonalds after working out, which is the same as taking a shit after a shower."
Here's where the egalitarian nature of Twitter really shines through. Write enough funny tweets, and it doesn't matter if you're a garbage man or a plutocrat—eventually you'll start getting followers, accolades and that strange, addictive Twitter fame.
Back at Sulkin's Miracle Mile apartment, I ask him if he ever thinks about the end of Twitter. The question feels strangely solemn, as though I'm asking about the end of the world. But really, how long can Twitter be sustained until it becomes something radically different? Everything on the web is always just a nascent form of its next version anyway. "Sometimes I get a little bit tired of it," Sulkin says. "And I think, Maybe I should just cap it at 5,000 tweets, which is coming soon." (His self-imposed retirement from Twitter never occurred, obviously. As of press time he has surpassed the 5,000-tweet plateau by almost 1,000 tweets.) "But then I also think, Fuck that! Stopping now would be like saying, 'I'm not funny anymore.' And I do think that I can still be funny, poignant or sad in a way that's entertaining. I never want to give that up."
I don't think Sulkin could stop tweeting even if he wanted to. In the drafts section of his iPhone's Twitter app, he has 320 potential tweets lined up. And on his computer, there is a tweet file that is hovering around 16,000 characters. Tweets come to him when he's in the shower, when he's walking across the street to work, when he's on planes. Basically, life hands tweets to Sulkin because he's hardwired to receive them. Like most funny people, he's a full-time observer. Twitter is made for his breed.
"So it never ends?" I ask.
Sulkin laughs. "It might have been Seth MacFarlane who asked a while ago, 'What do we do now? Do we tweet every day until we die?'?"
Sorry, @thesulk, but the answer, probably, is yes.
Jesse Pearson is the founder and editor of Apology, a newish quarterly magazine.
Photo by Justin Stephen


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Listening to John McCain on Wednesday night, you had to wonder if Sheldon Adelson had been giving him some kind of break at the craps tables. His speech was a noxious compendium of the usual neocon blather. He rehearsed the canard that President Obama didn't stand up for the Green Revolution protesters in the streets of Tehran (if he had, the regime would have had the rationale for a mass slaughter … oh, and by the way, the leadership of the Green Party, which I interviewed that week, vehemently expressed its support for the Iranian nuclear program — all except Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who sadly reached out to Obama in an interview with me the night before the Iranian election was stolen).
And then there's Syria, where John McCain sees freedom fighters, and the Israeli intelligence apparatus (and the Prime Minister's office) sees the threat of al-Qaeda.
The point is, these things are complicated. But not to McCain. In an interview with Candy Crowley after his speech, the Senator drifted into bilious fantasyland. Asked about the difference between Obama and Mitt Romney on Iran, he said, "One of them has a relationship with Israel." And then he said, "There is no U.S. credibility in the Middle East." And then he said, "The people of Israel are being slaughtered."
Nonsense, all of it. As Wolf Blitzer — who should receive a reward for truth telling this week — pointed out after McCain slunk off the screen, the military and intelligence relationship between the U.S. and Israel is stronger than it has ever been. The joint cyberwarfare effort has been devastating to the Iranian nuclear program. There are differences, to be sure. The U.S. President, following the precedent of all his predecessors since Richard Nixon, thinks the expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestinian lands is a bad idea.
Obama has wisely scaled down the war against al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists to the special forces, drone operation it should have been all along. It has been extremely effective. So far as I can tell, McCain's position as he approaches his dotage, is full-scale war everywhere, whenever possible.
This is disastrous, dangerous and sad.

subset: commoncrawl


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Child's Play Dinner Auction 2011
The Child's Play season is off to a strong start thanks to the support of our incredible community. Our brand new events calendar is brimming with community-run fundraisers and our hospitals are already receiving games and gifts from generous donors. Our total contributions are up to $622,000! We are so grateful for your support.
We're counting down the days to our annual Dinner Auction which is taking place this year at the Meydenbauer Center on December 8th. It's going to be a lovely evening of good food, fun, and really incredible auction items. If you're interested in attending you can get your tickets here. If you're part of a corporation who may want to sponsor a table, you can get more information and your table sponsorship here.
Part of what makes the evening special are the incredible auction items we have available each year. There are beautiful works of art, prop replicas, unique games and consoles, and incredible experiences all donated by members of the game community and industry. That's where you come in. We're currently accepting donations of geeky and non-geeky items alike: from Mario to merlot, consoles to kayak trips, we're ready to auction for the kids. If you have any items you'd like to donate to the auction, please contact Jamie- firstname.lastname@example.com.


text: Manage the Challenge of Feeding when Forage is Deficient July 1, 2014 09:47 AM Tweet TAGS: Marketing, Overseas December 18, 2014 By MILK Editors Email 5 areas where technology can help achieve feeding success. Source: Calibrate Technologies Forage availability difficulties have both dairy producers and nutritionists looking for options. Unlike in years past, higher grain diets may be the next best option economically these days; however, feeding these diets can be challenging. "Feeding a higher grain diet isn't new by any means," says Dr. Margaret Winsryg, technical support specialist with Calibrate® Technologies, based in Idaho. "Approximately 10 years ago, the dairy industry fed a higher concentrate than forage diet, but this is a trend the industry went away from, until recently." Winsryg says that challenges surrounding water are one of the many issues behind the shortage of forages and the shift towards feeding a higher grain diet. During what may be a difficult feeding atmosphere, knowledge and understanding of the effects high grain diets have on animal health and production will allow dairy producers and nutritionists to maintain an edge. Starch content, variability and digestibility are tops on the list. Dairy producers and nutritionists who find themselves in forage deficit areas, and plan to feed a higher grain diet, should keep an eye on the following areas, says Winsryg. 1. Starch content variability of the ingredients used in high grain rations, as well as the digestibility of those ingredients. 2. Forage neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and neutral detergent fiber digestibility (NDFd) variation. 3. If you are feeding a high grain ration, you could possibly be walking a fine line between efficiencies, milk production and animal health. 4. If starch variability in those feed ingredients goes down or up enough to change how the diet was balanced, and/or the digestibility also changes, milk yield can be reduced, milk components could decrease, animals could go off feed, money could be wasted on unnecessary feed expenses, existing feedstuffs may not be utilized as efficiently as possible or all of the above. 5. If your forage quality increases, causing the feed to move faster through the rumen, total feed efficiencies can go down with the increased dry matter intake (DMI). This is something to keep a close eye on, says Winsryg. If the forage quality decreases considerably, DMI could be lowered and cows may not reach maximum milk production. To mitigate any issues that may arise when feeding a higher grain diet, Winsryg suggests nutritionists and dairy producers use precise laboratory tests like Calibrate® Technologies, to measure rumen degradable starch and fiber digestibility. Utilizing proprietary measurements called GPN™ and FPN™, Calibrate® Technologies evaluates ruminal starch digestibility and NDFd. GPN™ measures how digestible and available starch will be to the rumen microbes. FPN™ measurements indicate how digestible the fiber will be and as a result how much rumen fill there will be. "Knowledge gained from rumen degradable starch testing and NDFd testing can help you optimize your rations," says Winsryg, "regardless of the feeding climate you find yourself in this year." For more information call: (800) 635-5701, email: email@example.com or go to: www.calibratetechnologies.com. Calibrate® Technologies provides the dairy industry's first rapid starch and fiber test with an online nutritional calculator to help provide ration recommendations to nutritionists and producers on rumen digestibility of forages and feedstuffs. For additional information, visit www.CalibrateTechnologies.com or call (800) 635-5701. Back to news


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President Hanlon welcomes members of the Class of 2017 at Matriculation.
President Hanlon visits First-Year Trips in Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.
Deputy Director of Athletics Bob Ceplikas '78 introduces President Hanlon and his wife, Gail Gentes, during a men's basketball game.
Gail Gentes and President Hanlon at home in the President's House on Webster Avenue. Gentes is the director of action-based learning programs at Dartmouth.
President Hanlon met with the student crew of the bio-diesel-fueled Big Green Bus as they prepared to depart for a national summer tour sharing a message of sustainability.
Phil Hanlon '77 became the 18th president of Dartmouth College on June 10, 2013. He is the 10th Dartmouth alumnus to serve as its president and the first since the 1981 to 1987 tenure of David T. McLaughlin '54, Tuck '55.
President Hanlon, 57, previously the Donald J. Lewis Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. An accomplished academic and administrative leader, Hanlon had been a Michigan faculty member since 1986 and served in a succession of administrative leadership roles there for more than a decade, most recently as the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
As a mathematician, Hanlon focuses on probability and combinatorics, the study of finite structures and their significance as they relate to bioinformatics, computer science, and other fields. Hanlon has earned numerous honors and awards for his mathematical research, including a Sloan Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Henry Russel Award, and the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and held an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship, the University of Michigan's highest recognition of faculty whose commitment to undergraduate teaching has had a demonstrable impact on the intellectual development and lives of their students.
Hanlon is married to Gail Gentes, who joined Dartmouth as the director of action-based learning programs. The couple has three children, all in their 20s. (See President Hanlon's full biography.)
Video: Hanlon on Dartmouth—"It transformed my life."
Photo gallery: Phil Hanlon at Dartmouth
Contact: Send a message to President Hanlon


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More than half of Americans will have diabetes or be prediabetic by 2020 at a cost to the U.S. health care system of $3.35 trillion if current trends go on unabated, according to analysis of a new report released last week by health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc….
Diabetes and prediabetes will account for an estimated 10% of total health care spending by the end of the decade at an annual cost of almost $500 billion — up from an estimated $194 billion this year, according to the report titled "The United States of Diabetes: Challenges and Opportunities in the Decade Ahead." (See this week's Tool for Your Practice.)
The average annual health care costs in 2009 for a person with known diabetes were about $11,700 compared with about $4,400 for non-diabetics, according to new data in the report drawn from 10 million United Healthcare members.
The average annual cost nearly doubles to $20,700 for a person with complications related to diabetes, the report said.
Diabetes, which is reaching epidemic proportions and is one of the fastest-growing diseases in the United States, currently affects about 26 million Americans. Another 67 million Americans are estimated to have prediabetes, with more than 60 million unaware that they have the condition, according to UnitedHealth.
The 52-page UnitedHealth report also focuses on the growing obesity epidemic as that condition is a leading cause of diabetes.
The authors of the report contend the skyrocketing cost forecasts are not inevitable but only if the crisis is tackled aggressively, including early intervention to prevent prediabetes from becoming diabetes.
"Because diabetes follows a progressive course, often starting with obesity and then moving to prediabetes, there are multiple opportunities to intervene early on and prevent this devastating disease before it's too late," Deneen Vojta, senior vice president of the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization, said in a statement.
The report also focuses on obesity and its relationship to diabetes. Being overweight or obese is one of the primary risk factors for diabetes, and with more than two-thirds of American adults and 17 percent of children overweight or obese, the risk is clearly rising. In fact, over half of adults in the U.S. who are overweight or obese have either prediabetes or diabetes, and studies have shown that gaining just 11-16 pounds doubles the risk of Type 2 diabetes and gaining 17-24 pounds nearly triples the risk.
"What is now needed is concerted, national, multi-stakeholder action," Simon Stevens, chairman of the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization, said in a statement. "Making a major impact on the prediabetes and diabetes epidemic will require health plans to engage consumers in new ways, while working to scale nationally some of the most promising preventive care models." Stevens added.
If solutions for tackling the epidemic offered in the report were adopted broadly and scaled nationally it could lead to cost savings of up to $250 billion over the next 10 years, according to the UnitedHealth analysis.
Report "The United States of Diabetes: Challenges and Opportunities in the Decade Ahead." (See this week's Tool for Your Practice.)


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Klimt Expectation Ashtray
Klimt Expectation Ashtray
During the golden age of Art Nouveau, the opulent works of this artist's "Golden Period", reveal shapes and ornamentation blending together to form uniquely sensuous compositions. Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918), co-founder of the "Vienna Secession" school, brings together the different strands of the international Art Nouveau movement in his magnificent paintings and is, in fact, considered to be its most important exponent. Indeed, his best-known painting "The Kiss" is universally recognised as the ultimate "allegory of love".
Composition: Porcelain
Detail: 16 x 16cm


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Not too long ago, I shared with you about my frustrations with Christmas, specifically that I don't want wish lists to be the focus (and despite my best efforts, my almost-5-year-old has a nasty case of presentitis).
Today, I want to consider a big question: What does the Bible say about giving?
I realize that's a pretty open-ended question, one that could go in any number of directions, so I want to focus on the issue of motivation. Why do we give? What is the purpose of giving? It should be no surprise that the answer is wonderfully simple and unimaginably complex, all at the same time.
For many of us, particularly those of us in the Compassion world, it's really tempting to point and look at the needs of the world and say,
"That's why we give. We're giving so we can bless others."
And this is a good motivation, but biblically it's not the starting place for God's people. We also have to remember that generosity is about so much more than money; it's about our entire lives — giving of our time, talent and treasure.
And if that's the case, our giving has to be motivated by something far greater than need.
Acts 2 helps us understand our primary motivation. (By the way, much of what you're about to read is adapted from a book I wrote) Here, Luke describes the believers as having,
"all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." Acts 2:44-47 (ESV)
This is incredible to read, isn't it? So strong was the bond between the believers that they had a great desire to meet one another's needs. Nothing was off-limits. Homes and lives were open.
People were giving away what they had, exchanging their earthly treasures for treasure in heaven. It's amazing to consider, possibly because the whole concept is so foreign to those of us living in the Western world.
What's going on in this picture of the early church? Was it some form of proto-communist experiment? There is no record of anyone suggesting that they do this, much less commanding it.
Despite what some who perhaps hold to a more creative view of possessions might suggest, personal property was not seen as wicked or sinful in the early church. Indeed, even during this time, many believers continued to own homes where they would meet (see v. 46), and Acts 5:4 indicates that believers were under no obligation to relieve themselves of all their earthly possessions.
So why this outpouring of generosity? What compelled them to give of themselves in this way?
It was motivated by the grace of God. It was a spontaneous response to God's lavish generosity toward them in not holding back the most precious treasure of all — free and unmerited salvation offered by the Father through the Son.
What's fascinating is that this is the pattern throughout the Bible: God's grace motivates generosity in His people for the purpose of glorifying God.
In Genesis 14:19-20, Abram gives Melchizedek a tenth of his spoils, but there is no command to do so. It's motivated by Abram's love for God and his conviction that Melchizedek is God's special servant.
Likewise in Exodus, as plans are made for the construction of the tabernacle, God says, "From every man whose heart moves him you shall receive the contribution for me" (Ex. 25:2). Moses then tells the Israelites, "Take from among you a contribution to the Lord. Whoever is of a generous heart, let him bring the Lord's contribution." When the people returned, they had to be restrained from giving, as what they offered was far beyond what was needed (Ex. 35:5, 36:5-7)!
Even as we turn to the New Testament, we see that the pattern continues and even becomes more overt. In 2 Corinthians, which contains perhaps the most exhaustive instruction on New Covenant giving, we read about a similarly generous offering. There, Paul commends the Macedonians to the Corinthians, saying that though they were in serious affliction and extreme poverty, they gave in an overflow of generosity according to their means (cf. 2 Cor. 8:1-12).
Paul was taking up a collection (as he mentions in nearly all his epistles) to help the impoverished Jerusalem church, and the Macedonians responded with overflowing generosity. Paul seeks to encourage the Corinthians to do likewise, explaining:
"The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, 'He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.'
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for all your generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God." 2 Cor. 9:6-12 (ESV)
Without getting into an extremely in-depth examination of the text, we can see that Paul is laying out a number of straightforward principles that should guide how we give, both positive and negative.
Give generously. Give cheerfully. Give according to what you've decided in your heart. Give thankfully.
But what's most interesting is the negative principle he offers in verse 7: Do not give under compulsion.
Giving out of a sense of guilt or external pressure isn't generosity. It's extortion, and God will have none of it. Guilt doesn't glorify God, Paul says in essence.
All of our giving is to be from a generous heart, cheerfully offered. Guilt and obligation don't produce this kind of heart, but the Holy Spirit does.
Grace produces generosity as men and women are reminded of the gospel — that Jesus, though He was rich became poor on our behalf, lived a sinless life, died on the cross, offering up His life for ours, and rose again to give us the gift of new life.
That's the kind of attitude toward giving that glorifies God. That's the purpose to which we are called as cheerful givers. And truly, there's no better motivation.
This was originally posted on December 21, 2011.


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Welcome to the CRG Discussion Forum!Forum registration problems: Make sure you enter your email correctly and you check your spam box first. *Then* email KurtS2@gmail for help.Classified ads are not allowed on the forum.
STILL raining cats and dogs. Hope it clears for the show tommorow. Good talking to you Phil, sorry we couldn't get together.
Saturday was a fabulous day, weather was perfect and show field held up quite well. Took the grandkids to the AACA musuem on Friday, I'm sure it was record attendance day for them. Another great Hershey is in the books!


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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
The SDe book imprint launched at the JLF
11 comments:
- Manjiri Kale said...
Socialite person with socialite bag..good one.
- January 29, 2013 at 3:15 PM
- Gargi Bose said...
This Rakhi a pleasant surprise is waiting for my brother. Thanks to www.rakhitoindia2013.com> for their lovely gift collection. It has simplified my task to a great extent.
- January 29, 2013 at 4:30 PM
- Pooja Rathore said...
nice pics,i loved your sunglasses(the first pic holding the book ).yep also socialite bag.
Nice post on Rahul ..he comes across as a nice person with goodintentions to serve the country...but politics ,somehow once you get into it...cant say...or i just want to be optimistic that rahul will remain the same...iam positive.
- January 29, 2013 at 5:34 PM
- Jas said...
What a sweet little chutki on Rahul's infant cheek. As if he hadn't been slapped hard enough by the we-know-it-all brigade. Surprise then, the smothered laadla is still standing upright. If only his speech-writer could be a pen-wielding striker,his political destiny would have been struck off, atleast more ceremoniously.But what an interesting read of an article Shobhaji; definitely more sartorial than Sethji.
- January 29, 2013 at 9:58 PM
- Anil Kumar said...
Rahul Baba looks innocent but the sad part is he is tutored by likes of Digvijay Singh, Ambika Soni, Rashid Alvi's and other crooks in congress. The way he is worshipped by the Congress Chamchas - for their own good - makes it very difficult for this laadla to carry India forward. You need a mind who can think independently and at the same time not blinded by chamcha's showing him rosy pictures.
You confirmed that you indeed have soft corner for him. I hope you are not benefitting by taking a little biased view on Rahul and Modi. Modi has a record of accomplishments - good and bad. Rahul's answersheet is still blank.
- January 30, 2013 at 10:20 AM
- Russel Ahmed said...
well speculation. thanks!!
- January 30, 2013 at 4:25 PM
- Jyostna said...
Rahul to me is still naive n childish. He may be prince charming for a princess but not really n may be never really a warrior prince to stand up n fight for the country
- January 30, 2013 at 6:23 PM
- Tinu srivastava said...
- January 31, 2013 at 12:54 PM
- Website and Printing Solutions said...
nice bag!
register marriage
- February 5, 2013 at 10:41 AM
- Aditya said...
Nice blog
Get Tech Updates at TechTantrik
Enjoy Funnier Side of Life at TheRoyalPoke
- December 16, 2013 at 11:42 AM
- Siva Cool said...
A truly motivational and life changing book
This book is really a good book which shows us right path. but i read
one more book named "ONE BOOK FOR LIFE SUCCESS" which is truly
motivational and life changing . .The writer has described in PlainEnglish with lot of examples which is easy to understand...For More
Please watch the videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biORjS8ngv0
YouTube video
- July 2, 2014 at 2:08 PM


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Mad ancestors or elusive ancestors
who drive US mad!
This blog post is not about someone who made me literally mad but maybe more mad in the sense that I am confused!
My Great Grandfather, Andrew Anderson Smalley was born April 3, 1853 in Falls Township, Wyoming County Pennsylvania. He died on March 12, 1943 in Coos County, Oregon. On his death certificate, his father is stated as B.F. Smalley and mother unknown. Okay, could this be a Benjamin Franklin? That name is fairly common and not easy to pinpoint.
So my next step was to go to the 1860 census of Wyoming County, PA to see if I can find Smalleys. I find 3 Smalley children living with a William Dunlap family and their daughter, Hannah. Mary age 6, Anderson age 5 and Edgar at 3 years. Was Hannah the children's mother? I couldn't assume at that point. Her last name was enumerated as "Dunlap". No Benjamin. Maybe he died? A few census pages away is a Jefferson Smalley family from New York. I set this aside as a possible clue.
1870 census of same location shows as head of family, Jesse Wall and wife Hannah and two Smalley children; Andrew age 17 and Edgar age 14 plus William Dunlap and wife. Mary is not found.
1880 census Andrew Smalley and his wife and children are found in Nevada where he is supposed to be. Back in Falls Twshp, no Walls are to be found! There was a land transaction that Jesse Wall participated in 1882, but what happened to him and Hannah? I scoured any variation of the 1880 census that I could think of to try to locate them. No luck.
In October 2004, I was fortunate enough to take a trip to the Historical Society in Tunkhannock, PA. One of my goals was to try to locate more Smalley information. I located the marriage notice of Andrew and his wife Emma in the local newspaper and found that his mother was listed as "Mrs. Wall". BINGO! That solved that issue.
At that point, I was stuck.
A few months ago I was googling and decided just on a whim to type in Andrew Smalley and Pennsylvania. I got a hit! There was a book called "The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811-1912" By Joseph Gaston which listed a whole biography of my Andrew Smalley. It was full of information and he mentions his parents as being Benjamin L. and Hannah M. which further states my case.
You would think at that point I solved all of my issues. Of course not!
It has lead to further problems.
First claim is that Andrew told the author that his father, Benjamin came to America from Germany when he was 16 years old. Okay I can handle that. What confuses me is that Smalley seems to be more of an English name. So not sold on that senario.
Second item is that he said his father "enlisted in the Federal Army as one of the first volunteers of his state and was killed in the Battle of Bull Run." So I eagerly did some research to find any records of a Civil War enlistment under his name, pension research for the widow, Hannah and Penn State enlistment records and there is no one by that name! So where was Benjamin in the 1860 census? He was gone by that time and there is no census listing for anywhere. There is one candidate for the 1850 Census of Luzerne County for a Benjamin L. age 21 a Mason and born in Pennsylvania. I suspect that could be him. Why did Andrew lie about his father? Was his father a criminal? Did he just die and Andrew embellished his story?
As far as Hannah goes, Andrew states that his mother, Hannah Wall lived with her daughter, Mary in Virginia City, NV same place as Andrew and family and died at her daughter's home. So I went to the 1880 census to retrace any Hannahs and Marys in Storey County, Nevada. I found a H.M. Wall age 39 female born in Pennsylvania and parents born in Penn as a prisoner in the County jail! The age was off by 5 years and she stated that she was married. Where was the husband, wouldn't he have been enumerated in the census? This just couldn't get any worse.
Andrew's brother Edgar supposedly died in a mine accident in Nevada as stated in the Centennial history. I did find a entry for an E. Smalley a miner who died from inflammation of the bowels in the 1880 mortality census of Nevada. An R. Smalley female is found in the 1880 census and could be his wife, Rebecca. She is listed in the same county, as a widow.
As far as Mary goes, do not know who she married and what happened. I need to further dig into Virginia City to find out more, the records are somewhat on the scarce side.
After Andrew and family left Nevada, they headed off to Mendocino County, California to lumber. What is interesting, is the family members of the previous Jefferson Smalley listed in the 1860 census are founded in that area! This group of Smalleys originate from the Killfish area of New York. I suspect that Andrews clan connects with these people, but I cannot at this time prove it.
So many unanswered questions which leads to more! The search still continues!


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Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine all ingredients, except casings, in a large bowl. Put the meat mixture through a grinder and grind according to manufacturer's instructions. Tie a knot in 1 end of a casing and begin filling the casings with the meat mixture, then tie off the other end of the casing once all the meat has been used. Twist the casing into 6 sausage links.
Bake sausage for at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat a grill.
Remove sausage links from oven and place on grill. Grill until crispy and golden brown. Spice up your favorite pasta recipe by adding sausage slices or enjoy your sausage the old-fashioned way, on a bun topped with your favorite condiments.
This recipe was provided by a chef, restaurant or culinary professional. It has not been tested for home use.


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Trevor is a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include real-time embedded devices and distributed real-time networks. He can be reached at [email protected]
While we like to think of C as a "write once, compile anywhere" language, a recent experience writing code for the ARM processor reminded me that this isn't always the case. I was porting a Linux application to the iPAQ, a handheld computer from HP (formerly Compaq), and assumed that because this desktop application was written in pure ANSI C, I'd have no problem. In this article, I show why I was wrong about this and share tips on making code more portable to the ARM and similar RISC processors. I've also included several short C programs illustrating portability problems when programming for the ARM (available electronically; see "Resource Center," page 5).
The ARM processor comes from the lineage known as "StrongARM." This low-voltage RISC core was never manufactured by ARM Ltd., which instead tends to license its embedded processor designs to manufacturers. This is what the company did in 1995 when it sold Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) the rights to build an enhanced version of the ARM core, which quadrupled the clock rate of the ARM while preserving its low-power characteristics. However, DEC eventually sold its design to Intel as part of a massive legal dispute. Today, StrongARM processors can run at 233 MHz without heat sinks or other cooling methods, making them suitable for CPU-intensive embedded devices such as the iPAQ.
Like most technologies, StrongARM earns these benefits by sacrificing a little bit of backward compatibility. Perhaps the most fundamental of these compatibility issues is the processor's endianessthe order in which it stores integers in memory. Fortunately, the ARM processor can configure itself, chameleon like, either as Big-endian or Little-endian. And because most Linux distributions for the iPAQ switch the ARM into Little-endian mode by default, developers porting x86 code to the ARM don't need to worry about endianess. (All x86 processors are Little-endian.) There are, however, three potential hazards you should still keep in mind: signed versus unsigned chars, data alignment, and floating-point emulation.
Signed versus Unsigned Chars
Can you predict what Listing One will do? On my Pentium laptop, this snippet prints c<0, as expected. When recompiled for ARM and run on the iPAQ, the code mysteriously prints c>=0. The reason is hinted at in a warning on the third line, signaled only by the ARM compiler: "Comparison is always false due to limited range of data type."
So the question is: What's the range of the char data type? The answer is "undefined." The ANSI C Standard specifies the range only for signed and unsigned chars. Signed chars are at least -127 to 127, while unsigned chars are at least 0 to 255. As for simple chars, the Standard lets the compiler decide whether they are signed or unsigned.
This ambiguity exists because compilers often have to promote chars to ints in arithmetic operationssuch as the comparison in Listing Oneand on some machines, the fastest way to do that is with a sign-extent instruction. The PDP-11, for example, on which Dennis Ritchie implemented the first modern version of C in 1973, had the instruction SXT for this task, so for historical reasons, most C compilers make chars signed by default.
Fast forward 20 years and you'll find no single "load character from memory and sign extend" in the ARM instruction set. That's why, for performance reasons, every compiler I'm aware of makes the default char type signed on x86, but unsigned on ARM. (A workaround for the GNU GCC compiler is the -fsigned- char parameter, which forces all chars to become signed.)
Of course, speed comes at the expense of portability. In Listing Two, the comparison is between EOF, defined as -1, and ch, of type char. On x86, the code dumps the contents of textfile to the console, but on ARM, it enters an infinite loop. Basically, what's happening here is that an internal conversion copies the lowest 8 bits of -1 into an instance of char for the comparison, and in the complement notation, those bits are all on. Of course, if the char type is 8 unsigned bits, then those bits are 255 in decimal, which never equals -1; hence, the infinite loop.
The easy solution is to declare the variable as int instead of char. If you take a close look at the stdio functions, you'll see that they were designed with this fix in mind. They all take and return ints, even though they work with characters.
Depending on your point of view, the specification for the char type may be as hysterical as it is historical, but I think everyone can agree on some rules of thumb when following it. They apply not just to ARM developers, but to anyone who wants to write portable code in C:
- Use signed char when you need small signed integers.
- Use unsigned char when you need small unsigned integers or to treat a block of memory as a sequence of bytes.
- Use plain char for ASCII characters and string manipulation only.
As usual, write portable code first and worry about optimizations later.
Data Alignment
Making assumptions about data alignment is another way to shoot yourself in the foot while programming for ARM. As a case in point, I recently wrote a program that sends data from an iPAQ to my PC over a serial cable; see Listing Three.
When I examined the two values of sensor data on the PC side, I discovered that the first one came over fine, but the second was corrupted. I didn't realize what was happening until I looked at the return value of sizeof. On the PC, the size of the SensorData struct was, just as I expected, 3 bytes (three chars of 1 byte each). On the iPAQ, however, the struct was 4 bytes.
The problem was that I assumed the compiler would lay out the fields of the struct without any space between them, when in fact, there is no such requirement in C. The compiler knew that the ARM, like other RISC processors, is more efficient when loading data from memory on 32-bit boundaries, and it realized that any data following my 24-bit struct wouldn't fall on such a boundary. So, it added an invisible 8 bits to make the struct reach the next 32-bit address. Those extra bits were being sent over the serial cable along with the sensor data, and that's what caused the corruption.
Essentially, the compiler makes a judgment call to trade data space for smaller, faster code. Otherwise, data lying across a 32-bit boundary may have to be loaded piecewise then shifted and ORed together, a slower alternative requiring more opcodes. That idea is foreign to programmers who grew up on the x86 architecture (like me) and are used to the CISC style where alignments don't matter. One way to fix the problem is to do the shifting and ORing yourself and pack the struct's fields into a string before sending them through the wire. Listing Four is a simpler solution using the __attribute__ keyword, a GNU GCC extension. With this change, sizeof(struct SensorData) returns three on both x86 and ARM. Figure 1 shows another example of how this __attribute__ keyword can eliminate structure padding differences.
Unfortunately, the fix works only for structs, and data alignment bugs can waste your afternoon in other ways. Imagine networking code that packs a char and int into a 5-byte string, ships it across the network, then unpacks it at the other end. Listing Five is a mock-up of how the unpacking might work.
On x86, this code predictably prints 05040302, but on ARM, it prints 01040302. The discrepancy is due to the location of the int pointer, which lies on an odd-numbered address (buf+1). The x86 processors have no problem accessing words from odd addresses; there is merely a performance hit for accesses not aligned on a 2-, 4-, or 8-byte boundary. ARM processors, on the other hand, truncate the pointer to the nearest word-aligned address during a load. They will then rotate the data in a way that depends on the endian configuration and the offset of the address. The results are unpredictable.
These frustrating data-alignment problems are certainly nothing new. They're so common that the comp.lang.c FAQ (http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html) has a section to address them. But it's not just beginners that step into the hole. Even experienced Linux kernel hackers sometimes produce nonportable code when they forget about structure padding. Listing Six is a struct from Version 2.4 of the Linux kernel's TCP/IP implementation. ETH_ALEN is 6, so the size of the struct is 14 on some architectures, but 16 on others. The alignment differences cause bugs in parts of the kernel that calculate offsets into network packets using sizeof(struct ethhdr). Luckily, Russell King, the maintainer of the ARM port of the Linux kernel, noticed the problem and submitted a patch that adds __attribute__ ((packed)) to the ethhdr struct, improving compatibility with ARM, SPARC, and other processors with strict alignment rules. The fix will be available in the 2.6 series of the Linux kernel.
The moral of this story is that you'll need sharp eyes to spot alignment errors when developing for ARM. If you plan on using structs for network routines or writing binary files, your code must be carefully crafted to avoid holes. Remember that the minimum structure alignment is 4 on the ARM compiler and 1 on x86. Be especially wary when porting legacy code from the x86 world, which is known to be sloppy in this area.
Floating-Point Emulation
Although ARM Ltd. offers a floating-point coprocessor, it's not compatible with StrongARM in the iPAQ. Like most embedded designs, however, power consumption, chip size, and cost take precedence over speed, so the iPAQ probably would have left the floating-point unit out anyway. Instead, a software library emulates floating-point operations with integer arithmetic and the expected performance penalty.
In Linux, the floating-point emulator for ARM is a child of NetWinder, a low-power Internet server running Linux on a StrongARM processor. The makers of this turn-key "Internet appliance" decided that the costs of licensing a third-party emulator were too steep and developed one on their own. They derived this emulator from SoftFloat (http://www.jhauser.us/arithmetic/SoftFloat.html), a freely available IEEE floating-point library by the University of California at Berkeley student John Hauser, to which they added some ARM-specific inline assembly. When the iPAQ reaches a floating-point instruction, the StrongARM processor, having no FPU, throws an "undefined instruction" exception that the NetWinder emulator traps and reroutes to the appropriate SoftFloat algorithms.
The NetWinder emulator is now included in the official Linux kernel and licensed under GPL. This means that any Linux distribution for the iPAQ has floating-point support by default. Programs can simply define floats and doubles as usual and link in the libc math library for high-level functions such as sin or cos. (In fact, the NetWinder emulator contains only arithmetic, exp, and sqrt operations and lets libc handle the rest.) You should still be aware of speed limitations if you need floating point extensively on the ARM.
Listing One
char c = -1; if (c < 0) printf("c<0\n"); else printf("c>=0\n");
Listing Two
char ch; FILE* file; file = fopen("textfile", "r"); while ((ch = getc(file)) != EOF) putchar(ch);
Listing Three
struct SensorData { unsigned char x_position; unsigned char y_position; unsigned char sensorID; }; ... write(serial_port, sensor_data1, sizeof(struct SensorData)); write(serial_port, sensor_data2, sizeof(struct SensorData));
Listing Four
struct SensorData { unsigned char x_position; unsigned char y_position; unsigned char sensorID; } __attribute__ ((packed));
Listing Five
char buf[5]; int* i = (int*)(buf+1); // Simulate data read from network buf[0]=1; buf[1]=2; buf[2]=3; buf[3]=4; buf[4]=5; printf("%08x\n", *i);
Listing Six
struct ethhdr { unsigned char h_dest[ETH_ALEN]; unsigned char h_source[ETH_ALEN]; unsigned short h_proto; };


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While reading the excellent interview Bruins Nation had with Rick Neuheisel, I came upon the final question of part one. It basically was, "Hey Rick, what do you think of the spread offense?"
Neuheisel ends up giving a fairly long and winding explanation of why he chooses a pro style offense rather than a spread scheme. I'm going to chop it up into mincemeat for a second to illustrate a point:
"The key to the spread offense, and the reason why its successful, is that it adds an extra player. It diminishes the need for great offensive linemen, because you've got a little longer because you are always in the gun…
"The problem at UCLA is that you have to beat the Trojans. And it's also the benefit at UCLA, because when you beat them, you're going to be among the nation's elite. So you have to be a physical offense...
"I was the benefactor of a type of spread offense, even though it was an option offense, it's the same math in terms of the quarterback's [being] a runner…
"There were some components of the spread offense in what we did last year. We got into the old wildcat stuff…"
The picture of the spread offense that Neuheisel paints is one that involves a running quarterback, the shotgun as the exclusive setup, an offense that isn't physical, and the wildcat formation.
Basically what he described is the Rich Rodriguez/Urban Meyer style offense (except for the part about the spread not being physical). However, that's not necessarily what a spread offense is.
I know Neuheisel is a bright guy, and I wasn't there when the interview was conducted. Maybe something about the session led him to think of the spread in those terms. However, that's an awfully narrow definition of a very broad concept.
The term "spread" dates back at least to 1952, and I'm sure it's been around longer than that. The spread isn't an offense; it's a formation and a philosophy.
For the record, this is a spread formation:
This is not:
That's all there is to it. There is no other distinction between spread and non-spread. A spread formation uses most of the horizontal space on the field and a non-spread formation does not. Nearly every offense uses some spread formations, and many spread-based offenses use some non-spread formations.
The idea behind a spread-based offense is to make the defense cover the entire field. Contrary to what Neuheisel may have made it sound like, a spread formation is an excellent choice for physical running up the middle. That's because with the defense spread out, there are fewer guys in the middle of the field to try to stop the ball carrier.
That fact is also why many spread teams prefer to have a mobile quarterback. Fewer guys near the line of scrimmage makes for fewer people hanging around to stop a runner behind center. Having a running triggerman is not a requirement though.
For instance, the first neo-spread team in the SEC was Hal Mumme's Kentucky, and we never saw Tim Couch take off and run much. That branch of spread offense is continued today by Mumme's former assistant Mike Leach at Texas Tech. You also have teams like Ohio State's 2006 team which ran a fair bit of spread with Troy Smith rarely participating in designed runs.
The shotgun isn't even a requirement as Neuheisel made it sound like. Sam Bradford operated from under center a fair bit in Oklahoma's spread last season. In addition, Paul Johnson's offense keeps the quarterback under center almost exclusively even though his base flexbone set is is a spread formation.
Finally, the wildcat is a formation and offensive package but it doesn't have to be run from a spread set or spread offense. Not all spread teams use it either.
No two teams run the exact same spread offense, as every coach has his own take on it. It also must be tailored to personnel. If you want details, there's a wealth of information on many spread topics at the blog Smart Football (start here, here, and here).
If I wasn't clear before, let me be so now: I don't think Rick Neuheisel is unaware of all this. He knows far more about offensive football than I do and he could probably explain it a lot better than I can.
It just disappointed me about the way he used "spread" to mean a lot fo specific things when it doesn't necessarily. It's like saying that having a quarterback under center in the I-formation means you're in a pro style offense, except that the heyday of the Nebraska option was largely done from the I.
In short, just remember that there is no one "spread offense." There are as many spread offenses as there are teams that run them, and every one has something that makes it unique.


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Once upon a time, there was a writer named Joe.
Joe very much wanted to make a living writing stories. But the market was very difficult to break into. It was controlled by the Gatekeeper, who was very picky, often arbitrarily so, about what he allowed to be published.
When Joe got out of college, he wrote his first novel. The Gatekeeper rejected it. So Joe wrote another one, and the Gatekeeper rejected that one too. Then Joe wrote a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and a ninth, but the Gatekeeper didn't like any of them.
Finally, after trying for over 12 years, and getting more than 500 rejections, the Gatekeeper bought Joe's tenth novel for $33,000.
Joe was very happy. Though it wasn't a lot of money, it allowed him to write full time, which had always been his dream.
But now Joe needed to make sure his dream wouldn't whither and die on the vine. He knew he had to sell a lot of books, or else the Gatekeeper could become fickle and turn his back on Joe.
So Joe worked hard to make sure he sold as many books as he could. He visited forty states in the US, and signed books in over 1200 bookstores. He created a popular blog. He spoke at hundreds of libraries, book fairs, and conferences.
But even though Joe's books sold well, they didn't sell well enough for the Gatekeeper, and Joe was dropped.
So Joe changed his name, and sold a book for $20,000. He worked very hard to make that book a success, traveling to over 200 bookstores, appearing on over 100 blogs in a single month.
The Gatekeeper seemed happy, but wanted changes in Joe's next book. Joe didn't want to make these changes. After all, he was the writer, not the Gatekeeper. But the Gatekeeper insisted, so once again Joe found himself without a publisher.
So Joe changed his name again, and sold another book... for $6000. He knew this was a small amount of money, but he also knew that he'd make it back very fast, because his other books had earned out their advances. Joe didn't understand why the Gatekeeper was being so fickle and cheap, when his books were selling well and making money. But then, there were a lot of things about the Gatekeeper that didn't make sense. And it wasn't like Joe had a choice. If he wanted to make a living, he had to take whatever crumbs the Gatekeeper offered.
In the meantime, Joe began selling some of his early, rejected books as ebooks on his website. When fans told Joe they couldn't read these on their new Kindle devices because the format was incompatible, Joe went to Amazon and uploaded the ebooks there.
Soon, Joe was making over $1000 a month on Kindle.
Joe was shocked by this. He thought the only way to make a living as a writer was with the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper offered advances. The Gatekeeper did the editing and the cover art. And most importantly, the Gatekeeper controlled distribution. There was no way to reach readers without the Gatekeeper.
But ebooks didn't need to be distributed in the same way print books were. So the Gatekeeper wasn't needed.
Because the Gatekeeper wasn't needed, writers could make a much better royalty rate.
The Gatekeeper gave Joe standard royalty rates. 8% on paperbacks. 10% - 15% on hardcovers. 17.5% on ebooks.
But on his own, self-publishing, Joe could earn 70% royalty rates. Instead of earning $2.50 on a Gatekeeper published $25 hardcover, Joe could earn $4.50 on a $14 trade paperback if he did it himself. Instead of earning $1.75 on a Gatekeeper published $9.99 ebook, Joe could earn $2.04 on a self-pubbed $2.99 ebook.
As the year went on, Joe's ebooks, and ebooks all over, began to sell in greater and greater numbers. Joe went from making $1000 a month, to $3000, then $6000, then $16,000.
Joe realized he could make more money without the Gatekeeper. He could write the books he wanted to, and he could publish them when they were finished, rather than having to wait a year for the Gatekeeper to publish them.
He didn't have to rely on the Gatekeeper getting him reviews, or buying coop space in bookstores, or sending him on tour, or offering discounts. He didn't have to compete for shelf space with the bestselling authors the Gatekeeper pushed.
For the first time ever, Joe had control.
And a funny thing happened. Once Joe didn't have the Gatekeeper determining his future, he became more successful than he ever dreamed.
Joe began to blog about what he was doing. He posted his sales figures. He encouraged other authors to self-publish. He got more publicity than he ever had in the past, all on his own.
Joe was very happy. He no longer had to worry about appeasing the Gatekeeper in order to get another contract. He no longer got paid only twice a year. He no longer had to cut things out of his books he didn't want to cut, or change his titles, or have zero say in cover art.
Joe was selling more books, making more money, and reaching more people than he ever had in the past, and he didn't have to go on any crazy two-month-long book tours, or mail out 7000 letters to libraries.
Best of all, Joe never worried about getting rejected ever again. Joe realized he was the brand, not the Gatekeeper. His fans would follow him, and retailers like Amazon and Smashwords and Barnes and Noble and Apple and Sony and Kobo and Borders and Android would allow Joe to find even more fans.
But the story doesn't end there. The Gatekeeper is still controlling the industry. Still looking for new writers, offering them 17.5% ebook royalties while he takes 52.5%. Still treating authors badly, while claiming they should be grateful. Still playing by the old rules, even though there are now new ones. Still trying to stay relevant in a changing industry and a dying business model.
But Joe knows that writers will eventually wise up. Why should authors live from advance to advance, hoping to get another contract? Why put up with heartache, depression, and abuse, when authors can, for the very first time, take control of their own career?
To put it another way, why sell your cow to a dairy for one lump sum, when you could make money forever if you just keep the cow and sell the milk yourself?
Joe began to preach this to writers. He preached long and loud. He wanted to spare his peers the angst and worry and pain and depression he went through while dealing with the Gatekeeper.
And writers began to listen.
Now Joe has a problem.
He doesn't have enough time in the day to answer all of the email he gets from authors, who want to thank him because they too have decided to self-publish. It seems like Joe wasn't the only one fed up with the Gatekeeper, and thousands of others have followed Joe's journey and embarked on similar journeys of their own.
Joe is humbled by all of the attention he's gotten, and all of the praise and thanks he's received. He's thrilled that so many authors are making money. And he's very excited about the future. Not just for himself, but for writers everywhere.
Once upon a time, there was a writer named Joe. He wanted to make a living writing stories.
Now he does.
Joe has made $22,000 in December, all without the Gatekeeper.
And he's just getting started...
Monday, December 27, 2010
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As reported on caboodle.hu, the current mayor of Óbuda had this to say:
Traffic in the capital should be viewed as an integrated system, within which cyclists must be treated as equal partners, Tarlós said, adding that "the right proportion should be established between cars and bicycles."Not to be cynical, but Mayor Demszky has also, over the course of his 20-year sway as city mayor, waxed lyrically about the virtues of cycling and the need to do more for our cause. The difficulty has always been in execution, particularly in cases where motorists had to be confronted. I doubt that any longtime followers of cycling politics were seduced by Tarlós's words. We'll have to see how they're embodied in action.
My skepticism is partly a superficial impression. Tarlós ran against Demszky four years ago, and in his campaign posters, he was always this hulking, unsmiling figure in a dark suit. He was the picture of either a mafia don or a rather unsympathetic director of a funeral parlour. In one poster, he was surrounded by several archetypal urbanites, including a fit, young woman on a bicycle. Even in this poster, Tarlós was unsmiling in his big, dark suit -- it was unimaginable that he could have any personal connection with anyone else in the photo. The visual dissonance was so stark, it created the impression that the picture was Photoshopped even though it (probably) wasn't.
For the current campaign, Tarlós has lost the suit and his bottle-blonde hair has been tousled -- probably by his hair dresser. However, the last bit of sloganeering I heard from him was characteristically right wing: something to do with "security and economic development" for Budapest. Let's hope the bicycling talk was more than just a compulsory campaign drill to appease some of his centrist detractors.


text: I just moved my ISPConfig3 (v. 184.108.40.206) install to a new virtual server running PHP Version 5.3.8 and now I'm not getting any site traffic showing up. I can see the web quotas for each site just not the traffic. You can see that last year there was traffic monitoring but after we moved my install and upgraded to 18.104.22.168 it's no longer logging traffic.


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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
New Adventures of Old John Fox
Fox has pulled the trigger on a QB change only two games into the season, benching Matt Moore in favor of 23-year-old rookie Jimmy Clausen. He also went for it on fourth down four times in Carolina's last game (there have been seasons in Charlotte where Fox has only gone for it on fourth down eight times the entire year).
It's an interesting phenomenon, one predicated, I think, by Fox knowing he's a short-timer here in his ninth season and wanting to leave no stone unturned as he tries to avoid, say, the 4-12 season that Moore looked like he was arrowing toward.
What's weird is how different of a guy Moore has seemed on the field this season. He's so indecisive, so inaccurate.... remember, he was 6-2 as a starter going into this season. But now he's lost his confidence, which is why I applaud what Fox is doing with Clausen (see the next blog post for more on that) as he tries to save the Panthers' season.
14 comments:
The only reason Fox pulled the plug on Matt is because he wasnt emotionally attached to him like he was to Jake. If Delhomme was still here he would have stuck with him for the whole season unless he was injured. Rumor has it that Fox is still very heartbroken that Jerry cut his boy toy and let him go to Cleveland
- September 21, 2010 at 10:35 AM
LOL @ rumor has it. Idiots like you are the rumor sources. 1 minute you say stuff like Fox only replaced Delhomme because if an injury. The next minute you say the injury was faked. You tards crack me up.
- September 21, 2010 at 10:40 AM
Fox...I mean Mr. Anonymous, Ill admit I wondered too if the injury was faked at the beginning. But seeing just how fragile Jake has become over the past 4 seasons I beleive it was legit. Plus I caught you kissing his finger at practice every day hoping and praying it would feel better.
- September 21, 2010 at 11:26 AM
OK Scott tell us..
Has the o-line protected him? has the runnung game worked so far? are the receivers getting open and CATCHING the ball? and who are the receivers comapared to last year?
One of you gets started with something and you all piggy back. Would you have the same cofidence and who is to say he lacks it with all the others issues? He looked frustrated after Gettis quit on the long reception and Rasario drop and even Smith dropped one. What is he supposed to do throw it run and catch it. Run block for himself oh! and pass block for himself. A totally diff. offense and defense at the start of the 4th whan clausen came in.
How bout let Moore throw it on 1st down one time to losen up the defense?
- September 21, 2010 at 12:26 PM
- Michael said...
It's pretty easy to look inaccurate and indecisive when teams are gameplanning against you because the games actually matter, rather than throwing their third-stringers (literally, that's what happened in each of the '07 Bucs, Seahawks, and '09 Saints games) out there and telling them to do their best. Moore is NOT an NFL quarterback, and he never will be
- September 21, 2010 at 12:28 PM
talking about matts confidence above
- September 21, 2010 at 12:29 PM
- Michael said...
12:26, that totally different offense wasn't a coincidence. The coaches knew they didn't have a scared little girl under center any more. They had a decisive, talented player who will lead this team for the next decade.
- September 21, 2010 at 12:29 PM
yeah so was The bucs in prevent or not smart guy?
- September 21, 2010 at 12:31 PM
whatever man we see where your heads at.
- September 21, 2010 at 12:32 PM
- mrbernz said...
Michael you arent looking very intelligent with that last comment. Also i believe i read somewhere that the Seahawks started their first string when Moore played them back in 07, i could be wrong about that though.
- September 21, 2010 at 1:21 PM
.."I think, by Fox knowing he's a short-timer here in his ninth season and wanting to leave no stone unturned.."
great...NOW he decides to get agressive and take chances. He drives me freakin crazy, and can't get gone soon enough.
- September 21, 2010 at 2:25 PM
Fox has shown a change in his behavior as of late but his play calling is consistent - run on first and second down and pass on third and long. Will this ever change with new QB? Everyone in the stadium and at home watching can tell when panthers are running the ball. I bet on the first down opponent can play without CBs and panthers will still run the ball.
- September 21, 2010 at 3:40 PM
Offensive coordinator Jeff Davidson is the culprit, Fox's mistake will be keeping that bum around.
- September 21, 2010 at 8:43 PM
was anyone here watching when Henning was here? Same football it is not the "OC"!
- September 22, 2010 at 12:48 PM


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A federal board has told the operator of a shuttered nuclear power plant in California that it wants dozens of pages of documents withheld when the company submitted a plan to restart one of its twin reactors.
The records at issue were prepared by industry experts who helped Southern California Edison investigate why the San Onofre plant's nearly new steam generators damaged hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.
The records would not become public.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board says Friday it needs the documents for a case related to Edison's restart proposal. The board told Edison to prepare an agreement to allow the records to be submitted only in that case.
Edison says on its website the information was omitted to shield "proprietary information."


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Your morning roundup for Feb. 10, the day we regretted the harm our actions have caused our family, our staff, and our constituents.
• Villanova loses to Rutgers 77-76 on a desperation four-pointer with 0.8 seconds left. [Star-Ledger] (Video here)
• Duke basketball won a game against the University of North Carolina last night. [Sporting News]
• Tate Forcier is taking his talents to Coral Gables. Said his father, "Some of the criticism he got in the past are from people who misunderstand him as 'cocky.' Really all he has is a lot swagger. I know the players at Miami are all about that." [Miami Herald]
• Bengals QB Carson Palmer is about to put his home up for sale, says a real-estate agent who added, "He's not coming back." Condolences to the Palmer family. [WCPO]
• The Cleveland Cavaliers lost their 26th straight last night. It was a performance deemed "sloppy from start to finish." [Plain Dealer]
• Before they lost their 26th consecutive game, the Cavs went ahead and sent NBA officials video of Dirk Nowitzki purportedly punching point guard Ramon Sessions the other night. [Waiting For Next Year]
• John Daly has a new golf bag. It has a flat-screen TV on it. Of course it does. [John Daly's photos/Plixi]
• The combined revenues of Europe's top 20 soccer clubs topped $5.5 billion for the first time. Top six moneymaking clubs: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Arsenal and Chelsea. [AP]
• FC Zurich fans "turned their section behind the goal blue and white with a giant Gene Simmons head complete with a blood-red tongue that they pulled out of the mouth hole with a stick." [YahooSports] (The Simmons homage is over in the video's first few seconds.)
• Lionel Messi's Argentina 2, Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal 1. [ESPN]
• Who can you trust if you can't trust members of the University of Florida swimming team not to shoplift jackets from Nordstrom's? Nobody. That's who. [Orlando Sentinel]
• And, some sad news: Taylor Corley has "mutually parted ways" with the Mississippi State cheerleading squad. She made this stunning announcement in her first interview since word leaked that she'd posed in Playboy under the banner of "Taylor Stone." [Memphis Sport]


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Barbara Mousigian, vice president of product, Cars.com
Cars.com has appointed Barbara Mousigian vice president of product. She will oversee the development and launch of new products while also guiding enhancements to Cars.com¿s existing properties. Mousigian earned her bachelor¿s degree in economics from Princeton University and her strategy and marketing-concentrated MBA from University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
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Also, Gunner is one of the children.
* Plank of Wood slapsGET A HOLD OF YOURSELF MAN. THE REVIEWS DO NOT EFFECT ANYTHING EVER.
What have you got against intellectual midgets? They're quite smart little guys as far as i can tell.
Stop rolling like pigs amongst the faeces and get out of the way of my sunlight, you stupid f***ers.
Jawless women and their fine, fine feet
"Down here, we All float!"From IT.
The best person ever. She should have won the Peace Prize.
What? No full control over children? You do realize that some of us have particular plans for those children.
Yeah, [Kishmond] came back from Africa, but the ponies have him now.
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A room is defined as a space in a housing unit or other living quarters enclosed by walls reaching from the floor to the ceiling or roof covering, or to a height of at least two metres, of an area large enough to hold a bed for an adult, that is, at least four square metres.
A bedroom is defined as a room equipped with a bed and used for night rest. (Please refer to the United Nations Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 2 (2008) paras. 2.472 and 2.475.)