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Julie, you bring up a great point about values ("deeper, wider, more serious problems"), and one I've been thinking of writing about. But why not just do it here? lol.
I remember after the last presidential election, there was talk about how people made their choices based on "values" and there was scattered applause for the fact that "values" still mattered in this country. The subtext was that people were voting against legalizing gay marriage, since Rove had pushed that agenda so hard in the last days of the campaign. That really pissed me off, because I, too, voted based on values--the value of a sustainable environment, the value of not bombing the shit out of innocent people, the value of finding ways to help the desperate instead of blaming them for their desperation. The idea that these don't count as "values" to be lauded is ridiculous! How can we really be so simple as to believe that values applies only to sexual morality? It's one of the tenets of the far Christian right, this focus on sexuality to the exclusion of all else, and I know this, having grown up in that culture where losing your virginity was the WORST thing you could do.
It's maddening, really, and I've had more than enough with the prurient interest we take in something so monumentally unimportant.
I said:
Gwen, by all means...do it here. :)
I agree. Values are relative.
And let's not confuse values, morals and ethics, especially the subjective.
Oooh babe, I think you just suggested next week's hump day topic.
Let's talk about this fast and loose use of the word "values" that has somehow become the catchphrase conservative political candidates bandy about.
They don't mean any sort of value, a la sociology or ethics:
Sociology. the ideals, customs, institutions, etc., of a society toward which the people of the group have an affective regard. These values may be positive, as cleanliness, freedom, or education, or negative, as cruelty, crime, or blasphemy.
Ethics. any object or quality desirable as a means or as an end in itself.
When politicians and most people these days use the word "values" they mean a specific set of conservative values.
So let's discuss that...what is a value? What is valuable? What are ethics, morals and values?
Do we have in our society a cohesive concept of ideals and customs towards things such as in the dictionary definition?
Do people suffer internal about what is expected versus personal values? Do we feel too apologetic about our values if they don't align with the vocal majority/minority values?
Or...simply discuss values in general, whatever angle you like.
Looking forward to it as always!
Copyright 2007 Julie Pippert
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How come? Because of "options." Options are a MLB administrative rule that limits how long a team can keep a player on their 40-man roster but keep them in the minors. Basically, they have three years before they need to commit to bringing that player to the majors. For a little more on it, check out this entry, where I compared it to the amount of time before you move from dating to married.
If a player doesn't have "options" left, they cannot be sent to the minors without being offered to every other major league team. So a team risks losing that player, and that isn't a risk the Twins are usually anxious to take. Thus, a player without options almost always has the inside track to make it to Opening Day. And when you look over the 25 spots the Twins have available, player without options look like they're going to gobble up most of the open spots. Let's run through them.
The Twins entered spring training with their lineup and rotation pretty set, which (barring any injuries) takes care of 14 of the 25 spots on the roster
C - Joe Mauer
1B - Justin Morneau
2B - Alexi Casilla
SS - Jamey Carroll
3B - Danny Valencia
DH - Ryan Doumit
RF - Josh Willingham
CF - Denard Span
LF - Ben Revere
Rotation - Carl Pavano, Scott Baker, Francisco Liriano, Nick Blackburn & Jason Marquis
That leaves 11 spots, which probably includes four guys off the bench and seven guys in the bullpen. Here are heavy favorites for each of them:
- Drew Butera is likely the backup catcher unless the Twins are really enamored with newly acquired JR Towles.
- Trevor Plouffe and Luke Hughes are both out of options, so they're almost locks to be on the bench.
- The fourth spot might be the only open spot, but the obvious option is Tsuyoshi Nishioka, who the Twins will be paying $3M whether he plays in the majors or minors.
- Anthony Swarzak is out of options, is right-handed and did a nice job in the swingman role last year. It seems obvious that he would make it.
- Jeff Gray is a right-handed reliever who has pitched for several team the last couple of years. The Twins picked him up this offseason off of waivers because he was out of options. The Twins want at least one more right-hander in the bullpen, so he looks like a front-runner.
- Finally, Matt Maloney is a left-hander that the Twins also picked up this offseason because he was also out of options. He has mostly worked as a starter, but so did Perkins before the Twins moved him to the bullpen. And a third left-handed reliever might make sense given that Perkins won't be used situationally.

subset: commoncrawl


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Photo: AP
An obscure pair of non-profits has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars of anonymous cash into the most influential advocacy groups, think tanks, academic centres and organisers in the conservative movement. Described by Mother Jones' Andy Kroll as "the dark money ATM of the right," Donors Trust and sister group Donors Capital Fund have fuelled the conservative movement by serving as middlemen between conservative donors with a desire for secrecy and groups in need of operating revenue.
"Over the past decade," Kroll writes, "it has funded the right's assault on labour unions, climate scientists, public schools, economic regulations, and the very premise of activist government."
The impact has been stunning. Between 1999 and the present day, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund have distributed more than $400 million to over 1,000 conservative and libertarian groups.
According to Kroll's investigation, Donors Trust is fuelled by 200 anonymous funders. While the structure of the group is such that nobody besides the donors and the Trust will ever know their donor identity, Kroll managed to identify several donors — Charles Koch gave $2 million in 2010, the DeVos family charity kicked in $2.5 million from 2009 to 2010, and the Bradley family gave $650,000 from 2001 to 2010.
The Board of Directors of the trust decide where the money is spent, and is comprised of the president of the American Enterprise Institute, the vice president of the Heritage Foundation, the president of the Institute for Justice and the director of the Acton Institute, each a conservative or libertarian heavyweight.
Thanks to Kroll, we now have access to Donors Trust's Fiscal Year 2011 tax forms. That year, the group funneled $39.3 million from the anonymous donors to dozens of conservative organisations.
The level of institutional support for someof the organisations is astounding. In 2011, several groups received donations which comprise large portions of their operating revenue.
For instance, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow — a group that lobbies against climate science — recieved an approximate total of $3 million in grants in 2011, according to their tax form. Nearly $1.2 million of that — 40 per cent — came from Donors Trust.
The NFIB Small Business Legal centre — a legal adversary of the Affordable Care Act and government regulation — recieved a total $3.1 million in grants in 2011, of which just over $2 million was provided through Donors Trust.
The conservative Public Notice Research and Education Fund took in $1,821,000 in grants in 2011, $1,244,000 of which — almost 70 per cent — came from Donors Trust.
While Donors Trust is a sophisticated middle man, the related group that oversees asset management investment is the nonprofit Donors Capital Fund. This group finished 2010 with $32.4 million in assets after dispensing $41.1 million in grants.
Donors Capital Fund also made several multi-million dollar contributions to firms in their most recent reported fiscal year, 2010.
Here are some of the largest conservative beneficiaries of Donors Capital Funds in 2010:
- $2.5 million for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, a think tank
- $2 million for Citizens Against Government Waste
- $2 million for DonorsTrust
- $1.7 million for the Heartland Institute, a think tank.
- $1.75 million for the State Policy Network, a network of think tanks.
Donors Capital Fund gave money to more than 206 other groups in 2010.
The untraceable money also funds conservative academics that can't get funding from the traditional grant process.
The groups both send money to many colleges — Harvard University, Notre Dame, University of Virginia and many others — with the intent to fund different research projects and post doctoral studies that often coincide with the conservative aims of DonorsTrust.
In 2010, DonorsTrust sent $520,000 to the George Mason University Foundation Law and Economics centre, and the Mercatus centre at George Mason University recieved another $921,000. Donors Capital Fund sent an additional $500,000 to the GMU Foundations and a further $243,500 to Mercatus.
According to the New Yorker, The Mercatus centre was first founded and funded by the billionaire conservative Koch Brothers, and the small think tank advocates environmental deregulation. The Wall Street Journal called it "the most important think tank you've never heard of."
All told, anonymous donors gave $1.2 million to the conservative Mercatus centre directly and $1 million to George Mason University Foundation through DonorsTrust.
Donors Trust also provided the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which promotes creationism, with $750,000 in grants in 2011.
To comprehend the scale of the Donors Trust operations, contrast the groups output with super PACs in the 2012 election cycle. In 2010 alone the groups funneled $63.3 million in anonymous dark money to conservative and other groups.
Even compared to SuperPAC spending in the 2012 election, that's huge. The Donors Trust funds gave more money than Club For Growth Action, FreedomWorks, Young Gun Action Fund, Endorse Liberty and Winning Our Future spent in 2012 combined.
Donors Trust is crucial for funding opponents of climate science. Kroll points to this study by Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist:
In 2003, Donors Trust money was the source of 3 per cent of the funding for more than 100 conservative groups whose financial records Brulle has studied. By 2010, that percentage had grown to 24 per cent. Brulle surmises that financial underwriters of the climate counter-movement and the conservative agenda writ large give through Donors Trust to wipe their fingerprints off donations to Heartland [Institute] and others.
While super PACs inspired outrage during the 2012 election, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund have been operating in the open for a decade.
"DonorsTrust makes grants only to other publicly supported 501(c)(3) organisations," Whitney Ball, the President and CEO of DonorsTrust said via email, "and as a condition of accepting any grant the grant recipient must agree that grant funds will not be used for lobbying or other political purposes."
The trouble is a vast amount of the recipients of DonorsTrust dark money are, by their very nature, political. And unlike the donors behind super PACs, the identities of the 200 donors will not be known under the current disclosure system.
Check out Mother Jones' full investigation here >
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A cube with a view
It's funny how you can get used to the most extraordinary things, taking the amazing for granted until someone threatens to take them away.
Twenty-ton airplanes fly, and we don't blink an eye. Lettuce seeds buried in the ground, angled every which way, somehow, amazingly, detect gravity to send their shoots straight up to the sky every time, and then we complain they're not big enough to eat yet. Mothers love us no matter what, and you know how we treat them.
And then there's Cubespace.
Cubespace is a shared workspace so perfectly functional and Portlandesque I've rarely thought about how extraordinary it is. The idea is "coworking": an efficient yet social workspace arrangement for serious freelancers, a step up from working at the cafe.
I suppose someone could set up a collection of desks and phones and printers anywhere and call it coworking, but Cubespace's proprietors Eva and David have truly generated a positive and comfortable atmosphere. They know what a freelancer needs: reasonably priced office space, a tireless, fully automatic espresso machine (complimentary for paying customers), a quiet room for when you need to focus, and, for when you need a sugar rush, free Capn Crunch. No wonder I feel at home there.
Now Cubespace is threatened with eviction. I won't bang the drum too loudly here, because David and Eva are negotiating with their landlord currently, and David has summarized the plot succintly here. But I am encouraged that the news led to a flash flood of direct support, including a fundraising site that's collected about $5000 in just a few days. I won't take Cubespace for granted any longer — nor the twenty-ton airplanes, nor the gravity-detecting lettuce shoots, nor the long-suffering moms. Well, maybe just one mom…
Update: June 2009. Cubespace is closing, but it's hard to say that it failed. Have a good summer, guys.


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Portrait of Jason
Shelly Clarke
On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costumes and reminisced about good times and bad behavior as a gay hustler, sometime houseboy and aspiring cabaret performer. The result is a mesmerizing portrait of a remarkable, charming and tortured man, who is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking.
Ingmar Bergman called it "the most extraordinary film I've seen in my life." When it first screened in a sneak preview, the audience included Tennessee Williams, Robert Frank, Thomas Hoving, Amos Vogel, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page and Terry Southern. But for decades, Shirley Clarke's powerful and transgressive PORTRAIT OF JASON was unavailable and its original elements were thought to be lost.
PORTRAIT OF JASON is a film that plays with complexities. While it was shot in a cinema vérité style, the film's subject is a man who readily admits to deceiving everyone — and may be lying to the camera. Was Clarke giving Holliday a stage on which to perform in what he calls his "moment," or just using him? She worried about that herself. As Holliday notes about the ironies of life as a houseboy, "it gets to be joke sometime as to who's using who." Later, Clarke would say "The result, I'm convinced is a portrait of a guy who is both a genius and a bore. Although Jason says he really hasn't had any fun as a 'hustler' conning people, he appears to have had the last laugh." Any way you look at the film, it remains of the most fascinating documentaries in cinema.
Now, almost fifty years after it was filmed, PORTRAIT OF JASON is also a potent reminder of what the world was like for black gay men in the heat of the Civil Rights movement and before the Stonewall Uprising.Holliday talks about serving time at New York's Riker's Island jail after propositioning (or being propositioned by) an undercover cop. And his observations on the casual racism he experienced are funny, stinging, and painful.
People fell in love with Jason Holliday in 1967. In 1995, Marlon Riggs asked the question in his brilliant Black Is…Black Ain't, "How long, Jason, how long have they sung about the freedom and the righteousness and the beauty of the black man and ignored you. How long?"


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Some new members aren't following the advice on posting links - please read it!
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Both the main LostCousins site and this forum have been upgraded to that you can log-in securely. If you are not automatically taken to the secure site simply add https:// at the beginning of the URL.
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Schott is an accomplished tennis player and will represent the school in the NYC Mayor's Cup 2013 this month. She also plans to attend Mount Holyoke in the fall, where she will play on the tennis team as well.
As one of the more ethnically diverse private schools in the country, Dinkins told Kew-Forest graduates to, "speak out against any wrongs" they witness and to "help others less fortunate."
Mr. Fish quoted Francis of Assisi, encouraging the new graduates to, "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."


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How much does it cost for surround sound installation?
If you're installing your dream home theater, you want the perfect sound system to round it out. The cost for surround sound installation will vary based on the speaker system you select, the amount of wiring and prep required for the job, and labor rates in your region. Home theater installation specialists can advise on the best surround sound speakers for your space and the technology you are using. Here are some examples of average home theater installation costs and the cost of surround sound speakers:
- TV wall mount and up to 5 wall-mounted speakers with hidden wires: $399.
- 60-inch TV and small home system: $2,080.
- Equipment cost: $1,680.
- Five box speakers and subwoofer: $500.
- Three HDMI wires: $30.
- Surround amp: $250.
- 60-inch TV and bracket: $900.
- Labor cost: $400 Including setup, wiring and TV mounting.
- Projector and screen system plus audio wiring throughout home: $12,900.
- Equipment cost: $9,900.
- Approximate wire costs: $2,700.
- Projector and bracket: $1,500.
- 110-inch screen: $600.
- Surround amp: $500.
- 5-inch ceiling speakers and sub: $1,400.
- Remote control system: $400.
- Eight zones of speakers and volume controls: $2,800 ($350 each)
- Labor cost: $3,000. Includes prewiring for 5-inch ceiling speakers, one subwoofer, one 20-inch to 50-inch HDMI, Cat. 6 control wire to projector, 1.5-inch tube for future wire changes, and wiring for two to eight additional audio zones throughout the home. All equipment (audio boxes, amps, cable box, etc.) is concealed. The audio zones are controllable by iOS devices from anywhere in the home.


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Review by: John H Glen
Date; 28 May 2012
Format: Paperback
My rating: 4 stars
Authors/Publishers Book Description/Synopsis
The Hostage Police officer Helen Weeks walks into her local newsagent's on her way to work. Little does she know that this simple daily ritual will change her life forever? It's the last place she expects to be met with violence, but as she waits innocently at the till, she comes face to face with a gunman. The Demand The crazed hostage-taker is desperate to know what really happened to his beloved son, who died a year before in youth custody. By holding a police officer at gunpoint, he will force the one man who knows more about the case than any other to re-investigate his son's death. That man is DI Tom Thorne. The Twist While Helen fights to stay alive and the body-count rises, Thorne must race against time if he is to bring a killer to justice and save a young mother's life.
What Do I Think?
Once more Mark Billingham is to be commended for the absolute readability of this finely woven story for me he has steered clear of falsely pushing Thorne into an atypical behaviour, and has faith in the readers that we will understand the dialect and speech used which is as usual delivered powerfully
This is a masterful story a real page turner and yes I found myself unable to put it down until I had finished, I just can't wait for the next outing from the masterful story-weaver.
At the start though, "Good As Dead" look as if like it's planning a somewhat standard state of affairs, when the Indian owner of a corner shop, apparently sick and tired with the day after day aggravation and aggression from a gang of youths.
I found the story captivating the description of all the characters is simply outstanding and Mark makes sure that Tom Thorne is not a hero, but a man attempting to do a demanding job.
" Good as Dead" has a couple of things that facilitates its ascent to being one of the best woven crime thrillers I have read.
This is the 10th Tom Thorne book and the progression shows no slowing down or tiredness the growth of the Tom Thorne character over the last few books is great and to keep to this intensity of superbly woven stories is a demonstration of the gift that this master story weaver mark Billingham has.
To finish I cannot recommend Mark Billingham's books enough and I await the next instalment with great excitement.
Related articles
- Editor's Choice: Sleepyhead author Mark Billingham keen to raise laughs if he can't be rock star (dailyrecord.co.uk)
- Encore to air 'Thorne' TV movies (upi.com)
- Thriller Author Peter James Receives ITV3 People's Bestseller Dagger Award (prweb.com)
- HUGE NEWS: J.K. Rowling's new novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy (Pre-order now) (booktopia.com.au)
- World Book Night 2012 titles unveiled – and how to apply to be a book giver (kimbofo.typepad.com)


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October 15, 2013, Burnaby, B.C. (ISN) – The Simon Fraser University Men's Hockey team is pleased to announce that the 2014 Great Northwest Showcase will take place on January 3rd and 4th, 2014.
The GNS will feature the University of North Dakota (NCAA Division I), the Princeton University Tigers (NCAA Division I), Simon Fraser University Men's Hockey (BCIHL), and the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds (CIS). This year's event is sponsored by Tourism Burnaby as well as the Hilton Vancouver Metrotown Hotel.
The Great Northwest Showcase began in 2012 as a four game exhibition showcasing top level international University Men's Hockey while promoting the importance of education during an athlete's career. This year's event will continue in the tradition of the GNS while building on the success of the inaugural event. The GNS not only provides a valuable competitive experience for the student-athletes involved, but also world-class entertainment and competition for sports fans of all ages who attend.
The four games of this year's GNS are: SFU vs Princeton, UBC vs UND, UBC vs Princeton, and SFU vs UND. The games are scheduled to take place at the Bill Copeland Sports Centre in Burnaby, BC, home of the SFU Men's Hockey team.
"We appreciate the invitation and are proud to be a part of this tournament," says UND Head Coach Dave Hakstol. "It is a great opportunity to spread the footprint of NCAA Division I hockey and, at the same time, allows many of our players from Western Canada to return home for two exhibition games."
"The UBC Hockey team is excited to attend this year's Great Northwest Showcase, it will be a great opportunity for the fans to see different levels of college hockey and two top NCAA programs." says UBC Head Coach Milan Dragicevic. "Our players will be thrilled to play against top NCAA competition and raise the level of awareness of CIS hockey in the Lower Mainland."
Tickets are now on sale at www.greatnorthwestshowcase.com


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Unfolding a camping chair on my back patio I soaked my feet in a blowup kiddie pool. It was time to weigh and measure my life like a feudal lord. To be specific, like a feudal lord from the grand strategy PC game Crusader Kings II. Its gaming metrics coursed through my brain, the numbers tinkling in my head like the two or three ice cubes in my glass of tap water. My video-game-converted-to-real-life ratings appeared low.
WEALTH: does an unemployment check count? PRESTIGE: 90 percent of my Klout score is from Facebook family members. PIETY: sure, I hit up Foursquare when I'm checking in at the church parking lot. REALM SIZE: I don't know, is 0.14 acres a vast tract of land?
It's safe to say that my contribution to the House of Kalista dynasty is minimal. Trifling, even. But Crusader Kings II is described as a "character-driven" strategy game, as opposed to the more tactically-oriented Total War series, or the more 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) machinations of Sid Meier's Civilization series. Besides, I said to myself, being "character-driven" is a noble aspiration for someone that isn't wealthy, prestigious, pious, or a real estate mogul. Perhaps -- and at this point I was only talking to my glass of water and the passive-aggressive audience my less-than-a-quarter acre of crab grass provided -- I could enact a grand stratagem of social and political maneuvering to beef up my real-life score.
First, I took stock of the heir to my kingdom, my two-and-a-half year old daughter. Extracting stats and abilities directly from Crusader Kings II, I figured out what kind of progeny I had on my hands, and if she's indeed worthy of inheriting all this unmowed grass and fluoridated drinking water.
It seemed premature to project what kind of adult my toddler will become. I realized that on a certain level. Everything her mom and I had done up to this point, however, still counted for something. If I'd made it my habit to emotionally distress and thoroughly ignore my child, she wouldn't remember all of that come adulthood, but she'd probably grow up with abandonment issues of some sort. She just wouldn't know why. I'm no child psychologist, but that much made sense.
I'm not saying my toddler's personality is cemented, but a study initiated in the '70s and funded by health research councils in New Zealand found that evidence of character is formed by the age of three. So here I was, six months away from finding out if my parenting was okay enough to (maybe) add a contributing member to society, or if my kid had already assimilated my reclusive and underachieving nature.
But already my toddler is a better-adjusted and more well-rounded individual than I grew up to be. Some of these Crusader Kings II traits are polarized, but I'm just grading my daughter on a thumbs-up/thumbs-down scale for the purposes of this exercise.
ENERGETIC: My two-and-a-half year old only sits still in a car seat. She has boundless vigor. There's more ballet dancing than I could've ever imagined. She has a reasonable work ethic when it comes to picking up her toys and putting away her books. Sure, "Listen to Dad -- hey, listen" is one of the most commonly uttered phrases I use when it's obvious she hasn't gotten enough sleep and she's cranky and she's not going to reshelf Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory on her own. But you know what? If I want to take a nap I don't suddenly start putting dishes away in the cupboards either.
FORGIVING: She takes insult without injury. I've seen her on the playground many times, with kids playing and shoving and playfully shoving their way around the slides and monkey bars. My kid gets quiet and observant during these times. If she's pushed, she doesn't reciprocate in kind. This would be an undesirable trait were we indeed living in medieval times, but I think this amount of prudence is acceptable on a playground when you're not fighting for your life.
HONEST: My kid is truthful and impartial to deception. She's been sat in the corner for talking back, stomping her feet, and ignoring her mom and dad on occasion. But later -- haha, when she's figured out we can all talk and laugh about it later -- she doesn't fabricate any details about why she was punished. She doesn't invent excuses or pass the buck. She even admits that being put in the corner made her sad and that she's sorry she disobeyed.
PROUD: My daughter enjoys praise and compliments. And this is where I'm concerned. She's such a capable little human being that it's difficult, as a parent, not to congratulate her incessantly for things she does. Her mom and I, to combat the tingle of pride that may be bubbling up, have changed our wording from, "Good job!" to, "You did it!" in order to stop handing out verbal trophies to every little two-bit accomplishment. Saying, "You did it," is an objective statement of fact: she completed a task. As opposed to, "Good job!" which, I was beginning to fear, might devalue such high praise through saturation. If everything she does is a good job, what happens when you do something more impressive than pottying in a toilet?
Despite the fact that, according to Crusader Kings II, my kid is more "proud" than "modest," I can still see that she's superior to me in every way. She is energetic, whereas I will be sitting at a computer desk for most daylight hours, and enjoying such a sedentary lifestyle. We may be both forgiving, however, since I'm physically incapable of holding a grudge, even when it would prove useful to do so. Her honesty supersedes mine because she really sells it with dramatic retellings of harrowing (for a two year old) events that transpired a week or even an hour ago. And proud? When it comes to receiving compliments, she's cool like the other side of the pillow. Me? I like them, but hate receiving them, and so my world burns divisively.
And so this is what my parenting hath wrought. Hopefully she's more concerned with being character-driven than concerned with wealth, prestige, piety, and realm size. Because not only will she not have any kind of dowry to speak of, she'll not have massive landholdings to swagger over. Still, my dynasty has been weighed and measured, and has been found wanting for nothing.
Randy gravitates toward anything open world, open ended, or open to interpretation. He prefers strategy over shooting, introspection over action, and stealth and survival over looting and grinding. He's been a gamer since 1982 and writing critically about video games for over 15 years. A few of his favorites are Skyrim, Elite Dangerous, and Red Dead Redemption. He lives with his wife and daughter in Oregon.View Profile


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BOSTON, Mass.—Six different Beacons scored and UMass Boston's (9-2-1) penalty-kill shut down Johnson & Wales (6-8) all afternoon long as the Beacons cruised to a 6-3 win and earned the title of Codfish Bowl champions for the first time since 2007.
After losing in the championship game each of the past three years, UMass Boston swept through the field of the 48th Annual Codfish Bowl Championship presented by MorganStanley Smith Barney, outscoring their opposition 11-5 over the course of the two day tournament.
With the victory, UMass Boston earned its fourth Codfish Bowl title in 31 years, moving into third place amongst teams that have competed in the field. Johnson & Wales dropped to 3-3 all-time in Codfish Bowl games.
Tournament MVP Mike DeGrazia (Novi, Mich.) led the Beacons high-powered attack with a goal and two assists, while fellow seniors Tim Richter (Naugatuck, Conn.) and Rob Florentino (West Roxbury, Mass.) were named to the All Tournament Team.
Junior winger Travis Daniel (North Brunswick, N.J.) added a goal and two assists in the Beacons seventh straight victory.
But while UMB's offense continued to click, it was the team's defense and penalty-kill that helped them come away with a title. In a game where Johnson & Wales outshot the Beacons 36-35 and were even in the face-off circle, UMass Boston's penalty-kill proved to be the turning point, as they held the Wildcats to a 1-for-9 mark on the power play.
Freshman netminder Zach Andrews (Coral Springs, Fla.) was the team's best player on special teams, making a career-high 33 saves, including a handful of highlight-reel stops in the second and third period. The freshman who started the season 2-2-1, is 6-0-0 in his last six games and has given up three goals or fewer in each appearance.
Matt Cooper allowed six goals on 35 shots to fall to 6-7 on the year for Johnson & Wales.
Richter put the Beacons ahead 1-0 just 2:46 into the first period, when the senior sent a turn-around shot through Cooper's five-hole, with the puck barely trickling across the line. Freshman Derek Colucci (North Scituate, R.I.) and Tim Niedzielak (Chicago, Ill.) picked up assists on the play.
Ryan Kelly answered for the Wildcats at 8:05, with Justin DeCowski and Eddie Patterson awarded assists.
UMass Boston blew the game open in a wild second period, in which they outscored the Wildcats 4-2.
DeGrazia got things going when he picked up a pass from Max Reavis (Omaha, Neb.) and sniped a shot off the underside of the crossbar at the 4:43 mark. Almost 10 minutes later, Daniel made it 4-1 Beacons with a power-play goal.
Johnson & Wales promptly responded with two goals of their own in 76 seconds. Josh Obregon sent a high shot past Andrews on the power-play at 15:01 of the second period and the Wildcasts leading scorer Daniel Chang cut the deficit to 4-3 with a slapshot from just inside the blue line.
With less than a minute to play in the period, defenseman Cam Harvey (Bow, N.H.) skated the puck into the Wildcats zone and sent a hard low shot just inside the post to give the Beacons a 6-3 cushion.
That would be more than enough for UMass Boston thanks to their terrific effort on the penalty kill. Despite being called for five minor penalties in the third period, the Beacons were able to hold on to their big lead, as the team's aggressive fore-check and willingness to give up their bodies, stymied the Wildcats all afternoon long.
At the conclusion of the contest, Niedzielak was named the Lawrence F. Curran Award winner and received his trophy from last year's captain and honoree Jim Ennis ('12). The award has been given out each year since 1983 in remembrance of Lawrence F. Curran, an former assistant coach and avid supporter of the program. Each year, the award is given to the player who best exemplifies true sportsmanship and competition over the course of the two-day tournament.
48th Annual UMass Boston Codfish Bowl Tournament Final Standings
UMass Boston - 2-0
Johnson & Wales - 1-1
Wentworth - 1-1
Fitchburg State - 0-2
All-Tournament Team
UMass Boston - Tim Richter
UMass Boston- Rob Florentino
Johnson & Wales - Ryan Kelly
Johnson & Wales - Daniel Chang
Wentworth - Beau Burgau
Fitchburg State - Ryan Wysocki
Tournament MVP
UMass Boston - Mike DeGrazia


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The Basic Beginner's Guide to Photography Light & Exposure
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Publisher Description
Through the years, we've heard countless requests for a basic photo guide. At Photofocus.com,
we've published thousands of articles to help photographers at all levels. However we realize that those new to photography seek a clear place to start (plus a good refresher course never hurts anybody).
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How to break into my house, or not
Wick's World
The train from Seattle arrived in St. Paul eight and a half hours late so we were out $500 in wages. We missed the 7:30 a.m. scheduled arrival time by way too much to actually get in even a partial day of scheduled work.
The cabbie hit us up for another $66 (including a generous tip) just to deposit us at our doorstep in Eagan. A few hours later, an ingenious credit card scammer who somehow compromised our Visa card started charging pizza and buying purses and Metro Transit passes. (By the way, what type of criminal steals a credit card number to buy bus tickets?) But even worse, we arrived home only to discover we were locked out of our house.
My house key was with a neighbor who was at her job at four in the afternoon. My wife's key was locked inside the house. I won't be commenting on that. The combination to open the garage door failed. The combination to open the front door failed, so I inserted the key. It failed. I inserted it farther and harder. It broke.
"I have a key to the sliding glass door on the deck," I yelled to my wife.
The only problem: There is no stairway to the second floor deck and the ladder was locked in the garage.
"We'll have to climb up to the deck," I told my skeptical wife.
Okay. If you're a thief and have gotten this far without getting in my house, trust me, give it up. In lieu of the ladder, we became creative. Including the railing around the deck, I figured we had about 12 feet vertical to traverse. We started with the four foot high, hard plastic recycling bin. When we added two stacked lawn chairs and a two-foot high tool box, we were getting close.
If you are thinking this might have been a little shaky, you are correct. For stabilization, we grabbed the garden hose and tossed it over the deck railing. I tied a sort of square knot in the hose (a creative feat itself) and we had a Tarzan-like vine with which to climb up and jump over the railing onto the deck.
One of us had to climb, while the other simultaneously stabilized and pushed. My wife volunteered to be the climber. She went up and over. She put the key in the door.
"The key won't turn!" she said.
"Yes it will. I tried it before we left!" I screamed.
"Well, it doesn't turn," she calmly said.
"It does too!" I countered.
I leapt up the climbing conglomeration, catapulted over the railing and approached the door. I tried the key. It wouldn't turn no matter how hard I tried. I descended the deck like a rejected prom date and headed for the shed. Nothing was about to stop me now from getting in that house even if I had to break every window and door in the joint.
Meanwhile, my wife headed for the front of the house, doing her best to stifle the smirk that was morphing into a huge belly laugh. She realized it was best that I not observe this.
Attention burglars: This is the part that works. You can easily get in my shed. Unfortunately, you will find no tools, but there is an L-shaped plant hanger that is made of a fairly sturdy metal. Take the plant hangar back to the sliding glass door and force it under the bottom side. This will be noisy and look real strange to the neighbors, but you can actually jam that plant hanger under the door and pry it up. After many efforts resulting in moving the door a quarter-inch at a time, with luck you will find that the door will slide just enough to open.
I made it in my house and you can, too. However, there is no gold, no jewelry, and no bags of cocaine or pot. All our valuables are in our suitcases that go with us on our travels. There is absolutely nothing in this house worth breaking into unless you are burned out from the late train arriving from the west and desperately need a bed. You would do better to try the neighbors; I think I saw him wearing a Rolex.


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Do I get XP for killing the game?
And if it's dead, can I finally find out what the original plot was meant to be?
@}-`-- Coffee + Hate = itches
Well this was already an attempt at revitalising a dead game, I'm not sure I'd try a third time. I'm glad you enjoyed it though, Tash.
For now, I'm feeling kind of burnt out with DMing in general.
I'll give it a few days so you guys can ask any burning questions you had, and then I'll throw it into my archive.
BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll
I enjoyed it quiet a lot as well. I've said it before: you do a great job DMing, and you have a wealth of interesting campaign ideas. It has been a lot of fun playing with all of you.
Well, we all had fun then. And as that is what matters, I think we'll call a chapter and a half of game a win!
BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll
Long, off the top of my head, ramble about the plot and where the game was going.
The cosmology
The non-standard cosmology of the setting was at the heart of the story I was trying to tell.
Just as souls move to the Netherworld when the Red Moon dawns they move on from the Netherworld in due course. If you follow them from world to world you end up back at Aos. The nature of souls and their movement changes from plane to plane. If you go back a world you'll find a vast tower. It's a world which for the most part has no concept of death. There are cities and towns on the different levels, but at a certain point "The Call" becomes too strong and an individual which start to ascend the tower. They will slowly climb the spiral steps until the "Winged" arrives. As the winged flies upwards through the centre of the tower, "The Called" vanish. It only takes a few minutes, and it utterly devastates the tower, towns are destroyed, lots of uncalled are vaporised and generally it's regarded as an inevitable semi-regular apocalypse. They invest lots of time and resources trying to stop this from happening.
The souls from that world trickle into Aos at all times (as the Called reach the Ebony Gate at the top they move on) but when the Winged arrives it causes a huge surge in the available souls. These unborn souls just kind of hang around uselessly but peacefully until a host arrives (i.e. is born). Birth rates increase when the soul surge arrives, but nobody has really noticed this before on Aos. And then they live happy lives and eventually their host dies and they drift aimlessly searching for a way to the next world, the Netherworld. The way only opens when the soul of the Winged arrives (having been born and died).
The general idea that it's undead with souls who are causing the moon problems is therefore not so far off. If the Winged (or keysoul as we'll call it when it's in Aos) were to become a lich, then the moon would not arrive until its phylactery was destroyed.
Winged? That sounds vaguely familiar
Yes, the game started with the party chasing a little girl. A little girl with black, feathered wings. Over the course of the original game, the players found and lost her a few times as the Moon Cult also wanted her for its nefarious schemes.
She'd been taken from the Tower before she could ascend, allowing the people there to live in peace. so long, story short, if the little girl had at any time died, then the moon would have dawned.
The nefarious schemes of the cult, were in fact to make sure that the girl was kept alive at all costs. And as she wasn't a human, and didn't need to eat this could be achieved by just locking her in a cage.
So the Tower people were behind it?
Not entirely. They helped, but it's always more complicated than that. The Tower people wanted to avoid the Winged's destruction and they were more than happy when a mysterious stranger turned up and offered them a way out.
A mysterious stranger that the party from the first game once met, Amides Hone. As I'm such a wit, that name is an anagram rather than a Shakespeare reference (He Is A Demon). Amides Hone wasn't from the Tower or Aos. He's from the Netherworld (there, the souls are sort of currency, contracts and a workforce, with the various Angels/Demons trading them between themselves). There's no major blockage for souls there, but there is a complicated bureaucracy and with no Red Moon there's also been a major economic crisis. Not that Amides Hone is doing something as simple as manipulating the soul-labour market for his own profit.
He took the Winged from the Tower and planned to take her to the Netherworld (this would be the safest place, it's furthest from the Tower and Aos where it can do something if it broke free). Interplanar travel is, however, more or less impossible and so he ended up stranded on Aos (due to the existence of the fissure around the Broken Tower in no small part) and had lost track of the Winged. He quickly met a useful individual, who also happened to be a master of disguise. And set about reviving the Moon Bringers as his personal force of misguided zealots (he used his right hand man to do the leg work, often appearing as somebody with just one eye and a pet orc).
So what was he trying to achieve?
This ring-shaped universe is actually a prison being the chains that hold a higher being in place. And Amides Hone discovered this and managed to commune with that being. I wanted there to be layers of reality, so this universe which has arrived within the beings chains is incidental. It's not some great monster or primordial chaos. It's just some guy being held captive. The world (which includes Aos) in his chains is just a result of the magic they use on that level of reality, and if he's ever freed then the universe would likely be destroyed.
This is the terrible truth that Amides Hone discovered. So, he had one option, make a deal with the captive. He breaks the chains and the captive gives him an existence outside of this accidental world. To destroy the universe, all he has to do is stop the flow of souls and let them build up somewhere. And that is what he did.
So what about the hole in the universe?
That was an unexpected direction for the game brought about by the players taking unexpected action (i.e. when they were at the Broken Tower talking with the rats and then decided to go and get a coffee rather than protecting it when every peasant with a pointy stick was intent on claiming some rat heads). The rats were split into three factions on Aos, and when the guardians (i.e. the big ones and the deformed tiny ones in the sacks at the tower) all died, the other two decided to bring all their friends through (because here, they would gain souls - they actually gained the souls of the dead, i.e. the restless ones that were building up due to a lack of moon, not the unborn ones). This widened the rift and every new rat tugged on it a bit more. There was a critical point approaching where this would destroy Aos entirely, which would break the chains and destroy the whole universe.
That didn't suit Amides Hone, as if it wasn't carefully controlled he might not get his own freedom. The exodus from Edinway, however, caused the Moon Bringers to split, with a majority abandoning their previous mysterious leadership to throw in their lots with the remains of Pelor's Cathedral. The Moon Bringers were generally not bad people, so much as scared and ignorant (on the whole that is).
This left a few factions in Edinway. The Cathedral with its Moon Bringers, the Magewright's Guild (who could now try and seize control of the city now that Lord Edinway had abandoned it), a ragtag group of former peasants living in the former noble houses, Amides Hone and his remaining cultists and the rats.
Which brings us to putting up the anchors
The Anchors would stop the rift was expanding and slow the growth of the rats. This suited just about everybody. The Magewright's Guild were avoiding helping where possible because they wanted the other factions to use up all their resources establishing a stable equilibrium and then they could pounce - annihilating the rats and all the other factions to leave behind an ancient city built in a place of power that could rival Hollowfaust (the Necromancer city far to the south).
Now, you guys got zapped over to the outside of Aos. That was because you put the anchor in a structurally unsound place (tower that was pretty damaged after a certain aspect of an entity beyond time and space attacked). The game diverged massively at that point - option one was dealing with a frantic rat war as they tried to destroy the anchors. Option two was what you opted for.
What was the deal with the trees
Each soul's lifeforce was represented by the leaves on the trees. Eating those leaves would keep anything alive but it would hurt (and possibly kill) somebody on the other side. The rats existed as a kind of inevitable, natural force of entropy. They ate the leaves out of the need to fill the gap they had instead of souls. But you'd pretty much figured that out.
What was the deal with the Sigil-bearers and Kings?
A King is kind of a proto-God. Some great entity that was drawn to Aos from the void and managed to gain a little feeble power from the worship of the rats (by using a Sigil-bearer as a sort of avatar). Worships without a soul is a hollow thing, so when the rats started gaining souls they started making the Kings more powerful.
The Sigil-bearers were given an artificial soul of sorts by the King to be more effective tools, but when Grimjaw and Kjetil decided to bear Bargrivyek's sigil they already had souls, which gave the King a lot more power. Even better, if they managed to get back to the interior of Aos, it would give Bargrivyek a way in. He could become a true god (this would have led to some fun interactions with the cathedral of Pelor). On the other hand it stopped you dying of thirst and hunger and would have let you take a Prestige Class to try and temper the influence of the King.
The rule about not killing rats, was due to the fact this had a fairly negative effect on the stability of Aos. Kill too many and not only is the nature order of death subverted, but you're also damaging the plane itself - which is bad.
And the dragon?
Untended, unloved objects can cross over. It's a one a billion chance, but it can happen and it does. Somehow, it happened with abandoned dragon's egg (there's a lot of very old stuff under Edinway). The egg matured outside of Aos and so it took on some aspects of the plane, despite being a real creature with its own soul. It was acutely aware that in its present location it was quite powerful, whereas inside Aos it would be a small fish in a big pond.
Giving a dragon a story of yourself willingly, gives it power of you to a tiny degree which I was holding in reserve as a potential plot hook down the line once we'd seen where things were going.
The Illithid was doing his usual unfathomable experiments which involved the keystone you needed (which was actually an ancient artifact of LeeCHeSS' old character's patron spirit). You'd run into a few of his various thralls (all partially replaced with bits of metal and whatnot) and then come across a strange full-colour area that was the Illithid's lab. This would be Chapter 3 - dealing with the Illithid. I was angling for a kind of vague horror aspect here and really trying to push the "his motives are so alien that any dealing with him is not going to work in the long term". The area was going to a mechanical fortress lab with lots of running water as the basic rules of this world were broken without effort and for no obvious reason.
So, with the keystone and the dragon's tokens it would all work out fine then?
Pretty much. Karthas would step out here, as he sacrificed himself to open a temporary door (although he's less dead and become a sentient part of the membrane between the two sides of Aos). Importantly, however, there's been a huge time slip between the two sides from your point of view. So, it's been over a year (it was late winter, now it's late spring).
You'd have arrived and been attacked by a band of elves. All of this has finally drawn them out of their homes to come and deal with it. They're hostile and superior and they've been systematically improving the anchors (generally killing any guards stationed around them too), so that they now not only prevent the rift from getting wider but also gradually close it (although this works on an Elven timescale and would take about a thousand years). The elves link together the anchors with their mysterious magic and set up a camp.
After dealing with the elves, the party return to Edinway to find things have sort of stabilised with the various factions becoming entrenched. I've only got super vague notes here, as it really depends on how the elves were dealt with and how you respond to the strange communist former peasants, the arrogant mages (and their Warforged servants) and the Cathedral who are increasingly compromising their own morals (first allying with the Moon Bringers, then by welcoming in the mysterious Amides Hone(who was still controlling both sects of Moonbringers by now) and then by becoming more and more combative in their approach to dealing with the Edinway situation.
Using the influx of rats to control the soul problem would also be brought up here. And then the idea would have been to let the players move along the chain of worlds, heading either backwards to the Tower or forwards to the Netherworld was the situation dictated to try and gain some insight as to what was happening.
What about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead!
Yes, it was literally me introducing two characters as a rubbish joke. These two mysterious characters who turned up every so often to help out the party in the first game would have reappeared. Not allied with any particular faction and yet seemingly with full knowledge of what was going on in the world. They're ancient, long dead and bound to serve and protect the city although forbidden in exactly what they can do. They were kind of an emergency "get out of a sticky situation" button for me. They've managed to evade a few Red Moons despite being ghosts.
BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll
Well, wow. I didn't get around to reading this when you posted it. I skimmed it back then, but now I've found the time.
... when you feel the urge to DM again, please consider me, yes?
When I read this summary, I'm getting the distinct feeling that I'm lacking in creativity.
Yeah, BRR does have a ton of interesting ideas. I never even considered that the Kings might have been a new occurrence - I just assumed that was how it always was. In hindsight, the sigil-bearer being hearted probably should have registered as possibly having something to do with all the excess souls running about.
So let me ask this: what would have happened had we all refused Bargrivyek's offer?
The Kings themselves weren't new as such, it was just that the "hearted" rats let them become more overtly manifest. The reason that they had their religions was because the way of life for the souless rats was Kings picking Sigil-bearers and then amassing hordes of rats (as the horde would give the King power). Every time the moon dawned, the rats were stripped off from Aos though, leaving the Kings to start again, trying to pull together enough strength to break the cycle.
So when the rats with souls on the interior of Aos kept their religions they suddenly were feeding a hell of a lot of power to these entities.
If you'd told Bargrivyek to sod off, then I had two ideas I was playing with:
1) Karthas says yes. So you still end up at the dragon (with water) and I have a different route to write out Karthas if needs be.
2) Bargrivyek sods off, leaving you waterless and with hostile rats. You kill a few more and it becomes obvious that this is creating some kind of microholes between the worlds that are very rapidly healing. You'd most likely have had to start drinking delicious blood at this point, or even eating the leaves. I planned to have Karthas come up with an idea for getting you back (gathering a group of rats together, maybe with some tokens and then sacrificing them to bend reality) - the failure of this plan would force the dragon's hand who would decide to send some of his "minions" (the confused rats who gave him their tokens) to demand you stop trying to destroy the world and come and see him.
I had a few ideas for other mortals on this side of the plane. The original wizard from the Broken Tower who accidentally made the rift, wandering around gradually losing his sanity, but kept alive by his magic. He may have shown up if I went with option 2 (the arrival of the PCs was pretty noticeable).
Far to the south near Hollowfaust (where the original "we kill undead" Moonbringers were from there was one of their experiments, a golem designed to kill any being with a captive soul - however, it misunderstood its orders, so it merrily included people (as well as liches and the like) in its list of things to kill. In the battle where it slaughtered most of its creators, one of them managed to push it to the other side, where it broke down. I was toying with the idea of trying to lure you down there, but I couldn't think of anything, so my plan was to save it for later and have you need to return to the other side at some point (possibly to deal with a King).
BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll
Ah, the webs we weave.
So what about the Septuagint? And Lade's rocky condition - was he on his way to Mineral Warrior templatation?
Lade's stony problem would have been quickly solved back at Pelor's Cathedral, I was trying to find some interesting mechanics which would present as the side effects for Grimjaw's dwarvern cure (a feat chain or a short PrC). The poison itself was just that, it doesn't quite relate directly to the sixty-sixth Septuagint, Master of Dead Dreams, Yaldabaoth.
The Septuagint were just me directly ripping off the Cthulhu-style "creatures beyond time and space that just do not operate on your scale". Here that equated to not existing solely in this world (or the one above or below it) but in all of them simultaneously. So the prisoner planned to destroy Aos and the rest of the universe because he valued his own freedom more than a microscopic set of worlds that existed in his chains. The Septuagint, and their snappy titles, were entities beyond any attempts at understanding. A fragment of one just happened to be sitting on the place of power that the thirteenth anchor needed putting and then it swatted at you a bit before forgetting you even existed.
The plan was to never mention them again outside of the spear (which I was thinking about scaling up, so it stuck there causing you to wonder what the deal was). That said, I was going to make a casual reference to a different Septuagint in the Island (as Tash plays in both), hopefully he'd remember the word and wonder if it was just me splitting an idea or whether it implied that the world of that game was somehow part of the one in this game.
BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll
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Oracle's Advice for 19th February 2019
Oracle's Advice - Tomorrow
Things to Be Careful About
Auspicious Activies to Do
19th February 2019
15th February 2019
Eight Immortals
Elder Zhang Guo: He is represented as an Old Man riding a donkey. (Sometimes Backwards) He is usually carrying two drumsticks. Legend has it that at the end of his journeys, he could fold up his donkey like a piece of paper and store him in his wallet. When he was ready to travel again he would sprinkle water on his wallet and the Donkey would reappear. Zhongli Quan: This is the familiar Fat Man with his bare belly showing. He always carries a fa...
Eight Imomrtals in Full
Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1


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There's boring old bones…and then there's Only Natural Pet's New Chews!
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This new line is sure to be a hit with your dog, and at 20% off, it'll be a huge hit with you as well! But hurry, the sale ends February 27th!


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team barbieri
We picked up our new gps last night (PN-40) and could not wait to start hunting so we went out and found our first one at higgins beach. This is going to be very addictive. I want to thank all of you for the helpful and sometimes confusing info on geo maine. I stumbled across this web sight a couple of weeks ago looking for places to snowmobile, If we only had snow. So after alot of research to confuse myself even more i said the heck with, got a gps, and started searching. Hope to see some of you out there tracking down caches.
John & Teresa.
John & Teresa.


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Time for a little reality check. It seems like almost every day there's a piece of news about how "research suggests there were once oceans floating in the vacuum of space!" or "life could have once existed at the center of the Sun!" You know, we all get a little over-excited sometimes. Well, geochemist Nicholas Tosca of Harvard University put a damper on our enthusiasm yesterday when he calculated that early oceans on Mars were between 10 and 100 times more salty than seawater here on Earth. Even worse, they were probably highly acidic. But pro-Mars life scientists aren't giving up without a fight, After the break, some hopeful scientists speak out on why following Mars' ancient water supply could still lead us to the aliens.
Tosca's calculations paint a picture of ancient Mars that'd be a nasty place for young life to try and grow up in, but not all researchers are throwing in the towel yet. From yesterday's ScienceNOW article:
"Tosca et al. are making some very good points," writes planetary geochemist Jeffrey Kargel of the University of Arizona, Tucson, in an e-mail, but "they carry it too far." Perhaps early exploration has been drawn to the most saline and therefore most obvious sites, he writes, missing more hospitable places. Microbiologist Kenneth Nealson of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles also holds out hope for life. Faced with greater challenges, martian life may have evolved even better ways to cope with salty water than Earth's microbes have devised. "Keep on following the water" is the message, say these optimists—and the Phoenix lander is doing just that. Within weeks, it will be analyzing far younger and presumably far fresher water in the martian arctic.
Kargel and Nelson may be waving the ET flag out of fear of losing funding for their research more than anything else, but what the hell? With the Phoenix lander getting ready to start digging into the Martian permafrost any day now, how could you not hope just a little bit that it'll turn up evidence of Martian life? I bet even Tosca's keeping his fingers crossed.
Source: Science


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1. Would Halladay have no-hit San Diego? With the stuff he had last night, Roy Halladay would have no-hit the '27 Yankees. More to the point, here are the Reds and Padres relative NL rankings in various hitting categories:
- Average: Reds (1st), Padres (15th)
- OBP: Reds (2nd), Padres (13th)
- Slugging: Reds (1st), Padres (15th)
- ISO: Reds (2nd), Padres (15th)
- And of course, wOBA Reds (1st), Padres (15th).
2. Would the Padres have no-hit Cincinnati? A little more difficult to answer. The game would have been here, so that's an advantage for the Padre starter. Who would have been the Padre starter? Chris Young would have pitched the Monday play-in game, so Bud Black's options were Jon Garland on extra rest or Clayton Richard on full rest (let's eliminate Tim Stauffer and Mat Latos from consideration; no way they start Game 1 on short rest).
- Neither Garland nor Richard have thrown a no-hitter in their careers to date.
- Garland has 2 post-season starts; he allowed 4 ER in 16 IP (ERA: 2.25) as a White Sox in 2005. Richard has never started a post-season game.
- The Reds hit .275/.335/.437 against RHP and .265/.346/.434 against LHP. That's known as a wash. No advantage there.
- The Padres lost both of Richard's starts against Cincinnati this season. The Padres were 4-2 against Cincinnati overall. Garland's teams are 2-2 in his career when he started against the Reds.
Of course, it doesn't matter. San Diego lost last Sunday. Which meant I had to do this today.


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Mathematics Education
The concentration in Mathematics Education prepares scholars to work as researchers, expert practitioners, or policy professionals with a special focus on the teaching and learning of mathematics.
Science Education
This program prepares scholars and researchers to explore issues in science education that have an impact on the teaching and learning of science. A primary focus is exploration of important questions that can impact children, science teachers, and science classrooms as well as informing other scholars in the field of science education.
Teaching and Teacher Education
This concentration prepares scholars for practice, research, and policy work in teaching and the preparation of teachers.
Education and Statistics (Dual Degree)
The program, offered in collaboration with the university's Department of Statistics, leads to a master of arts in statistics and a doctor of philosophy in educational studies. In this program, students are engaged with the best thinking in applied statistics across a range of departments while applying their technical interests to challenging applied problems and methods in education.
Individually Designed Concentration
Current or prospective doctoral students whose research interests cut across the designated doctoral concentrations may, in collaboration with a faculty committee, create an individualized program and set of requirements.
Doctor of Philosophy in English and Education
English and Education
This program, drawing upon resources in both the Department of English Language and in the School of Education, prepares students with prior teaching experience to assume positions as professors of English and/or professors of Education.
Doctor of Philosophy in Education and Psychology
Education and Psychology
This interdisciplinary program, cosponsored by the School of Education and the Department of Psychology, focuses on psychological science and problems of education.
Doctor of Philosophy in Higher Education
Academic Affairs and Student Development
This program focuses on the teaching and learning mission of colleges and universities, and on the communities in which this central function occurs. Scholarship in this concentration includes academic programs and curriculum; student learning and development; student access, adjustment, and achievement in higher education; teaching and research processes; college and university faculty; and leadership in administrative units with teaching and learning responsibilities.
Organizational Behavior and Management
Students and faculty in this concentration explore and research the administration, governance, management, leadership, organizational strategy, planning and budgeting, and institutional research and assessment of postsecondary educational organizations.
Public Policy in Postsecondary Education
This concentration includes studies of the social, economic, and political factors that affect postsecondary institutions, particularly the impact of local, state, and federal policies on students, faculty, and other constituencies.
Research, Evaluation, and Assessment
Students in this concentration develop the conceptual and technical skills necessary to produce the highest quality research on higher and postsecondary education, including applied research related to institutional research, educational and administrative evaluation, program review, and assessment of teaching and learning.
Individually Designed Concentration
Current or prospective doctoral students whose research interests cut across the designated doctoral concentrations may, in collaboration with a faculty committee, create an individualized program and set of requirements.


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Year End Tax Strategies for Car Dealerships
Year End Tax Strategies for Car Dealerships
With the end of the year fast approaching I wanted to create a thread to see if there was any advice or recommendations that our members had as it related to year end tax strategies.
As always, I don't want to advocate anything that might not comply with IRS regulations and anyone reading this thread should check with their accountant to verify that any suggested tax strategy is permitted.
That said, here are some thought starters:
-- Can you "re-book" your Used Car Inventory and take a write down?
-- Can you evaluate your Parts Inventory and write down obsolete parts?
-- Are there any last minute donations that make sense?
-- Are there any expenses that you can pre-pay to lessen this year's tax obligation?
-we revalue all used cars to nada "loan" value, depending on annual profit, sometimes makes for a great January!
-you could make a case for writing off all parts not sold in the past year, never clear on whether or not you had to scrap them though [we didn't].
-donations are always appreciated
Concerning the parts inventory, that's a great question. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an IRS requirement that the parts needed to be scrapped if the dealership wanted to write them off.
I don't know exactly the legal requirements to write off parts, but below is the process that I have been instructed to follow when we "write off parts".
1.The parts are itemized in an excel worksheet with the part number, description, qty, cost, and extended cost. This worksheet is printed when "write offs" occur and signed by me the parts manager.
2. Prior to pulling the worksheet a photo of each part is taken showing it in "new" condition.
3. Repeat #2 for all parts on worksheet.
4. The parts are taken out of packaging and destroyed, as much as possible.
5. A photo showing the destroyed parts is then taken and another photo is taken showing the destroyed part in the dumpster.
6. The photos are then stored on a file in the computer, backed up on the cloud, and a secondary cloud backup, and the worksheets and all photos are stored on a USB given to the controller once a year.
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Coming soon, new site design with added storefront for your religious item needs.
NEW addition: Holy Bible King James Version. Holy Bible KJV
Pagan = 23.1%
Secular = 21.8%
Hindu = 15.4%
Wiccan = 7.7%
Christian = 6.8%
Buddhist = 6.7%
Jewish = 6.4%
Mormon = 6.3%
Muslim = 6.3%
You are Agnostic. This is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.
A Deist is a person that Believes in a God but not like religions teach. This God is the creator of everything but, most Deists dont think that God interacts with the world or our lives.
Because you are Agnostic, you are being honest with yourself by saying that you do not know. By using your logic and reasoning you have set yourself up to be able to find the truth.
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A former Tuscaloosa firefighter has announced he will seek his first elected office by challenging incumbent Councilman Bob Lundell.
A former Tuscaloosa firefighter has announced he will seek his first elected office by challenging incumbent Councilman Bob Lundell.
Edwin "Eddie" Pugh of Heatherwood Drive made his campaign for the City Council's District 6 seat public on Friday and became the second candidate to challenge a sitting council member.
Pugh, 59, said that his more than three decades as a firefighter taught him the necessary skills to be a representative of the public.
"I learned to work with and for people and (I learned) that what might have seemed like a small problem to me could also be a huge problem for them and how to help solve these problems," Pugh said in a statement announcing his candidacy. "Listening was very important on all fronts. Communication was key and accountability was expected."
A brother, father, husband and grandfather, Pugh joined the Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Service at age 23 and rose to the rank of battalion chief before retiring after 35 years.
"As your council person, I will be there for you as I was for 35 years as a firefighter," Pugh said. "We must remember who we work for: the people that put us in office and diligently work to earn their trust and show that we can work with all people and areas of city government."
Pugh said that, if elected, he would focus on all areas of the city, while working to improve the city schools' southwest district.
And after the April 27, 2011, tornado, he also wants to ensure that police officers and firefighters maintain adequate training.
"The tornado on April 27th showed what well trained safety departments we have along with the rest of our city and county employees," Pugh said. " The young people of today are our leaders of tomorrow and we owe it to them and ourselves to make them priorities."
His candidacy pits him against Lundell, who said earlier this year that he intends to seek a third term.
Pugh joins Sonya McKinstry, 43, who has announced her bid to unseat Councilman William Tinker in District 7.
The only other non-incumbent to announce a campaign for this year's municipal election is 22-year-old Matt Calderone, who is attempting to win the seat being vacated by Councilman Lee Garrison.
Reach Jason Morton at firstname.lastname@example.com or 205-722-0200.


text: Retirement Manager is a convenient web-based access point for managing your voluntary 403b and 457b retirement savings 24/7. In Retirement Manager, employees can enroll in the 403b and/or 457b retirement plan, change or stop contributions, and obtain plan information. To enroll, make changes or to review information regarding your voluntary 403(b) and/or 457(b) retirement plans, click the links below. 'How to Guide' for Retirement Manager Retirement Manager Online Retirement Manager Technical Support: 866.294.7950


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Obama's big sequester gamble
A smart political move on the campaign trail is often a misstep on the legislative playing field — unless you pull the kind of two-step that President Barack Obama did on defense cuts.
Step One: Grab the political moment by telling a national debate audience that you won't actually slash defense, assuaging voters in swing states with a lot of military employment.
Story Continued Below
Step Two: Stabilize the policy blowback inside the Beltway by sending out your aides to reassure Washington that you didn't quite mean what you said.
If Obama and Congress don't act, $120 billion in spending cuts — half of it from the Pentagon — will go into effect on Jan. 2. Mitt Romney has been using that dangling budget ax to tell voters that Obama is putting national security at risk. Obama struck back on Monday night.
"It will not happen," the president said, as coolly and confidently as a sports analyst laying odds against Barry Bonds getting into the Hall of Fame.
But when the debate cameras turned off, and the average voter had switched over to Monday Night Football or Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, Obama's aides began walking it back for a surprised set of Washington insiders who weren't the target audience.
"What the president said last night was a reiteration of what his position has long been," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters traveling on Air Force Once on Tuesday. "The sequester that was designed and passed by Congress was never meant to become policy, it was never meant to be implemented."
Intentionally or not, the mixed messages left Obama communicating one thing to voters and another to Congress on one of the most vexing and urgent issues facing Washington in the next few months. In the end, there's no change in the president's stance toward Capitol Hill — he'll still try to use defense cuts as leverage to raise taxes — but he left voters with the impression that he won't put the Pentagon on the chopping block under any circumstances.
Call it the fog of the campaign.
It's "election year baloney," said Paul Lindsay, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
"This was certainly news to us during the debate last night, and I can tell you it sent waves around Washington when he made that statement last night," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), who is a member of the Senate "gang" negotiating on the fiscal cliff, speaking at a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association meeting. "But I understand they've backed off of that."
For voters at home, Obama's comments were a smooth parry that took the punch out of Romney's thrust. And for Democrats getting hammered on the pending Pentagon cuts, including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine in Virginia's Senate race, it was a possible source of cover.
But for the inside-the-Beltway crowd, it was, at least initially, taken as a hint that Obama might cave to Republican demands — and lose leverage over other taxing and spending parts of the so-called fiscal cliff. While official Washington was atwitter — and on Twitter — trying to figure just what Obama's declaration meant on a nuts-and-bolts policy level, Obama's aides went to the post-debate spin room to tamp it down.
"[E]veryone in Washington agrees that sequester 'should not happen,'" said White House senior adviser David Plouffe.
Obama also blamed sequestration on Congress during Monday's debate. The truth: Republicans demanded spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit last summer. The White House and Democrats in Congress insisted that steep cuts to the Defense Department accompany the domestic-spending reductions favored by the GOP. It may have been an ugly deal that no one liked, but it was bipartisan.


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WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. House Tuesday voted to raise the nation's debt limit without imposing any conditions and sent the bill to the Senate.
The vote was 221-201 after House Speaker John Boehner decided against a plan to tie the measure to restoring some cuts to military benefits adopted in the omnibus budget resolution.
The Senate was expected by the end of the week, averting possible default.
Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stood on the House floor and shook hands as the measure passed with mostly Democratic votes. Only 28 Republicans supported the measure.
"Tonight's vote is a positive step in moving away from the political brinkmanship that's a needless drag on our economy," White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. "The American economy is moving forward, but there is much more to do to ensure that more middle class Americans -- and those striving to get into it -- can get ahead. Congress can start by raising the minimum wage so that no one who works full time raises their family in poverty, restoring emergency unemployment insurance for the 1.7 million Americans searching every day for a job who need this vital lifeline to support their families, and taking additional steps to strengthen our economy and restore opportunity for all Americans. The president looks forward to working with both sides to get that done."
Boehner's decision earned the ire of the Senate Conservative Fund, which urged House Republicans to deny Boehner the speaker's post in January 2015, after the midterm elections.
The fund accused Boehner, R-Ohio, of "helping President Obama enact his liberal agenda," The Hill reported.
"Instead of using the House majority to stop bad legislation, Speaker Boehner has used it to increase spending, raise the debt limit, increase taxes, pass a bloated farm bill, and fund the implementation of Obamacare. Instead of fighting for conservative principles, Speaker Boehner has repeatedly surrendered to the Democrats," the fund said in a statement.
House leadership decided during a morning meeting to discard a bill that would have restored a cost-of-living raise for the military after the White House said raising the debt ceiling was not negotiable.
Boehner had said earlier Republican members would vote for a clean bill, but that Democratic support would have to assure its passage, the Washington Post reported.
Boehner's decision to bring only the clean bill up for a vote was met with "stunned silence" by others at the meeting, the New York Times reported.
Boehner had presented a plan Monday night that would have tied an increase to the debt ceiling to a reversal of cuts in military retirement benefits. The bill got no support from conservative Republicans and Republican leadership said support from Democratic members was unlikely.
Boehner's change of mind shocked GOP members because it violated the speaker's own "Boehner Rule" that increases in the debt ceiling had to be matched by equivalent cuts in the budget.
The president supported bipartisan efforts to reverse the military cuts, Gene B. Sperling, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters at a breakfast meeting.
However, he added, "I hope the tactic of threatening default for budget debates is over, off the table and never to happen again."
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said Congress must increase the treasury's borrowing authority or risk a U.S. default, beginning Feb. 27, on more than $17 trillion in federal debt.


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By Patricia Sands September 30, 2014
© 2017 by Patricia Sands. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author. All photographs on this site are copyright of Patricia Sands
Copyright © 2019 By Patricia Sands · Theme created and maintained by Bakerview Consulting


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1. Logging bundle resolution errorsThomas Diesler Apr 21, 2011 4:37 AM (in response to Thomas Diesler)
The propper fix might be to enable the error event in
// #4 If this bundle's state is not RESOLVED, an attempt is made to resolve this bundle.
// If the Framework cannot resolve this bundle, a BundleException is thrown.
if (ensureResolved(false) == false)
throw new BundleException("Cannot resolve bundle: " + this);
Not sure what the TCK expects in terms of events
2. Logging bundle resolution errorsDavid Bosschaert Apr 21, 2011 6:26 AM (in response to Thomas Diesler)
Hmmm maybe the case I was looking at the ensureResolved(false) should have been a ensureResolved(true) instead. It's called from HostBundle.startInternal() (since the refactoring this code has moved elsewhere now). Maybe the startInternal() should call ensureResolved(true) instead? Any thoughts here?
The problem I was facing here is that with any deployment (e.g. through the deployments folder) that has unresolved dependencies it was impossible to find out why (unless you fire uyp a debugger). In all of these cases ensureResolved was always called with 'false'.


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Burbank is a city that has a specific subtropical Mediterranean climate with long hot summers and relatively cold summers. This is the reason why air conditioning and/or HVAC systems are a must for every home and company situated in Burbank. Modern cooling and heating units are much more advanced compared to the ones used 10 or 20 years ago. Thanks to the advance of technology, modern HVAC systems can deliver excellent climate management and better energy efficiency too. However, just like most other electronic devices and machines, HVAC unit need maintenance or repair from time to time. Although there are many Air conditioning Services Burbank options, the truth is that not every Air Conditioning Company has the equipment, parts and experience to provide adequate repair and maintenance.
The certified and licensed technicians at HESD Air Conditioning Burbank now offer complete HVAC repair Burbank solution for HVAC units manufactured by the most popular companies in this industry. As one of the best air conditioning repair Burbank options, HSED has a team of dedicated service specialists that can also help homeowners and business owners with air conditioning installation in this area.
In the last few years, HSED Air Conditioning Burbank has managed to build a reputation of a brand that doesn't make any compromises when it comes to quality. As their official website claims, they are focused on delivering ultimate customer satisfaction thanks to their unmatched services and finishing every HVAC and air conditioning service in a timely and proper manner. They treat every client with the same respect regardless of the size of the project they get. In addition to offering residential AC and HVAC repair in Burbank, the professionals at HSED Air Conditioning Burbank also provide commercial services.
In other words, this is a service provider that has invested a lot of time and money in order to become a comprehensive service provider for all HVAC and AC needs. This is something that you can't find often in Burbank service providers in this industry.
To learn more about HSED Air Conditioning Burbank, feel free to contact their licensed and certified staff right now at 747-201-3113 or visit their official website on http://www.airconditioningburbank.net/. People are surprised by the fast response that this company provides and the high quality of services they provide.


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The Crown
Anchor Road, Aldridge, Walsall, West Midlands, WS9 8PT 01922 451002
Anchor Road, Aldridge, Walsall, West Midlands, WS9 8PT 01922 451002
Get stuck into the best live sporting action at The Crown.
If you're looking for a family-friendly pub showing both BT Sports AND Sky Sports in the Rushall, Streetly and Walsall Wood area, you've found it.
We have all the latest live sporting events , bringing you access to all televised Premier League matches and top European action from UEFA Champions League, the Europa League and more.
With a huge variety of major sporting fixtures on BT Sports, Sky Sports and terrestrial TV, all you have to do is grab your mates, a pint of your favourite tipple and watch the sport that really matters to you.
We specialise in mouth-watering roasts and pub-food classics, and serve a super selection of drinks. Add in great-value prices and you know you've scored a winner.
We've got a welcoming family atmosphere, plus specially sized food portions for smaller appetites. Making our carvery your best choice if you want to bring your kids to watch too.


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Celebrity Family Pictures Week of Nov. 5, 2012
Celebaby Roundup
Celebaby Roundup
Stars spent quality time with their little ones over the weekend at the farmers market, on shopping sprees, and dressing up together. Victoria Beckham spent an afternoon shopping with Harper and her boys in LA, while Ben Affleck enjoyed the farmers market with his girls, Violet and Seraphina. Gwen Stefani had the company of her travel companion Zuma in London, and Rachel Zoe stepped out with her little cowboy Skyler for some fun on the West Coast.
That's not all the adorable excitement that was had by celebs and their tots this weekend, so be sure to click through the rest of the fun snaps!