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1. Points
· Smoking is an addiction and a chronic relapsing disorder.
· Smoking should be routinely evaluated whenever a patient presents to a healthcare facility
· All smokers should be offered the best chance to treat this disorder.
· Permanent remissions can be achieved in a substantial percentage of smokers with currently available treatments.
· Successful treatment of this disorder can have a substantial benefit in reducing many secondary complications of which chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one.
· Smoking cessation activities and support for its implementation should be integrated into the healthcare system.
2. Background
A. Smoking as a primary disorder
Cigarette smoking is an addiction and a chronic relapsing disorder regarded as a primary disorder by the Department of Health and Human Services Guidelines in the USA and by the World Health Organization. Therefore, treating tobacco use and dependence should be regarded as a primary and specific intervention. Preventing the development and progression of COPD can be regarded as one of the secondary effects prevented by treating the primary disorder, because although cigarette smoking is the single most important cause of COPD, it is also a major risk factor for many other diseases including atherosclerotic vascular disease, cancer, peptic ulcer and osteoporosis.
B. Smoking prevention
Effective primary prevention of smoking would eliminate the need for smoking cessation. Unfortunately, measures to decrease smoking initiation have had limited success. Yet, the following measures have been shown to prevent smoking addiction:
- increasing the price of cigarettes
- enforced programmes which limit access to cigarettes
- society can have a major effect on smoking behaviour and it is hoped that
- comprehensive programmes designed to control smoking initiation can have similar benefits.
C. Smoking in COPD
Smokers experience an accelerated rate of decline in lung function. Individual susceptibility, however, varies greatly and depends on a complex interaction of many genetic and environmental factors. It is often stated that 15% of smokers will develop COPD. This dramatically underestimates the impact of smoking because the majority of smokers will develop loss of lung function,and reduced lung function, at any level, is predictive of increased mortality. Many smokers with undiagnosed COPD have symptoms. It is necessary to identify and properly diagnose individuals earlier in the course of the disease when physiological limitation and symptoms are milder. Quitting smoking can slow the progressive loss of lung function and can reduce symptoms at any point in time. Yet, the beneficial impact of smoking cessation on the natural history of COPD is greatest the earlier cessation is achieved. Adolescents who quit smoking will have increased lung growth
D. Passive smoking and COPD
Smoking during pregnancy is associated with low birth weight, and infants with low birth weight appear to have a greater risk of developing COPD. Smoking and probably passive smoke exposure in childhood compromises lung growth leading to diminished maximal lung function in young adulthood. Passive smoke exposure is a risk factor for symptoms of cough and sputum production, and may account for some of the COPD that develops in nonsmokers.
3. Brief intervention
A brief intervention can be effective for many smokers and should be practiced in all clinical settings. Often this can take the form of several minutes during a routine visit. The key steps in the algorithm for brief intervention are the "5 As".
· Ask: systematically identify all tobacco users at every visit; implement an office-wide system that ensures that tobacco-use status is queried and documented for every patient at every clinic visit.
· Advise: strongly urge all tobacco users to quit, in a clear, strong and personalized manner.
· Assess: determine willingness to make a quit attempt.
· Assist: help the patient with a quit plan, provide practical counselling, provide intratreatment social support, help the patient obtain extra-treatment social support, recommend use of approved pharmacotherapy (except in special circumstances) and provide supplementary materials.
· Arrange: schedule follow-up contact, either in person or via the telephone.
4. Intensive intervention
Intensive intervention refers to behavioural programmes more extensive than the brief intervention described above. Review of multiple studies demonstrates a dose-response effect, indicating that quit rates increase with the intensity, duration and frequency of behavioural support sessions. All smokers willing to participate in intensive intervention should be offered the opportunity as quit rates will increase. Many smokers, however, will not wish to participate in such programmes and, for these individuals, properly executed brief intervention is the best alternative. Intensive intervention can be provided by any suitably trained clinician with adequate resources. Availability of such a programme should be an essential part of every healthcare system, particularly those caring for COPD patients.
5. Systems approach
A major impediment in the delivery of established treatments to treat tobacco use and dependence has been lack of appropriate institutional support. Adequately trained staff with access to the necessary materials and with sufficient time to diagnose, stage and treat the smoking patient must be provided by all reputable healthcare systems. Systems approaches are particularly important as coordinated interventions, involving healthcare providers at a variety of levels, are both more effective and more cost efficient. The healthcare provider has the obligation to provide state-of-the art behavioural and pharmacological treatments. The healthcare administrator has a clear responsibility to insure that smoking cessation services are adequately provided. The healthcare purchaser should expect that tobacco intervention, at the most effective level, will be a contractually covered obligation of insurers and providers. Patients have a reasonable expectation that the most preventable threat to their health will be addressed.
6. Intervention in the smoker not ready to make a quit attempt
Empathetic, nonconfrontational interactions that maximise patient participation are believed to be most effective when dealing with smokers not ready to make a quit attempt. The "5 Rs" can serve as a guide permitting the clinician to focus on the important issues, recognising that multiple interactions are likely to be required in order to achieve a quit attempt.
· Relevance: personalise the reasons to quit. This may include issues in addition to COPD.
· Risks: both acute (i.e. dyspnoea, cough, exacerbations, increased carbon monoxide), chronic (i.e. COPD progression, cancer, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, peptic ulcer) and other environmental risks (i.e. disease risk to spouse, household members, increased risk of smoking in children).
· Rewards: such as improved health, improved self image, regaining sense of taste and smell, and saving money.
· Roadblocks: such as withdrawal symptoms, fear of failure, weight gain, lack of support, depression and the enjoyment of tobacco.
· Repetition: most smokers make several quit attempts before achieving long-term abstinence; smoking can be regarded as a chronic relapsing condition, but prolonged remissions are possible A variety of interventions including acupuncture, hypnosis and aversive training methods, among others, have been suggested to aid cessation. None have been shown to be more effective than behavioural interventions alone.
7. Intervention in the smoker ready to make a quit attempt
Every effort should be made to maximise the chances of success in the smoker ready to make a quit attempt, and the following should be offered: behavioural support, pharmacological treatment and follow-up.
· Pharmacological treatment
All smokers willing to make a serious quit attempt should be offered pharmacological support The approach to males and females and to racial and ethnic groups should not vary. Pregnant women should quit, although use of medications in pregnancy has undefined risks. Smoking cessation treatments can be initiated in hospitalised patients. Patients with concurrent psychiatric morbidities may require specific treatment of these conditions. Smoking cessation treatment in adolescence is difficult. The same approaches used in adults can be tried. Quit rates approximately double with first-line pharmacological treatments. First-line treatments include various forms of nicotine replacement treatment and bupropion. Second-line treatments can be considered for smokers unsuccessful with or unable to utilise first-line medication.
First-line treatments
· Nicotine replacement is available in five approved formulations and several others are in development. Their different routes of administration permit individual preference. All that have been assessed are similar in efficacy.
· Nicotine polacrilex (gum) contains nicotine bound to a polacrilex resin together with a buffering agent. Chewing releases the nicotine from the polacrilex. Varying the rate of chewing varies the rate of nicotine release. Once released, nicotine is present in the saliva and is absorbed across the buccal mucosa. Low oral pH causes the nicotine base to ionise and the charged form is absorbed much more slowly. Both 2- and 4-mg formulations are available. Eight to 10 gums per day should be recommended, but are often difficult to chew. Treatment for 3–6 months is recommended, but some smokers will substitute gum for smoking and sustain their addiction with gum.
· Transdermal nicotine system or "patch" is applied to the skin in a nonhairy area of the torso or proximal area of the extremities. Each device contains an adhesive, a reservoir that contains nicotine and an impermeable backing. Nicotine diffuses from the reservoir through the skin and is absorbed into the capillary blood of the skin. Absorption is continuous and relatively slow. Several formulations are available. Transdermal nicotine reduces the intensity, but does not eliminate, withdrawal symptoms. Treatment with nicotine patches is generally recommended at "full dose" for 4–6 weeks. This is often followed by a tapering regimen for several additional weeks.
· Nicotine inhaler consists of a mouthpiece and a nicotine-containing cartridge. Nicotine is released when air is inhaled through the device. Most of the nicotine is deposited in the mouth and absorbed through the buccal mucosa. The device should not, therefore, be inhaled like a cigarette as very little nicotine will reach the lower respiratory tract. Because the nicotine is absorbed through the buccal mucosa, absorption is into the venous circulation. The device contains ~10 mg of nicotine, of which ~1 mg is released with ~100 inhalations.
· Nicotine nasal spray consists of an aqueous solution of nicotine. It is delivered by direct spray to the nasal mucosa [23]. One spray in each nostril delivers 1 mg of nicotine. The nicotine is absorbed into the venous blood in the nasal mucosa. Absorption, however, is relatively rapid with peak levels being achieved in ~10 min. This comes closest to that observed with smoking. As a result, the nicotine nasal spray has increased potential for prolonging nicotine dependence as compared to other nicotine replacement therapies. Local irritation is exceedingly common and can be severe, although most individuals are able to adjust to the local effects with continued use.
· Nicotine lozenges are the most recently approved formulation of nicotine as an aid for smoking cessation [24]. It is approved for over-the-counter use in the USA and is available in 2- and 4-mg nicotine doses. The smoker is allowed to select the dose based on the time from awakening to the first cigarette, a measure of intensity of addiction. Those who use a cigarette within 30 min of awakening are advised to use the 4-mg nicotine dose. Dosing is recommended at nine lozenges per day, one every 1–2 h for up to 6 weeks, followed by tapering of daily use with discontinuation after 6 months.
· Combined modality treatment with several formulations, while not approved by regulatory agencies, has been reported to improve efficacy. Retreatment after a failed attempt can be successful. Treatment is generally started on the quit day. Variable durations of treatment have been suggested. Nicotine replacement can be discontinued abruptly, but gradual tapering is generally preferred. Concurrent cardiac disease should always engender caution, but evidence does not demonstrate an increase in acute cardiac events with the use of nicotine replacement.
· Bupropion is a non-nicotine drug previously approved for use as an anti-depressant .
o It approximately doubles quit rates compared to placebo.
o Treatment is usually initiated at 150 mg daily and increased to 150 mg twice daily after 3 days, if tolerated.
o The quit day should be after 1 week of treatment.
o Treatment is generally continued for 7–12 weeks.
o Bupropion may be more effective than nicotine replacement therapy for individuals with a past history of depression.
o It may also be useful for those concerned about weight gain since it has been shown to delay but not prevent weight gain during cessation.
o Bupropion may cause insomnia and dry mouth. It has been reported to cause seizure in patients with known history of seizure disorder.
o Bupropion can be combined with nicotine replacement treatment, although this may lead to worsening of hypertension.
o Contraindications include increased seizure risk, bulimia, concurrent use of monoamine oxidase inhibitors or a bupropion preparation for depression.
Second-line treatments
· Clonidine has been evaluated in several trials, and while results are equivocal, efficacy is supported by a meta-analysis.
· Nortriptyline is also supported by two studies. Neither second-line treatment currently has an indication for smoking cessation approved by regulatory agencies, but both are approved for other indications and may be used by the experienced clinician "off label" for smoking cessation. Use of other medications for smoking cessation is not supported by currently available data.
8. Harm Reduction
For the smoker who is unable or unwilling to quit, there are few options. The concept that the toxic effects of smoking can be partially mitigated while smoking continues is termed harm reduction . Several strategies are possible, including partial nicotine replacement, substituting cigarettes for less harmful tobacco products and engineering the cigarette to produce less toxins. None of these approaches have been demonstrated to have clinical benefit.


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|Lexicon RT-10 Universal Disc Player
|Monday, 01 September 2003
Page 2 of 3
Many people can imagine that setting up a hybrid disc transport featuring DVD-Audio and SACD would be a confusing and frustrating task, and rightly so. Despite the additional cabling, digital and analogue outputs and a plethora of options in the onscreen menus, having to rely on two instruction manuals (one for the processor and the other for the disc transport, which are likely from separate manufacturers) can only make matters worse. Fortunately, the RT-10's User Guide, although lengthy, is well organized and clearly written, so that most people should be up and running in no time. I found the onscreen set-up menus to be quite familiar, since the RT-10, which is based on reliable and tested Pioneer OEM components, also utilizes its onscreen set-up menus and functionality.
Beginning with the audio, I connected the RT-10 to my preamp via the six RCA analogue outputs. These outputs would be used exclusively for DVD-Audio and SACD. Since the major record companies have yet to agree on a universal high-resolution output standard, listening to high-resolution music is only possible via the 5.1 analog outputs. While admittedly I am aware of no high-resolution audio player that is upgradeable once a standard becomes clear, it would have been nice for Lexicon's engineers to have been more proactive here and provide for a potential future upgrade of the RT-10. At the very least, they could design and provide a proprietary digital connection to the MC-8 and MC-12 controllers, much like Denon, Pioneer and Meridian have done with their products.
I also chose to connect the RT-10 to my processor through the balanced XLR digital audio output, using a Transparent Premium AES/EBU 110 Ohm Digital Link. Setting up the RT-10 in this way employs the digital-to-analog converters and processing capabilities in the Proceed AVP2 for music and movies and not those in the RT-10. This was a personal decision and one that you must reach through experimentation. I find the D/A converters and signal processing in the AVP2 with their silky smooth sound, incredible detail and full bottom end, to be superior to most on the market. Since most potential buyers of the RT-10 will be attracted foremost to its ability to play both DVD-Audio and SACD formats, my favoring the digital-to-analog conversion and processing capabilities of the Proceed AVP2 over the RT-10 for listening to compact discs and movies should not be construed as a criticism of the latter.
As far as video, I connected the RT-10 directly to my Fujitsu Plasmavision display via the BNC component video output. I did not test the S-video and composite video outputs, as most people who can afford an RT-10 will likely have a preamp, outboard processor or display with component video inputs. I did most of my viewing in progressive video mode directly to my display, but also tested the unit through my reference video processor, the Faroudja NRS-DVI. All the audio and video cables used in this review were from Transparent Cable.
Two Channel Music
At this point, I was ready and excited to give the RT-10 a vigorous workout. I began my evaluation with one of my favorite compact discs, Cake's Fashion Nugget (Capricorn Records). People not familiar with Cake have no doubt heard their lively rendition of Gloria Gaynor's 1978 disco classic "I Will Survive," which the RT-10 delivered with notable clarity. One of the most enjoyable things about Cake is lead singer John McCrea's unique voice and singing style, which sounded great through the RT-10. As I listened to "Open Book," I was amazed by the accurate placement of the tambourine, which seemingly sat out in space, neatly placed just off the left speaker. The RT-10 delivered Fashion Nugget as well, if not better than I have ever heard it before.
I decided next to spin the 30th Anniversary Edition compact disc of King Crimson's Discipline (Virgin Records). Simon Heyworth and Robert Fripp have been remixing and remastering many of King Crimson's albums, commemorating the band's 30th anniversary in 24-bit and HDCD. With each reissued compact disc that I purchased, the improvement in sound quality and dynamic range over the original release was so striking that I since have given away many of my King Crimson compact discs to friends and replaced them with Anniversary Editions. You can easily understand why I was disappointed that Lexicon did not include HDCD decoding in the RT-10.
In my opinion, Discipline is King Crimson's best modern work. Listening to "Frame by Frame" and "Matte Kudasai," Adrian Belew's vocals were gripping and placed squarely in front of the instrumentation, which took on an airy quality, leaving me nothing short of ecstatic. Throughout these tracks and the rest of the album, the RT-10 did an exceptional job articulating the attack of Bill Bruford's acoustic and electric drums, as well as the tonality of other various sounds and rhythms. It is no wonder the album's back cover simply refers to Bill Bruford's instrument simply as the Batterie. The RT-10 did Bruford great justice in this regard. The RT-10 was very strong on the title track, "Discipline," where the complex guitar and stick bass arrangement was easily heard with no muddy or blending effect between instruments in the arrangement. All I can say is that after listening to Discipline, the RT-10 left me eager to spend time getting to know my Crimson collection all over again.
Getting to DVD-Audio, I listened to Steely Dan's Everything Must Go (Reprise Records). Upon loading up the disc and navigating the menus via Lexicon's comfortable and well laid-out remote, I quickly made two discoveries. The first positive was a video ON/OFF toggle button on the top of the remote control. One of the great things about DVD-Audio is the accompanying pictures, lyrics and artwork on the disc to be enjoyed on your television while listening to the music. Unfortunately for those of us with plasma displays, these are still images and I was grateful to be able to shut them off from the comfort of my couch in fear that if I left those still images up too long they could burn my delicate screen. Many enthusiasts claim that it is also an advantage to shut off the video circuitry of the transport in order to avoid possible interference when listening to audio, although I have never been able to hear the benefit. The second discovery was that the RT-10's remote interfered with my Proceed AVP2. Initially, this was shocking, given that both Proceed and Lexicon are technically manufactured by Harman International. Several buttons on the RT-10 triggered the Proceed AVP2 into the main set-up menu, toggled the input selector or adjusted the balance of the main speakers. Lexicon indicated that the RT-10 remote was designed to control two players in the same system and that there was an alternative set of remote codes in the Advanced Setup Menu. After locating the simple instructions in the User Guide, I was able to successfully change the frequency of the remote and the RT-10 and eliminate the problem.
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have been entertaining audiences and making great music for over 30 years. I have been a big Steely Dan fan for a long time and while this album is in no way close to their best work, it is easily one of the very best recordings and mixes I have ever heard. Listening to it on DVD-Audio through the RT-10 gave me chills. It was one of those rare feelings you get when the experience is just right. The balance of the multi-channel surround mix on "Things I Miss the Most" was perfect. The background vocals, piano, trumpet and tenor saxophone in the rear channels clearly demonstrated the exceptional (read: near-reference) quality of the RT-10's DVD-Audio capabilities. What struck me the most about the RT-10 went way beyond the silky smooth sound of the music and the incredible separation and placement of every instrument; it was the effortless nature of the presentation itself. The opening chimes on "Godwhacker" moved around the room naturally and transparently, a testament to the imaging capability of the RT-10. The tone of Walter Becker's solo bluesy guitar had a roundness and fullness in the front speakers that added a sense of depth to the mix. Finally, Everything Must Go has fantastic bass. The RT-10 was able to squeeze the most out of my Sunfire True Mark IV subwoofer. Bass was deep and textured throughout the entire album. This DVD-Audio disc showed off the very best qualities of the RT-10 and is one I will keep handy for future DVD-Audio product reviews.
I later decided to spin Chicago's second album, Chicago (Rhino), which is now widely known as Chicago II and was originally released in 1969. Needless to say, as it is almost 35 years old and recently released on DVD-Audio, Chicago II would be a great test for the RT-10, and what better place to start than with Robert Lamm's classic "25 or 6 to 4"? The song has a lot of energy and I was immediately struck by the vast increase in dynamic range and clarity over the original record. The driving beat of Daniel Seraphine's drums, the thickly vocaled choruses and signature brass came to life with extraordinary vigor through the RT-10. Terry Kath's guitar solo, with its dark tone and nimble, bluesy riffs, was delivered with exceptional clarity and I was able to hear every note with precise detail. On the short but catchy "Wake Up Sunshine," the beautifully arranged vocals took on a natural feel and I was inclined to listen to it several times, hearing new nuances in the music with each listen. Finally, no self-respecting Chicago fan can write about Chicago II and overlook "Make Me Smile." The staccato horns in the opening moments were punchy in the front and rear channels and the tambourine was placed accurately in the left channel. It was at this point that I found it hard to imagine how any player at this price or even for thousands more could have made Chicago II sound any better as did the RT-10. The music certainty made me smile.
It was time to give Santana's Abraxas SACD (Sony Music Entertainment) a spin. This two-channel stereo SACD is Santana's most popular album, and for good reason, despite the critical backlash for the 5.1 CD mix that was created from an old quad mix of the record. I began my listening with the forever popular "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen," where the percussion was thick, Santana's signature melodic guitar was clear as a bell and the vocals had remarkable transparency. While much of this is in the quality of the recording and the mix, the RT-10 brought out the best in the music, leaving nothing between Santana's emotional message and my ears. I must admit that listening to Abraxas in two-channel stereo was slightly disappointing as I kept imagining how remarkable a multi-channel remix would sound through the RT-10. The opportunity for an aggressive mix featuring percussion in each distinct channel is seemingly endless with music this full of life and texture. And this could be no truer than on "Oye Como Va," which is nothing short of a rhythmic masterpiece. It is one of my all-time favorite Santana songs. Right from the beginning, the mood is set with the organ placed slightly off center, congas to the right and percussion to the left. The RT-10's canny ability to cleanly image with precise detail was demonstrated here. The song returns to this familiar groove throughout the track, including during the organ and guitar solos, always maintaining a balance and fullness that I enjoyed. My impression of the RT-10's SACD capability was excellent, and I give it very high marks for this.

subset: commoncrawl


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Alan Mason will spend another weekend in jail, even though Dallas Police say he is no longer a person of interest in the South Dallas rape investigation.
"It's probably one of the worst weeks of my life. I'm glad it's almost over," Mason said Friday from the Dallas County Jail.
The 29-year-old insurance agent was arrested at his Arlington apartment last weekend after Dallas Police Chief David Brown named Mason as "person of interest" on Twitter.
U.S. & World
An informant fingered Mason, but DNA tests later linked 38-year-old Van Dralan Dixson to several of the sexual assaults.
The DNA tests cleared Mason.
Nine women were raped since June in the area east and south of Dallas Fair Park.
"The women are the true victims," Mason said. "I don't want to take any attention from what happened to them because that was way worse than what I'm going through."
Mason remains jailed for an outstanding DUI probation violation but he believes the time he is serving in jail will satisfy that case by Monday.
He might never have wound up in jail for that case if not for the rape investigation.
His grandmother Shirley Clerkley is upset that police have not apologized. She worries Mason's good reputation will be tarnished by the incorrect connection to a rape investigation.
"He's not that type of guy. He's a real good guy. He's respected wherever he goes and he respects other people," she said.
Mason is considering a lawsuit over what happened, but he believes his job will still be waiting for him and he's hoping to get his regular life back in order.
"First step is to get out of here, go to the barbershop, get my appearance back right, visit my daughter, go to my grand mother's house, eat dinner," he said.
Dixson was arrested in Louisiana this week. He will be transferred to the Dallas County Jail at some future date.


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Main Page
Welcome to: WVRailroads, your source for information on West Virginia's railroads, past and present. In addition, you'll also find info and links to model railroading, train excursions, photos and more.
West Virginia Railroad Categories
Multimedia : Photos: Videos: Sounds: Gallery of New Images
Scale Drawings (RR subjects): Coal Mining
Articles (RR subjects)
Railroad Companies (present-day):
Tourist, Excursion & Dinner Trains
Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) steam locomotive No.. 611, "The Spirit of Roanoke", arrived home in Roanoke on Saturday, May 30, 2015, pulling into the former N&W Passenger Station (currently the O. Winston Link Museum) in Roanoke, Virginia (VA) with 18 passenger cars in tow, having traveled about 200 miles from Spencer, North Carolina (NC) where the Class J passenger locomotive had been restored.
Click the video at right to view a compilation of videos taken on May 30, 2015 showing N&W Class J No.611 steam locomotive running through various towns between Spencer, NC and Roanoke, VA on her homecoming trip back to the city of her birth.
Visit FireUp611.org and the Virginia Museum of Transportation for the latest news about #611.
WV Railroads @ Blogger
Our newest sister website, SteamSoundz, features steam locomotive enginesound sound effect files, e-specs, and content for Trainz Simulator.
And don't forget to check out the blog edition of WV Railroads @ Blogger, which features news, editorials, and information about the railroad lines and operations in West Virginia and the greater Appalachian region
Riding the Virtual RailsThe blog edition of WV Railroads provides additional information on our video series, "Riding the Virtual Rails". The videos in this series are produced using Auran's Trainz Simulator software and feature West Virginia railroad related themes.
Visit the WV Railroads Photos section to browse the images online our new photo gallery. Although currently under construction, we'll be adding many more photos to the gallery during the coming weeks.


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South Carolina Cash for Clunkers
Find out in just a few minutes. Call for a free, no obligation quote anytime 24/7 or use the online form below: 2002 and NEWER vehicles only:
1-855-241-1258 Call now for a cash offer.
2001 and OLDER vehicles only:
UsedCarOffers.com - Get an anonymous cash offer online
1-855-381-5949 Call now for a cash offer. Donate your Car to Charity
Free towing, possible tax deduction and a free vacation voucher while helping children in need. Any year model / any condition wanted. Both running and non-running cars are accepted.
Visit DonateaCar.org Want to save time on your quote? Have your VIN handy. Your VIN is your Vehicle ID Number and is located on your Vehicle Title, Registration Card, Insurance Card and on your car (usually in lower left windshield or doorjamb of driver side).


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KPMG Greece
KPMG is a CCH Tagetik reseller in Greece and Cyprus
Operating in Greece for the last 40 years, KPMG offers audit, tax, advisory and bookkeeping services to domestic and international businesses in Greece and abroad. Operating in Athens and Thessaloniki, KPMG employs around 400 high caliber professionals, most of who hold post-graduate degrees and possess significant specialized expertise. KPMG is an ISO 9001: 2015 certified advisory firm by the Lloyd's Register and has its own additional internal International Quality and Risk Management system. With sustained growth and major expansion plans, KPMG continues to maintain its leading position in the Greek market.
Join the CCH Tagetik Partner Network!
Deliver the results your clients expect as well as generate new business.
Let's win together!


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Colorado on the world stage for first presidential debate
Colorado, the "swingiest of the swing states," was on center stage this week as a panel in Washington looked its politics and demographics before the upcoming presidential debate at the University of Denver on Oct. 3.
"This year Colorado has the potential to change the presidential election," said Rowena Alegria, spokeswoman for Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who delivered the welcome.
The panelists included DU professors, Dick Wadhams, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, and Guy Cecil, who helped Democrat Michael Bennet win the U.S. Senate race in 2010. Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary for President Clinton moderated the panel, which met Monday. The discussion, which lasted an hour, included talk about immigration, voter turnout and whether debates change people's minds. The discussion can be viewed on C-SPAN.
Wadhams said it's a "myth" that Colorado used to be a reliably red state, pointing out Democrats held the governor's office for 24 years before Republican Bill Owens won it in 1998.


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|By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
|November 9, 2011 08:00 AM EST
With Cloud Expo Silicon Valley (9th Cloud Expo) beginning its final two days at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, let's remind you in greater detail about all the the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT?
Just click on the speaker name of your choice to go straight to the relevant Cloud Expo Speaker Profile.
Brett Adam - CTO at rPath
Michael Adams - GPM at VMware
Brian Adler - Sr. Professional Services Architect at RightScale
Rahul Akolkar - Services Cloud Platform team at IBM
Allen Allison - Chief Security Officer at NaviSite
Karl Anderson - CTO at 2600hz
Dave Asprey - VP of Cloud Security at Trend Micro
Drew Bartkiewicz - CEO & Founder of CloudInsure
Kia Behnia - CTO at BMC
Michael Behrens - CTO of R2AD
Kunal Bhasin - Deputy CTO at Terracotta
Darryl S. Brown - Director of Cloud, SaaS & Media at Telx
Patrick Bryant - Product Manager at Racemi
Greg Bybee - Graduate Student at Stanford University
Dipto Chakravarty - Vice President of Worldwide Engineering at NetIQ
Trevor Chamberlin - VP Business Development at Abiquo
Scott Chasin - CTO Content & Cloud Security at McAfee
Wesley Chun - Sr. Developer Advocate at Google
Lewis Cirne - Founder & CEO of New Relic
Anna Claiborne - Chair, Security Working Group in the Open Data Center Alliance
Richard Cocchiara - CTO for Business Continuity at IBM
Peter Coffee - VP and Head of Platform Research at Salesforce.com
Rob Collazo - Customer Advocate at Rackspace Hosting
Michael Collier - National Architect at Neudesic
Chad Collins - VP of Strategy at HighJump Software
Bart Copeland - President & CEO of ActiveState Software
Joseph Corvaia - VP Solution Engineering at Broadview Networks
Terry Cunnigham - President and General Manager of i365
Winston Damarillo - CEO at Morphlabs
Vincent DiMemmo - General Manager, Global Cloud & IT Services at Equinix
Brian Patrick Donaghy is CEO of Appcore
Jamie Dos Santos - President & CEO, Terremark Federal Group
John Engates - Chief Technology Officer of Rackspace
Alistair Farquharson - CTO at SOA Software
Henry Fastert - Chief Technologist & Managing Partner at SHI
George Gerchow - Director at VMware
Jamie Dos Santos - President & CEO, Terremark Federal Group
Rick German - Co-founder, CEO & CTO of Stoneware
Bernard Golden - CEO of HyperStratus
Gautam Goswami - Sr. Director & GM of BIRT onDemand at Actuate
Jocelyn DeGance Graham - Founder, Cloud Network of Women (CloudNOW)
Sean Hackett - Cloud Computing Research Director at The 451 Group
Andrew Hillier - CTO at CiRBA
Mark Hinkle - Director, Cloud Computing Community at Citrix
Jeff Hobbs is Director of Engineering at ActiveState
Vikas Jain - Director of Product Management at Intel
Tyler Jewell - VP, Product Management & Strategy, Oracle Public Cloud
Marc Jones - Director of Product Innovation for SoftLayer
Das Kamhout - Lead for the Intel IT Cloud Program
Fima Katz - President & CEO of Exadel
John Keagy - CEO & Founder at GoGrid
Michael Kopp - Technology Strategist at dynaTrace
Matt Krebs - Business Development Mgr. at Axis Communications
Misha Kuperman - VP Operations & Infrastructure at Cotendo
Rich Lechner - Vice President, Energy & Environment at IBM
Jae Lee - Director of Product Management at Vyatta
Tom Leyden - Director of Business Development at Amplidata
Sheng Liang - CTO Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix Systems
Jason Lieblich - Founder & CEO of Exoprise Systems
David S. Linthicum - Founder & CTO of Blue Mountain Labs
Kristin Lovejoy - VIP of IT Risk at IBM
Bill Lowry - Vice President, Cloud Services at Terremark
Blake Madden - Technology Evangelist with Spoon.net
Dante Malagrinò - Co-Founder & CEO of Embrane
Pete Malcolm - CEO at Abiquo
Ross Mason - CTO & Founder at MuleSoft
Tim Mather - Advisory Director at KPMG
Joshua McKenty - Co-Founder & CEO at Piston Cloud Computing
Mårten Mickos - CEO of Eucalyptus Systems
Krisztian Mizser - Manager, Global Hosting at Sony Computer Entertainment America
Justin Moore - Founder & CEO of Axcient
Diane Mueller - Director, Enterprise Product Management at ActiveState
Louis Naugès - Co-Founder & Chief Cloud Evangelist at Revevol
Christine Normile - Sr. Product Manager at TransLattice
Rick Nucci - Co-Founder & CTO of Dell Boomi
Greg O'Connor - Founder & CEO of AppZero
Toby Owen - Sr. Manager for Hybrid Cloud Solutions at Rackspace Hosting
Rob Paddon - Business Development Manager for TelecityGroup
Pavan Pant, Director of Product Management, Cloudswitch
AB Periasamy - Co-Founder & CTO of Gluster
Chris Pettey - Co-Founder & CTO of NextIO
David Piontek - VP Support and Services at Abiquo
Govind Rangasamy - Director of Product Management at Eucalyptus Systems
Dave Roberts - VP of Strategy at ServiceMesh
Francisco Romero - Director of Corporate Analytics at SoftLayer
Paulo Rosado - Founder & CEO of OutSystems
Dina Rosenberg - Director of Hosted Solutions at Broadview Networks
Ken Rutsky - Principal Consultant, KJR Associates
Treb Ryan - Co-Founder & CEO at OpSource
Raj Sabhlok - President of Zoho Corp
Akhil Sahai - VP of Product Management at Gale Technologies
Jeffrey SanMarco - Director of Research & Development at StrataScale
Vijay Sarathy - Director, Cloud BU at Red Hat
Scott Scheflin - Manager of Emerging Solutions at Deloitte Consulting
Melissa Siems - Sr. Director, Cloud Security, McAfee
Hidayatullah Shaikh - Sr. Technical Staff Member & Sr Manager at IBM
Sinclair Schuller - CEO at Apprenda
Joseph Seibel - CFO & Vice President of Strategic Development at Hexagrid
Ryan Sherstobitoff - Independent Security Researcher
Melissa Siems - Sr. Director, Cloud Security at McAfee
Jill Tummler Singer - CIO for the National Reconnaissance Office
Duke Skarda - CTO at SoftLayer
Mark Skilton - Global Director, Infrastructure Services at Capgemini
Anthony Skipper - VP at ServiceMesh
M.C. Srivas - CTO & Co-Founder of MapR Technologies
Richard Stone - Sr. Solutions Mgr, Cloud Computing & Mobile at Compuware
Ravi Subramaniam - Principal Engineer at Intel
Becky Swain - Silicon Valley Chapter Board at Cloud Security Alliance
Fred Tanzella - CEO & Chairman of Cirracore
Byron Tatsumi - Director at KPMG
Willie Tejada - Sr VP Enterprise Cloud Division at Akamai Technologies
James Thomason - CTO at Gale Technologies
Thomas Trappler - Director of Software Licensing at UCLA
Peder Ulander - VP of Product Marketing, Cloud Platform Group at Citrix Systems
Jason Waxman - GM of the Cloud Infrastructure Group at Intel
James Weir - CTO & Co-Founder of UShareSoft
John Weston - Cloud IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft
Marc Wilkinson - Director, Cloud Global Practice at HP
Craig Winter - CEO at GenuFi
Rich Wolski - CTO & Co-Founder of Eucalyptus Systems
Terry Woloszyn - Founder / CTO at PerspecSys
Joshua Woodruff - Senior Director of Technical Operations at Zuora
Mark Worsey - CIO & EVP Technology at GoGrid
Adam Wray - President & CEO at Tier 3
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Haha! Figured you'd end up here eventually. :3I assume as the school doctors would be playing a minor role, that the characters doing so would be able to play a student and/or teacher. Well, I assumed everyone would be able to play two characters or more if they wanted, not all just students. n.n
Hee hee, the more Combicon and I discuss it the less like a school it gets and more like a sort of exclusive BDSM club, but we do want some teacher/student dynamics and we do want 'lessons' though these may be more in the way of demonstrations and roleplays, such as "three into one will go", "how to deep throat", "rape scene", "how to use a riding crop" and so on.EDIT: We need more ladies. :(
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Reds looking forward to matchup of aces
CINCINNATI -- The Reds and Nationals still had a game to play before Sunday's matchup of Washington ace Stephen Strasburg and his Cincinnati counterpart, Johnny Cueto. But that didn't keep folks from talking about the showdown.
Strasburg's appearance will be his first against the Reds since beating them on July 21, 2010, his last win before undergoing Tommy John surgery that cost him most of the 2011 season and led to his innings limit in 2012. Somebody mentioned to Reds manager Dusty Baker before Saturday's game that his team has been lucky to miss the right-handed phenom up to now.
"Maybe he's been one who's been lucky," Baker said with a coy smile.
Baker pointed out that his starter isn't too shabby, either. Cueto went 19-9 with a 2.78 ERA in a league-leading 33 starts last season, and allowed just three hits and one run over seven innings before leaving with a no-decision on Opening Day.
At the same time, Strasburg's talent can't be denied. The No 1 overall pick in the 2009 First-Year Player Draft, who was shut down after going 15-6 with a 3.16 ERA in 28 starts last season, showed no signs of rust while pitching seven scoreless innings against Miami on Opening Day.
"He's a good one," Baker admitted. "There are other guys you'd pick before him to face, but you can't look too far ahead."


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Cutting Social Security will not solve the problems of the national debt or the deficit. Funding for Social Security comes from a separate payroll tax, not from the general fund, which is primarily paid for with individual and corporate income taxes. According to the website Social Security Works, in 2011, Social Security ran a $68 billion surplus, while the general fund ran a $1.4 trillion deficit (strengthensocialsecurity.org).
As Dean Baker from the Center for Economic and Policy Research put it in The Atlantic in an article titled "Nine Misconceptions about Social Security": "Social Security is a social-insurance program, not a welfare program. People pay into it during their working lives. They have a right to expect something in return, just as they expect interest payments when they buy a government bond."
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is going back on its campaign promises not to cut Social Security. Congress and the President are now discussing tying Social Security payments to the Chained CPI, a different method of calculating price levels of consumer goods and services. Doing this will result in 3 percent cuts in Social Security benefits for those who have been retired 10 years, 6 percent after 20 years, and 9 percent after 30 years.
Baker points out that the vast majority of seniors are already not doing well because our defined benefit pension system is disappearing, 401(k)s have not come close to filling the gap, and retirees lost much of their home equity in the 2008 housing crash.
In addition, Baker reminds us that cutting social security is bad for the economy (in truthout.org on Jan. 14, 2013) because it will slow growth and cost us jobs.
Instead, Baker proposes taxing Wall Street speculation, which could raise almost $40 billion a year.
There are dozens of other ways to cut debt and balance the budget. Cutting military by 50 percent and ending fossil fuel subsidies are at the top of my list.
This Saturday, there will be a rally to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and essential elements of the social safety net at noon at the Boulder County Courthouse, at 14th and Pearl Streets. Please attend. Also contact your Congress people (you'll find contact info at congress.org) and let them know how you feel about preserving important programs for the most vulnerable people in our society.
Carolyn Bninski is on the staff of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. You can contact her at email@example.com.


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Stylish cotton ceiling lampshade that is original and minimalistic. Modern patterns are silkscreened on to cotton to create a light and natural look. The lamp features a bamboo structure which makes this product collapsible and easy to post. Ideal for anyone who would like to bring joy in to their home.
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DUBAI (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Aramco's trading unit started swapping the kingdom's crude oil for products refined in other countries, allowing the company to tap new markets, according to its CEO.
The company has supplied crude to refiners in the Mediterranean region and gotten fuel in return, Ibrahim Al-Buainain, CEO of Saudi Aramco Products Trading Co., said Wednesday by phone. The refined products have been sold in Europe, North Africa and the west coast of Saudi Arabia, and the aim is to do more of the processing deals, Al-Buainain said.
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The global bioethanol market is estimated at USD 53.19 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 68.95 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.3% from 2017 to 2022. The market is driven by the increased demand for bioethanol from various end-use industry segments, such as transportation, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, alcoholic beverages, and others. The transportation end-use industry segment led the global bioethanol market, in terms of volume, in 2016.
Download PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=131222570Major Growth Drivers:
Starch-based feedstock is estimated to be the largest feedstock type in the global bioethanol market.
The starch-based segment is estimated to be the largest feedstock segment of the global bioethanol market. This feedstock type uses corn, barley, wheat, and other starch raw materials as feedstocks to produce bioethanol. Corn has the highest percentage of starch, about 70-72%. The growth in this segment is attributed to the rising demand from Asia Pacific and South America and the wide variety of feedstocks that can be used to produce starch-based bioethanol. The feedstocks used are available in almost all over the world.
Alcoholic beverages segment is estimated to be the fastest growing end-use industry segment of the global bioethanol market.
Among end-use industries, the alcoholic beverages segment is estimated to be the fastest growing end-use segment of the global bioethanol market. The growth of this segment is attributed to the increasing purchasing power in developing countries and the growing acceptance of drinking alcoholic beverages in some cultures.
North America contributes as the largest market of bioethanol
In 2016, North America accounted for largest share of the bioethanol market. Currently, the US is the largest market for bioethanol in North America, and is expected to continue to be the largest market till 2022. In the US, the demand for bioethanol is expected to increase due to the increasing government and environment regulations in the country. Regulations such as the Federal Reformulated Gasoline (RFG) and E15 regulations contribute to the growing use of bioethanol in fuels. The other driving factor for the bioethanol market is the low price of corn, which is a prime feedstock used in the production of bioethanol in the country. Many bioethanol manufacturers are based in this region.
Key companies profiled in the global bioethanol market research report include Archer Daniels Midland Company (US), POET LLC (US), Green Plains (US), Valero Energy Corporation (US), Flint Hills Resource (US), Abengoa Bioenergy SA (Spain), Royal Dutch Shell plc (Netherlands), Pacific Ethanol, Inc. (US), Petrobras (Brazil), and The Andersons (US).
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Natural gas
Electricity, coal, renewables, and emissions
Many of Indonesia's oil and gas fields, both on and offshore, are coming to the end of their commercially viable operational lifespan. More than 60% of Indonesia's oil and more than 30% of gas production comes from late-life-cycle resources spread across the world's largest island country. Despite investment and use of enhanced oil field recovery measures, as well as increasing automation to extend the economic lifespan of these assets, decommissioning will soon become necessary.
However Indonesia, like many countries new to the prospect of decommissioning energy infrastructure, face many key technological, fiscal, environmental, regulatory and industrial capacity issues, which need to be addressed by both government and industry decision makers.
This report, commissioned by the consulting and advisory arm of London and Aberdeen based Precision Media & Communications, aims to take a look at many of the issues Indonesia and other South East Asian oil producing nations are likely to face with the prospect of decommissioning the region's oil and gas aging energy infrastructure both onshore and offshore... To find out more Click here


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Have you visited ProfessorBainbridge.com before? It's a blog hosted by a corporate law professor, but every now and then (pardon the incoming pun) he corks off a rather fine wine review, and recently, he wrote a post about our 1994 Monte Bello that I quite enjoyed.
You can read the full post here, but one thing I specifically wanted to note was the dish he paired with this wine when he served it: Lamb Chops with Mint Salsa Verde! Sounds extraordinary. The recipe comes from Saveur.com, and you can find it here. Oddly enough, Saveur.com recommended pairing the dish with a "high-acid, ultracrisp white", which the good professor disparages as being "absurd." I have to say, I think I'm on the professor's side with this one! Anyone out there have other pairing suggestions for the 1994 Monte Bello? Enquiring minds want to know!
Categories: Bordeaux varietals, Food & Wine Pairing, Monte Bello, Tasting Notes, Varietals & Blends, Viticultural Salmagundi


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I know. I know. It's December and everyone has holiday baking on the brain, but my girl turns 6 today and I am committed to enthusiastically celebrating her birthday despite its being smack dab in the middle of the holiday gauntlet.
As her birthday approached, Lilah informed me that she wanted cupcakes with blue frosting. While this description may not sound immediately appealing, I was determined to bake a dreamy cupcake to please the birthday girl and myself at the same time.
The cake recipe is from Pamela's site and it's damn good. If you are gluten-free or need to bake a treat for gluten-free friends on their birthday, give these cupcakes a try and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised and so will they. I guess you could even bring some to a holiday party - everyone is loving cupcakes these days.
- 2 cups Pamela's Pancake and Baking Mix
- 1/2 stick butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Preheat oven to 350.
Separate egg yokes from whites. Whip whites with a mixer until they form stiff peaks.
In a separate bowl blend butter, Pamela's mix, and sugar. Mix on medium speed for 1 minute. Then add 1/4 cup milk, vanilla and almond extracts. Again mix on medium for a minute. Then add remaining milk and egg yokes, and mix for one more minute. Finally, fold in stiffened egg whites.
Pour batter into cupcake papers until they are just over half full. Bake for about 20-25 minutes. Touch the centers to see if they spring back; if so, they are ready.
When I read about buttercream frosting recipes, they all seemed unnecessarily complicated for my needs. I remembered making a very simple frosting last year but couldn't recall where I had found the recipe, though I had a vague recollection it was from a old C & H box. Yep, there is was. We are talking old-school: well, I guess that is the point with cupcakes and frosting. Here's my interpretation:
- 3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 6 tablespoons butter, softened
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- heavy cream
- a few drops of food coloring, if desired
Cream together butter, sifted powdered sugar, and vanilla. Then slowly drizzle in cream (a few tablespoons perhaps) until you reach the perfect consistency. Add a few drops of food-coloring if you are so inclined.
When cupcakes have cooled, spread frosting over top of each one. Add sprinkles. Live a little. They are cupcakes, right?
makes approximately 18 cupcakes


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The television show "Deadliest Catch" depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, "Dirty Jobs," shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive.
Is there a more "real" alternative (short of inseminating turkeys)?
High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become "knowledge workers." The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.
When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy's poem "To Be of Use," which concludes with the lines "the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real." Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.
This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics' trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people aren't buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The
If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn't really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. One shop teacher suggested to me that "in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged."Continue reading the main story
A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive
The trades suffer from low prestige, and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid. This is not my experience. I have a small business as a motorcycle mechanic in
After finishing a Ph.D. in political philosophy at the
I called Fred, and he invited me to come to his independent motorcycle-repair shop, tucked discreetly into an unmarked warehouse on Goose Island. He told me to put the motor on a certain bench that was free of clutter. He checked the electrical resistance through the windings, as I had done, to confirm there was no short circuit or broken wire. He spun the shaft that ran through the center of the motor, as I had. No problem: it spun freely. Then he hooked it up to a battery. It moved ever so slightly but wouldn't spin. He grasped the shaft, delicately, with three fingers, and tried to wiggle it side to side. "Too much free play," he said. He suggested that the problem was with the bushing (a thick-walled sleeve of metal) that captured the end of the shaft in the end of the cylindrical motor housing. It was worn, so it wasn't locating the shaft precisely enough. The shaft was free to move too much side to side (perhaps a couple of hundredths of an inch), causing the outer circumference of the rotor to bind on the inner circumference of the motor housing when a current was applied. Fred scrounged around for a Honda motor. He found one with the same bushing, then used a "blind hole bearing puller" to extract it, as well as the one in my motor. Then he gently tapped the new, or rather newer, one into place. The motor worked! Then Fred gave me an impromptu dissertation on the peculiar metallurgy of these Honda starter-motor bushings of the mid-'70s. Here was a scholar.
Over the next six months I spent a lot of time at Fred's shop, learning, and put in only occasional appearances at the university. This was something of a regression: I worked on cars throughout high school and college, and one of my early jobs was at a
As it happened, in the spring I landed a job as executive director of a policy organization in
Seeing a motorcycle about to leave my shop under its own power, several days after arriving in the back of a pickup truck, I don't feel tired even though I've been standing on a concrete floor all day. Peering into the portal of his helmet, I think I can make out the edges of a grin on the face of a guy who hasn't ridden his bike in a while. I give him a wave. With one of his hands on the throttle and the other on the clutch, I know he can't wave back. But I can hear his salute in the exuberant "bwaaAAAAP!" of a crisp throttle, gratuitously revved. That sound pleases me, as I know it does him. It's a ventriloquist conversation in one mechanical voice, and the gist of it is "Yeah!"
After five months at the think tank, I'd saved enough money to buy some tools I needed, and I quit and went into business fixing bikes. My shop rate is $40 per hour. Other shops have rates as high as $70 per hour, but I tend to work pretty slowly. Further, only about half the time I spend in the shop ends up being billable (I have no employees; every little chore falls to me), so it usually works out closer to $20 per hour — a modest but decent wage. The business goes up and down; when it is down I have supplemented it with writing. The work is sometimes frustrating, but it is never irrational.
And it frequently requires complex thinking. In fixing motorcycles you come up with several imagined trains of cause and effect for manifest symptoms, and you judge their likelihood before tearing anything down. This imagining relies on a mental library that you develop. An internal combustion engine can work in any number of ways, and different manufacturers have tried different approaches. Each has its own proclivities for failure. You also develop a library of sounds and smells and feels. For example, the backfire of a too-lean fuel mixture is subtly different from an ignition backfire.
As in any learned profession, you just have to know a lot. If the motorcycle is 30 years old, from an obscure maker that went out of business 20 years ago, its tendencies are known mostly through lore. It would probably be impossible to do such work in isolation, without access to a collective historical
There is always a risk of introducing new complications when working on old motorcycles, and this enters the diagnostic logic. Measured in likelihood of screw-ups, the cost is not identical for all avenues of inquiry when deciding which hypothesis to pursue. Imagine you're trying to figure out why a bike won't start. The fasteners holding the engine covers on 1970s-era Hondas are Phillips head, and they are almost always rounded out and corroded. Do you really want to check the condition of the starter clutch if each of eight screws will need to be drilled out and extracted, risking damage to the engine case? Such impediments have to be taken into account. The attractiveness of any hypothesis is determined in part by physical circumstances that have no logical connection to the diagnostic problem at hand. The mechanic's proper response to the situation cannot be anticipated by a set of rules or algorithms.
There probably aren't many jobs that can be reduced to rule-following and still be done well. But in many jobs there is an attempt to do just this, and the perversity of it may go unnoticed by those who design the work process. Mechanics face something like this problem in the factory service manuals that we use. These manuals tell you to be systematic in eliminating variables, presenting an idealized image of diagnostic work. But they never take into account the risks of working on old machines. So you put the manual away and consider the facts before you. You do this because ultimately you are responsible to the motorcycle and its owner, not to some procedure.
Some diagnostic situations contain a lot of variables. Any given symptom may have several possible causes, and further, these causes may interact with one another and therefore be difficult to isolate. In deciding how to proceed, there often comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around the lift. The gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you, and this is where it gets interesting. What you need now is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules. For me, at least, there is more real thinking going on in the bike shop than there was in the think tank.
Put differently, mechanical work has required me to cultivate different intellectual habits. Further, habits of mind have an ethical dimension that we don't often think about. Good diagnosis requires attentiveness to the machine, almost a conversation with it, rather than assertiveness, as in the position papers produced on K Street. Cognitive
This active concern for the motorcycle is reinforced by the social aspects of the job. As is the case with many independent mechanics, my business is based entirely on word of mouth. I sometimes barter services with machinists and metal fabricators. This has a very different feel than transactions with money; it situates me in a community. The result is that I really don't want to mess up anybody's motorcycle or charge more than a fair price. You often hear people complain about mechanics and other tradespeople whom they take to be dishonest or incompetent. I am sure this is sometimes justified. But it is also true that the mechanic deals with a large element of chance.
I once accidentally dropped a feeler gauge down into the crankcase of a Kawasaki Ninja that was practically brand new, while performing its first scheduled valve adjustment. I escaped a complete tear-down of the motor only through an operation that involved the use of a stethoscope, another pair of trusted hands and the sort of concentration we associate with a bomb squad. When finally I laid my fingers on that feeler gauge, I felt as if I had cheated death. I don't remember ever feeling so alive as in the hours that followed.
Often as not, however, such crises do not end in redemption. Moments of elation are counterbalanced with failures, and these, too, are vivid, taking place right before your eyes. With stakes that are often high and immediate, the manual trades elicit heedful absorption in work. They are punctuated by moments of pleasure that take place against a darker backdrop: a keen awareness of catastrophe as an always-present possibility. The core experience is one of individual responsibility, supported by face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.
Contrast the experience of being a middle manager. This is a stock figure of ridicule, but the sociologist Robert Jackall spent years inhabiting the world of corporate managers, conducting interviews, and he poignantly describes the "moral maze" they feel trapped in. Like the mechanic, the manager faces the possibility of disaster at any time. But in his case these disasters feel arbitrary; they are typically a result of corporate restructurings, not of physics. A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain (and there is always someone higher up the food chain). It's important for your career that these reversals not look like defeats, and more generally you have to spend a lot of time managing what others think of you. Survival depends on a crucial insight: you can't back down from an argument that you initially made in straightforward language, with moral conviction, without seeming to lose your integrity. So managers learn the art of provisional thinking and feeling, expressed in corporate doublespeak, and cultivate a lack of commitment to their own actions. Nothing is set in concrete the way it is when you are, for example, pouring concrete.
Those who work on the lower rungs of the information-age office hierarchy face their own kinds of unreality, as I learned some time ago. After earning a master's degree in the early 1990s, I had a hard time finding work but eventually landed a job in the Bay Area writing brief summaries of academic journal articles, which were then sold on CD-ROMs to subscribing libraries. When I got the phone call offering me the job, I was excited. I felt I had grabbed hold of the passing world — miraculously, through the mere filament of a classified ad — and reeled myself into its current. My new bosses immediately took up residence in my imagination, where I often surprised them with my hidden depths. As I was shown to my cubicle, I felt a real sense of being honored. It seemed more than spacious enough. It was my desk, where I would think my thoughts — my unique contribution to a common enterprise, in a real company with hundreds of employees. The regularity of the cubicles made me feel I had found a place in the order of things. I was to be a knowledge worker.
But the feel of the job changed on my first day. The company had gotten its start by providing libraries with a subject index of popular magazines like Sports Illustrated. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, it now found itself offering not just indexes but also abstracts (that is, summaries), and of a very different kind of material: scholarly works in the physical and biological sciences, humanities, social sciences and law. Some of this stuff was simply incomprehensible to anyone but an expert in the particular field covered by the journal. I was reading articles in Classical Philology where practically every other word was in Greek. Some of the scientific journals were no less mysterious. Yet the categorical difference between, say, Sports Illustrated and Nature Genetics seemed not to have impressed itself on the company's decision makers. In some of the titles I was assigned, articles began with an abstract written by the author. But even in such cases I was to write my own. The reason offered was that unless I did so, there would be no "value added" by our product. It was hard to believe I was going to add anything other than error and confusion to such material. But then, I hadn't yet been trained.
My job was structured on the supposition that in writing an abstract of an article there is a method that merely needs to be applied, and that this can be done without understanding the text. I was actually told this by the trainer, Monica, as she stood before a whiteboard, diagramming an abstract. Monica seemed a perfectly sensible person and gave no outward signs of suffering delusions. She didn't insist too much on what she was telling us, and it became clear she was in a position similar to that of a veteran Soviet bureaucrat who must work on two levels at once: reality and official ideology. The official ideology was a bit like the factory service manuals I mentioned before, the ones that offer procedures that mechanics often have to ignore in order to do their jobs.
My starting quota, after finishing a week of training, was 15 articles per day. By my 11th month at the company, my quota was up to 28 articles per day (this was the normal, scheduled increase). I was always sleepy while at work, and I think this exhaustion was because I felt trapped in a contradiction: the fast pace demanded complete focus on the task, yet that pace also made any real concentration impossible. I had to actively suppress my own ability to think, because the more you think, the more the inadequacies in your understanding of an author's argument come into focus. This can only slow you down. To not do justice to an author who had poured himself into the subject at hand felt like violence against what was best in myself.
The quota demanded, then, not just dumbing down but also a bit of moral re-education, the opposite of the kind that occurs in the heedful absorption of mechanical work. I had to suppress my sense of responsibility to the article itself, and to others — to the author, to begin with, as well as to the hapless users of the database, who might naïvely suppose that my abstract reflected the author's work. Such detachment was made easy by the fact there was no immediate consequence for me; I could write any nonsense whatever.
Now, it is probably true that every job entails some kind of mutilation. I used to work as an electrician and had my own business doing it for a while. As an electrician you breathe a lot of unknown dust in crawl spaces, your knees get bruised, your neck gets strained from looking up at the ceiling while installing lights or ceiling fans and you get shocked regularly, sometimes while on a ladder. Your hands are sliced up from twisting wires together, handling junction boxes made out of stamped sheet metal and cutting metal conduit with a hacksaw. But none of this damage touches the best part of yourself.
You might wonder: Wasn't there any quality control? My supervisor would periodically read a few of my abstracts, and I was sometimes corrected and told not to begin an abstract with a dependent clause. But I was never confronted with an abstract I had written and told that it did not adequately reflect the article. The quality standards were the generic ones of grammar, which could be applied without my supervisor having to read the article at hand. Rather, my supervisor and I both were held to a metric that was conjured by someone remote from the work process — an absentee decision maker armed with a (putatively) profit-maximizing calculus, one that took no account of the intrinsic nature of the job. I wonder whether the resulting perversity really made for maximum profits in the long term. Corporate managers are not, after all, the owners of the businesses they run.
At lunch I had a standing arrangement with two other abstracters. One was from my group, a laconic, disheveled man named Mike whom I liked instantly. He did about as well on his quota as I did on mine, but it didn't seem to bother him too much. The other guy was from beyond the partition, a meticulously groomed Liberian named Henry who said he had worked for the
How was it that I, once a proudly self-employed electrician, had ended up among these walking wounded, a "knowledge worker" at a salary of $23,000? I had a master's degree, and it needed to be used. The escalating demand for academic credentials in the job market gives the impression of an ever-more-knowledgeable society, whose members perform cognitive feats their unschooled parents could scarcely conceive of. On paper, my abstracting job, multiplied a millionfold, is precisely what puts the futurologist in a rapture: we are getting to be so smart! Yet my M.A. obscures a more real stupidification of the work I secured with that credential, and a wage to match. When I first got the degree, I felt as if I had been inducted to a certain order of society. But despite the beautiful ties I wore, it turned out to be a more proletarian existence than I had known as an electrician. In that job I had made quite a bit more money. I also felt free and active, rather than confined and stultified.
A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.
Nor can big business or big government — those idols of the right and the left — reliably secure such work for us. Everyone is rightly concerned about economic growth on the one hand or unemployment and wages on the other, but the character of work doesn't figure much in political debate. Labor unions address important concerns like workplace safety and family leave, and management looks for greater efficiency, but on the nature of the job itself, the dominant political and economic paradigms are mute. Yet work forms us, and deforms us, with broad public consequences.
The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of
There is good reason to suppose that responsibility has to be installed in the foundation of your mental equipment — at the level of perception and habit. There is an ethic of paying attention that develops in the trades through hard experience. It inflects your perception of the world and your habitual responses to it. This is due to the immediate feedback you get from material objects and to the fact that the work is typically situated in face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.
An economy that is more entrepreneurial, less managerial, would be less subject to the kind of distortions that occur when corporate managers' compensation is tied to the short-term profit of distant shareholders. For most entrepreneurs, profit is at once a more capacious and a more concrete thing than this. It is a calculation in which the intrinsic satisfactions of work count — not least, the exercise of your own powers of reason.
Ultimately it is enlightened self-interest, then, not a harangue about humility or public-spiritedness, that will compel us to take a fresh look at the trades. The good life comes in a variety of forms. This variety has become difficult to see; our field of aspiration has narrowed into certain channels. But the current perplexity in the economy seems to be softening our gaze. Our peripheral vision is perhaps recovering, allowing us to consider the full range of lives worth choosing. For anyone who feels ill suited by disposition to spend his days sitting in an office, the question of what a good job looks like is now wide open.Continue reading the main story


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The Mt. Airy Art Garage (MAAG), a creative community center for emerging and professional artists in Northwest Philadelphia will host an opening reception and dedication of the Solomon Levy Gallery of Art on Friday, April 27 from 6 to 8 p.m.
The Gallery's first exhibit, "Travels Through Life," will feature the work of the late Sol Levy.
and will span his earliest landscapes through his most recent abstractions. Whether
capturing the grand terrain of Europe or a few inches of cracking paint on a city door, no scene
was too vast or insignificant for Levy's lens. All work will be for sale.
As MAAG's Vice President and founding Board member, Levy was instrumental in making
MAAG's dreams a reality. The gallery that will bear his name is in honor of his contributions toMAAG
Sol Levy's "Travels Through Life" will conitnue until May 20.
Regular hours are Thursday through Saturday, 12 to 6 p.m. and Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m.. Private appointments are available.
For further information, visit www.mtairyartgarage.org or call 215.242.5074.


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PORTSMOUTH — To those who worked with him at the Redhook Ale Brewery and pub in Portsmouth, Benjamin Harris was known as a wonderful man, dedicated colleague and friend to all who knew him, company officials said this week.
Harris died of injuries sustained when a pressurized beer keg he was cleaning exploded on Tuesday morning. Harris, who lived in Newington and grew up in Pennsylvania, was newly married and expecting a child.
The company announced on Thursday that a plastic beer keg was involved in the tragic accident, which occurred at about 7 a.m. on Tuesday, April 24.
In a statement, Vice President of Commercial Operations Andy Thomas expressed gratitude to the community for the support shown to Redhook employees and Harris' family and friends.
"We are grateful for the outpouring of support that we've received from the community after Tuesday's tragic accident in Portsmouth," Thomas wrote.
Harris had been a Redhook employee for more than seven years. He began working at the Cataqua Pub, and was most recently a part of Redhook's brewing operations team.
His wife, Alysha Miller, was also a server in the pub.
On Thursday, Thomas announced a fund has been established to benefit Harris' unborn child.
"Ben was a wonderful man, a dedicated member of our team and a friend to all who knew him," Thomas wrote. "We are heartbroken by this tragedy and are grieving with the family."
According to Thomas, the keg that ruptured and critically injured Harris was not owned or used by Redhook Brewery, nor was the keg owned by any other brewery operated by Craft Brew Alliance, Inc., Redhook's owner and operator.
Thomas said it is normal protocol for the brewery to receive kegs that aren't theirs from time to time. Thomas also confirmed that Harris was handling the keg at the time it exploded.
"It is extremely important to us that we understand exactly what happened before we share additional information about this tragedy," he wrote of the ongoing investigation into the industrial accident. "There is an evaluation in progress and we can assure you that we will issue further information when the report is complete."
"In the meantime, we ask for continued thoughts and prayers for Ben's family, friends, and everyone touched by this accident," Thomas added.
Built in 1996, Redhook's brewery at Pease Tradeport utilizes a 100-barrel brewing system and has an annual capacity of 215,000 barrels, according to the most recent annual report filed by Craft Brew Alliance, which operates the Redhook brand, as well as Widmer Brothers and Kona beers.
The company operates four "highly-automated, small-batch breweries," including the one in Portsmouth and other facilities in Hawaii, Oregon and Washington.
It also operates a small manual brewpub-style brewing system at the Rose Quarter Brewery in Portland, Ore..
Operations in Portsmouth came to a halt this week after the Tuesday industrial accident, and the pub remained closed through the middle of the week.
Dozens of Harris' colleagues attended visiting hours Thursday at the J. Verne Wood Funeral Home in Portsmouth. Among them was former coworker Amanda Telford, who remembered that Harris was always positive on the job. Telford left Redhook about two years ago, but returned to be with former coworkers and remember Harris.
"Once you're part of the Redhook family, you're always part of the Redhook family," she said.
"He was a very nice guy," said Sandy Kennedy, of York, Maine, who worked with Harris' sister in Portsmouth for several years before meeting Harris for the first time when he relocated to the Seacoast from Pennsylvania. "He was well-liked by everybody."
"We love him, and we're hurting," said a woman standing outside the funeral home during Thursday's wake. She identified herself as a member of the "Redhook family."
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at the Redhook Ale Brewery with a reception immediately following. Friends are invited.
The family asks that memorial contributions be made to: The Alysha Miller Harris Baby Fund c/o TD Bank, 20 International Drive, Portsmouth, NH, 03801. For more information, call 603-430-3812.
'Redhook family' grieves loss of coworker killed in keg explosion
PORTSMOUTH — To those who worked with him at the Redhook Ale Brewery and pub in Portsmouth, Benjamin Harris was known as a wonderful man, dedicated colleague and friend to all who knew him, company officials said this week.


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A part of our wausau originals, the downey floor plan features 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with a foot print of 52x66 feet and 1951 total square feet of living space.
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Howdy folks. I bet you are surprised to see this newspaper article. Well, like an old long lost relative that shows up when you win the lottery, I just keep on coming back.
I have been busy. I am working down in Farmington, New Mexico. In the last four years, I have worked in Colorado, California, Idaho and now New Mexico.
Not many small newspapers can match the San Juan Record for having a western states correspondent traveling the world to bring you the news. Oh, that's right I don't report the news, I make it up as I go.
This last weekend, I ran in a triathalon from hell. I have done a few dumb things in my life. Okay, I have done lots of dumb things in my life. But this time, I paid $50 to run a five mile race through the desert; one mile in a sandy wash bottom, one mile straight up a hill, one mile on cobble stone, one mile straight down a steep hill, and one mile around a lake on a trail where one misplaced foot and you would drop 50 feet into the water and drown or be eaten.
The only thing that makes me feel a little better is that I was able to convince two friends (now maybe former friends) to do the race with me.
Now that I live in New Mexico, several people call me a "New Mexican" which is better than being called an "old Mexican"; which is all I got when I was in Monticello.
Kind of interesting the state question of New Mexico is "Red or Green?", which of course, being from Utah, I thought referred to which color of Jello you wanted.
But alas, it refers to which kind of chili you want. And I mean you can get chili or Tabasco Sauce on just about everything down here.
The local McBurger even has an option to add chili. I do have to admit, it makes being away from my mom a little easier because they have pretty darn good chili down here.
In spite of being a "New Mexican", I feel like I am getting older. I have two grandkids and three more on the way. Apparently, they are producing like rabbits. I am a grandpa and my too kind and loving wife hasn't even trained me to put the toilet lid down when finished.
I am a pretty good grandpa though, as I can spoil and sugar those kids up with the best of them and we are both pretty happy to take a nap in the afternoon. I have not taught them to swear; although, that may come if I take them golfing.
I am looking forward to seeing people on the Pioneer Day celebration. It is time for the annual pre-class reunion "dump your plump" yo-yo diet.
We all have to try and lose a few pounds in time for the annual pilgrimage to the mother-land and the strut your stuff stroll in the Park on the 24th.
Listen, if you show up to the celebration with a good tan and a new girlfriend (named Eye-Candy Mandy), we are all going to know it's a big mid-life crisis.
So just be yourself and show up fat, dumb and happy listening to your 8-track tapes of the Doobie Brothers. However, you should definitely think about losing the mullet or lamb-chop side burns; neither is in any more.


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The Winter I Expected
Recently I sent a Facebook "Friend Request" to a high school classmate. He replied, "I don't think I can accept your friend request. You have too many pictures of snow/ice on your Facebook page …which leads me to think it … Continue reading
Posted in Drummond Island, Ice, Jeep, Michigan, Photography, Shelter Island, Upper Peninsula, Walk, Winter Tagged blizzard, camera, Drummond Island, ducks, goldeneye, hot chocolate, ice, Jeep, Lake Huron, Michigan, Nikon, Panasonic, photograph, photography, snow, snow day, Upper Peninsula, winter Leave a comment
Pulitzers, Trees, Winter, and Books
Although my book has been selling well, it apparently does not hold a candle to Gilbert King's Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. King's book won the 2013 nonfiction Pulitzer … Continue reading
Posted in Art of Winter book, Book, Michigan, Nature, Photography, Upper Peninsula, Winter, Woods, Writing Tagged Art of Winter, coffee table book, David Haskell, Drummond Island, gilbert king, island, nature, Unseen Forest, walk, winter Leave a comment
The Adventures of Hip Boots
One Saturday morning in mid-February, Hugh was working in town, so I had plenty of time to wander with my camera. The lake was calm so I decided it would be a great day to go for a stroll in … Continue reading
Posted in Michigan, Musings, Photography, Shelter Island, Walk, Water, Winter Tagged fishing hole, hip boots, hot chocolate, ice, Lake Huron, Muck boots, nature, outdoors, photography, walk, water, winter, wood stoves Leave a comment
I caught sunrise
With my husband out of town, I've been busy working on finishing two manuscripts. This has meant that I have been working undisturbed, between posting comments on Facebook and Twitter, until the moon has travelled far across the dark sky. … Continue reading
Posted in Michigan, Nature, Photography, Shelter Island, Sunrise, Winter Tagged camera, Canada, Drummond Island, ice, Lake Huron, Muck boots, water, winter, wood stoves 3 Comments
9 Day Solo Winter Wonderland Adventure
The sun is rising over a very calm Lake Huron. Today begins, not only a new year, but a new adventure and challenge for me. For the next nine days I'm home solo. This is the longest I'll have been … Continue reading
Posted in Birds, Book, Cooking, Ice, Jeep, Nature, Off the Grid, Photography, Shelter Island, Sunrise, Water, Winter, Wood splitting, Wood stove, Writing Tagged adventure, camera, cookstove, ice, Lake Huron, living off the grid, nature, outdoors, photography, snow, solar power, water, water conservation, winter, wood stoves 1 Comment


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Early Intervention Policy
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Closed for all County Holidays
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Phone# 210-223-2213
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The Bexar County Chronicle
First Quarter, 2017
Holiday Issue, 2016
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Third Quarter, 2015
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November 2014
July 2014
Rights to Grieve
Making a Statement
Your Garrity Rights
Drug & Urine Test
Stress, the (Detention) Correctional Officer's Silent Killer
How to be Calm Under Pressure
Leadership Is All About the Small Things
Why Officer Darren Wilson was'nt Indicted
Jail Officer arrested for trying to smuggle pot in Cheetos bag
Behind these Walls
A cop's shoot/no-shoot: When is a 'good decision' a 'deadly hesitation'?
A History of Women in Policing
Garrity Warnings: To Give or Not to Give, That Is the Question
The attack cascade: Engaging an offender before it's too late
Lying Under Garrity Immunity
10 Life Lessons to Change the World
Feds: Jail Mail Soaked With Drugs a Big 'Hit'
Longtime employees fired by Sheriff Salazar continue legal fight for their jobs
Bexar County deputies took a man into custody after chase
Special Ceremony for BCSO Graduates
BCSO substations coming to east, west Bexar County
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Arabic For Dummies Audio Set
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Learn how to speak and understand Modern Standard Arabic quickly and easily with Arabic For Dummies Audio Set, which allows you to practice your skills whether you're at home or on the road. From 3 hours of instructional material on 3 CDs, learn basic greetings, vocabulary, how to ask for directions, get help when you need it most, expressions, grammar, and other essentials that will allow you to start communicating right away. Follow along with the handy portable guide, which is filled with words and phrases that you'll hear on the CD.
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