text:
The trolls have had an easy time of it so far. Is this the end for them?
Against Monopoly
defending the right to innovate
Monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely.
Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom
Recording Industry vs. The People
Copyright Notice: We don't think much of copyright, so you can do what you want with the content on this blog. Of course we are hungry for publicity, so we would be pleased if you avoided plagiarism and gave us credit for what we have written. We encourage you not to impose copyright restrictions on your "derivative" works, but we won't try to stop you. For the legally or statist minded, you can consider yourself subject to a Creative Commons Attribution License.
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Hope for Small Defendants in Patent Cases Against the Trolls
Floyd Norris writes on patent trolls and the law link here. It is well-worth a read as it offers hope that the Supreme Court will reverse common practice in appeals where the winner doesn't get his legal fees paid by the loser. This practice has made it difficult for small defendants to cover their costs and makes them reluctant to fight the trolls even when they have a good case as their company may not survive.
The trolls have had an easy time of it so far. Is this the end for them?
[Posted at 10/22/2013 12:29 PM by John Bennett on Patent Trolls comments(0)]
Patent Reform Draft Examined
First, techdirt and then the Electronic Frontier Foundation examine the draft bill on patent reform introduced by House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte. Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20130923/17400624628/posturing-over-patent-reform-shows-how-young-companies-innovate-while-old-companies-litigate.shtml) looks at the sources of support for the proposal, mostly from startups that are innovators and are frequent critics of existing patents. Older firms which have an established position and may fear innovation are opposed. EFF's piece (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/troll-killing-patent-reform-one-step-closer) looks at the details and specifies what it likes in the draft, most of the bill's proposals. Given the balance of forces in the Congress, passage seems questionable but one can always hope.
[Posted at 09/29/2013 10:53 AM by John Bennett on Patent Trolls comments(0)]
Patent Troll "Intellectual Ventures" Proves Need for Patent Reform
Bartees Cox Jr. contrasts the company image and the public image of the patent troll, Intellectual Ventures (http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/two-sides-intellectual-ventures). He sums it up, "Intellectual Ventures is giving you the good side of the story. They say that they are champions of invention and they're quick to point out their health and medical research. Everyone else in the battle for patent reform sees the other side. The side that preys on businesses without penalty, that buys up patents to sue innovators building companies, and that ultimately keeps innovation at a standstill while raking in massive profits. Later, he writes, "Because when a company like Intellectual Ventures sits on technologies and patents, waiting for someone to independently make a product to become unintentional fodder for a lawsuit trap, there is no benefit to knowledge, consumers, or to society." Worth a read and thought about the purpose of patents and current experience and whether we wouldn't be better off without them.
[Posted at 09/22/2013 12:40 PM by John Bennett on Patent Trolls comments(0)]
The Times: You Can Get Your Invention on to the Store Shelf; Here's How
The other day, the New York Times published instructions for aspiring inventors on how to take their inventions through the patent granting process and on to the retailers' shelves link here. The examples are a couple of aspiring inventors and describes the pitfalls, the costs, and a rough estimate of the likelihood of success.
In the first example, the invention is a sun shade for a baby's stroller. The problem in this case was the number of thieves waiting to take the aspiring inventor's money without providing any service or charging an arm and a leg for minimal services. First lesson: know your help's history. Second lesson: you have to do a lot of the work yourself; it is hard to write a contract that specifies what is needed and to find a contractor who can provide it.
The second case is an inventor of a screw device to replace the broken one on the ear pieces of eyeglasses. The experience with companies who are selling consulting and other assistance is much the same as in the first case. The upfront costs of patenting and marketing are stiff and the need for added funding, often high.
The article seems to suggest that there is a growing number of successful inventor-developers and leaves the thought that with a bit of effort, you too can succeed. This does not account for the number who failed. Nor does the data cite the proportion that were brought to market by big companies who seem to dominate the marketplace when you shop and who turn out to end up with the patents that make market dominance possible.
[Posted at 08/25/2013 11:30 AM by John Bennett on Patents comments(0)]
ITC Allows Apple Imports That Violate Samsung Patents
The blog, Public Knowledge, argues that the International Trade Commission should consider the public interest in reaching regulatory decisions on patents. The Obama has so decreed when it overruled an ITC case and permitted imports of Apple phones that it had found to violate duly recognized patents of other companies, in this case foreign firms link here.
When I look at the mess in the whole patent system, I see a world of oligopolies and monopolies built on patents, supposedly designed to encourage innovation, but instead creating a self-perpetuating means to paralyze innovation.
I would do away with the whole system of patents, but that isn't going to happen. Too many huge companies have a vested interest in the existing highly profitable system. Instead, those of my persuasion must examine whether the legal change making importation illegal under a finding of public interest is a good thing, rather than allowing the competing imports and slowing Apple's ability to go on coining money. To put it differently, isn't allowing the imports in the public interest? In this case, the big American company was the winner. Who lost?
[Posted at 08/13/2013 11:40 AM by John Bennett on Patents comments(0)]
Cable and TV Networks Fee Fight Fallout--- Who Pays? The Public
Public Knowledge has a couple of pieces up on the fight between CBS and Time Warner Cable over TWC's payment for the right to rebroadcast broadcasts and then charge the public link here and link here. CBS has already been amply rewarded through advertising on its over the air broadcasts free use of the public airwaves. But in the current fight, it wants still more money. Congress set this up in 1992 legislation which allowed the networks to charge for retransmission permission of its broadcasts.
CBS has the right to charge for its retransmission consent but the law stipulates that the fees must be reasonable. However, left to themselves the parties have self-interest to decide what is reasonable. The 1992 law gives the FCC the power to intervene on what is reasonable link here but it has so far avoided taking a position.
CBS has now upped its pressure and limited its over-the-air broadcasts in some areas served by TWC. The public pays in lost services and will pay again with higher charges.
[Posted at 08/08/2013 12:49 PM by John Bennett on Copyright comments(0)]
Competition now; But in the Future?
Competition for cable-television providers looks safe at least for a time, as the result of two copyright suits link here. In one, Aereo TV captures from antennas and delivers regular programming via the internet for a monthly fee; this allows the subscriber to record the programs playing them back when he wants. In the other, the satellite Dish provider offered a service, Hopper, which allowed the customer to eliminate ads on home recorded programs. Neither service allows the broadcaster to charge for its programs since the courts ruled that they could not use copyright to enforce payment.
The crucial court decisions found that it was the customer who made the recording so copyright was not violated.
As the Times article points out, unless the two interlopers pay, the broadcasters can and now are likely to retaliate by ceasing to broadcast over the air and providing cable service only.
In judging the result of these cases, once again copyright appears to reduce competition and raise prices to consumers. But its ostensible purpose, to reward the creator of the program to induce new creativity, is largely avoided--if that ever happened, it was long in the past.
[Posted at 07/31/2013 07:40 AM by John Bennett on Copyright comments(0)]
Redistributing TV Material Without the Ads Is Legal
Here is one for the books; you may record copyrighted material and play it back without the ads, because dumping the ads is covered by fair use link here. Fox TV, the plaintiff, saw it was losing revenue when others downloaded and redistributed its on-line material without the ads. Dish, the TV redistributor, made a good business out of doing so and charging subscriptions from its customers. Its successful defense will no doubt attract others into the redistribution business.
[Posted at 07/26/2013 11:14 AM by John Bennett on Copyright comments(0)]
Public Knowledge announces a Patent Reform Project
I'm late with this but Public Knowledge announced two weeks ago that it was starting a Patent Reform Project link here. Given that we are surrounded with an incredibly expensive and inefficient and now corrupt (with the presence of the patent trolls' extortion) system, it is important for the informed and interested to weigh in.
One cannot be terribly optimistic about the outcome, but to leave the system to the big money and personally interested is to give up. We can do better. Given our democratic system, compromise is essential so one almost never gets all his wishes. But the critics have been making a dent in the unthinking belief that intellectual property was property like physical goods or land and that it always encouraged innovation and thus human progress. It is a right with characteristics like real property, created by law and law can be changed. Now is the time to change it.
Weigh in, please.
[Posted at 07/24/2013 08:50 AM by John Bennett on Patents comments(1)]
Another Big Patent Troll Assessed
The New York Times went after another big patent troll yesterday, the second in less than a week link here. This one is called Intellectual Ventures. It seems to be a spinoff from Microsoft, a major patent holder, as it is run by Microsoft's former chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold. Its origin may raise the question as to how much business it does with Microsoft and whether it profits in some way from the new enterprise.
Another reason for the article is the announcement that "This summer, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to begin a sweeping investigation of the patent system after the agency's chairwoman, Edith Ramirez, urged a crackdown link here. She has singled out a particular kind of miscreant, one that engages in 'a variety of aggressive litigation tactics,' including hiding behind shell companies when it sues." Although not part of the article, it is worth reading as a description of what the FTC is thinking.
Most of the article is a description of what Intellectual Ventures has been up to and what a toll it has levied on the cost of doing business in a world that fosters both patents and patent-trolls.
[Posted at 07/18/2013 11:25 AM by John Bennett on Patent Trolls comments(1)]
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IIPA thinks open source equals piracy rerwerwerwer
at 07/08/2019 11:35 PM by WolfLarsen Larsen
IIPA thinks open source equals piracy Thank you for this great
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Questions and Challenges For Defenders of the Current Copyright Regime Eu acho que os direitos autorais da invenção ou projeto devem ser
at 05/11/2019 09:15 PM by Marcelo
IIPA thinks open source equals piracy https://essaywritingsolutions.co.uk/
at 04/07/2019 11:22 PM by WolfLarsen
at 04/07/2019 11:21 PM by WolfLarsen
IIPA thinks open source equals piracy rwerwewre
at 04/07/2019 11:20 PM by WolfLarsen
at 02/05/2019 07:44 AM by Anonymous
Questions and Challenges For Defenders of the Current Copyright Regime It is one of the finest websites I have stumbled upon. It is not only well developed, but has good
at 06/19/2018 10:36 PM by Michael Jones
Killing people with patents I'm not really commenting the post, but rather asking if this blog is going to make a comeback
at 01/09/2018 03:46 AM by Anonymous
The right to rub smooth using a hardened steel tool with ridges Finally got around to looking at the comments, sorry for delay... Replying to Stephan: I'm sorry
at 05/08/2015 08:35 AM by Dan Dobkin
Let's See: Pallas, Pan, Patents, Persephone, Perses, Poseidon, Prometheus... Seems like a kinda bizarre proposal to me. We just need to abolish the patent system, not replace
at 04/10/2015 10:44 AM by Stephan Kinsella
The right to rub smooth using a hardened steel tool with ridges I'm a bit confused by this--even if "hired to invent" went away, that would just change the default
at 04/10/2015 10:34 AM by Stephan Kinsella
Do we need a law? @ Alexander Baker: So basically, if I copy parts of 'Titus Andronicus' to a webpage without
at 01/08/2015 08:58 PM by Sheogorath
Do we need a law? The issue is whether the crime is punished not who punishes it. If somebody robs our house we do
at 11/17/2014 04:48 AM by David K. Levine
Do we need a law? 1. Plagiarism most certainly is illegal, it is called "copyright infringement". One very famous
at 10/29/2014 10:49 AM by Alexander Baker
Yet another proof of the inutility of copyright. The 9/11 Commission report cost $15,000,000 to produce, not counting the salaries of the authors.
at 09/20/2014 03:19 PM by Alexander Baker
WKRP In Cincinnati - Requiem For A Masterpiece P.S. The link to Amazon's WKRP product page:
at 06/28/2014 10:03 AM by Doris
WKRP In Cincinnati - Requiem For A Masterpiece Hopefully some very good news. Shout! Factory is releasing the entire series of WKRP in Cincinnati,
at 06/28/2014 10:00 AM by Doris
What's copywritable? Go fish in court. @ Anonymous: You misunderstood my intent. I was actually trying to point out a huge but basic
at 05/05/2014 01:03 PM by Sheogorath
Rights Violations Aren't the Only Bads I hear that nonsense from pro-IP people all the
at 04/07/2014 04:47 AM by Dan McCracken


text:
Dennis Prager mentioned this must-read article on his radio show on Monday. It is written by a female United States Marine named Katie Petronio, who has served in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Marines are above average troops, with much stricter requirements to get in than the Army, Navy and Air Force.
In her article, Captain Petronio explains what serving in the infantry during combat operations did to her body.
As a young lieutenant, I fit the mold of a female who would have had a shot at completing IOC, and I am sure there was a time in my life where I would have volunteered to be an infantryman. I was a star ice hockey player at Bowdoin College, a small elite college in Maine, with a major in government and law. At 5 feet 3 inches I was squatting 200 pounds and benching 145 pounds when I graduated in 2007. I completed Officer Candidates School (OCS) ranked 4 of 52 candidates, graduated 48 of 261 from TBS, and finished second at MOS school. I also repeatedly scored far above average in all female-based physical fitness tests (for example, earning a 292 out of 300 on the Marine physical fitness test). Five years later, I am physically not the woman I once was and my views have greatly changed on the possibility of women having successful long careers while serving in the infantry. I can say from firsthand experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not just emotion, that we haven't even begun to analyze and comprehend the gender-specific medical issues and overall physical toll continuous combat operations will have on females.
I was a motivated, resilient second lieutenant when I deployed to Iraq for 10 months, traveling across the Marine area of operations (AO) and participating in numerous combat operations. Yet, due to the excessive amount of time I spent in full combat load, I was diagnosed with a severe case of restless leg syndrome. My spine had compressed on nerves in my lower back causing neuropathy which compounded the symptoms of restless leg syndrome. While this injury has certainly not been enjoyable, Iraq was a pleasant experience compared to the experiences I endured during my deployment to Afghanistan. At the beginning of my tour in Helmand Province, I was physically capable of conducting combat operations for weeks at a time, remaining in my gear for days if necessary and averaging 16-hour days of engineering operations in the heart of Sangin, one of the most kinetic and challenging AOs in the country. There were numerous occasions where I was sent to a grid coordinate and told to build a PB from the ground up, serving not only as the mission commander but also the base commander until the occupants (infantry units) arrived 5 days later. In most of these situations, I had a sergeant as my assistant commander, and the remainder of my platoon consisted of young, motivated NCOs. I was the senior Marine making the final decisions on construction concerns, along with 24-hour base defense and leading 30 Marines at any given time. The physical strain of enduring combat operations and the stress of being responsible for the lives and well-being of such a young group in an extremely kinetic environment were compounded by lack of sleep, which ultimately took a physical toll on my body that I couldn't have foreseen.
By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change. My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and further compounded by gender-specific medical conditions. At the end of the 7-month deployment, and the construction of 18 PBs later, I had lost 17 pounds and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (which personally resulted in infertility, but is not a genetic trend in my family), which was brought on by the chemical and physical changes endured during deployment. Regardless of my deteriorating physical stature, I was extremely successful during both of my combat tours, serving beside my infantry brethren and gaining the respect of every unit I supported. Regardless, I can say with 100 percent assurance that despite my accomplishments, there is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside as their combat load and constant deployment cycle would leave me facing medical separation long before the option of retirement. I understand that everyone is affected differently; however, I am confident that should the Marine Corps attempt to fully integrate women into the infantry, we as an institution are going to experience a colossal increase in crippling and career-ending medical conditions for females.
This article is a must-read, and it contains an audio interview and a video clip from CNN. Thank goodness that she spoke out about this, because right now it seems like the Democrats are passing a lot of legislation with a complete disregard to the long-term consequences and the incentives they are introducing. This issue is related to so many of the other issues being pushed by the left. They want to eradicate the differences between men and women – that's what they mean by feminism. Abortion is there way of making women equal to men, with respect to recreational sex. And pushing women into combat roles is their way of making women equal to men, with respect to war. No one is stopping to ask what women really want, or what men and children need from women.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The life of Leona Helmsley presents an object lesson in the truism that money does not buy happiness. Born in 1920, she overcame a hardscrabble youth in Brooklyn to become a successful condominium broker in Manhattan, eventually alighting, in the nineteen-sixties, at a firm owned by Harry B. Helmsley, one of the city's biggest real-estate developers. The two married in 1972, and Leona became the public face of their empire, the self-styled "queen" of the Helmsley chain of hotels. In a series of ads that ran in the Times Magazine and elsewhere, Helmsley's visage became a symbol of the celebration of wealth in the nineteen-eighties. She wouldn't settle for skimpy towels, the ads proclaimed—"Why should you?"
In private, as it turned out, the grinning monarch wasn't just demanding but despotic. Throughout her life, Leona left a trail of ruin—embittered relatives, fired employees, and, fatefully, unpaid taxes. Knowing that the Helmsleys had used company funds to renovate their sprawling mansion, Dunnellen Hall, in Greenwich, Connecticut, disgruntled associates leaked the records to the Post. Among the charges billed to the company were a million-dollar dance floor installed above a swimming pool; a forty-five-thousand-dollar silver clock; and a two-hundred-and-ten-thousand-dollar mahogany card table. In 1988, the U.S. Attorney's office charged the couple with income-tax evasion, among other crimes. (Harry Helmsley avoided trial because of ill health; he died in 1997, at the age of eighty-seven.) At the trial, a housekeeper famously testified that Leona had told her, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes," and the public warmed itself on a tabloid bonfire built under the Queen of Mean. Leona was convicted of multiple counts and served eighteen months in federal prison. In time, following her release, she became largely a recluse, and she died at Dunnellen Hall on August 20, 2007.
After her husband died, Leona Helmsley got a dog named Trouble, a Maltese bitch. In her will, which she signed two years before her death, Helmsley put aside twelve million dollars in a trust to care for Trouble. Further, she directed that, when Trouble died, the dog was to be "buried next to my remains in the Helmsley Mausoleum," at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, in Westchester County. Helmsley made only a handful of relatively small individual bequests in the will, and left the bulk of her remaining estate to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Based on the figures in court files, that trust may turn out to be worth nearly eight billion dollars, which would make it one of the top ten or so foundations in the United States. (Leona's estate was so large because Harry left his fortune to her.) According to a "mission statement," which Helmsley signed on March 1, 2004, the trust was to make expenditures for "purposes related to the provision of care for dogs." The size of the bequests, to Trouble and to dogs generally, has generated widespread astonishment.
In fact, the clear motivation underlying Leona Helmsley's will—her desire to pass her wealth on to dogs—is more common than might be expected. Pet-lovers (many of whom now prefer the term "animal companion") have engineered a quiet revolution in the law to allow, in effect, nonhumans to inherit and spend money. It is becoming routine for dogs to receive cash and real estate in the form of trusts, and there is already at least one major foundation devoted to helping dogs. A network of lawyers and animal activists has orchestrated these changes, largely without opposition, in order to whittle down the legal distinctions between human beings and animals. They are already making plans for the Helmsleys' billions.
For a couple that became emblematic of late-twentieth-century New York, Harry and Leona Helmsley were an unlikely pair. Harry, born in 1909 and raised in the Bronx, was sixteen when he joined a small Manhattan real-estate firm as an office boy for twelve dollars a week, and soon worked his way into a partnership. In 1938, he married the former Eve Green, a widow. Tall, stooped, a workaholic before the term was invented, Helmsley started buying buildings that were, in a way, a reflection of himself—drab but profitable. Often collaborating with a rotating group of partners on different projects, he moved on to a few more glamorous acquisitions, like the Empire State Building, in 1961, but he seemed to go out of his way to avoid calling attention to himself. He and Eve had no children. "My properties are my children," he would say.
Lena Rosenthal, in contrast, was a raucous, disputatious presence seemingly from birth. (She later changed her name to Leona Roberts.) Nearly every aspect of her biography has been challenged, particularly if she was the source for it. She claimed to have worked as a model for Chesterfield cigarettes in her early years, but evidence for that assertion is elusive. She was married three times, but generally acknowledged having had only two husbands. She married Leo Panzirer in 1940, and they divorced twelve years later. Then she married and divorced Joseph Lubin (she usually neglected to mention him at all in later years), before her marriage to Harry Helmsley, who had left his wife of thirty-three years shortly after Leona's arrival at his firm. Leona had one child, Jay Panzirer, who died, of a heart ailment, in 1982, at the age of forty. Jay Panzirer had four children, and these grandchildren survived Leona. The will hints at the tense relationship between her and her only descendants.
Leona had contentious relationships with almost everybody (except Harry). In particular, she came to despise Jay's widow, Mimi, his third wife, for reasons that Mimi later said she never understood. Following Jay's death, the Helmsleys moved immediately to evict Mimi and their eldest grandchild, Craig, from their home in Florida, which was owned by a Helmsley subsidiary. During the next several years, the Helmsleys filed no fewer than six lawsuits against Mimi, asserting that they were entitled to the money in Jay's estate, a distinctly modest sum compared with their own fortune. After five years of rancorous litigation, Leona won about two-thirds of the two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars at issue. As a result of Leona's legal triumph, each of her grandchildren was left with an inheritance from their father of a little more than four hundred dollars.
In her will, Leona Helmsley was more generous to two of her grandchildren, David and Walter Panzirer, who were left trusts and bequests worth ten million dollars, on the condition that they visit their father's grave at least once a year. (Jay was buried in the family mausoleum, alongside Harry and Leona.) To make sure that they did, the will stipulated that the trustees "shall have placed in the Helmsley Mausoleum a register to be signed by each visitor." Leona's other two grandchildren, Craig Panzirer and Meegan Panzirer Wesolko, were excluded from any inheritance, "for reasons which are known to them." (The reasons were not disclosed.) That omission led to the first legal skirmish regarding the Helmsley estate. Lawyers for the two disinherited grandchildren filed a notice in Manhattan Surrogate's Court announcing that they planned to challenge the will on the ground that Leona "was not of sound mind or memory and did not have the mental capacity to make a Will" in 2005.
Leona's executors—her surviving brother, Alvin Rosenthal; her grandsons David and Walter Panzirer; her lawyer Sandor Frankel; and John Codey, a family friend—decided to settle the dispute quickly. They agreed to amend the will so that Craig and Meegan also received bequests: four million dollars for Craig, and two million for Meegan. In return, Craig and Meegan agreed to an elaborate confidentiality provision, promising not to "directly or indirectly publish or cause to be published any diary, memoir, letter, story, photograph, interview, article, essay, account or depiction of any kind" concerning the dispute over the will. Likewise, they agreed that all of their "personal correspondence . . . records, tapes, papers and financial information of or relating to" Leona must be given to the estate's lawyers. (Consequently, neither Craig nor Meegan, nor their attorneys, would comment on the dispute.) Still, the conflict among the human beneficiaries of the will was easy to resolve compared with the legal matters relating to dogs.
The modern history of legal rights for animals begins with a chimpanzee named Washoe. "He was the first 'signing chimp,' the first chimpanzee who learned sign language to communicate with people," Victoria Bjorklund, the head of the exempt-organizations practice at the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, said. "There came a time when he was going to be sent off to be used in medical testing, and there was a lot of distress about that possibility." So Bjorklund and others set up a trust (funded with the proceeds of a book about Washoe), and appointed a guardian to protect him and several other chimps like him. The problem was that New York law said that a guardian could be appointed for a "person with a disability." Was Washoe a "person" under New York law?
The lawyers at Simpson Thacher argued that "the mental, emotional, sociological, and biological characteristics" of Washoe and the other chimps "warrant their treatment as persons" entitled to representation. The lawyers submitted affidavits from such animal experts as Jane Goodall, who said that "chimpanzees are biochemically closer to humans than they are to any other of the great apes." According to the brief in the case, the chimps "are capable of rational thought, communication, and other higher cognitive functions," justifying their treatment as the legal equivalent of minors or disabled humans. In a 1997 decision, the surrogate of Nassau County agreed and appointed a guardian to administer the trust for the benefit of the chimps. "That trust was then respected by the State of Washington, where Washoe lived," Bjorklund said. "We think it was the first trust ever established for the benefit of specific nonhuman primates."
Jane Hoffman, a former associate at Simpson Thacher, had brought the Washoe case to the firm. "The idea was to create a right for a nonhuman animal to receive money—to push the envelope on the law, which at that point had only allowed trusts for the benefit of children or disabled adults," she said. In 1990, Hoffman and a group of other lawyers founded a new committee at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, on "Legal Issues Pertaining to Animals." One of the first subjects that the committee's members took up was the issue of inheritance. In 1996, they helped change the law to make it easier for any animal—especially a pet—to become the beneficiary of a trust. Many people wanted to make provisions for the care of their pets in their wills, but the law allowed no simple mechanism to do so. Frances Carlisle, a New York trusts-and-estates lawyer and a member of the committee, pushed the New York State Legislature to allow the creation of "pet trusts," which permit individuals to put aside money and instructions for their pets. New York approved the changes, and now thirty-eight states allow for the creation of such trusts. "We decided we didn't want people to have to leave the disposition of their pets to chance, or a sudden decision, after they died," Carlisle told me. "We want to give people peace of mind about their animals."
The legal movement, which largely focussed on pets, was, of course, symbiotically aligned with the broader animal-rights movement, which also grew in the nineteen-nineties. But the theme remained the same—to extend the rights of humans to animals. In a country where most people eat meat, many hunt, and most others give little thought to the legal rights of their pets, the complexities of such a change are considerable. Even pro-animal-rights scholars, like Peter Singer, a professor at Princeton, recognize the difficulties. As Singer said at a recent conference in New York City, "We're talking about beings as different as chimpanzees, pigs, chickens, fish, oysters, and others, and you must recognize those differences." For the moment, the goals of the movement are modest, and largely limited to domestic animals.
"What the law is doing is catching up with the idea that people don't consider their pets property, in the way a car or a chair is," Hoffman told me. "I am not pumping for my cats to be able to vote for McCain or Obama. I'm not saying they could visit me at the hospital, though that's probably a pretty good idea. The right category for pets is closer to children, who can't vote, and can't own property, but you can't inflict pain on them, either. The law is catching up with societal beliefs."
"Leona had never had a dog before she got Trouble," Elaine Silverstein, a co-founder of the Miami agency that created the "queen" advertisements for the Helmsley hotels, told me. "She treated her like a person, and took her everywhere. She would take that dog to bed with her every night." After Helmsley's release from prison, she returned for a time to her hotels' ads, but for one campaign she insisted that Silverstein feature Trouble instead. The ad showed the tiny white dog perched on a red velvet chair, and text that said, " 'Trouble,' the Helmsley's favorite four-legged guest," recommends that you call for reservations. "It didn't make much sense for a dog to endorse a hotel, but that's what Leona wanted," Silverstein said.
Still, Helmsley's relationship with dogs reflected some of the distemper of her dealings with humans. According to Silverstein, one of Helmsley's friends, seeing how much she loved Trouble, gave her another Maltese, who was named Double Trouble. "But Leona never liked that dog, so she got rid of it," Silverstein said. "That was usually Leona's solution. It was what she did with people."
For all Helmsley's love of Trouble, her will certainly made life complicated for the dog. She stipulated that Trouble, when her time came, join Leona, Harry, and Jay in the family mausoleum. (Leona also established a three-million-dollar trust for the "perpetual care and maintenance" of the mausoleum, directing that it be "acid washed or steam cleaned at least once a year.") According to Carlisle, however, a joint human-canine burial is not possible at Sleepy Hollow. "Under New York law, animals can't be buried in human cemeteries," she said. "Leona could possibly be buried in a pet cemetery with Trouble, but not the other way around. That was an error in the drafting of the will." (Trouble is still alive, so it's not clear where she will be buried.)
The twelve-million-dollar trust for Trouble also created problems. The will stated that custody of Trouble should go to Rosenthal, Leona's brother, or to her grandson David, and the trust agreement directed them to "provide for the care, welfare and comfort of Trouble at the highest standard." But neither man wanted the dog. After the will was made public, Trouble received death threats, which may have had something to do with their refusal. (Both men declined to comment.) So the trustees had to find the dog a home. Moreover, the bequest to Trouble was so self-evidently excessive for a single, aging dog that the trustees decided to take steps to reduce it.
As a guardian for Trouble, the trustees settled on Carl Lekic, who is the general manager of the Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel, in Sarasota, Florida. According to his affidavit in the case, Lekic had known Trouble since she was born, because Leona spent several months a year, late in life, at the hotel. "When I visited New York on business while Mrs. Helmsley was alive, I would also see Trouble and would pay attention to and play with her," Lekic said. The trustees agreed to pay him five thousand dollars a month to take care of Trouble. Lekic estimated annual security costs for the dog of a hundred thousand dollars, grooming costs of eight thousand dollars, food costs of twelve hundred dollars, and veterinary care of up to eighteen thousand dollars.
But how many years would Trouble likely live? To answer this question, the trustees sought an affidavit from Dr. E. F. Thomas, Jr., Trouble's veterinarian. Trouble was nine years old in early 2008 and had, according to Thomas, "several ongoing medical problems," including hypothyroidism and compromised kidney function. In the light of her medical issues, and the patterns of Maltese generally, Thomas estimated that Trouble was likely to live only three to five more years. In all, then, Lekic and the trustees concluded, only two million dollars of the trust's principal would suffice to cover all of Trouble's needs. On April 30, 2008, Judge Renee Roth, the New York surrogate who is supervising the Helmsley will, approved the reduction of ten million dollars in the trust. (If there is any leftover money in Trouble's trust following her demise, it goes to the Helmsley charitable trust.)
The local tabloids responded to Roth's ruling with feigned sympathy for Trouble's loss of ten million dollars. But some in the legal world of pet trusts saw the surrogate's decision as a substantial victory for their cause. "One of the greatest moments in my life was when the judge awarded two million in the Helmsley case," said Rachel Hirschfeld, a New York trusts-and-estates lawyer and the operator of petriarch.com, a Web site for pet owners. "It's not the reduction that's important; it's that the judge said two million was appropriate. It's a landmark case, for a judge to be able to say that we have a case for that amount of money."
The amount of money for Trouble, while substantial, pales compared with the sums at issue in the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. According to the estimate submitted in court by the trustees, the proceeds are between three and eight billion dollars. In the final years of her life, Leona appears to have given considerable thought to the trust, and to have reordered her priorities in a dog-focussed way.
To make her intentions clear for the trust, she signed two mission statements, which have not previously been made public. (The documents are available at newyorker.com.) On September 16, 2003, Leona signed a document that listed three goals for the planned expenditures. The money was to go first "to the provision of care for dogs." The second was more conventional: "the provision of medical and health care services for indigent people, with emphasis on providing care to children." A third category covered "such other charitable activities as the Trustee shall determine." About six months later, however, Helmsley changed her mind. On March 1, 2004, she signed a new mission statement that revoked the previous one, and made one significant change. She now omitted the second purpose—medical care for the indigent, especially children—and left only the purpose of caring for dogs and the catch-all third category.
What this means for how the trust will operate is far from clear. "A mission statement is really just guidance to the trustees," Victoria Bjorklund, of Simpson Thacher, said. "It's not binding on them. It would only be binding if it was in the will itself." Still, the mission statement should have an influence on how the trustees allocate the funds. "The fact that she took out the care of children means to me that she probably experienced a change in her priorities that she expressed that way," Bjorklund went on. "And there is a general-purposes clause that says the trustees can use the funds for anything that would be charitable. So they don't have to use the money only for the care of dogs, but she is certainly indicating that it's a priority." The trust is not yet operating or making grants, and people familiar with the work of the trustees say that they are still trying to figure out what to do.
The animal-rights movement in New York is, however, already gathering proposals for how to use the money. The most detailed ideas so far come from Jane Hoffman. In 2002, the former corporate lawyer founded the group now known as the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals, a not-for-profit organization that works as a public-private partnership with more than a hundred and forty animal-rescue groups and shelters around the city. "We are committed to making New York 'no-kill,' one community at a time," she told me, using the movement's term for eliminating euthanasia as a means of population control for any kind of animal.
To run the operations of the alliance, Hoffman secured a $25.4-million grant over seven years from Maddie's Fund, the largest-endowed dog-and-cat-centered foundation in America, which was created in 1999 by the founder of PeopleSoft software, Dave Duffield, and his wife, Cheryl. The Duffields have endowed the foundation with more than three hundred million dollars and made grants of more than seventy-one million dollars. According to the fund's Web site, "The Foundation makes good on a promise the Duffields made to their beloved Miniature Schnauzer, Maddie, to give back to her kind in dollars that which Maddie gave to them in companionship and love."
Hoffman and other animal-rights supporters have been nursing a grudge for years against the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Duke, the tobacco heiress, died in 1993 and left much of her wealth to a foundation that now has assets of about two billion dollars. In her will, Duke spoke of her interest in the "prevention of cruelty to children or to animals" and in "promoting anti-vivisectionism." (Duke's pets included two camels and a leopard, as well as several dogs.) The Duke foundation has a program to combat child abuse, but it has never invested in an animal-welfare program. Claire Baralt, a communications officer for the foundation, points out that the will says that support of animal rights was optional, not mandatory. According to Hoffman, however, "Doris Duke is a good example of how a testator's intent has been thwarted. You know that person was extremely attached to her animals, but, at the end of the day, the trustees have made sure that very little has gone from that estate to animals. If you judge animal need against human need, human need is going to win most of the time, because we are human. We want to make sure the same mistakes are not made with Helmsley.
"The thing that I'm trying to get people to realize is this is not bling for dogs," Hoffman went on. "When you think about it, five to eight billion dollars isn't that much. Foundations are required to give out at least five per cent of their assets every year, so we're talking about two hundred and fifty million to four hundred million dollars." This vast sum, which would dwarf the proceeds of Maddie's Fund, could finance a great deal of medical research on or about dogs, but most of the ideas so far involve establishing no-kill policies for strays. Thanks in part to the efforts of the members of Hoffman's alliance to foster adoptions and spaying and neutering, the percentage of animals killed in New York City shelters has dropped from seventy-four per cent, in 2002, to forty-three per cent, in 2007. Hoffman would like to use the Helmsley money to buy more spay-neuter vans, at two hundred thousand dollars each, and windowed vans for adoption events, at a hundred and seventy thousand dollars apiece; and to establish a "special Leona Helmsley Memorial Veterinary Hospital for needy pets," at twenty million dollars a year, "providing medical treatment, inoculations, and training to help low-income families care for their dogs and create safer and more humane communities." Hoffman wants to take these ideas nationwide. "A Leona Helmsley Trust dedicated to helping make the U.S. 'no kill' could actually achieve its goal in a remarkably short amount of time," she said.
Hoffman's enthusiasm obscures the fundamental moral question about how Helmsley hoped to dispose of her fortune. The way Leona altered her mission statement places the issue in especially stark terms. Version one proposed helping dogs and ailing poor children; version two—the final version—cut out the children and gave everything to the dogs. Is there any justification for such a calculation? Or does Helmsley's change, along with the broader vogue for pet bequests, reflect a decadent moment in our history?
"In the nineteenth century, when the robber barons started modern American philanthropy, there were no tax deductions, no incentives from the government to give, just the growing idea that with wealth comes social and moral obligation," Vartan Gregorian, the president of the Carnegie Corporation and a veteran of the New York philanthropic scene, said. "They could spend their money any way they wanted, but, once we started giving tax deductions, which amounted to a publicly approved subsidy, you had to prove that the money was going for a philanthropic purpose, but that is so broad that you can give to almost anything.
"When you see a gift like Leona's, it's individualism carried to iconography," Gregorian went on. "The whole idea that individuals can do whatever they want is part of the American psyche. It's left to individual decision-making. That you can give to this sector of society, which is animals, as opposed to the other sector, which is human beings, tells you something about her and about the times in which we live."
The specific nature of Leona's gift appears consistent with the pervasive misanthropy of her life and her will. This was a woman, after all, who at her trial was quoted as saying about a contractor who was owed thirteen thousand dollars for installing a custom-made barbecue pit at the Helmsley estate and wanted to be paid because he had six children, "Why doesn't he keep his pants on? He wouldn't have so many problems." (In his opening statement at the trial, her defense attorney said, "I don't believe Mrs. Helmsley is charged in the indictment with being a tough bitch.") In the light of her vast wealth, the bequests to her relatives were grudging, small, and controlling, particularly the insistence that two of Jay Panzirer's children visit his grave each year. As in life, Leona's disdain for others contrasted with her nearly fetishistic obsession with her husband. (While Harry was alive, she held an annual ball to celebrate his birthday, known as the "I'm Just Wild About Harry" party.) The transfer of this kind of obsessive affection from Harry to Trouble seems apparent. The twelve-million-dollar trust for the dog is bigger than any other single bequest in the will. On the whole, the will reflects contempt for humanity as much as love of dogs.
Under the law, certainly, it was Helmsley's right to divvy up her money any way she wanted. And she is not the first wealthy person to use a will to show a preference for dogs over humans. Rumors abound about major bequests to pets, although facts are difficult to pin down. Natalie Schafer, the actress who played Lovey, the millionaire's wife, on "Gilligan's Island," is said to have left her estate for the care of her dog. ("It is still getting residuals," Rachel Hirschfeld said.) Toby Rimes, a New York dog, is said to have inherited about eighty million dollars, and Kalu, a pet chimpanzee in Australia, may have received a bequest of a hundred and nine million dollars. (A widely reported story that a German dog named Gunther IV inherited more than a hundred million dollars appears to be a hoax.)
Is it right to give so much money to a dog—or to dogs generally? And what is the limit of such dispensations to pets? Will there come a time when dogs can sue for a new guardian—or to avoid being put to sleep? One philosopher draws a distinction between the needs of Trouble and those of dogs as a whole. Helmsley "did a disservice to the people in the dog world and to dogs generally by leaving such an enormous amount of money for her own dog," Jeff McMahan, who teaches philosophy at Rutgers University, said. "To give even two million dollars to a single little dog is like setting the money on fire in front of a group of poor people. To bestow that amount of money is contemptuous of the poor, and that may be one reason she did it.
"But to give such a large sum of money to dogs generally is not frivolous," McMahan went on. "I think it shows some misplaced priorities, but many bequests do. In a world where there is starvation and poverty, you can say that it's wrong to give money to universities, or museums, or, worst of all, to divide it up for your children and heirs who are already rich. Welfare for dogs is better than more pampering of the rich. It may indicate misplaced moral priorities, but it's not frivolous or silly. It's disgraced by the context, but the two bequests should be separately evaluated."
Throughout her life, Leona Helmsley demonstrated not just a lack of affection for her fellow-humans but an absence of understanding as well. The irony is that, for all that her will purports to show her love for Trouble, Leona didn't seem to understand dogs very well, either. "What is funny about giving all this money to one dog is that it doesn't deal with the fact that the dog is going to be sad that Leona died," Elizabeth Harman, who teaches philosophy at Princeton, said. "What would make this dog happy is for a loving family to take it in. The dog doesn't want the money. The money will just make everyone who deals with the dog strange." ♦


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The Nintendo 3DS isn't out yet, but it looks like it will get a bunch of games. A list of undated titles has popped up online. Those games include:
*Deep breath*
Samurai Warriors Chronicle, Resident Evil Revelations, Super Street Fighter IV, Dynasty Warriors Musou, Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive, Kingdom Hearts 3D, Chocobo Racing 3D, Super Black Bass 3D, Super Monkey Ball, Sonic, Licca-chan 3DS, Animal Crossing, Kid Icarus: Uprising, StarFox 64 3D, Steel Diver, nintendogs + cats, Mario Kart, Pilot Wings Resort, Paper Mario, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Marble Mania, Deca Sporta, Bomberman, Gundam, Super Robot, Dragonball, Pac-Man & Galaga, Ridge Racer, Harvest Moon, Professor Layton and the Mask of the Miracle, Crash-City GP, VS-robo, Class of Heroes 3D x 3D, Combat of Giants Dinosaur 3D, Ghost Recon Tactics, Splinter Cell 3D, and Driver 3D.
The vast majority of these games have already been made public. There are a few title titles like Marble Mania, Chocobo Racing and Licca-chan. One title not included in the list is the Metal Gear Solid Nintendo 3DS title that was shown at E3.
The release dates for these titles are still TBA, and some of the game titles are tentative and are subject to change.


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text: It's always pretty great when a musician can take a song by another musician and make you hear it in a different way. (I'm talking small-scale here, not shit like this.) Take violinist Seth G.'s cover of "Boyfriend," for example. When you heard this song before, you were probably too distracted by the cloyingness of that cute little chicken nugget Justin Bieber to really enjoy it. But take him away and add some strings? "Boyfriend" just became-dare I say -a kind of cool tune.


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Solutions by Role
Throughout your organization, each level of responsibility has different expectations of engineering software. Engineers, are interested in usability, reliability, time to solution and the fidelity of your models to the real-world products you are creating. Managers have operational costs and project timelines including workflow, on their minds as well. Executives must provide employees with the best tools and strategies to meet your company's long-term objectives. Whatever your role, ANSYS has the software and the expertise to help you successfully meet your goals quickly and easily.


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|Hudson, NY
|High School:
2011-12: Played in all 26 rounds for the Blue Devils...Recorded the second-best average score on the team with an 83.0...Her top finish came at the Dartmouth Invitational where she finished sixth and carded a team-low 157...Finished 30th at the Northeast Conference Tournament shooting a 249...Tallied 2,157 strokes on the season and two top-ten finishes.
2010-11: Played in 9.5 rounds for the Blue Devils…Had her best finish at the Sacred Heart Invitational, tied for 24th…Recorded 814 strokes over her 9.5 rounds for a 85.7 average score…Her best round of the season was an 81 in the final round of the Dartmouth Invitational.
2009-10: As a freshman for the Blue Devils, she played in 20 rounds...Placed 16th at the Northeast Conference Championship carding a 253 in three rounds...Averaged a score of 84.9 after recording 1,698 strokes and two top-ten finishes on the season...Her top finish came at the CCSU Shootout where she wrote in an 83 and placed fourth.
Before Central: Won the Ladies Championship at the Columbia Golf and Country Club for 2007 and 2008...Participated on the boys golf team at Hudson High, playing number one as a senior...Tied for seventh at the Medalist Tournament against 32 boys...Competed in and placed at many Junior PGA Tour Events.


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Health and happiness come together where the healing goddess, Ella embraces the pure life of mainly vegan and gluten-free cooking and shares wellness and nutrition tips. Inspired living for pure health and happiness.
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©2019 POPSUGAR Inc. • Insanely Addictive™ • PopSugar • PopSugar Living • PopSugar Moms


text:
Pretty Printing XML in Python
MartinPacker 11000094DH Comments (2) Visits (27050)
A need has arisen for pretty printing XML. This post includes some Python code to do it. I've been working with the OpenOffice.org ODP presentation file format recently: I want to generate presentations from application code. An ODP file is a structured zip file. Among other items it contains an XML file - content.xml - which describes the pages in the presentation. content.xml... [More]


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11701 Olivetti LN, FORT MYERS, FL
- Follow This Home!
- Cape Coral, Fl Homes For Sale Homes for Sale
- Search the SWFL MLS
- Market Report
- 15 Second Home Valuations
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Royal Shell Real Estate – The Koffman Group
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WorkForce Development
The River Valley Business and Industry Training Center is geared to fulfill the training needs of your workforce. With training centers in Claremont, Keene and Lebanon, and the ability to perform customized training at your place of business, we can provide a solution that fits your requirements.
Our experienced instructors provide training in Supervisory and Leadership skills, Professional Sales, Manufacturing, Project Management, Computer Applications and Security. Call our Business Training Center to inquire how you can offset some of your training costs by accessing the $1M New Hampshire has appropriated for industry training through the NH Job Training Grant Fund.
Contact 603-542-7744 for more information.


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Ten Best Practices for a Crowdfund Investing Campaign
Following are ten principles you should follow so you do right by your investors and yourself, both during a campaign and after it's funded:
Set Realistic Expectations
Your investors expect you to set reasonable expectations based on your experience and set milestones to achieving those goals. Take the time to map out a business plan. Break your plan into milestones, and make sure each milestone is achievable based on time and resources.
Work for Your Investors
When you take on investors, you take on a legal responsibility — a fiduciary responsibility — to do right by your investors and act in their best interest. Your investors want to make sure you're making sound decisions with their money, and they want to hear about what you're doing.
Don't Be Evil
Crowdfund investing is a brand-new industry that allows entrepreneurs and small businesses access to capital to start and grow their companies. Many people stand to benefit from this funding source — including the American people, who need the jobs it can help to create — if the industry maintains a great reputation. If it becomes tainted, even by a few individuals' poor behavior, the industry as a whole will be constrained. Therefore, everyone involved in the industry has the responsibility to make sure things are done right.
Thank Everyone — Constantly
Throughout the process of starting your business and raising money, you're going to get help from many people. Thank them often, and thank them genuinely. When your campaign is live, be grateful for every investment pledge you receive. Thank people in your online forums, via e-mail updates, and on your Facebook page. When a friend, family member, or another close supporter invests in you, take the time to call and say thanks.
Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
If someone helps you, give him credit in an open format. Your investors don't expect you to be a one-man show, so share the spotlight. Showing appreciation can get your entire support team to work even harder.
Engage with Investors in Regular and Scalable Ways
The word scalable is very important here. Chances are, you're already putting in 60 to 80 hours (or more) each week to achieve your business goals. You simply can't respond to individual e-mails or calls from your investors. If you did, you wouldn't have any time to run your business.
You must create a communication cadence (a pace and pattern of communication) that works for you, and tell your investors what this cadence will be so they can set their expectations. Then meet those expectations! As long as you communicate regularly and on schedule, most investors will appreciate it and will respect your time.
Create Ways to Include Your Supporters
Your supporters bring wisdom, knowledge, and marketing power to your venture. Take advantage of the fact that you have a group of backers with a vested interest in your success, and figure out ways to include them. Here are a few suggestions:
Create an informal board of advisors, and establish subgroups for sales, marketing, public relations, graphics and design, operations, and finance.
From your board of advisors, pick a few seasoned entrepreneurs — preferably ones who have raised capital before — to be your mentors.
Create an e-mail inbox for questions from investors.
Make Your Vision and Goals Transparent to All
To gain investors, you must clearly communicate your vision and goals. The same is true for growing and leading your team. So, whether you're talking to your investors or employees, you must communicate your vision and your goals over and over again.
Understand Why These People Are Investing in Your Company
Investors, especially early-stage investors, are supporting you more than they're supporting the exact details of your plan. When you run into rough times and wonder why you ever decided to start this company, let their faith in you inspire your own confidence.
Work with People You Like
As you're building your company, nothing is more important than the team you create. No matter what skills people have, if you don't like them, you shouldn't work with them.


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The AAA receives daily requests from researchers, administrators, faculty, and students for information such as:
- Number of degrees granted in a given year
- Average length of time to complete a degree in anthropology
- Degrees granted by gender and/or minority status
- Post-graduation employment rates
To address these inquiries we often rely on our membership database, AnthroGuide, and findings from special purpose surveys. In addition, in January 2014, the NSF released tables and an interactive report on findings from the 2012 Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). First conducted in 1957-1958, the 2012 SED reports on "all individuals who received a research doctorate from a U.S. academic institution in the 12-month period from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012," producing annual statistics on graduate demographics, time to degree, funding source, field of study, and post-graduate commitments. For the most recent iteration, the total eligible population was 51,008 graduates with a doctorate degree. The survey had a response rate of 92% of doctorate recipients.
In this first of two reports, we highlight key findings in the composition of graduates in anthropology and the social sciences. The Graduates 2012 Report: As Anthropology Doctorates Increase in Number and Diversity, So Do Financial and Social Support Needs for Graduates summarizes growth patterns among PhDs, and changes in anthropology's graduate student body composition, based on data from the NSF SED and contextualized with recent reports on the costs and benefits of graduate-level education. The NSF SED data indicate that post-secondary education enrollments continue to rise as graduate-level degrees become requisite for an increasing range of careers. While a greater portion of college-aged students are attending graduate school, they are enrolling disproportionately in career-oriented fields. More students from racialized minority groups are pursuing doctorate degrees, albeit with less social and financial resources at hand than their white counterparts. And the costs versus gains in pursuing a graduate degree may be differentially calculated among members of racial and ethnic categories. The findings reported in the SED, combined with growing reports of PhD debt suggest that the demographic profile of students and role of higher education are evolving.
The second, forthcoming report will discuss post-graduation employment trends.
As we continue to strengthen our institutional research capacity, we will be updating, re-organizing, and building on the reports and data sources currently available on our Resources for Researchers webpages. By constructing an easily-navigated, comprehensive repository for assessing trends in education, academic programs, membership, and employment, we hope to help our members and other interested parties obtain the information and statistics necessary to monitor trends, lobby for resources, and address changing needs in our field. We look forward to any feedback or additional inquiries you would like to contribute to this effort.
For more information on the Graduates 2012 Report, please contact Courtney Dowdall (firstname.lastname@example.com)


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0 Members and 1 Lonely Barbarian are spying on this topic.
A geas (also geis), has two interpretations in Irish mythology and folklore. First, it is considered some kind of bond that people or even gods can be placed under; later, it took the aspect of a taboo or prohibition. A geas can also be compared with a curse. If someone placed under a geas breaks it, the infractor will suffer dishonour or even death.
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Find videos on a variety of mental health topics, including: anxiety disorders and medication, divorce and children, autism, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, tics and Tourette's Disorder, substance abuse, and more.
Review Date: Friday, April 18, 2014
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Therapists can talk with kids and help them figure out what is causing problems at school or at home. This document discusses why a kid would see a therapist and what happens during a therapy visit.
Review Date: Friday, April 03, 2015
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The Jewish Crohn's & Colitis Support Group (JCCSG Inc.) was founded in 2011, Our Mission: To provide Advocacy, Education, Help, Information, Medical referrals and Support to the people of the Orthodox Jewish community who are suffering of Crohn's disease and Ulcerative Colitis; Improving the quality of life of children and adults affected by these diseases. And spreading awareness within the community. Contact us at: 718-63-JCCSG (718-635-2274) ~ email@example.com ~ Twitter: @JCCSG
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Our Halloween inspired collection of evil graffiti badness.
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Dear Torcers,
A long time ago there was no actual forum for guilds. The first guild was the Bard's Guild by Erinhue, but soon after (almost simultaneously) an old, ancient, and powerful guild was founded by Nilson the White (now retired) by the name of the Wizard's Guild.
This was the early inception of the guild system here. The two guilds both existed under the auspices of the Prancing Pony. However, with the loss of Nilson, the guild has never been able to maintain itself since then.
I was put in charge of the guild several years ago when it was in disarray. I tried desperately to keep it alive, but alas could do very little. It has always sat poorly with me that the guild was never able to survive.
Given such, a substantial amount of time has passed and I feel that perhaps there is room to start anew on the foundation set by the old wizard's guild. I am creating this thread to begin to brainstorm how people feel that the guild should function and who is interested.
For the guild to be reborn. We will need new members. If you would be interested in joining, please post here and help restart this illustrious heritage!
The old guild worked as such:
There was a rank system something along the following lines: Master Wizard, Wizard, Conjurer, Invoker, Apprentice (or something of that sort). The ranks were determined through quizzes that the guild leaders would post. People would answer questions about LotR and be able to move on.
I feel that system is somewhat outdated. I would like to see what people think would be a neat new system
Things I would like to include (or that sound fun):
1) A guild spellbook. Each member can create a spell. Certain members can be rewarded with the ability to inscribe another spell into the guild book. Spells could be divided by element perhaps?
2) A rank system, but with a different means of determining who gets promoted. It was too difficult to have to make quizzes.
3) An apprentice system. It would be neat to assign "masters" to help out starting wizards.
4) Wizard Staffs. Wizards received an award for reaching the rank of Wizard. I dont have the sig pic icons anymore, but that would be neat to ressurect.
5) Titles: After they pass apprentice, they get a title (such as "Nilson the White" or "Gandalf the Gray" or perhaps something like "X the Ice Maiden, etc.)
6) Perhaps element alignments? Maybe there would be a proficiency test for fire, etc., though I dont know how that would work. Maybe there would be a master wizard in charge of each element who assigns the test. I have no idea what the tests would be like though or how that would be fun as of yet.
Any other ideas? How do you suggest things like advancement, promotion, and the sort work? I havent been present in this forum for a while so I am out of the loop.
Who is interested? Ideas? Eventually once we get a good foundation we will have a grand reopening and formally invite other guilds to join in a big celebration (since I think a celebration would be due!)


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Astoundingly good for minimal effort, this makes an indulgent weekend breakfast or anyday dessert. A judicious smear of mascarpone (half the fat of butter) is part of the luxury, but even lighter low-fat cream cheese will work as well. The real secret is warming the berries just enough to make the flavor bloom and transform their juices into a rosy syrup.
Ready In


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I am excited to introduce myself to the readership of the blogs here at TeamUSA.org. My name is Marco Sullivan and I am a member of the United States Alpine Ski Team. I am one of the senior members of the team and I race primarily in the speed disciplines of downhill and super G. I have raced those events at two Olympic Games, Salt Lake City and Vancouver. The best accomplishments in my career include standing up on the World Cup podium four times and being a three-time national champion.
One of the greatest enjoyments of my career has been being able to mold my lifestyle around the sport of skiing, something that I began doing when I was 2 years old. Growing up in Tahoe City, Calif., with my family that consists of my older sister Chelsea and parents Paul and Rena, our lives were tied tightly to the weather. My mom worked at Squaw Valley so that the whole family could get free ski passes. My dad plowed snow in the winter so he could rarely get to the hill on fresh snow days, but he was the one responsible for getting my sister and I onto skis. We would hike up a large, snow covered, gravel pile in our back yard and whiz down. I even remember some bamboo gates being set up on that hill which maybe started my affinity for racing. When we were old enough, skiing at Squaw Valley became our daycare. I loved skiing of any kind and could never get enough. When I was 5 years old my Uncle Sully took us to watch a World Cup ski race at Heavenly Valley, a ski area on the other side of Lake Tahoe. From that day on I knew what I wanted to be.
When I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school, I qualified for the U.S. Ski Team.That was 13 short years ago and I am still enjoying being able to travel and ski race all over the world.There have been peaks and valleys but I cannot explain them all in this short blog. A laundry list of injuries has slowed me down at certain junctures of the journey but that is all part of the story. I still dream of competing in another Olympics and that is my main focus at the moment. Spending winters in Europe racing on the World Cup is what we do and this season has started out strong for me and the rest of the team. The U.S. men's downhill team currently has three racers ranked in the top 15 in the season standings. I am one of those at number 12 and hoping to move up with some big races on the docket in the next month.
We are currently in a small ski area in Austria and banking a few training days before the next World Cup race in Wengen, Switzerland. I will talk about that more in the next blog.
I look forward to sharing my perspective with you over the next year leading up to the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. You can also follow my journey on my website. From there you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Another cool way to see alpine skiing action is to cruise the U.S. Ski Team's new YouTube channel. It has tons of great race runs from this season, a weekly show that comes out on Wednesdays, and crazy stuff like this spectacular crash from my teammate Tommy Biesemeyer. Don't worry, he's OK! Thanks for reading.


text: not sure, haven't found one either, I have been pulling the card out of mine to transfer data, not the best way, just like the usb data cable. I don't like opening up the card slot or the charging slot for that matter, I would think that with every opening and/or closing of the seals would weaken them? I just wish that verizon/casio would allow bluetooth file transfer, no opening and/or closing waterproof doors then!


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Pre-Owned Boat Packages
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331 Great Eastern Hwy,
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Telephone: (08) 9250 3339
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Email: nick@aquasportsmarine....
Monday to Friday : 8.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday : 8.00am - 1.00pm
Sunday : Closed - Gone Fishing
(08) 9250 3339
Aquasports Marine has been operating for many years servicing Midvale, surrounding areas and Western Australia. Our customer base is as diverse and long standing as the residents of our community and we pride ourselves on giving all our customers the very best pricing backed up by superb and friendly customer service.
Our many services include motor services, trailer sales and repairs, electronic sales and installation, fiberglass repairs, boat covers, upholstery and all things marine related
Over many years we have built a reputation for excellence in service and customer satisfaction and pride ourselves on offering value for money on family boat packages, outboards and marine advice.
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Candy Cauldron
Use 1/2" seam allowances unless otherwise noted.
Fold the fleece in half, matching the selvage edges, and then fold the fleece in half widthwise. Position the circle template below along the foldline; cut (1).
From the cotton fabric, cut one lining template circle from below; transfer the markings.
From the cotton fabric, cut four 7 1/4"x9" rectangles for the panels, two 4"x32" rectangles for the tie, four 4"x24 3/4" rectangles for the band and one 2 1/2"x32" rectangle for the handle casing.
Position two panel pieces with right sides facing. Stitch one long edge. Repeat to stitch the remaining two panels. Stitch the resulting panel 9" edges to form a tube (2).
Stitch 1/2" above the tube lower edge using a long machine stitch. Clip every 1", making sure not to cut through the stitching (3).
With right sides facing, align the marks on the fabric lining piece with the lower panel seams. Pin along the clipped tube edge; stitch.
With two band strips right sides facing, stitch one short edge. Repeat to stitch the remaining two band strips.
Stitch the resulting band strips along the short edge with right sides facing to form a tube.
With right sides facing, align the band raw edges with the large fleece circle perimeter; stitch.
Turn the raw band edge toward the large circle wrong side; press. Topstitch 1/2" from the fold (4).
With right sides facing, stitch the two tie pieces along one short edge.
Fold the tie in half lengthwise with right sides facing. Stitch the tie perimeter, leaving a 3" opening on one long edge for turning.
Turn the tie right side out; press. Slipstitch the opening closed.
Fold the handle casing in half lengthwise with right sides facing; stitch the long edge.
Turn the handle casing right side out; press. Topstitch 1/8" from each long edge.
Bucket Construction
Remove the handle from the bucket and insert it through the fabric handle casing.
Place the fabric lining in the bucket. Fold the excess fabric over the bucket edge.
Using an awl or other sharp tool, poke a hole on each lining side where the handle will be reinserted.
Baste the exterior circle perimeter 2 1/2" inside of the finished edge.
On a flat work surface, position the exterior circle right side up so the fabric band right side is exposed. Center the bucket over the fabric circle (5).
Gently pull the basting thread tails to gather the large fabric circle around the bucket.
Stuff polyester fiberfill between the fabric and the bucket until the desired fullness is achieved.
Tightly pull the gathering stitches to fit the fabric circle around the bucket, evenly distributing the fullness. The gathers should fall about 1" under the bucket lip and should hide the bucket lining and fabric-band raw edges.
Hot glue the fabric band raw edge to the bucket lining raw edge.
Insert the fabric-covered handle into the bucket.
Position the tie around the bucket under the gathers; tie it in place with a bow.
Stacy Schlyer is a self-taught seamstress and self-proclaimed fabric junkie whose goal is to reach SABLE (Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy). She lives in Kansas with her family and writes about her sewing adventures daily on her blog, stacysews.com.
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Homemade Vegetable Bouillon ♥ Recipe
In 2006, no-knead bread zoomed from blog to blog and oven to oven. Will the same happen in 2010?
Thanks to the always-innovative Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks and author of Super Natural Cooking: Five Delicious Ways to Incorporate Whole and Natural Foods into Your Cooking, I predict -- and dream! -- that all of us will dump those dusty cubes of bouillon straight-away into the rubbish because now we have something even better, bouillon made at home, fresh, convenient, frugal. Let's make this recipe for homemade bouillon the "recipe that flew across the world" in 2010!
(Word dancing: and yes, the word is spelled bouillON, not bullion or boolion or my own fumble-fingered spelling, bouillion. The word is pronounced [bool-yon] or [bool-yuhn] or in the native French, [boo-yawn].)
Here's why:
- TASTE Imagine the very best vegetable stock you can imagine, fresh, lively, delicious.
- CONVENIENCE Make it once, then it keeps in the freezer. Use it a teaspoon or a tablespoon at a time.
- ADAPTABILITY It's impossible not to imagine variations of this stock, with hints of Thai or Mexican or Italian flavors, say.
- COST When we buy bouillon, we're paying premium dollars for what's essentially water (if we buy in cans) and salt (both cans and cubes and pastes). When I wrote the series of posts about How to Save Money on Groceries, I admonished, Don't buy water and don't buy salt. Here's one more way to avoid those expenses.
I adapted Heidi's recipe in two ways, first by figuring out how many leeks, carrots and other vegetables are needed to make the Homemade Vegetable Bouillon -- and then I used the trimmings and the leftovers vegetables to make a quick stock. So absolutely nothing went to waste! Last night I took a jar to a party as a hostess gift (she's a cook, she'll 'get it') and today I used it to make a big pot of broccoli soup.
Verdict: This stuff is fabulous and soon all of us will have Heidi to thank. Please note, Heidi credits the recipe to Pam Corbin, author of Preserves: River Cottage Handbook No.2, who tucked this kitchen-transforming recipe into a last chapter along with other odds and ends that fit nowhere else. I'm off to check my own cookbook collection, what goodies are in those 'other' chapters?
"I made this and it's very handy to have and I love that it's all fresh ingredients." ~ BellePlaine
"Love love LOVE this stuff." ~ Anonymous
Hands-on time: 35 minutes
Time to table: 35 minutes
Makes about 3-1/2 cups
5 ounces (150 grams) leeks, white and light-green parts only (from 3 leeks, how to clean leeks)
7 ounces (200 grams) fennel bulb, chopped (from about 1 - 2 bulbs of fennel weighing about 3/4 pound)
7 ounces (200 grams) carrot, chopped (from about 4 large carrots)
3.5 ounces (100 grams) celery, chopped (from about 2 large ribs of celery)
3.5 ounces (100 grams) celery root (also called celeriac, from about one large bulb weighing about 8 ounces)
1 ounce (30 grams) sun-dried tomatoes
3.5 ounces (100 grams) shallot, peeled (from about 2 large shallots weighing 5 to 6 ounces)
3 medium garlic cloves
9 ounces (250 grams) kosher salt (about 1 cup)
1.5 ounces (40 grams) parsley (1 big bunch)
2 ounces (60 grams) cilantro (1/2 big bunch
In a food processor, process all the ingredients, pulsing until a small, rough chop forms. Depending on the size of your food processor, you might need to process two or three vegetables at a time, even individually. No problem, just process each one and transfer to a mixing bowl and stir together. Once all the vegetables are processed once and stirred together, return to the food processor, in batches if needed, and process until a thick wet paste forms but individual bits of vegetables remain distinct. Transfer to very clean storage containers and freeze. Because of the salt, the bouillon will be very easy to scoop out a spoonful at a time.
To use, mix 1 teaspoon Homemade Vegetable Bouillon with 1 cup water.
TO MAKE VEGETABLE STOCK from the SCRAPS Before starting, get out a large pot or a Dutch oven to collect leftover vegetables to make a fresh vegetable stock and collect them while trimming the vegetables. Do NOT use the rough edges, root ends, etc, that get trimmed off, discard or compost these but everything else is fair game, including any leftover vegetable pieces plus the green leaves of the leeks and the shallot skins. Add a bay leaf, a few peppercorns and water to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. Strain and the stock within two or three days, it also freezes well.
This recipe does rely on both a food processor and a scale. If you don't have a kitchen scale, then today's the last day to enter to win one over at How to Lose Weight with Weight Watchers. That said, I suspect that this recipe is quite forgiving. The trick will be to keep the proportion of salt and vegetables roughly the same.
Wash all the vegetables very, very well so there's no contamination that gets into the Homemade Vegetable Bouillon
Buy more vegetables than you think are needed, to allow for trimming and also for imperfections in the vegetables. Because of the long storage time, even in the freezer, you really do want to use pretty much perfect vegetables.
Sun-dried tomatoes are hard-to-find and expensive in St. Louis. So a trick I use is to pick up just a handful from the olive bar. They're expensive by the pound but I only need a few and so nothing goes to waste.
When I bought the vegetables for this stock, it never occurred to me to check to see if I had enough salt on hand. This uses a lot of salt, check your pantry!
Celeriac can be hard to find, too, also expensive. Another time I'd substitute more of the inexpensive celery.
Choose flat-leafed Italian parsley or curly parsley? Until recently, I'd have opted for Italian parsley for 'more flavor'. But I read somewhere that curly parsley has more flavor especially when it's a little less fresh. For my first batch of bouillon, I used curly parsley. If you have enough, opt for mostly leaves, leaving the somewhat tougher stems for the stockpot.
The leaves and stems of the cilantro are both tender and can be used.
~ Light Vegetable Stock ~
~ No-Waste Leek Stock ~
~ more vegetable stock recipes ~


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Every Wednesday I post a photo of a weather vane from the area of New Hampshire once known as Nutfield, now the towns of Londonderry, Derry and Windham. Today I wandered a bit over the border into Litchfield.
Do you know the location of weathervane #70? Scroll down to see the answer.
Today's weather vane was seen at one of the pretty homes lining the fairways on Passaconaway Golf Course in Litchfield, New Hampshire. This unusual weather vane is mounted directly on the ridge pole of the garage roof, and is not attached to a cupola or tower. It is a great weather vane for this neighborhood!
Click here to see all the Weathervane Wednesday posts!
Copyright 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo


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Advisory Opinion 2006-08A
October 3, 2006
Donald J. Myers, Esq.
Reed Smith LLP
1301 K Street, N.W.
Suite 1100-East Tower
Washington, D.C. 20005-3373
- 404(a)
Dear Mr. Myers:
This is in response to your request for an advisory opinion on behalf of JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (JPMorgan) regarding the application of the fiduciary responsibility provisions of Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA). Specifically you have inquired whether a fiduciary of a defined benefit plan may, consistent with the requirements of section 404 of ERISA, consider the liability obligations of the plan and the risks associated with such liability obligations in determining a prudent investment strategy for the plan.
You represent that JPMorgan, as a plan fiduciary, proposes to "risk manage" the assets of defined benefit plans by better matching the risks of a plan's investment portfolio assets with the risks associated with its benefit liabilities, with a goal toward reducing the likelihood that liabilities will rise at a time when the assets decline. Defined benefit plan liabilities are determined by a number of factors, most significantly the demography of the participant population (participants' number of years of service and/or expected length of time for payment of retirement benefits) and the interest rates used to calculate the present value of the plans' obligations for funding and accounting purposes.
According to your letter, these liabilities most closely correlate with fixed-income assets, so that one approach for risk managing assets would be to invest directly in a portfolio of fixed-income securities with a duration of the plan's benefit obligations. However, you note that there may be aspects of a plan's obligations that correlate more closely with other types of investments, and it may not be possible to match liabilities precisely with fixed-income securities due to limitations in the fixed-income market. As a result, you indicate that a variety of approaches may be used in practice, depending on the facts and circumstances of the particular plan.
In developing an asset allocation that better matches the risk and duration characteristics of a plan's benefit liabilities, you explain that the focus of JPMorgans services would be on reducing the risk of underfunding to the plan and its participants and beneficiaries by reducing volatility in funding levels. In this regard, you note that there may be incidental benefits to the plan sponsor from maintaining more consistent funding levels, such as reduced volatility on the sponsor's financial statements and reduced minimum contribution obligations. However, you also note that the principal benefit of decreased volatility would be the reduced need for the plan to rely on the plan sponsor to meet its funding obligations, protecting the plan participants and beneficiaries in the event of the sponsor's insolvency.
Taking into account the foregoing, you have requested the views of the Department on whether a fiduciary of a defined benefit plan may, consistent with the requirements of section 404 of ERISA, consider the liability obligations of the plan and the risks associated with such liability obligations in determining a prudent investment strategy for the plan.
Sections 403(c) and 404(a)(1)(A) of ERISA require plan fiduciaries to discharge their duties with respect to a plan solely in the interest of plan participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits to participants and beneficiaries and defraying the reasonable expenses of administering the plan. Section 404(a)(1)(B) of ERISA requires plan fiduciaries to act with the care, skill, prudence and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent man acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character with like aims. These fiduciary standards apply to the selection and monitoring of plan investments, including plan investments made pursuant to a particular investment strategy. The frequency and degree of monitoring, will, of course, depend on the nature of such investments and their role in the plan's portfolio.
The general standards of fiduciary conduct contained in sections 404(a)(1) apply to any investment by a plan covered by Title I, including investments made pursuant to the described risk management investment strategy. Accordingly, fiduciaries of the plan must act prudently, solely in the interest of the plan's participants and beneficiaries, and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits and defraying reasonable plan administrative costs when deciding whether to invest in a particular investment or use a particular investment strategy.
With regard to investing plan assets, the Department has issued a regulation, at 29 CFR 2550.404a-1, interpreting the prudence requirements of ERISA as they apply to the investment duties of fiduciaries of employee benefit plans. The regulation provides that the prudence requirements of section 404(a)(1)(B) are satisfied if (1) the fiduciary making an investment or engaging in an investment course of action has given appropriate consideration to those facts and circumstances that, given the scope of the fiduciary's investment duties, the fiduciary knows or should know are relevant, and (2) the fiduciary acts accordingly. This includes giving appropriate consideration to the role that the investment or investment course of action plays with respect to that portion of the plan's investment portfolio within the scope of the fiduciary's responsibility.
The regulation further specifies the facts and circumstances that must be given appropriate consideration to include, but not be limited to, (A) a determination by the fiduciary that the particular investment or investment course of action is reasonably designed, as part of the portfolio (or, where applicable, that portion of the plan portfolio with respect to which the fiduciary has investment duties) to further the purposes of the plan, taking into consideration the risk of loss and the opportunity for gain (or other return) associated with the investment or investment course of action and (B) consideration of the following factors as they relate to such portion of the portfolio: (i) the composition of the portfolio with regard to diversification; (ii) the liquidity and current return of the portfolio relative to the anticipated cash flow requirement of the plan; and (iii) the projected return of the portfolio relative to the funding objectives of the plan.
Within the framework of ERISA's prudence, exclusive purpose and diversification requirements, the Department believes that plan fiduciaries have broad discretion in defining investment strategies appropriate to their plans. In this regard, the Department does not believe that there is anything in the statute or the regulations that would limit a plan fiduciary's ability to take into account the risks associated with benefit liabilities or how those risks relate to the portfolio management in designing an investment strategy.
For these reasons, a fiduciary would not, in the view of the Department, violate their duties under sections 403 and 404 solely because the fiduciary implements an investment strategy for a plan that takes into account the liability obligations of the plan and the risks associated with such liabilities and results in reduced volatility in the plan's funding requirements. Whether any particular investment strategy is prudent with respect to a particular plan will depend on all the facts and circumstances involved.
This letter constitutes an advisory opinion under ERISA Procedure 76-1. Accordingly, it is issued subject to the provisions of that procedure, including section 10 thereof relating to the effect of advisory opinions.
Louis J. Campagna
Chief, Division of Fiduciary Interpretations
Office of Regulations and Interpretations