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In January 2011, only hours before I had to send back the proofs for In the Plex, the news came out that Larry Page would be taking the helm of the company as the CEO. The transition would occur on April 4 of that year. If it had been anyone else but Larry Page to take over Google, this change would have been ruinous to the project I'd been working on for almost three years. But as I quickly made adjustments to the copy to reflect this change, I realized that my book already reflected a reality that few understood: Page has always been the key visionary of Google and its driving force.
Now that Page has been CEO for a year, everybody knows it.
Since Page took over, he has been exercising an autonomy that is new to the company.Page's reign has been characterized by focus. Focus on product. Focus on the threat from a social networking movement embodied by Facebook. A focusing of Google itself, from a collection of disparate services to a single one with intermeshed components. And a more focused leadership structure where every employee can cite a single name when asked who is in charge.
Google is Larry's company now.
This isn't to belittle Sergey Brin, who was a full partner in co-founding the company and partnering with Larry in its first 13 years. Nor is it necessarily a knock on Eric Schmidt, who proved that experience counts when growing a company from a middling operation to a behemoth. But since Page took over, he has been exercising an autonomy that is new to the company. What was an unconventional arrangement where the big decisions were made via the "troika" of Schmidt and the two founders has morphed to something more conventional, where a single CEO sits at the top of a pyramid.
Supposedly the really big decisions are still made collectively. But when you talk to Googlers, they constantly refer to what Larry thinks, and what Larry wants and what Larry believes.
The Greatest Threat of All?
Though Page seldom speaks directly to the press (more on this later), we do know a lot about what Larry thinks, wants, and believes. One of the primary themes of his first year is his belief that Google is endangered. When I asked him last September (in one of the very rare opportunities for reporters to pose questions to him on the record) what he thought was Google's threat, the answer was out of his mouth even before I finished the query.
"Google," he said. Page lives in horror of the company being bogged down by inertia, timidity or the sluggishness of bureaucracy.
Thus, one of Page's first acts as CEO was to reorganize his executives to focus on products. He also arranged to have his top lieutenants work in the same room for a few hours every week to make sure everyone was on the same page. (No pun intended.)
When I asked Larry last September what he thought was Google's threat, the answer was out of his mouth even before I finished the query.'Google,' he said.
What's more, Page asked Google's top executives to commit to the company for several more years. Some of these were very early employees – and more than wealthy enough to turn tail if they didn't think the Page regime would be satisfying. Yet they threw their lot in with the new CEO. That was impressive.
But the hallmark of his first year is Page's response to a different threat – the impact of Google's historic failures in the social space.
Page assumed his new role in the midst of a corporate accounting of Google's shortcomings in the "people" sense, triggered by the specter of Facebook's accumulation of a massive amount of vital personal data on nearly a billion people. The Googleplex had been seized by low-level panic over this issue. The fear was that without such information, Google might be eclipsed in providing the best experiences for its users.
Page dialed up the anxiety. He moved his office from the building where Search was centered to a location near the Google+ team. He dictated that the annual bonus of all Googlers would be partially dependent on how well the company did in the social space. And in a classic Larry Page response to a problem, he is not satisfied with a solution involving simply a product that competes with Facebook. Larry thinks big. He has enthusiastically backed a plan to have all of Google remade, into a single complex organism fortified with social DNA.
Of course, there are plenty of metrics that show that Google is doing just fine. It takes in $38 billion a year. (Its stock price has been fairly flat, but Page has always insisted that Google focuses on the long-term, not Wall Street's quarterly calendar.) It is the world's dominant search engine. In YouTube, it has the world's premier internet video franchise. Its infrastructure is one of the marvels of the 21st century.
Like Your Life Depends on It
Yet Page seems to be running the company as if its survival is at stake – making a risky bet on integration and "socializing" the company so that it knows its users more intimately and can thusly deliver them a better and more useful experience.
In some ways, operating as if your life depended on it can be a pretty good strategy. Running scared is a good way to log big mileage. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, a hangman's noose can provide wonderful focus.
Such urgency helped get Google+ out the door to a surprisingly warm response. There were some genuine innovations (particularly the ease of organizing contacts into "circles"), and a stylishness not often associated with Google products. Critics have been knocking Google+ a lot in recent weeks, but it is by far the most successful social product in the company's history. Even if you dispute how Google measures usership, the fact is that 500 million people have access to it. And as Google always reminds us, Google+ is not done. It's an early step to the transformation of the company to a single Google.
The concept is that when all the pieces of Google – Search, Gmail, Docs, Maps and so on – make use of what the company knows about you, it can serve you a lot better. This makes a lot of sense, but it's a tricky thing to execute. People are accustomed using Google products individually. Suddenly being forced to take in the Google experience in one big chunk can be jarring – and scary.
But that is what Google did this past winter when, with the best of intentions, it dramatically flagged the changes to its privacy policy that would allow such changes to occur. It was a weird case when the headline was frightening (We know plenty about you and we want to use it all! By March 1!) but the details, set in pica, were nowhere as scary (We're not sharing with third parties, nobody but you sees this stuff unless you specify, you have plenty of controls on what we store, and nothing special is happening on March 1!)
But who reads the fine print?
Compare this to Facebook, which unveiled a product called Timeline last September. The creepy factor is potentially off the charts. (It involves automatically updating your public profile with the books you read, the music you listen to, the places you go and the events you attend.) But users got to enjoy the benefits of the privacy tradeoff immediately. (For lots of people, sharing that stuff is fun.)
Google rolled out its privacy policy well before it delivered the putative benefits of the change. Instead of seeing all the benefits, users faced uncertainty about what Google would actually do.
Worse, the privacy policy was rolled out only a brief time after Google altered its most important product, search, with social results – mainly from its own social network, Google+. Because services like Facebook and Twitter weren't equally integrated, critics saw it as an abuse of Google's market power in search.
Google has since tweaked the product, Search Plus Your World – and vigorously defends its move. But even some allies were unhappy with the change, and wondered why Google was messing with the crown jewels.
Anyone who has seen Larry Page run an all-hands TGIF session at the end of every week knows he can be incisive, articulate and, yes, charming as he addresses even some fairly barbed questions from employees.That double-shot of poorly received moves shows the downside of urgency. Larry Page is a worshiper at the altar of speed, so it's no surprise that he wants to address Google's problems, like, yesterday. A word that often comes up when Googlers discuss their CEO is "impatience." Page seems to believe that impatience is a virtue; good things come to he who does not wait.
But impatience can lead to mistakes. Not long after the flaps about social search and privacy, Google got a black eye when it revealed that it had messed with the privacy settings of the Safari browser. Google's intent was simply to allow its "+1" ads to work properly, an arguably reasonable move. But Google poorly implemented the actual tweak, leading to a more serious violation of Safari's settings.
Such errors may be common among internet companies. But Google long ago reached the point where its every move is closely scrutinized. Doing things right in that atmosphere can sometimes require ... patience.
Page will always be dealing with that tricky balance – go fast and make mistakes, or move deliberately and lose opportunities. Maybe in the long run, it's best that he's a go-fast guy. (It's certainly the Googley way!) But there is price for that, and he paid it in those instances.
So, Sue Me
The social sphere was not the only big challenge for Page in year one. Another threat has been patent litigation. Most notably, Google's Android system has been under attack by those who claim that it infringes on their intellectual property. (Page has gotten insufficient credit for his prescience for buying Android, then a modest startup, in 2004. Were it not for this purchase, Google's biggest problem in 2011 might have been the mobile space, not the social one.) Never mind that some of the patent claims are bogus or overly broad: The traditional response by big companies is to counter-sue with in-house patents. But as a young company, Google has too few of those.
Page attacked his patent gap in a characteristic fashion: He sought a solution by broadening his response beyond the specific problem. Instead of just buying a patent portfolio (an approach that was challenging anyway, since Google's competitors were collaborating to snatch up the ones on the market), he bought a whole company – Motorola Mobility. We know what he intends to do with the patents – use them to sue Apple and other competitors until they sit down at the bargaining table and declare mutual disarmament. But what he intends to do with the handset manufacturer he now owns is a mystery.
The least likely possibility is that Page will operate Motorola with few changes. Google thrives on disrupting industries, and now it has the chance to rethink the hardware world. It's unimaginable that Page won't do something interesting. Will his schemes justify the huge purchase? Will expanding Google's headcount by nearly 20,000 Motorola employees overwhelm Page's attempts to stave off bureaucratic paralysis? Way too soon to tell.
One thing that Page has not done in his first year is assume the bully pulpit for the company to present Google's side of the story in some of its more controversial moves. That has been a costly omission.
Google was once widely viewed as a feisty startup, an underdog that was on the side of the people; now people increasingly see it as a mighty and distant power that knows too much about them.
This shift in perception is dangerous to Google. It provides cover to politicians and regulators (many of whom are being lobbied furiously by Google's competitors) who want to hobble a company that seems to have a troubling amount of power. The constant scrutiny of the DOJ and the FTC have already hurt Google considerably: When considering acquisitions, there's not only the possibility that government will block the move – there's the certainty that the long approval process will lower the value of the purchase.
Though Eric Schmidt (who now holds the amorphous post of executive chair) has done yeoman service in defending Google to legislators, regulators, and tech conference attendees, there's no substitute for hearing the company's story from the guy in charge. Instead, we hear more from ex-employees who gripe that Google has lost its soul than we do from the leader who is the soul of Google.
Anyone who has seen Larry Page run an all-hands TGIF session at the end of every week knows he can be incisive, articulate and, yes, charming as he addresses even some fairly barbed questions from employees. In the first earnings call after he became CEO, Page put in a very brief and content-free cameo appearance and got slammed for it. The next call, he participated fully, and acquitted himself nicely. A smart fellow like Larry Page will certainly come to understand the value of doing the same thing with the media.
One expectation of Larry Page's first year has been fulfilled indisputably. He has not been dull. I suspect that will be the case for Year Two.
UPDATE: Within minutes after posting this, my prediction that Page would figure out that it makes sense to give a media interview proved prescient. Here's what he said to Business Week.
Opinion Editor: John C. Abell @johncabell


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Friday, May 19, 2006
10 Clear Errors In The Davinci Code
Should you believe the claims made by Dan Brown in the book (now turned into a movie) The Davinci Code? At the start of the book the reader discovers a "fact page," which asserts, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." In fact, the book and it's wild claims about Christianity are based on total falsehoods. Here are just a few examples:
1. More than 80 Lost Gospels. Brown claims, "More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John among them" (p. 231).
In fact, that is a total lie. Yes, there were other books written later on in the second century which were called "gospels"—The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, and The Gospel of Judas are three of the most famous. But there were nowhere near 80 of them! Brown appears to have completely invented that number.[1] Furthermore, none of them were ever considered for inclusion in the New Testament. In fact these gospels were written much later and drew much of their material from the biblical Gospels.
2. Constantine and the Bible. The Davinci Code claims: "The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine" (p. 231).
This is utterly false. Constantine died in A. D. 337. Yet, Christians still continued to disagree about which books were Scripture long after he died. This is clearly evident when one reads the lists of the biblical books written by Cyril of Jerusalem (~A. D. 350) and Gregory of Nazianzus (~A. D. 389) which exclude the Book of Revelation. In fact, it seems clear that the question wasn't fully decided until the list assembled by the Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (A. D. 397) was finally sent off to be ratified in A. D. 419. Interestingly, the list was not sent off to the Emperor: "Let this be sent to our brother and fellow bishop, Boniface, and to the other bishops of those parts, that they may confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church."
3. Lost Gospels found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. On page 234 Brown writes, "some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert. And, of course, the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 at Nag Hammadi. In addition to telling the true Grail story, these documents speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms.…"
What was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls is no secret—you can order an English translation of the scrolls from any on-line bookseller. Nowhere in any of the Dead Sea Scrolls is anything ever said about Jesus. Furthermore, while apocryphal gospels such as The Gospel of Thomas were found at Nag Hammadi, they depict a much more esoteric Jesus than the biblical gospels—they do not present Jesus' ministry "in very human terms."
4. Mary Magdalene as Jesus' wife. On page 234 we learn that the Gospel of Phillip describes Mary Magdalene as the "companion" to Jesus—we are told that the Aramaic word used here implies a "spousal" relationship. Brown reveals his ignorance here. The Gospel of Philip was written in Coptic, not Aramaic. Moreover, "companion" means just that—there's no reason to believe it implies a marital relationship.
The book continues with the following passage from the Gospel of Philip: "Christ loved [Mary Magdalene] more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth." What Brown never tells us is that this is a questionable reading of the passage. The original document contains holes in key places—it tells us that Jesus "used to kiss her often on" and then there is a blank. Whether the next word is "mouth" is not clear—it might simply be "cheek."
Regardless, it is clear that the book of Philip uses the image of the "kiss" as a metaphor for spiritual communion. To read this passage as evidence of a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene misunderstands what the passage is saying.[2]
5. Leonardo's Painting of the Last Supper. Of course, one of the major claims is that Leonardo's picture of the Last Supper contains an image of Mary Magdalene—she is supposedly the figure sitting at Jesus' right. That this figure is depicted as looking "feminine" supposedly supports this view. In fact, this is not Mary Magdalene but the youngest disciple, John, who was called the "beloved disciple." The Gospel of John tells us that he sat next to Jesus at the Last Supper (cf. John 19:23). Count the number of people there with Jesus in the picture and you will find that there are exactly 12—they are clearly the twelve apostles.
The "feminine" depiction of John is usually attributed to the attempt to portray his youth. Leonardo's portrait of the young John the Baptist also depicts him rather as rather "feminine." Moreover, many medieval painters prior to Leonardo depicted John the Apostle this way. If the figure is not John one would have to conclude that Leonardo left one of the prominent apostles out of the Last Supper scene—and that's outrageous.
6. The Mona Lisa. The book claims that Leonardo hid his belief in the "sacred feminine"—a belief suppressed by the Church—in his painting of the Mona Lisa. That painting's name is supposedly a combination of the names of two Egyptian gods: Amon and the goddess Isis. We read that Isis' "ancient pictogram was once called L'ISA. The title Mona Lisa, then, is really 'an anagram of the divine union of male and female' (p. 121).
Really? What Brown doesn't tell us is that the painting was never named by Da Vinci. Da Vinci died in 1519. It wasn't until 1550 that the painting was first named. In 1550 Giorgio Vasari lists the work in his Lives of the Artists as "Monna Lisa." It was later shortened in English to "Mona Lisa." It simply means Madame Lisa, and refers to the person who most scholars believe it depicts: Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Brown's explanation is completely unfounded and is nothing more than a product of his imagination.
7. The Bloodline of Jesus. The book purports that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were not only married, but that they also had children. Brown writes, "The royal bloodline of Jesus Christ has been chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians" (p. 253). Who are these "historians" who have chronicled all of this? He lists four books, written by Margaret Starbird, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince.
Yet, none of these authors are strictly speaking "historians"—none of them have earned advanced degrees in history. Starbird, for example, has her M.A. in literature. The work Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln co-authored, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, has been thoroughly discredited by scholars—Baigent has even admitted to forging his sources. The last two authors, Picknett and Prince, believe that the ancient pyramids of Egypt were built by aliens from outer space (The Stargate Conspiracy: The Truth About Extraterrestrials and the Mysteries of Egypt [2001])
8. The Priory of Sion. On the "fact page" we read: "The Priory of Sion—a European secret society formed in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous numbers of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci" (p. 1).
The Priory of Sion hardly goes back 1099—it was established in 1952 by Pierre Plantard, who was eventually revealed as a hoax and sentenced to prison for Fraud. He admitted so in 1993 in a French Court before Judge Thierry Jean-Pierre. The so-called secret documents that were "discovered" were faked by Plantard and Philippe de Chérisey, who has also admitted his role in the scandal. Full documentation is found at http://www.priory-of-sion.com/. An episode of 60 Minutes which aired on CBS in April of 2006 also exposed the Priory of Sion as nothing but "good old fashioned fraud."
9. Opus Dei. Throughout the book Brown demonstrates his shoddy knowledge of Opus Dei. The murderer in the book is an Opus Dei monk named Silas. Yet, in the real world, there are no monks in Opus Dei. Anyone who knows Opus Dei knows that the organization seeks to help Catholics who live in the world live their faith. Opus Dei is made up of lay people: doctors, teachers, etc. You will never find a monk in Opus Dei. Moreover, while it is true that a very small number of Opus Dei members practice forms of corporeal mortification, the depiction of Silas whipping himself to a bloody pulp is an outrageous misrepresentation.
10. Jesus as a "mortal prophet." Brown claims that originally, Christians did not think Jesus was God—that belief was invented at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. He writes, "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet" (p. 233).
Hardly. The New Testament contains many references to the divinity of Jesus. One of the most clear statements is found in the Gospel of John, written in the first century—long before Nicea. In John 21:28, Thomas addresses the resurrected Lord as "My Lord and My God" (John 22:28). At the beginning of his Gospel, Jesus is described as "the Word". His divinity and pre-existence is especially clear: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made."
For more information I recommend you listen to Matthew Arnold's wonderful audio set, The Davinci Code Exposed.
Other resources include:
--Darrel Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code. Nashville: Nelson, 2004.
--Carl Olson, et al. The Davinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in the Davinci Code. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.
--Amy Wellborn, De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of the Da Vinci Code. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2004.
Although it is not specifically about Dan Brown's Book, I also recommend Mike Aquilina and Christopher Bailey's fine book on the Holy Grail, The Grail Code. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2006.
[1] "Add up everything that was ever called a gospel in the first half-millennium of Christianity (most of which are small compilations of esoteric sayings ascribed to Jesus and not narratives of any portion of his life) and you come up with about two dozen documents." Craig L. Blomberg, Ph.D., Review of The Da Vinci Code in Denver Journal, An Online Review of Current Biblical and Theological Studies.
[2] Darrel Bock, Breaking the Code (Nashville: Nelson, 2004), 23.
8 comments:
- Michael F. Bird said...
I must say, even as a Protestant, that I found the incessant Catholic bashing of the book distasteful and loathsome. I get the feeling that in North America the only minority that one is permitted to demean are Catholics.
- Ric said...
I have found two great resources that corrects the myths of The Da Vinci Code:
In God's Grace,
- ::aaron g:: said...
The most recent Christian Century has a similar feature in which they "Decode the Da Vinci Code."
I do believe that the very foundation of organized religion (Christianity) is crumbling!
I don't believe in any organized religion!
- mojoala said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- mojoala said...
You said:
Count the number of people there with Jesus in the picture and you will find that there are exactly 12—they are clearly the twelve apostles.
I ask:
Could it be possible that the scene painted is immediately after the departure of Judas?
- An Anonymous Fool said...
mojoala said, "Could it be possible that the scene painted is immediately after the departure of Judas?"
Guess who is in front (green and blue) kinda looking taken aback. He is clutching a small bag and has (in the picture) knocked over a salt cellar.
- Johnny Mathis Appreciation Society said...
I found this article very interesting and am thankful for it because I can direct others here. However, I don't see all the fuss and bother over a poorly written work of fiction (THE DA VINCI CODE). Sure, it was a popular book, but so was THE HISTORIAN, and no one is running to debunk Dracula. I think most people do recognize the absurdity of Brown's book and the absurdity of any claim that Jesus was married or had children. Such an event would be so important it would be recorded in the NT somewhere or even in Flavius Josephus' writings. It's not. Most people overlook the fact that the NT does not even give us Mary Magdalene's age or occupation. There is no evidence that she was a prostitute other than the fact that she was from Magdala (infamous for prostitutes). She very well could have been an 80-year-old woman who liked to mother rather unkempt but appealing young men. That's all. We know Mary Magdalene walked with the Lord and his disciples, but so did the Lord's mother, and the woman identified as his sister (probably his step-sister from a prior marriage of Joseph's). There was nothing unseemly about her relationship to Our Lord, and Jesus never married. THE DA VINCI CODE was written by an overly imaginative man looking to make easy money (and he did).

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Singer / Actress Emmy Rossum is married – but is a divorce coming just as the public finds out about her secret nuptials?
The Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder's Office has confirmed to Access Hollywood that a marriage license was issued to Emmy Rossum – whose full name is Emmanuelle Grey Rossum – and one Justin Siegel. Further details about when the couple was married could not be released, as the license is confidential.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Latest Star Sightings
But according to E! Online, news of the couple's marriage is not something to celebrate. They have reportedly now split.
Emmy, 22, and Justin, 27, reportedly first stepped out as a couple in 2007.
Related Content from AccessHollywood.com:
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Top 10 Most Expensive Celebrity Divorces
PLAY IT NOW: Teen Choice Awards 2009: Selena Gomez Amazed By Taylor Lautner's Abs
PLAY IT NOW: Why Is Kate Gosselin Still Wearing Her Wedding Ring? (August 10, 2009)
MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Emmy Rossum - Movies - Divorces - Couples


text:
In 1949, three enterprising gentlemen, Bill Bernbach, Ned Doyle and
Maxwell Dane gave the advertising industry a wake-up call. They introduced a new approach to marketing that relied on insight into human nature, respect for the consumer, and the power of creativity. In short, they said: Let's stop talking at people and let's start conversations that lead to action.
This heritage is a unique strength that continually tells us who we are, what we believe and how we should behave. It inspires us to continually challenge standard convention. From Bill Bernbach to Keith Reinhard to the present generation of DDB leaders, we are continuing the revolution.
We believe that creativity is the most powerful force in business- it stirs emotion, influences minds and builds brands. The combination of brilliant creative ideas and extraordinary results is what sets DDB apart. We are not satisfied to be simply the most creative agency network in the world, but hold our creative ideas accountable for delivering business-building results. Our vision is to maintain our distinguished position by developing remarkable creative that transforms communication clutter into communication currency. The DDB Worldwide Communications Group was ranked #1 worldwide by the Advertising Age 2009 Agency Report. This recognition is a testament to the depth and breadth of our marketing services resources across the globe. Collectively, our network and individual offices around the world have been named Agency of the Year 120 times. In 2009 alone, DDB won nearly 100 awards for creativity and marketing effectiveness including: 52 Cannes Lions, 22 Clios, 12 EFFIEs, 6 Pencils and 2 One Show awards. We believe our success is directly a result of the talent at DDB, the proprietary tools and processes we employ, and the way we work.
About Omnicom Group Inc. Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE-OMC) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries. For further information on Omnicom and its brands, please visit www.omnicomgroup.com


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I'm not usually this prevalent with two posts in a week, but with something as newsworthy as the Sydney Writer's Festival Zine Fair, I had to get off my sorry arse and report in for KooK. I manned a stall down at the Museum of Contemporary Art with my peeps Tim Hilton and Rebecca Doubledecka, and I must say I had a lovely day indeed!
This was the first zine fair where I had branched out from only offering KooK and it was definitely the most fun zine fair I have participated in. The highlight of the day would easily have been the guy who came and picked up my Hangin' On Cleveland Street zine, looked at every page, laughed like a crazed loony, put it down and walked off in hysterics! Strangely enough I also managed to flog a few old KooK #1's for a buck even after I later realised I had put really old copies on the table that had 'FREE' on the front. If you took one for free I'm glad hahaha!
The only unfortunate incident on the day was my extreme case of caffeine intoxication jitters after I virtually inhaled two strong coffees and a bottle of Coke in quick succession. This rendered me unable to hold a decent conversation for the first few hours. Luckily after years of attending meetings in corporate offices, I have perfected the act of nod and smile… It also made it virtually impossible to hold a camera still enough to take a picture, but here's a photograph one of my wares on the table. Look I did my best… 😉
As you may be able to see in the picture, I was also flogging my new zine Trash Talk about celebrity trash mags. Thanks to the site http://girlwithasatchel.blogspot.com for their great write up of the zine!
Anyway enough shameless self promotion Zina! Here's some of my zine highlights from the day:
Tim Hilton: His smokin' hot zine I Require Your Full Attention sold out in the blink of an eye. I didn't even get my mitts on one dammit!
Rebecca Doubledecka: If the number of people who bought Beard #3 or had a good laugh at it is any indication, people really love beards! Issue three even has a cameo from KooK's own Troy McLure under another name…
Teeth: Teeth #6 rocks the house and all the cool kids had "Hi My Name is Annie Ly" badges on at the fair…
Just Like Candy: A crackin' second issue with a great cover. There's even an article by yours truly!
The Blue Rinse Society: Another busy table with an intriguing lucky dip. The third 'I Am Russia' themed issue also has an article from me. Look out for Issue 4 soon!
Tiny Paper Hearts: The lovely ladies were in fine form once again with great zines and a kick ass table filled with handmade treats.
Miss Helen: I picked up her new zine Fly Away Bird #8 and it's definitely one of my favourite finds of the day. Zine fairs fill me with anxiety too Miss Helen. It doesn't help when you've got the jitters like I did either… 😉
Vanessa Berry: Everytime I approached Vanessa's table it was virtually impossible to get near it. I did manage to squeeze in and get my hands on an older issue of I Am A Camera that I didn't have. Very inspiring!
Ordinary Magazine: Someone from this new online magazine thrust their card in my hand and I'm glad they did! Check out their great site at www.ordinarymagazine.org
Bird In The Hand: The Sydney based zine distributor had dozens of great zines available on the day. Noice work Suzy!
Finally, a big hello to all the other zinesters who I didn't get a chance to meet but who made it such a kickass event. Next time I promise to drink less caffeine and come and say hello… 😉
Z. KooK


text: This year instead of just watching all the bloggers from all over take part I decided that I needed to be a part of Neil's Annual Christmahanukwanzaakah Holiday Online Concert. So here I am singing with my son Aidan. If I was better prepared I would have recorded the one we sang at church the […] . . . → Read More: Happy Christmahanukwanzaakah!


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UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- The United Nations Thursday accused the Syrian government of "gross human rights violations" constituting crimes against humanity.
A three-member panel based its 72-page report on 369 interviews with victims, witnesses, defectors and others with "inside knowledge" of the situation in Syria, The New York Times reported.
The report, which cited torture and killing of civilians, said the nation was "on the brink" of civil war and "the continuation of the crisis carries the risk of radicalizing the population, deepening inter-communal tensions and eroding the fabric of society."
The report said "credible and consistent evidence" showed members of the armed forces had "ordered their subordinates to shoot at unarmed protesters, kill soldiers who refused to obey such orders, arrest persons without cause, mistreat detained persons and attack civilian neighborhoods with indiscriminate tanks and machine gun fire."
Evidence, the report said, "provides reasonable grounds to believe that particular individuals, including commanding officers and officials at the highest levels of government, bear responsibility for crimes against humanity and other gross human rights violations."
"Gross human rights violations were conducted pursuant to a policy of the state," the report said and the "orders to commit such violations originated from policies and directives issued at the highest levels of the armed forces and the government."
The Times said there was no immediate response from Syrian authorities.
The report, delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, also said the Free Syrian Army, comprising defectors from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, had also committed abuses, but they were "not comparable in scale and organization to those carried out by the state."
The report came as Britain and France demanded the Syrian government return the bodies of two slain journalists and treat three other injured journalists.
Meantime, world leaders were preparing to try to build pressure on Assad to end an 11-month-old crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, CNN reported.
The three journalists reportedly were in Homs to document the attacks by government forces when they were wounded Wednesday in shelling that killed American reporter Marie Colvin, working for a British newspaper, and French photographer Remi Ochlik.
Assad has denied targeting civilians and said military action was necessary to protect Syrians from "terrorists" and foreign fighters trying to destabilize Syria.
The French and British foreign ministries summoned Syria's ambassadors in their countries and told Syria it was expected to make arrangements to return the bodies of Colvin and Ochlik, as well as provide medical attention to the injured journalists.
In London, the Foreign Office said in a statement it demanded the "unacceptable violence" in Homs stop immediately, CNN reported.
"The Syrian authorities must implement the undertakings they had given to the Arab League, halt all violence against civilians, and start an orderly political transition" before anyone else is killed, the statement said
Syria's Information Ministry said it had no knowledge of the journalists being attacked and officials in Homs province were looking into the reports, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said.
While offering condolences, the Syrian Foreign Ministry denied Syria was responsible for the deaths of journalists "who infiltrated its territory on their own," Syrian state TV said.
The demands concerning the journalists came as the International Committee of the Red Cross in Damascus was reported trying to negotiate a temporary cease-fire and humanitarian aid corridor, CNN said.
"We are back talking to everybody and anybody on how to arrange a two-hour cessation of conflict," said Saleh Dabbakeh, a Red Cross communication delegate in Syria.
The negotiations concerned not only getting journalists out but also any civilians trying to flee the conflict in Homs, Dabbakeh said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Wednesday Moscow was "seriously concerned" about the civilian plight in Homs.
CNN said reports indicated at least four people died in Homs Thursday, the 20th straight day of shelling in the besieged city.
At a meeting Friday in Tunisia, world leaders are expected to increase pressure on the Assad regime, the U.S. State Department said.
More than 70 countries were invited to participate in the "Friends of Syria" group, described as part of "ongoing efforts with our friends, allies, and the Syrian opposition to crystallize the next steps to halt the slaughter of the Syrian people and pursue a transition to democracy in Syria," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
The United Nations said it has documented 5,400 deaths as of January, when it said it was no longer able to safely gather information. Saudi Arabia says the death toll is now at least 7,000.


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March 23, 2010 -- Smoking, high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, and obesity -- four preventable risk factors -- are robbing years from the lives of Americans.
The new findings -- almost five years from men, and just over four years from women --suggest that disparities in these risk factors help explain why some ethnic and socioeconomic groups have lower life expectancies.
"Our results demonstrate that a small number of risk factors for chronic disease account for a noticeable part of the disparities in life expectancy in the U.S., with the largest contributions from smoking and high blood pressure," say the researchers, led by Majid Ezzati, PhD, an associate professor of International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. The findings appear in the journal PLoS Medicine.
The 8 Americas
Researchers from Harvard and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle classified individuals from several 2005 national data sources into eight subgroups based on their race, geographic locale, and socioeconomic characteristics. The "Eight Americas" consisted of:
1. Asians
2. Low-income whites in the Northern Plains and Dakotas
3. Middle America
4. Low-income whites from Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley
5. Western Native Americans
6. African-American middle America
7. Southern low-income rural African-Americans
8. High-risk urban African-Americans
In general,your location and your ethnicity affect your life expectancy and how healthy and fit you are. These findings held among all age groups -- the young, the middle-aged, and older adults.
Asians Healthiest, Live Longest
Overall, Asians were leaner, least likely to smoke, and had the lowest blood sugar levels. Asians also had the highest life expectancies.
In 2005, men lived to 75.1, on average, and women lived to 80.3. Asians had an average life expectancy of 82.3 for men and 86.8 for women. The study authors point out that this is one and two years longer than the highest life expectancies seen across the globe.
African-Americans from the rural South had the highest blood pressure levels in the new study. They also tended to be more overweight and have higher blood sugar levels. Rural African-American males had life expectances that were seven years lower than the national average, and their female counterparts' life expectancies were reduced by 5.4 years.
Controlling risk factors, however, can improve life expectancy significantly, the study authors point out. For example, if a man got his blood pressure under control, he would add 1.5 years to his life, while a woman could add 1.6 years to hers. Quitting smoking would add 2.5 years to a man's life and 1.8 years to a woman's life, the study showed.


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Empowering People
to Make an Impression.
to Make an Impression.
Make an impression, Leave your mark
Cimpress makes it easy and affordable for customers to express themselves in physical form – for their customers, organization or loved ones. Whether it's apparel emblazoned with a company logo or an announcement celebrating a birth, Cimpress combines the individual personalization customers desire with the tangible impact of physical products.
In an increasingly digital world, physical connections matter more than ever. Cimpress ceaselessly innovates to make connections ever more impactful, and more personal.
Entrepreneurial Businesses
Cimpress invests in and builds customer-focused, entrepreneurial, mass customization businesses for the long-term, which we manage in a decentralized, autonomous manner.
Strategic Capabilities
We drive competitive advantage across Cimpress by investing in a select few shared capabilities that have the greatest potential to create company-wide value.
Staying small as we get big
Other than our select few shared strategic capabilities, we limit central activities to only those which absolutely must be performed centrally so as to foster the entrepreneurial passion, customer focus, speed and accountability of our businesses.
In the news
Stories from around the business, press releases and recent news
What Does Building Flexible Technology Have To Do With Enabling An Entrepreneurial Culture?
Have you ever thought about what the secrets behind the successes of today's unicorns and other tech leaders may be? Perhaps one of these other questions piques your interest: How can you help your business operate and execute more efficiently? What if you could give your business more flexibility to [...]
Maarten Wensveen on Differentiating Technology Dreams from Business Realities
Machine learning, blockchain, IoT, augmented reality…there are many new and exciting technologies out there promising to transform a number of industries, but not all of them are right for every business. So how do we filter through the buzz and determine which ones make sense for our business?
In Cimpress Technology, Successful Distributed Teams don't Happen by Accident
There is real benefit to having a geographically dispersed technology team. For Cimpress, a few include: tapping into the best talent pools in the world, having coverage across many time zones, and having a diverse population that brings unique perspectives to their work.


text:
Andrew Hickman
Head of the Transfer Pricing Unit
Centre for Tax Policy and Administration
Andrew Hickman has been appointed Head of the Transfer Pricing Unit of the Tax Treaties, Transfer Pricing and Financial Transactions Division within the Centre for Tax Policy and Administration. He will take up duty in May 2014.
Andrew brings over 25 years of transfer pricing experience, most recently as partner with KPMG in London, where he participates in developing transfer pricing policy and works with major multinational clients and tax authorities on transfer pricing compliance, dispute resolution, and Advance Pricing Agreements. For the first half of his career, Andrew was a senior transfer pricing official at the UK tax authority. In that time he acted as Competent Authority in eliminating double taxation with treaty partners and introduced legislation for and managed the UK's Advance Pricing Agreement programme. Andrew was UK delegate to Working Party 6 for five years in the early 1990s and helped to produce the 1995 update to the Transfer Pricing Guidelines.
Andrew Hickman holds a Doctorate Degree from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
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Dr. Eugenia Cheng is Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She won tenure in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield, UK, where she is now Honorary Fellow. Alongside her research in Category Theory and undergraduate teaching her aim is to rid the world of "math phobia". Eugenia is also math columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a concert pianist.
Emotions are powerful. In newspaper headlines and on social media, they have become the primary way of understanding the world. With her new book "The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't", Eugenia has set out to show how mathematical logic can help us see things more clearly - and know when politicians and companies are trying to mislead us. This talk, like the book, is filled with useful real-life examples of logic and illogic at work and an essential guide to decoding modern life.


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U.S. Olympian Shaun White earned Presidential kudos for his gold medal snowboarding run at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver – words that impressed Shaun himself.
"Shaun White's secret training facility up on Silverton Mountain paid off," President Barack Obama said earlier this week during a speech in Colorado, where the snowboarder trained for the games.
"He's basically talking about me inventing the tricks out there," Shaun told Access Hollywood's Billy Bush after reading Obama's remarks out loud. "Not bad to have Obama talking about you… the day gets better!"
And the President's not the only one who's a fan of the red-haired medalist.
"After the Olympics last time around, I'd walk through the airport and the whole airport would start to [applaud]… It was out of like a crazy movie, it's like the slow clap. You just throw the arm up, 'Rocky' style," Shaun told Billy.
This time around, though, Shaun explained he's got a new nickname – one not based on his famous hair.
"I like the new nickname because apparently I resemble the drummer from 'The Muppets,'" he told Billy, adding that the "Flying Tomato" era was over. "I thought Shaun 'The Animal' White had a good ring to it."
The star, who hadn't slept since his medal victory – which he punctuated by unveiling a brand-new trick, the McTwist 1260, on his final run – told Billy he'll have a hard time keeping his eyes dry once he steps up to the medal stand.
"I'm going to try not to [cry] but they go for it. They get you," he said. "They put your whole family – imagine, you're sitting there and they put your mom in front of you and she's just bawling and then your dad's like this tough, rugged guy but he's shedding a single tear. They cut you deep, man."
While Shaun's looking forward to his opportunities following the games, the athlete was still buzzing from landing his high-flying trick.
"I wanted to deliver," he said. "And I had the best victory run of my life."
Related Content from AccessHollywood.com:
VIEW THE PHOTOS: 2010 Winter Olympics: Team USA
PLAY IT NOW: 2010 Winter Olympics: Is Shaun White An 'Animal' Or A 'Tomato'?
PLAY IT NOW: 2010 Winter Olympics: Billy Bush w/ Shaun White - 'It Felt Surreal'
MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Shaun White - Winter Olympics - Athletes - Billy Bush - Celebrities


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WISN 12 News investigates company making sales pitch to seniors
BBB gives AFD Medical Advisors an F rating, puts out nationwide warning
A WISN 12 News investigation issues a word of warning to help people protect their elderly loved ones by telling a story about children and caretakers paying careful attention and keeping a watchful eye on finances.
Vicki Thompson is a crusader. She helps consumers identify fraud.
"Medicare fraud is a multibillion dollar business," Thompson said.
Thompson works at the Aging Commission of the Mid-South finding families legitimate health care coverage, so she was stunned when her own mother called to say she just got a great deal from Medicare.
"I said, 'Mom, did you give her your bank account number?'" Her mother said, 'Yes, I did,'" Thompson said.
A company called AFD Medical Advisors had deducted $299 from her mom's bank account. The company's website listed a Wisconsin address, so Thompson called the Better Business Bureau. It was already on high alert about AFD.
"These people know who they're looking for," said Liz Fredrichs of the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau.
Fredrichs said it's been getting about 60 calls a month about AFD since mid-November. In every case, the call came from a caregiver for an elderly person -- most suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's.
"All of the people who are being contacted who are giving their information most likely won't ever file a complaint with us because they're not even going to remember the call," Fredrichs said.
Wisconsin's Department of Financial Institutions lists Aaron F. Dupont as AFD's registered agent. WISN 12 News found him at home near Wausau.
"Hi, Mr. Dupont," Henry said.
"Yes?" Dupont said
"I'm Colleen Henry from Channel 12. How are you?"
"Just fine, thank you," Dupont said.
"We're working on a story about your business," Henry said.
"OK," Dupont said.
Dupont's business claims it helps patients get prescriptions at a discount or free.
Complaints against AFD follow a pattern. A Missouri woman said AFD told her, "she needed to get a new Medicare card."
A California woman said she was told, "Medicare was going to be cancelled the next day."
A Tennessee woman said AFD told her she "had to pay right away or lose her insurance."
In each case, a caretaker learned of the transaction after AFD withdrew $299 from the elderly person's bank account. In addition to the BBB, Wisconsin's Office of Consumer Protection, and a couple police agencies are now investigating AFD.
AFD lists its address on Highway 10 in downtown Stevens Point, but when WISN 12 News arrived, it found nothing but a UPS store, where the business rents a post box.
"We came looking for AFD Medical Advisors," Henry said.
"They have a mailbox here," said Randy Staedter, who works at the UPS store.
The UPS store operator told WISN 12 News it gets a box from AFD each week that comes from Canada. The company pays him to stamp the letters and mail them to U.S. addresses.
"We've done as many as 865 in a week," Staedter said.
The UPS store said Dupont rented the box.
"We have no evidence that there is a drug program or an assistance program of any kind at all," Fredrichs said.
The BBB said none of those who complained ever got anything for their $299.
"You've probably heard from the BBB?" Henry asked Dupont.
"No, I haven't," he said.
"Well, they say they've talked to you, and they're very concerned that perhaps you're preying on elderly people, taking advantage of them," Henry said.
"No, I haven't talked to anybody," Dupont said.
"I think it's horrible," Thompson said.
Thompson said she worries about all the elderly consumers who don't have loved ones tracking their finances when outfits like AFD come calling.
"They say it's not hurting anybody; yes it is hurting people. It's hurting everybody that pays into Medicare. It's hurting everybody that hopes to get Medicare benefits. It's hurting everyone," Thompson said.
BBB got refunds for the customers who filed formal complaints. The checks listed Dupont's Wausau-area address.
It gives AFD an F rating and has posted a nationwide alert on its website.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection is conducting its own investigation but won't comment until it's complete.
Police said criminal charges haven't been filed because in many cases the victims may not be considered reliable witnesses. Some of them don't even remember giving out their bank account numbers.
BBB advised that people make sure elderly loved ones are on the "do not call list," or better yet, get them an unlisted phone number to avoid solicitations altogether.
It also recommended people alert caregivers, assisted living and senior centers they deal with so they know how to handle such calls.


text:
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Flyer on the Wall: Beyer Redux
Outsider comic artist Mark Beyer originally created this art for a show at The Kosmos in August 2011. He was published in every issue of RAW Magazine during the publication's 11-year run and contributed album and merch artwork for both John Zorn and Naked City. Gregg Araki loosely based his cult classic The Doom Generation on Beyer's "Amy and Jordan" comic series. DJ Caterwaul recycles this art to hype a Friday night Low Life Happy Hour at Blackbird Buvette in this week's Flyer on the Wall.


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StarLight Tourism Certification System encourages dark skies and intelligent tourism
22 January 2010
In December 2009 the StarLight Tourist Certification was been presented at the UN-WTO (World Tourism Organization) headquarters with the title "The StarLight Tourism Certification System: A New Vision: Science and Tourism under the Stars". It is the first Certification System for tourist destinations whose main resource is the starry sky and astronomical observations. It is an important step toward getting the tourism world involved in the defence of astronomy and its associated values.
The StarLight Tourism Certification System was created with the aim of encouraging, at world-wide level, the improvement of the quality of tourist experiences and the protection of the night skies in StarLight Destinations. These are places that can be visited and have excellent properties for contemplating the star-studded skies and for tourist activities based on this resource.
The StarLight Certification seeks to guarantee the capacity to enjoy the view of the stars and to discover the associated scientific, cultural, natural and scenic values. It makes it possible for the first time to bring science and tourism together, creating a new form of intelligent tourism that provides innovative criteria for a responsible development of this activity based on astronomy and a vision of the firmament."
For more information, please see: http://www.starlight2007.net/starlightcertification.html
Search IYA2009 Updates
National Nodes: 148
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Why can't I log in to Parallels Plesk Panel Webmail?
If your password is rejected when you log in to Webmail, your email might be disabled.
To Enable Parallels Plesk Panel Email
- Log in to Parallels Plesk Panel as admin.
- From the menu on the left, click Domains.
- Select the domain name for the email account you want to enable.
- In the Mail section, click Mail Accounts.
- In the Tools section, click Mail Settings.
- Verify that Activate mail service on domain is checked.


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Our church in Greenville, South Carolina is a branch of The Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts. Church services are held each Sunday morning at 10:30.
Mary Baker Eddy founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 "to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." (Church Manual, page 17). Mrs. Eddy grew up in the Congregational church in New England and loved and revered the life and teachings of Christ Jesus. She founded a church so that his healing works would be more universally understood and practiced.
Many people attending a Christian Science church service for the first time will recognize many familiar elements—hymns, prayer, readings from the Bible, a warm sense of fellowship. One unique feature is that we don't have personal preachers or pastors conducting the services. Instead, two lay readers conduct services that are based on Bible Lessons published in The Christian Science Quarterly. These lessons are made up of passages from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (written by Mary Baker Eddy) and address topics such as God, Christ Jesus, and so forth. There is a simplicity to the services that is very much in keeping with the earliest Christian gatherings where love and healing were at the heart of worship.
Please join us for our mid-week testimony meeting held every Wednesday evening at 7:30. The congregation meets for an hour to pray, sing, share readings based again on the Bible, and to give thanks for the blessings and healing experiences that have resulted from our prayers and study of Christian Science.
Child care is lovingly provided in our Children's Room during all of our services.


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Rachael Rosenfeld evened the score for Harvard against Vermont Sunday afternoon (photo Gil Talbot).
BURLINGTON, Vt. – Rachael Rosenfeld tied the score, 1-1, in the second half, but the Harvard field hockey team could not find a golden goal in overtime, as the Crimson fell at Vermont, 2-1, Sunday afternoon. The tally was the third of the year for Rosenfeld, the second most on the squad.
Vermont pulled ahead nine minutes into the contest with a goal from Molly Higgins. The freshman deflected a shot form Sally Snickenberger past Harvard goalie Cynthia Tassopoulos for her first goal of the season.
Harvard thought it had evened the score with 2:36 left in the first half, but the goal was waved off. Sydney Jenkins split two defenders and passed to Kailtin Wahl on the baseline. Wahl quickly moved the ball back to Jenkins, who fired it towards the cage from the right wing of the circle. The shot bounced past Vermont's goalie, Stephanie Zygmunt, and to Madison Jung on the back post. Jung tipped in the shot, but the referees said the ball had hit a Crimson player's foot resulting in a foul before the goal was scored.
The Crimson had six shots in the first 35 minutes, while holding Vermont to three. Harvard also held the advantage in penalty corners, 3-1, but trailed 1-0 entering halftime.
Harvard was able to tie the score at the 43-minute mark in the second half. Rosenfeld fired from five feet away from the cage in the middle of the circle and beat the Vermont goalie for an unassisted goal.
Throughout the second half, Harvard weathered nine Catamount shots and a pair of man-down situations because of a green and yellow card to hold Vermont scoreless in the stanza. Tassopoulos came up with four big saves in the frame, totaling five in the game, to keep the score knotted.
Harvard had an opportunity to win the game in regulation after gaining a penalty corner with 30 seconds remaining. The Crimson inserted the ball to Caitlin Rea at the top, but the sophomore's last second shot was denied by a diving Zygmunt.
Another green card by the Crimson in the second minute of overtime gave Vermont an advantage. Once again, Harvard was able to play through the penalty, as Vermont failed to get a shot while playing with an extra player for two minutes.
The Crimson's penalties finally proved costly in the 75th minute of action. A foul in the circle granted the Catamounts a penalty stroke and Angie DeBellis lifted the ball into the left side of the cage to end the game.
Five Harvard seniors will be honored in the Crimson's next matchup, the last of the regular season. A pregame ceremony is planned for Tassopoulos, Wahl, Kim Goh, Emma Keller and Emily Stansik before Harvard takes on Columbia at Jordan Field Nov. 3. The game is slated for a noon start.


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Every inch of this height adjustable stroller is designed to bring your baby closer for bonding and connection. Intuitive design makes Stokke® Xplory® a dream to push. Swivel wheel function provides effortless one hand maneuvering, even around the tightest city corners. Parent or forward facing with adjustable seat height and seat angles, Stokke® Xplory® offers an almost infinite choice of seating positions to adapt to your family ́s ever-changing needs. It is suitable from birth to 33 lbs. It offers an ultra comfortable carry cot with superior ventilation, a generously padded seat with an extended canopy, and even a sibling solution with the addition of the Stokke® Xplory® Sibling Board. No other stroller brings children and parents together like the Stokke® Xplory®. Don't forget, Stokke® Xplory® can be used as part of a travel system with all Stokke® car seats without the use of adaptors. It may also be used as part of a travel system with car seats from selected manufacturers with the use of Stokke® car seat adaptors.
*If color selection out of stock, please call the store to order.


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Anyhow Weir, Ivory, Whitehaven
Order a sample HERE
Fabric is sold by the 1/4 Yard. For example, if you would like to purchase 1 Yard, you would enter 4 in the Qty. box at Checkout. Yardage is cut in one continuous piece.
1/4 yard = 1
1/2 yard = 2
3/4 yard = 3
1 yard = 4
1/4 Yard Measures 9" x 44/45"
Fiber Content: 100% Organic Cotton. This is a woven fabric - NOT KNIT. It's perfect for quilting and other sewing projects
Hover over image for a larger, better view.
Care Instructions: Always wash and dry fabric before sewing to ensure that it is done shrinking, this will make your final project more likely to be machine washable.
*** Ordering multiple items will save money on shipping costs. ***
** We tear the fabric to make sure it's cut on the straight of grain, because of this, we make sure to add about an inch extra to the cut.**
"Cloud9 Fabrics uses only 100% certified organic cotton in the manufacturing of our base cloths and eco-responsible low impact dyes for printing and dying. We work closely with mills that are committed to ethical and responsible conduct. This includes respecting the rights of all individuals, a devotion to sustained social compliance, and an accountability to the environment."


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Rockies recap: Gerardo Parra's laser beam assist, Trevor Story homers against Reds
The Colorado Rockies are off to an 8-5 start this season and added another win against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park Monday night. Here's at look at the video highlights from the game.
You can read the full game story from Rockies beat writer Patrick Saunders here.
Gerardo Parra throws a laser beam to Nolan Arenado, nabs Jay Bruce at third.
Trevor Story does it again, crushes his eighth home run against Reds.


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BizBox™ was designed and created with a few simple criteria that are reflective of today's world and economy; innovation, simplicity, sustainability, form and a clear focus on function. BizBox literally opens up a new world of opportunities for business all over the world. Due to its adaptability and versatility in design and concept it can be used in almost any commercial application from Healthcare to Retail to Education to Hospitality.
The integral design of the building is firmly founded upon green building principles; the use of natural daylight, high R Value insulation, low energy components and renewable resources create a mobile building that is responsibly green, reducing energy consumption and costs. The solar panels (that angle to the sun) produce up to 1000 watts of energy per day and the batteries store up to 5 days of power, which allows you to run all the LED lights, LED TV's, computers and much more for days without a recharge, making it sustainable.
Due to the simplicity and ease of operation, which is afforded from complex engineering, BizBox transforms in no more than 15 minutes from a mobile 'branded box' into a state of the art building, allowing the user to be in the right location at the right time, with the right facility. Designed upon the core principles of form and function BizBox draws inspiration from nature – just like a Seagull spreads and folds its large wingspan with effortlessness, BizBox expands and contracts in much the same way, bringing that element of surprise.
We live in an ever-changing 'mobile world' and just like human beings, buildings need to evolve and adapt to the surroundings we are presented with. BizBox pushes the boundaries of building design and changes the way we think about interacting with each other.


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UFC 172 Weigh-in Photo Gallery
April 25, 2014
62 Photos
UFC 172 weigh-in at the Baltimore Arena on April 25, 2014 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Getty Images reserves the right to pursue unauthorized users of this image or clip. If you violate our intellectual property you may be liable for: actual damages, loss of income, and profits you derive from the use of this image or clip, and, where appropriate, the costs of collection and/or statutory damages up to $150,000 (USD).


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Join us Friday, March 10 at 10 a.m. for our Friday Financial Forum. We will meet at the Friday Forum Room at Arvest's East Side Branch, located at 4225 S.E. Adams Rd. in Bartlesville, Okla.*
Our featured speaker this week is Dr. Ian Palmer, a retired petroleum engineer who has traveled all over the world. An avid hiker, Dr. Palmer will be speaking on a subject of interest he discovered on one of his many hiking adventures on the nomadic trails in Australia. He will share his experience trekking Kangaroo Island, a unique island located in South Australia with an intriguing history and a fascinating array of birds and animals.
Many of you may remember Dr. Palmer from last year's forum when he spoke about the effects of fracking in Oklahoma. What you may not be aware of is that he is an author of three books and hosts the blog, The Gray Nomad, and spends time hiking, dancing and playing pickleball.
What you can also expect at the event:
Invite a friend and come enjoy delicious homemade cookies and hear about what's going on in the Bartlesville area! If you have any questions or would like to be included on the invitation email list, please contact Billie Roane at (918) 337-4358. We look forward to seeing you there!
Links marked with * go to a third-party site not operated or endorsed by Arvest Bank, an FDIC-insured institution.
**Josh Randolph Oklahoma Insurance License #122041 and Sonya Reed Oklahoma Insurance License # 111796
Submitted questions will be answered by an Arvest banker and may appear on the Arvest Blog.
All Arvest banks are Equal Housing Lenders and Member FDIC.
Investment products and services are provided by Arvest Investments, Inc., doing business as Arvest Asset Management, member FINRA/SIPC, an SEC registered investment adviser and a subsidiary of Arvest Bank. Trust services are provided by Arvest Bank. Insurance products are made available through Arvest Insurance, Inc., which is registered as an insurance agency. Insurance products are marketed through Arvest Insurance, Inc., but are underwritten by insurance companies.
Securities and Insurance Products: Not Insured by FDIC or any Federal Government Agency, May Lose Value, Not a Deposit of or Guaranteed by a Bank or any Bank Affiliate.


text: Mac systems can run even better with a memory upgrade from Crucial. Our Apple memory is certified, OEM-quality, and guaranteed compatible. It's also surprisingly affordable.Mac users demand the best — and Crucial delivers.Our reliability and quality make Crucial memory ideal for any Mac system upgrade. Easy to find, easy to buy, and easy to install, Crucial's Apple-compatible memory is rigorously tested and comes from a division of one of the largest DRAM manufacturers in the world.A trusted nameWith over a decade in the DRAM business, Crucial is a recognized name in memory products. We are price-competitive, high-quality, and reliable. And we back our products with industry-leading warranties and outstanding service and support.Crucial Apple Memory offerings:- DDR, DDR2 and DDR3 options- Certified FBDIMM modules- Legacy memory for older systems


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Road to Mac Office 2008: Excel '08 vs Numbers 1.0The planned mid-January release of Office 2008 offers a significant overhaul of the productivity suite's look and features. The previous segment described new features in Word 2008, with some comparisons to Apple's Pages 08. This article examines what's new in Excel 2008 and contrasts Microsoft's oldest application to Apple's newest: the Numbers 08 spreadsheet included with iWork.
The Birth of Excel 2008
Excel was Microsoft's first desktop application and is widely regarded today to be its best. As described in Road to Mac Office 2008: an introduction, Excel was originally sold under the name Multiplan for a variety of text-based computer systems in the early 80s, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, and TI-99/4A. Multiplan was largely a clone of 1979's VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet.
In 1984, Apple unveiled the Macintosh with advertisements touting its unique graphical interface. Those ads highlighted Microsoft among Apple's most prominent software partners on the Mac and cited a young Bill Gates noting that the Macintosh sets a new standard that "captures peoples imaginations," as noted in Office Wars 3. While Multiplan wasn't available until 1985, it beat spreadsheet leader Lotus to the Mac platform. Lotus delivered a graphical, simplified version of its 1-2-3 spreadsheet under the name Jazz that ended up as an embarrassing failure.
Jazz never took off on the Mac in part because it was criticized for failing to properly adopt the Mac human interface guidelines. In contrast, Microsoft's Multiplan for Mac, renamed Excel shortly after its launch, delivered a familiar VisiCalc interface within a familiar Mac window, which quickly made it one of the most popular Mac software titles. Excel 2.0 migrated that familiar interface to the DOS PC world in 1987, piggybacked on top of Microsoft's new Windows 2.0 environment.
By 1990, Excel had almost singlehandedly established Windows as important enough for PC makers to begin pre-installing on their systems. Nearly twenty years later, Excel has become the common language of number crunchers. It has preserved alive the legacy of VisiCalc with a nearly unchanged interface that is almost identical on both the Mac and Windows.
While most Excel competitors have attempted to clone every aspect of the program, Apple's Numbers 1.0, released earlier this fall, takes a different approach. Like the other components of iWork, Numbers is template-oriented, providing users with a starting point for using a spreadsheet. Numbers also focuses on the needs of a specific market: home, education, and small office users who want a capable tool with easy and simple presentation features.
Excel: Used and Abused
The focus of Excel is much wider. That also makes it more challenging for Microsoft to deliver a version Excel tailored for the Mac; the program is more of a general purpose Erector set. Excel's wide range of users all have very different needs. Its core competency is in sorting, calculating, distilling, and presenting meaningful data from rows of information. Many of the people using for other purposes would really be better suited with more specific tools appropriate to their actual task.
For example, users with simple presentation needs often get sucked into using Excel to layout text and graphics because its predictable grid makes alignment easy. The result is that information that should be in a simple presentation format now depends upon Excel. Further, while Excel offers the tantalizing ability to format its grid with outlines of boxes and gradient fills, its tools are not designed for general presentation, and are clumsy and time consuming to use for that purpose.
At the other end of the spectrum are technical users who employ Excel to build complex documents that really demand the structure of a relational database. Creating and maintaining such monstrous projects are easy up to the point where it's realized that Excel is the wrong tool for the job, at which time it can be difficult to migrate the efforts invested in Excel into a more suitable application.
That leaves Microsoft stuck with supporting a wide range of users in Excel, many of whom should really be using something better suited for their task. With Numbers, Apple doesn't attempt to match Excel's feature list, but rather aims at delivering spreadsheet functions for consumers in a revamped, approachable interface. Numbers breaks out of the old VisiCalc grid to instead mix number crunching with presentation features.
Rethinking the Grid: Pivot Tables
Numbers isn't the first attempt to rethink the limitations of the old VisiCalc grid. In the mid 80s, Lotus began work that resulted in Improv, detailed in Office Wars 4. Rather than just providing a huge spreadsheet grid, Improv applied the idea of separating data, formulas, and views to add structure to spreadsheet analysis. Only the data itself lived in spreadsheet columns, organized into named categories. Formulas could act on that data by name, without requiring it to sit in specific cells of the grid. Views, whether tables, charts, or graphs, could be created independently from the grid.
Improv caught the attention of Steve Jobs at NeXT, who championed it on his own platform and got involved in providing feedback on its design. Porting Improv from NeXT to other platforms was more difficult. On the PC, Improv competed directly against Lotus 1-2-3. In addition, the newness of Improv found resistance among users already familiar with the old VisiCalc grid in 1-2-3 and Excel.
Brio Technology later created a Mac product called DataPivot inspired by Lotus Improv on NeXT. The spreadsheet was designed to identify patterns within spreadsheet grids that could be grouped and aggregated to assist in data analysis. Borland bought Brio and added the pivot table concept to its Quattro Pro for Windows, which somewhat ironically was also competing against Lotus 1-2-3.
Microsoft later adopted the same data pivot concept in Excel under the name pivot table. It's much easier to illustrate than to explain how pivot tables work, as Excel's Help indicates (below). Numbers does not offer support for pivot tables.
Getting Started with Excel 2008
The Project Gallery that opens when Excel launches offers to create a new workbook or launch the list wizard, which is used to import data from an external file or database. A workbook is an Excel spreadsheet document that can have multiple spreadsheet pages hiding behind its tabs.
Just like the existing version, Excel 2008 presents its spreadsheet grid in two view modes: Page Layout View (above), which breaks up the grid to fit on printed pages, and Normal View (below), which presents an unbroken grid that stretches out for a page and a half, but will expand out to 65536 rows and multi lettered columns out to IV. The new Excel 2008 will also support the big grid introduced in Excel 2007 for Windows, with 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. However, as spreadsheets get larger than a few printed pages wide, scanning back and forth over the huge spreadsheet can quickly become impractical.
To solve this, Excel workbooks add new sheets in a tabbed interface at the bottom of the window (above). You can open multiple new windows that display different sheets within the same workbook, or partition the window into panes that show different regions of the same sheet.
Within a sheet, the entire grid of each sheet is locked into the two coordinates, so if you want to float several independent calculations within the space of a page, you have to make sure they either line up correctly in columns, or fit into isolated rows and columns of the grid. This also demands some planning, because retrofitting a block of cells in between others might require shifting everything over or inserting new columns, either of which may upset existing fixed calculations based on cell assignments.
Numbers works around this limitation by stripping the grid off the sheet. Instead, Numbers allows you to drop multiple spreadsheet tables on a sheet, each with its own independent grid. A Numbers document can incorporate multiple sheets, each with multiple independent tables. The ROI sheet (below), one of the supplied templates in Numbers, incorporates three tables : Benefits, Costs and Values; Discount Rate; and Summary.
Selecting one of the tables from the sidebar (or clicking on the data within the table) activates that table for editing and draws the familiar rows and columns controls around it (below). A table can be expanded as desired, and rearranged on the sheet without breaking anything. Further, any selected cells are presented with a sum, average, and count along with the minimum and maximum values of the selection in the lower left.
Above the auto-calculate area are styles (above), which make it easy to instantly impose a design format upon a table. Users can create and customize table styles and use them to quickly format plain data into attractive presentations without much work. Further editing of spreadsheet tables and cells is done using Inspector panels familiar to other iWork applications (below). Other related settings also appear in the contextual Format Bar, which sits just below the Toolbar (above).
On page 2 of 3: Excel 2008 User Interface; Working with Functions; and Excel 2008 Templates.