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Krell KSA-50S power amplifier
Then I tried a modestly powered, hot-running class-A amplifier, the KSA-50, from a new US company: Krell Industries. (The company was modestly named after the legendary super race in the classic 1956 SF movie, Forbidden Planet: "You fool! To think that your ape-brain can contain the full knowledge of the Krell!" exclaimed the marooned Dr. Morbius when he found one of his human intruders dying after trying the Krell mind amplifier.)
Now that was what I'd been looking for, without knowing it. Yes, the amplifier had tremendous dynamic range, coupled with awesomely deep bass, even on the little Celestions. But it was the KSA-50's imaging capability that opened my eyes—and ears—to something that I had not been particularly aware of: the transformation of a traditional stereo image into a fully dimensioned "soundstage."
As I wrote in my 1983 HFN/RR review (footnote 1) of the Krell KSA-50: "The beginning of Andreas Vollenweider's electronic harp LP (CBS FM 37793), for example, consists of immaculately and naturally recorded woodland birdsong. With the Krell, I was in the wood, with a pheasant squawking some 60' ahead of me. The crapgame in the Decca Porgy and Bess sounded as though the dice were actually rolling across the floor of a large bare room adjoining mine, and at the end of Act One of the Colin Davis Tosca...the wall behind the speakers disappeared, putting me in the church almost close enough to smell the wax on Scarpia's moustache as he twizzled the ends. And as for the cannon from the castle of Sant'Angelo, they were in the next village!...And to play the sadly neglected Checkmates' version of 'Proud Mary' was to discover anew the genius of Phil Spector in the way he had captured, in mono, the atmosphere and acoustic of a large hall revivalist meeting!"
A paradigm shift of the finest kind. I bought the review sample of the amplifier with money I'd been saving for a car.
Fast-forward exactly 12 years into the future from that August 1983 review. Sitting between my B&W Silver Signatures is the subject of this August 1995 review: the Krell KSA-50S.
The "S"
The KSA-50S is the smallest member of Krell's "Sustained Plateau Biasing" range of power amplifiers, launched in 1993. The other members of the family are the $9500, 300Wpc KSA-300S (reviewed by TJN in Vol.17 No.1, p.92); the $7500, 200Wpc KSA-200S (reviewed by MC in Vol.17 No.6, p.113); and the $5500, 100Wpc KSA-100S (reviewed by RD in Vol.17 No.9, p.98). The KSA-50S looks almost identical to the other S-series Krell amplifiers, but is less deep. The amplifier's rear panel has one pair of brass binding posts against the bigger amplifiers' two pairs. Input sockets are XLRs (balanced) and RCAs (unbalanced). When the amp is used unbalanced, Krell recommends shunting the "cold-polarity" XLR pins to ground with the supplied jumpers to avoid excessive noise pickup.
The "Sustained Plateau Biasing" concept is a patent-pending way for Krell to have its class-A output-stage cake and eat it too, without paying the penalty of wasting large amounts of wall power as heat. A fast "anticipator" circuit, one for each channel, looks at the incoming signal and increases the output stage's bias current if the level would be likely to turn off one half of the transistor array on half-cycle peaks. In this manner, when there's little or no signal, the amplifier is not being asked to pass a large standing bias current with the concomitant radiation of heat. If the signal level allows it, the amplifier's output bias progressively drops back to the lower levels after 20 seconds or so. If continuous high powers are required that would lead to overheating, the amplifier reverts to classic class-AB operation.
Whereas the larger Krell S-series amplifiers have five bias levels, the '50S has three, indicated by first a red LED lighting for each channel, then a blue one at the third, highest bias level. A central blue LED remains on all the time to indicate that the amp is powered. These LEDs are carried on the central black vertical styling strip on the dark-gray front panel; the KSA-50S doesn't have the glass window of the more expensive Krells.
The KSA-50S is specified at 50Wpc into 8 ohms, but, like Krell amplifiers since time immemorial, it offers considerably more than its specified power. The original paradigm-shifting KSA-50 cost $1800 in 1983; the '50S costs $3300, which is actually cheaper in real terms than its illustrious ancestor.
The first thing I noticed even before I listened to any music was that, despite its "Sustained Plateau Biasing," the KSA-50S runs quite hot. A couple of hours of operation at the highest bias setting (which came on at a peak sound-pressure level of exactly 90dB at the listening position with the 86.5dB-sensitive B&Ws), and the enclosure became too hot for me to keep my hand on for more than a few seconds.
Footnote 1: The KSA-50 was reviewed in Stereophile by Anthony H. Cordesman in September 1985 (Vol.8 No.5, p.84). He liked it too, though he thought it expensive at nineteen-hundred 1985 dollars.—John Atkinson


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Jack Horkheimer, the vivacious host of the PBS astronomy program Star Gazer/Star Hustler and the director of the Miami Museum of Science, died of respiratory disease last Friday. He was 72. Here, AD Jameson of Big Other remembers Horkheimer.
Back when I was in late grade school/early high school, every Friday night, my local PBS station would run two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, plus one episode of the Original Series, all commercial free. In between ran episodes of Jack Horkheimer's Star Hustler:
I'm not ashamed (now) to confess that, in those awkward adolescent years, this three-hour block of TV was the highlight of my week. (Yes, I was that kid, mad for Star Trek and astronomy.) Star Hustler is where I probably first heard Debussy's Arabesque No. 1-and certainly where I first heard Isao Tomita's electronic music. (And it's also, along with Tom Carvel's deranged ice cream cake commercials, probably where I first gained my love of cheap 1980s video art.)
RIP, Mr. Horkheimer, sir. Thanks to you, I'll keep looking up.
This post originally appeared on Big Other.

subset: commoncrawl


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Now that The Vampire Diaries' Matt and Rebekah are jetting off for the summer together, will they continue their relationship when the series, and its spin-off The Originals, returns in the fall?
"Julie [Plec] has left the door open for us to have cross-overs and for each of the characters to swap between the show," Claire Holt told TVGuide.com.
The Vampire Diaries' Julie Plec answers burning questions and Teases Season 5
Although Rebekah has had a new companion in Matt (Zach Roerig), Holt says she'll have to fix her relationship with brother Klaus (Joseph Morgan) in order to survive New Orleans.
"She's going to have to mend her relationship with Klaus in order to make it successful and work for her," Holt says. "I'm hoping Rebekah and Klaus will reconnect again because we had some fun times in the '20s."
Watch our interview below for more from Holt and her Originals co-star Phoebe Tonkin:
(Full disclosure: TVGuide.com is owned by a joint venture between Lionsgate and CBS, the latter of which also owns The CW in a joint venture with Warner Bros. Entertainment.)


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Blogs and Blogging...
I've gone through another month of posts this evening and given them del.icio.us tags. Only a hopeless nerd would happily spend a Saturday night doing this, but I have enjoyed the retrospect as well as the process of categorization.
In del.icio.us, a group of tags can be placed under a heading ("bundled") to create a simple outline of main points and subpoints. In a blog, it's a way to impose order upon the creation.
Librarians have been doing this sort of thing for years, and fortunately they have the Dewey Decimal System to provide standardized categories from library to library.
At last I recognize the absolute brilliance of that method. The entire world is organized under just ten main categories:
- 000 – Computer science, information, and general works
- 100 – Philosophy and psychology
- 200 – Religion
- 300 – Social sciences
- 400 – Language
- 500 – Science
- 600 – Technology
- 700 – Arts and recreation
- 800 – Literature
- 900 – History and geography
I've never understood why computer science is under 000 instead of 600 or even 400, but that's beside the point.
Each of the broad categories of Dewey is then broken down into groups of ten, and each of those groups is broken down farther and farther, until at last a book is assigned a number with places behind the decimal point as commonly seen on library books.
Dewey Decimal Classification is copyrighted by the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), but early editions of it (pre-1923) are in the public domain. I had never imagined that any entity owns the Dewey system.
"Do We" Really Know Dewey? No, obviously I don't!
Library of Congress Classification is another system of library organization, but it is not as widely used as the Dewey. The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) gives every book a distinctive number so barcodes will work wherever the book is sold.
Librarians assign just one category per book, but del.icio.us users can give as many tags as they wish to a webpage. That's an example of the flexibility of the digital compared to the physical. With so much flexibility, one must guard against redundancy.
I figure I'll just muddle along until I've gone through all the posts. Then I might go back and organize some tags a little better.
On the other hand, don't I really have something better to be doing with my time?!
Related site: Dewey Decimal System by Tens (quite useful for sorting things out.)
Technorati tags:


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1244393 Under Armour Men's ColdGear® Infrared Tactical Fitted Mock
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Pecan Pie Brownies - two of my favorite desserts combined into one. Brownies topped with pecan pie filling! SO good! All you need is a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and you are set! #brownies #dessert #pecanpie
This recipe uses a box of brownie mix for the base. I used Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie Mix, and it worked great. These were a big hit at the tailgate. Shh, don't tell anyone, but I stashed a few brownies at home so we would have a few to snack on after the football game. It's one of the perks of being the baker!
Pecan Pie Brownies
- 1 package brownie mix and ingredients listed on the box (Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie Mix)
- 1/4 cup melted butter
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp flour
- 1/4 cup light corn syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups pecans, chopped
- Preheat oven to 350ºF. Lightly grease a 9x9-inch pan.
- Mix together brownies according to package directions. Spread in 9x9-inch pan.
- Whisk together melted butter, brown sugar, flour, corn syrup, vanilla and eggs. Stir in chopped pecans.
- Carefully spoon pecan pie mixture over uncooked brownies.
- Bake 30-35 minutes. Cool and cut into 12 or 16 squares.


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Adam Curtis
Tagged with:
Last week there was yet another cycle of horrific violence in the Gaza strip. This week there are demonstrations in Cairo driven by fears that the revolution is being hi-jacked by the Islamists. Liberals in the west look on baffled and horrified. What they thought was a glorious revolution in the Arab world is morphing into something they don't understand. While Gaza is like some brutal other planet forever possessed by hi-tech assassinations and bearded aliens dragging corpses around the streets on motor cycles.
All this is comprehensible though - but only if you look at it in a wider context. A context that western liberals really don't like to think about because it makes them very depressed. It is the great shift of our time - the collapse of the dream that politicians could change the world for the better. A dream that was replaced by a conviction that politicians were untrustworthy and always become corrupted by power.
The collapse of that optimistic vision of what politics could achieve then left the way open for powerful, reactionary forces to take power who don't want to change the world. Instead they want to manage the world and hold it stable - backed up by the threat of violence. A threat to which they have become increasingly addicted.
This has happened not only in America and in Britain - but all over the world. And I want to tell the story of how it happened in the Middle East. It is the intertwined story of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in the Gaza strip and the reactionary right-wing nationalist groups in Israel.
All three groups are driven by an angry, pessimistic vision of the world, of human nature - and the inability of politicians to transform things for the better. It's a fascinating story because it shows how the underlying similarities led those groups to become tightly locked together - helping each other cement their ruthless grip on their people - and freeze out any progressive alternatives.
The story begins nearly a hundred years ago with one of the great examples of how you can never trust politicians.
The British promised the Arabs that they would create a new and better world for them. The only problem is that they promised the Jews the very same thing.
In 1915, at the height of the First World War, Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt made an agreement with the Emir of Mecca. It said that if the Arabs helped the British overthrow the Turks who ruled Palestine - then the British would in return give the Arabs independence. Lawrence of Arabia - TE Lawrence - was one of the British agents sent to help organise the Arab Revolt.
But two years later later the British Foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, promised the Zionist movement that a permanent Jewish homeland would be set up in Palestine. Zionism was in many ways a utopian movement. It had been invented by Theodor Herzl in the 1890s, and he believed that a Jewish state would not just rescue Jews from persecution, but it would also transform them. The state of Israel would be a new kind of environment which would turn its people into stronger and better kinds of human beings.
The British didn't care about that kind of thing. They were desperate to get America into the war on their side - and one of the reasons for the Balfour declaration was to curry favour with the Zionists and their supporters in America.
Here is part of a massive TV series made in the 1960s called The Great War. It tells the story of how in 1917 the British came to find themselves marching into Gaza (what is today the Gaza Strip) on their way to conquer Jerusalem - and the nightmare that trapped them in that small strip of land.
It also gives a very good sense of the background pressures that led Britain to making the contradictory promises.
In the 1920s Britain took over the running of Palestine and came face to face with their hypocrisy and deceit.
On the one hand Jewish immigrants began to arrive in their thousands, buying up the land from the old Palestinian families. While the Arabs were furious at what they saw as British treachery and a revolt began to grow against both the British and the Jews.
One of the main leaders of the Palestinian Arab revolt was Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam. He is forgotten in the west today - but not by Palestinian Arabs and above all by Hamas who see him as the first true Islamist revolutionary. The thousands of Qassam rockets that were fired from the Gaza strip last week are named after him, as is Hamas' military wing - the Qassam Brigades.
Qassam had studied at Al-Azhar university in Cairo and had become one of new wave of reformists who argued that Islam should be cleansed of all the rituals and superstitions that had grown up over 1200 years. It could then become a powerful faith that would deal with all the modern forces at play in society - economic and scientific and political.
And he believed it could help lead a revolt against British power and the Jewish immigrants. Qassam went to the city of Haifa and began attracting followers - promoting the idea of a jihad against the occupying powers. You couldn't trust the old families who run Palestinian society, he said, because they had sold out, as had the politicians and the traditional religious leaders.
The Palestine Post recorded one of Qassam's speeches ending angrily: "Jews do not have to take the country by force as the Arabs are selling it to them"
Here is part of a film that gives a powerful sense of the strange world that Qassam was fighting against. It is about one of the surviving members of a grand Palestinian landowning family. She is called Malika Shawa - and when the film was shot in the late 80s she was running the only hotel in the Gaza Strip, playing the piano as all around her the first intifada was erupting.
The film shows how involved the Palestinian elites had become with the British rulers. Malika tells of her time being educated at Cheltenham Ladies College.
In the 1930s Qassam formed The Black Hand Gang. He and a group of followers took to the hills and for five years they launched armed attacks on Jewish settlements and on the British military and police.
The British called him "The Brigand Sheikh" and he became a terrifying figure - it was said that he would send his followers to kill anyone that said anything bad about him. But in November 1935 the British cornered him in a cave and Qassam was killed in a violent shootout.
It is important to realise that Qassam saw politicians as part of the problem. Like Hassan al Bana who had founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s with the slogan "The Koran is our Constitution", Qassam saw modernised Islam as a total system that could replace politics. You had to do this because if you left politicians to their own devices they lied and betrayed you, as the British had done, or sold you out, as the Palestinian elites were doing.
In contrast, the Zionists who were moving into Haifa and the rest of Palestine in the 1930s believed deeply in the power of science, technology and politics to change the world for the better. Many of them had read a novel written by Theodor Herzl in 1902 called Altneuland - Old New Land.
The novel is a utopian vision of a future perfect society set up in Palestine with the city of Haifa at it's heart - Herzl calls it "The City of the Future." Herzl's Zionism was part of a socialist vision of utopia that went back to writers like Fourier and Saint Simon, and he described a society where the land was under common ownership and people lived in co-operatives and communes. There was also a model welfare system, no social classes and exploitation - yet individuals could pursue their own ends and profit by them.
It was a glorious vision, but it was also firmly rooted in the European tradition of empire. In the novel the characters listen to a phonograph roll that describes the achievements of The New Society for the Colonisation of Palestine. It describes how the benevolent technocracy that runs this new society has brought the benefits of European progress to a backward and sparsely populated land.
That's not quite how Sheikh Qassam and his Black Hand Gang saw the Jewish settlers.
But then - in the late 1940s - a new political force emerged to challenge Zionism - Arab nationalism.
It's charismatic leader was the President of the new independent Egypt - Gamal Abdel Nasser. He became a heroic and inspirational figure for millions of Arabs because he promised a united Arab world that would become strong enough to challenge western imperialism.
And also strong enough to challenge the new state of Israel which had been established in Palestine after the war of 1948 between the Arabs and the Jews.
Here is Nasser talking about the revolution he has begun - and you get a good sense of the progressive optimism at its heart. Nasser was convinced that the Arab people could be transformed by a modern planned socialist society into new, more confident individuals who would no longer meekly accept the iron hand of authoritarian dictators who were backed by the west.
Nasser was ignoring the fact that he himself was an authoritarian dictator.
And Nasser began to organise the fight against Israel - using the Gaza strip as the base.
After the 1948 war hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had ended up living in refugee camps in Gaza. Beginning in 1955 Nasser got Egyptian intelligence to organise small resistance groups from the Palestinians in the camps. They were called Fedayeen and they started to do hit and run attacks into Israel.
Israel retaliated by attacking the Gaza strip and the border guards. The man who led the commando units that fought back against the Fedayeen was a young Ariel Sharon.
Here are the fragments of film from the archive that report those incidents. What is really interesting is how forcefully both America and Britain in the UN condemn the Israeli actions.
At first the Islamists - the Muslim Brotherhood - welcomed Nasser. They liked the fact that he banned all political parties because it seemed to fit with their ideas about the "unity of the faithful". But they quickly discovered that Nasser's idea was to turn Egypt into a modern secular society - inspired by socialist ideas and driven by the by the ideology of authoritarian nationalism.
So they tried to assassinate him. In turn Nasser jailed or hanged several of their leaders and sent the rest into exile. Everyone thought the Muslim Brothers were finished - another hangover from colonial times gone forever.
I have found a fascinating film in the archive which shows how dramatically marginalized the religious establishment became under Nasser. It's about the famous Muslim University at the grand Al Azhar mosque in Cairo. For centuries it had been the powerhouse of Islamic thought throughout the Arab world. It was the place that Sheikh Qassam had gone to study - and where he had become inspired by the new radical ideas of reforming Islam.
But now Al Azhar was under orders from the revolution to modernize in a very different way. The film shows how the revolutionary government has insisted that Al Azhar teach courses that have nothing to do with religion - even a department of Business has been formed.
And the new, modernising head of Al-Azhar says he is trying to prevent a class of "priests" arising who will stop progress.
In the 1950s Israel was also driven by a deep sense of progressive optimism. And in an odd way it mirrored the ideas of a planned socialist society that Nasser was trying to build.
Starting in the 1930s, the Israelis set out to try and build in Palestine the new kind of Zionist society that Theodor Herzl had laid out in his novel Altneuland - Old New Land. The new capital was called Tel Aviv - which was the Hebrew title given to Herzl's novel by it's translator. It roughly means "a new spring coming from an old mound".
The new city was constructed as a grand experiment in town planning. It was based on plans drawn up by the Scottish town planner, Patrick Geddes. His ideas about how cities could be planned came from the same utopian traditions as Herzl's belief in a socialist planned society. What linked them was the technocratic belief that flourished in the 1930s - and again in the 1950s - that you could shape the environment around human beings as a total system that would make them stronger, more confident and morally better human beings.
It was a grand dream. Here is Patrick Geddes.
And here is the utopian city that was built according to his plans - it was called "The White City". Many of the architects who actually designed it had been trained in the 1930s at the Bauhaus school and were deeply influenced by the ideas of Le Corbusier. One pamphlet described the ideas behind it:
"The city is an experimental laboratory for the implementation of modern principles of planning and architecture, it has influenced the whole country.
The plan was based on the idea of creating a new place for a new society, where the Zionist ideal would come true through the Modern Movement. It is also a synthesis between Oriental and Western cultures."
And in the 1950s - that utopianism spread through a lot of Israeli society . At it's heart was the kibbutz movement. Again the idea of the kibbutz had been developed in the 1920s - and was an attempt to create model socialist collectives that were a concrete expression of the Zionist theory.
The kibbutzim were more than just a collective way of managing the land. They were seen as a new kind of environment in which individuals would come together in the evenings, have group dances and then group discussions. In some cases the discussions were like early versions of group therapy - individuals being given permission to express their ideas and feelings. Out of all this would come "new people".
Unfortunately many of the kibbutzim had been constructed on land on which Palestinian Arabs had lived - and whose families now lived in cramped misery in the refugee camps in the Gaza strip. And increasingly there was a realisation in Israel that the kibbutzim were a powerful weapon in establishing a more permanent Israeli presence in the outlying fringes of the new state.
The kibbutzim in the 1950s and 60s became a weird combination of happy-clappy utopian socialism and an armed fearfulness - with bomb shelters and trenches built around their modernist-inspired communal halls. It was a bit like some JG Ballard story.
But then a character from the past came back in a dramatic way into the heart of Israeli society. And his presence - and what he said - sent out shockwaves that began to undermine the very underpinnings of the optimistic progressivism at the heart of Israeli society.
In May 1960 a group of Mossad agents kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. They drugged him and flew him to Israel on an El Al plane disguised as a member of the plane's crew.The kidnapping was a world-wide sensation because Eichmann had been one of the main organisers of the Final Solution - the mass extermination of the Jews.
A year later the Israelis put Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem. He was encased in a bulletproof glass booth - and it became a powerful image of this terrifying figure who had organised the Holocaust sitting on show in the midst of the new state of Israel.
A number of historians have argued that Eichmann's trial created an enormous shock to Israeli society because for the fifteen years after the second world war no one in Israel - or in the Jewish communities in America - really talked about the Holocaust. It was if it was forgotten and wiped.
Hundreds of thousand of survivors from the death camps came to Israel, but the mood among them was to look towards the future - turning their faces towards a better future promised by the Zionist dream, and trying to forget the horrors of the past.
Above all they didn't want to be seen as victims in an optimistic age. The leader of the American Jewish Committee wrote that
"Jewish organizations should avoid representing the Jew as weak, victimized and suffering" Because it reinforced "long ingrained stereotypes - the hunted wanderer, inured to universal hatred and contempt"
Other historians have challenged this argument - and it can quickly lead into the dead end of arguments about how the memory of the Holocaust has been used and abused.
But I have found a really interesting film shot in Israel in 1961 during the Eichmann trial. It asks ordinary Israelis - including some on a kibbutz - what they feel about Eichmann and his effect on their world. Some approve - but the majority feeling is that this should have been forgotten - and is doing real harm to the new country of Israel.
One woman who speaks very powerfully finishes - "I would be happy if he had never entered this country"
But that was only the beginning of the terrible corrosive effect Eichmann was going to have not just on Israeli optimism about their society - but on the whole western liberal belief that human beings could be transformed for the better.
In 1963 a political philosopher called Hannah Arendt who had attended the Eichmann trial published a series of articles in the New Yorker. In them she challenged the idea put forward by the Israeli prosecutors that Eichmann was a special kind of evil human being. Arendt argued that he was the very opposite - that he was "terrifyingly normal". That far from being a demonic monster he was actually a bland, mindless and extremely efficient bureaucrat. He was motivated, she said by personal ambition and that he wasn't even particularly anti-semitic.
Arendt called it "the banality of evil".
"evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction in the doer.
However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic.
Evil can spread over the whole world like a fungus and lay waste precisely because it is not rooted anywhere. It was the most banal motives, not especially wicked ones which made Eichmann such a frightful evil-doer."
Arendt's reports caused an outrage. The journalist Norman Podhoretz wrote that Arendt's picture of Eichmann -
"violates everything we know about the Nature of Man."
And that went to the heart of it. Because what Arendt was implying was that human beings might not be changeable or perfectible. That anyone could do really evil, horrible things any time depending on the circumstances they found themselves in. And what was worse - that the modern world of intricate bureaucracies and bland management might make it more possible.
It was a pretty pessimistic and conservative view of human beings - and it challenged the idea that you could change the world for the better. And this dark frightening idea, born out of the horrors of twenty years before, began to worm its way into the post war optimism not just in Israel but a whole generation of liberals in Europe and America.
Here is part of a documentary about Arendt and the trial of Eichmann. The first interviewee is Arendt's biographer, the second is one of her students. They are intercut with the extraordinary defence Eichmann gave at the trial. He does sound like a General Manager trying to excuse himself.
And four years later the optimistic vision of the future that Nasser had held out to the Arab people also began to collapse - because of Israel.
In June 1967 Nasser was told by the Soviet Union that Israel was planning to attack Egypt - so he began to mass troops. The report was false - but in response the Israelis launched a pre-emptive attack against Egypt and Syria.
It was a catastrophe for the Arab states. In six days Egypt's military was overwhelmingly defeated. It was also a crippling humiliation for Nasser because it exposed as a sham his promise that the Zionist state would be annihilated. Nasser then behaved like a petulant drama queen - resigning in a spectacular public way, then retracting it.
Millions still loved Nasser - but the defeat was the beginning of the end of the dream that a new confident Pan-Arabism could transform the fortunes and the subservient psychology of the Arab people. Left wing students began to protest in Cairo - they demanded Egypt attack Israel again, and they blamed the defeat on corrupt generals who headed the Egyptian Army.
But power in the struggle with Israel was now seized by the revolutionary left in the Palestinian refugee camps. In 1969 Yasser Arafat became the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation which was an umbrella for a range of left-wing, secular groups - including Arafat's own Fatah organisation.
And again Gaza was the centre of the opposition. After the Six Day war Israel had taken over both Gaza and the Sinai peninsula and the Palestinian refugees now found themselves facing the Israelis as their overlords.
Here are some of the earliest news reports from Gaza about the new young terrorists who are promising to rid Palestine of the state of Israel. It begins in 1969 with the coverage of three Palestinian schoolgirls who have been arrested and put on trial for supporting "a subversive organisation"
It is all a bit ramshackle, and the journalists have no idea really what they are reporting on. Then I have added a report from just three years later - 1972 - about an Al-Fatah training school for children. It shows just how quickly the movement has grown - and how intense the belief in the armed struggle had become.
Although Nasser's dream had failed - and he died in 1970 - the PLO and their fighters had inherited his progressive world view. Many of the groups in the PLO were left wing revolutionaries and they believed that they were not only fighting to get rid of Israel, but also to create a new kind of secular, socialist state in Palestine.
But in Egypt that optimistic view of politics and its ability to transform society was collapsing. A vacuum was opening up which would be filled by the group that only fifteen years before everyone thought was dead and buried - the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, along with their much more conservative view of how to run society.
In 1975 a feature film was made called Al-Karnak. It told the story of how after the defeat in 1967 hundreds of Nasser's opponents had been jailed and tortured. The film showed the torture in detail and it was a powerful exposure of how Nasser's visionary ideals had become horrifically corrupted.
It seemed to prove dramatically the central message of the Islamist movement - that if you gave power to politicians in a secular society they would inevitably become corrupted and dangerous - however noble their original ideals had been.
Here is part of a documentary made in Cairo as the movie gripped both the elites and ordinary Egyptians. It begins with Mustafa Amin - a famous journalist who had been one of those imprisoned and tortured. Then it goes on to the sensation caused by the movie. It is a good report because it gives a real feeling of the changing mood within the Arab world at that moment in the mid 1970s
And that pessimistic mood began to spread through the Palestinian resistance movement too - carried by the odd logic of terrorist violence. Because the terrorists' actions would lead them to be haunted by the same old ghost that Eichmann had brought back into the heart of Israel - the Final Solution.
Since the early 1970s various different Palestinian groups had hi-jacked western passenger planes. The motive was to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinian people and their fight against Israeli occupation. They also had developed close links with a number of western terrorist groups - in particular the groups in West Germany like the Red Army Faction, and The Revolutionary Cells.
In June 1976 a group of terrorists hi-jacked an Air France plane and flew it to Entebbe in Uganda. Some of the terrorists were from the Patriotic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, others were from the German Revolutionary Cells. At Entebbe the terrorists began inspecting the passengers' passports. As they did so they separated the Jewish passengers out from the others, and said they would release the non-Jewish hostages.
It was a powerfully symbolic moment for the revolutionary left - both Palestinian and German. They had turned to violence in the belief that they were fighting to go forwards - to liberate Palestine and create a new revolutionary world. Instead they now found themselves behaving like the Nazis thirty years ago separating the jews out from the others.
One of the Jewish hostages later described how he had shown the terrorists the concentration camp number tatooed on his arm. He described how one of the German terrorists, Wilfried Bose, plaintively responded - "I'm no Nazi - I'm an idealist"
It seemed that idealism might be taking the secular revolutionary movement not forwards into a better future but backwards into the very worst times of the past.
It is also important to remember that one of the Israeli rescuers who was killed at Entebbe was Jonathan Netanyahu. He was the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu - the future Prime Minister of Israel. His brother's death, it is said, was a powerful shaping force on the younger brother.
By the late 1970s there was a massive political, social and moral vacuum at the heart of Egypt - and much of the Arab World. The collapse of President Nasser's grand progressive, and secular vision had left the society adrift.
Into the vacuum came a resurgent Islamism. Some of the Islamists turned to extremism and violence - like the Al-Jihad group who assassinated President Sadat in 1981. But the Muslim Brotherhood took another route.
Sadat had freed many of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood from jail, but they were banned as a political party. So the leaders of the Brotherhood turned to building their influence through the complex social and professional organisations in Egyptian society. Brotherhood members stood for election to the syndicates and guilds of many of the leading middle-class professions - and in the 1980s they took control of the doctors, the dentists, the engineers, the pharmacists, and even the Egyptian bar - the lawyers.
At the same time the Brotherhood created a powerful system of social welfare for millions of ordinary Egyptians in villages across the country that was far more efficient and responsive than the cumbersome state welfare.
Many middle-class Egyptians began to fear a silent, creeping political coup. But the Brotherhood argued that what they were doing was openly creating the foundations for their idea of a modern society. Islam would be a total system that could manage and guide all parts of society.
Here is part of a film made about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It was filmed in 1992 and it is really good because it takes you into the heart of their revolution and allows them to express their utopian vision. But it is a deeply conservative sort of utopia - because the system they want to build would act as a restraint on politicians who tried to use their power to change the world. You couldn't let them do that because it always led to disaster.
I love the TV preacher who argues that society is like a TV set. God, he says, is just like the person who writes the instruction manual for a TV set.
"The rules are written by the person who creates it.
And when it goes wrong you take the product to the manufacturer. He knows how to fix it. But if you take it to someone else he screws it up."
That puts politicians in their place.
And the prizes given by the Muslim Brotherhood's newspaper for their religious quiz are great. First prize - a trip to Mecca. Second prize - a vacuum cleaner.
I have followed it with part of another documentary about how the Muslim Brotherhood took over the Lawyers Syndicate. Their opponents forcefully argue that this is a silent, creeping political coup. The two films take you to the heart of the mystery about the Muslim Brotherhood. What are they really up to?
At the same time the Muslim Brothers' ideas - and their techniques - began to spread into the Gaza strip. And as they did so they became weirdly mixed up with the Israeli forces who were fighting against Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Out of that would come a tacit cooperation to destroy a common enemy but it would also have very dark consequences - it would lead to both sides becoming locked together in a static world.
It happened through the rise of Hamas - who were directly inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood.
To begin with they weren't called Hamas. Back in 1973 a preacher in the Gaza Strip called Sheikh Ahmed Yassin formed an organisation called al-Mujamma al-Islami (The Islamic Centre). Yassin wanted the organisation to spread the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood through the Palestinian world - and that also meant getting rid of the secular resistance movement and replacing it with one inspired by Islamist ideas.
Sheikh Yassin was an extraordinarily powerful character. Crippled since his childhood by a broken spine he was totally dependent on his followers to look after him, feed him and put him to bed. But he inspired those around him to believe that one day their tiny group could destroy the leftist infidels around the PLO and take control of the Palestinian movement.
The Mujamma did what the Muslim Brotherhood were doing in Egypt. They set up a complex system of welfare in Gaza, including kindergartens, free food and clothing. It also set up clinics offering free healthcare and medicines. They also began to take over many of the professional associations - like the Medical Association, the Engineering Association and the Bar Association.
And the Israeli authorities not only allowed them to do this - but encouraged it. They did this because they saw the conservative ideas of the Islamists as a potent force that could undermine and damage the secular Palestinian revolutionary movement.
There is a really good book about the rise of Hamas by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell. In it they got a number of very senior Israelis to admit the tacit support they gave to Yassin and the Mujamma. One director military intelligence says:
"At the beginning some elements within the Israeli government - not the government, some elements within the government - were thinking that by strengthening Mujamma they could put some more pressure on Fatah in the Gaza Strip, back in the mid eighties.
I think it was a mistake, yes."
One of the key factors in Mujamma's rise was the decision by the Israelis in 1978 to grant the organisation official status. This was something that would never have been granted to secular groups. Milton-Edwards says that this was on the orders of the office of the Prime Minister - Menachem Begin, and that former Israeli officials concede that it was part of a strategy to undermine the PLO, divide secular nationalists - and encourage them to join this more conservative alternative.
The former president of the Islamic University of Gaza says:
"They were given permission from the Israeli officials to form. The Israeli authorities kept their eyes closed to the reality of what they were allowing to be created, to the preaching of Islam that was spreading all over the Gaza strip, because at that time the PLO factions had power - and the Israelis wanted an adversary to fight them."
The Israeli military governor of Gaza, Brigadier General Segev even arranged for Sheikh Yassin to be taken to hospital in Tel Aviv to see if the best surgeons in Israel could operate on his spine. They decided they couldn't because they said the damage was too severe.
Bit by bit through the 1980s, with the tacit encouragement of the Israelis, Sheikh Yassin built the structure of an alternative Islamist society in Gaza. All this went unrecorded - I have searched the archives and can find nothing, all the TV reports from Palestine and Israel focus on Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Even when Hamas is formed in 1987 during the first Intifada there is nothing. The first news item about Hamas isn't until December 1992 - when they kidnap an Israeli border guard.
But to give you a sense of the world in which Yassin built Hamas, and of what Yassin is like, I want to show parts of a brilliant film made by the wonderful journalist Sean Langan. He made it in 2001 about the Gaza strip - including going to see Sheikh Yassin at his house. By now Hamas was dominant and its military wing was ordering repeated car bombings of Israeli civilians.
What I love is the way Langan gives you a real sense of the place - both the layout and the mood. It's something that news reports never do. And when he goes to see Sheikh Yassin, Langan's reactions to camera are truthful and honest - scared and silly in equal measure. So much better than the pompous self-confidence of most news reporters which increasingly feels both fake and alien.
But there was a nasty and dark side to what Sheikh Yassin and his fellow Islamists were up to in Gaza in the 1980s. They got a reputation for violently attacking anything that supported the PLO - rather than the Israelis. Milton-Edwards writes:
"After Friday prayers burning torches were held aloft as Mujamma thugs set fire to libraries, newspaper offices, billiard halls and bars. They burned cinemas and cafes, closed liquor stores and ran intimidation campaigns in the community and on the university campus.
Men and women students were severely beaten or had acid thrown at them for speaking out against the Mujamma.
The apparent indifference of the Israeli authorities to such violence was noted by PLO supporters."
An Israeli journalist - Danny Rubinstein - says:
"Ever since, many have accused Israel of providing the raison d'etre for the Islamic religious movement - a phenomenon identical to American support for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation."
But Yassin and the other Gaza islamists did have a sense of humour. One of their main slogans was:
And what began to rise up in Gaza was a rigid, limited world view. There is a dramatic expression of this in Sean Langan's film from the Gaza strip. Wandering along the beach he comes upon a group of young Palestinian men - everything goes swimmingly until suddenly they get onto the subject of the Jews and the holocaust.
Suddenly you discover just how much the distorted ghosts from the Nazi era have also risen up to possess the Palestinian mind as well.
When the Intifada began, Sheikh Yassin and other leaders of Mujamma formed Hamas - and Hamas members took part in the ongoing confrontation with the Israeli forces. This was a shift away from the Muslim Brotherhood - who claimed to have renounced violence - but Hamas still saw itself as the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.
But Hamas also spent a lot of their time attacking the secular PLO, refusing to have strikes on the same day as the other Palestinian groups, beating up PLO prisoners who were in jail with them - and generally creating divisions within the Palestinian movement. Again the Israelis gave them preferential treatment - not cutting of the flow of funds to Hamas from abroad, and allowing them to keep their schools open. It was all part of a strategy of divide and rule.
At the same time the violence of the Intifada began to create growing divisions within Israeli society. Here are some sections from a fascinating Open Space film made in Israel at the height of the Intifada in 1988. It's made by community activists - and it is following the liberal group Peace Now who are asking for a dialogue with the Palestinians.
But it shows how there was growing opposition to that liberal view. It's actuality footage - with very little commentary - records the moment when you see the progressive optimism of the early Zionism beginning to crumble - and being replaced by a much harsher and above all defensive mood with the rise of the Israeli right. It is epitomised in a woman shouting
"Stinking Arabs - send them all to the gas chambers"
But then Hamas went out of control.
The Israelis were worried about its growing strength - and in 1990 they arrested Sheikh Yassin and put him in jail. Their aim was to weaken the command structure of Hamas - but it didn't have that effect at all.
Hamas responed by inventing a "military wing" for themselves which they called the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades - after Sheikh Qassam the early Islamist who had fought the British in the 1930s. And in 1992 the Qassam brigades kidnapped an Israeli border guard and threatened to kill him unless Sheikh Yassin was released from jail.
The Israelis refused - so Hamas killed the border guard. There was outrage in Israel - especially from the right who demanded that action be taken against Hamas. The Israeli government went and grabbed 400 of the leading members of Hamas from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and dumped them on top of a freezing snowy mountain in the south of Lebanon.
It was a public relations disaster for Israel. Day after day news reports showed the Hamas men huddled on top of the mountain. Their organization now became a global brand - and what was worse Hamas attacks on the Israeli forces increased.
It was the beginning of the unstoppable rise of Hamas. here are some of the reports as they unfolded.
At the heart of the Islamist ideas that Hamas was born out of was the belief that secular politicians were dangerous - above all if they used their power to try and change the world.
And in September 1993 Hamas were faced by a secular politician trying to do just that. Yasser Arafat stood on the White House lawn and signed what were called the Oslo Accords - they were agreements that were supposed to lead to peace between the Palestinians and Israel - and a Palestinian state.
Hamas hated it - as also did many from the secular left. They thought that Arafat was selling out the Palestinian people, that the dream of a real liberation had been reduced, as one Hamas leader said, to the dream that Palestinian policemen will have the power to direct traffic.
But Hamas' response would lead them yet again into a very strange relationship with forces in Israel - in particular with the Israeli right who also hated and distrusted the peace process.
Hamas's problem was that many palestinians welcomed the idea of peace - and the promise of safety and calm it promised. But on the 25th February 1994 their chance came to change things. A right-wing Israeli extremist opened fire on Palestinian civilians in a mosque in Hebron. 29 were killed and 125 injured. Hamas promised revenge.
Forty days later - the traditional time of mourning - a Hamas suicide bomber blew up a car bomb in an Israeli town called Afula, killing eight people and wounding many more. Hamas had chosen the town specifically. It had been founded back in 1925 by The American Zion Commonwealth who were an American company set up to try and build model utopian communities that would make the Zionist dream come true.
Afula had been one of these utopian models - built on land bought off an absentee Palestinian landowner. Now it's heart was torn out by a suicide bomber - and it shocked Israel. Hamas was now exploding suicide bombs in Israel with the deliberate aim of killing Israeli civilians. And they followed it up with more - including one in the heart of Tel Aviv.
Here are the reports of the Afula and Tel Aviv bombs. They show the shock and fear that was now gripping Israeli society. And note the politician who turns up at the end of the Tel Aviv report - Benjamin Netanyahu - he says that Rabin's concessions in the peace process have led to this.
Hamas insisted that there was a perfect logic behind the civilian killings - Sheikh Yassin gave interviews saying that if they kill our civilians, then we'll kill theirs. But everyone knew that the real aim was to stop the peace process - to undermine the negotiations between Arafat and Israel.
Then in 1996 there were elections in Israel. The Prime Minister was Shimon Peres who was a veteran of the left-wing Labour Zionist movement. His opponent was the star of the newly rising right in Israel - the leader of the Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu. He was an opponent of the peace process.
Hamas intensified their suicide bombing campaign. They claimed it was in response for the killing of their best bomb maker - called The Engineer. But in March 1996 Palestinian TV broadcast an interview with a jailed Hamas member who had been organising the bombings.
He was called Abu Warda - and he claimed in the interview that the leaders of Hamas' military wing had told him that the aim of the bombings was to make sure that Peres was defeated, and Netanyahu was elected.
"They thought that the military operations would work to the benefit of the Likud and against the left. They wanted to destroy the political process, and they thought that, if the right succeeded, the political process would stop."
Everyone was furious and all sides - Likud, Fatah, and Hamas said that Abu Warda had been forced to lie. And each blamed the other for doing it. But Netanyahu then went on to win the election by a narrow margin - and he started to do everything he could to drag his feet on the peace process.
And since then Hamas and the Israeli right have been locked together in a terrible cycle in which both shift back and forth between politics and violence in order to promote their aims. Last week's flare up in the Gaza strip was just another example of that cycle.
And at their heart those aims are deeply conservative. Both Hamas and the Israeli right are rooted in defensive ideologies that distrust change and are seeped in a deep pessimism about the ability of politics and politicians to change the world for the better. To try and prevent change both groups have increasingly turned to violence to stop things from running away from them. But it is growing increasingly desperate - because it is impossible to stop the world from changing and the growing addiction to using violence to stop change has corrupted both sides ideals.
But it cannot last. In Egypt, the new President - Mohammed Morsi was elected as a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet this week he started acting in the very way the Islamists fear most. He used his political position to ride roughshod over democracy - grabbing power for himself.
In the 1950s Nasser used his power to try and enforce his vision of a progressive, planned world. Now Morsi is doing the same - to try and enforce his vision of a deeply conservative, rigid world.
Again it will fail because it is impossible to control the world in that way - either for progressive or conservative aims. What is badly needed in the Middle East - and in the West - is a new, sophisticated politics that accepts the dynamic forces of history, yet tries to seize them and use the chaotic events of this incredibly exciting time we are living through to try and change the world for the better.


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How to Get Money for College in Maryland
What are the types of financial aid?
What is FAFSA?
FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. FAFSA is a form you have to fill out to get federal financial aid.
Colleges and Universities also use FAFSA to award state and college aid. You will need a FSA ID to "sign" your online FAFSA, make corrections,
and more. The process is free. Never pay to apply for federal financial aid.
To fill out the FAFSA you will need:
Note: Complete the FAFSA starting on October 1. Be sure you meet application deadlines. The priority filing date for Maryland is March 1. Eligibility criteria is available at the Federal Student Aid website.Scholarships
Ask people in your community about scholarships that may be available to you:
Contact the Social Science and History Department for current materials. Scholarship books for minorities, veterans, women, and more.
Be careful where you find information. For-profit companies try to sell you information you can get for free from scholarships books at your library, and Student Aid on the Web.
If you need more help
Chat with a librarian 24/7 through Maryland AskUsNow! Contact us through our Ask A Librarian Service, call (410) 396-5430, or write:
Enoch Pratt Free Library
State Library Resource Center
400 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201


text:
Slim Randles' Home Country
It comes after Christmas
Send a link to a friend
29, 2012]
'Twas the morning after
Christmas, and all through the Mule Barn truck stop's philosophy
counter ...
"Boxing Day?" said Steve.
"It certainly is," Herb said. He's like that ... a lot.
We looked at each other. Doc put down the crossword puzzle he was
working on.
"You think there'll ever be another Muhammed Ali?" said Dud.
"The best," Doc said.
"How about Sugar Ray Robinson?" Steve said. "A toast to the great
Cups were raised.
"Guys?" said Herb. "Boxing Day isn't about ... boxing."
"I knew this was coming," Dud said.
"Boxing Day goes back to medieval times ..."
"Like Doc?"
"Seriously," Herb said. "It was the day after Christmas, and the
masters of the castles and manor houses would give the servants the
day off to go see their families ..."
"Because on Christmas they had to stay in the castle and feed the
duke?" Steve asked.
[to top of second
"Precisely. So the lord and master would give each servant a box
with goodies in it for the servant's kiddies and send them on their
way for a day."
"Is this what started the Boxer Rebellion?" Dud asked. Dud
collected strange knowledge.
"No, no!" Herb said. "That was in China ..."
"Don't they make boxer shorts in China?"
We watched Herb. "I don't even know why I bother ..."
Neither do we.
"You guys ever see Mike Tyson's uppercut?"
"I know he's hard on ears."
"I heard about the War of Jenkins' Ear," Dud said. "Maybe that
was hooked up with the Boxer Rebellion?"
We finally got Herb to groan.
[Text from file received from Slim Randles]
Brought to you by "Home Country," the best of the first six
years. Read a sample at
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text:
Local risksDate published: 10 September 2019 08:03
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 places a legal duty on the wide range of responders to carry out risk assessments and maintain them in a Community Risk Register. The assessment of the risks in Community Risk Register is the first step in the emergency planning process; it ensures that planning and other work is carried out in proportion to the risk.
Our South Yorkshire Community Risk Register has been prepared in accordance with national guidance. Please access the South Yorkshire Community Risk Register here, which also includes advice on how you can prepare yourself and your home for local emergencies.
The Government also produces a National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies (NRR) to provide an assessment of the likelihood and potential impact of a range of different civil emergency risks (including naturally and accidentally occurring hazards and malicious threats) that may directly affect the UK.
For general advice on preparing for emergencies, the GOV.UK preparing for emergencies page has a range of useful information for individuals/homes, for businesses, and for communities.
To check if you are at risk of flooding, you can visit the GOV.UK flooding page, and you can also sign up for Flood Alerts from this page.
To access weather warnings, follow this link to the Met Office website, which also have useful seasonal weather advice.
For national information and guidance on preparing for Brexit, please access the following link: https://www.gov.uk/brexit


text:
Andrea Stuart
Andrea Stuart grew up in the Caribbean and now lives in London. She has written three books: Showgirls, The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine and Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire. She is currently writer in residence at Kingston University.


text:
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Knuckling down on the Cards
Ike homers. 3 run shot! It's all we needed. R.A. has been a godsend!
7 comments:
And it even rained a little, so the fans got to salute Dickey's outstanding effort with thousands of those sweet blue & orange umbrellas that were given out.ReplyDelete
First damn series win since freaking June. More or less a month to the day.
hopefully this will get us on the right foot for August...sheesh!ReplyDelete
Dickey is the heart of this team! He would put everyone on his back if he could!ReplyDelete
Love this one, Joe. You're amazing!ReplyDelete
People are overlooking that Manuel moved Dickey up in the rotation so he could pitch this game.ReplyDelete
I think think was a great move.
All we need is Pelf to get back to form!
This latest sketch has to be one of my favorites so far this season, keep up the good work and let's go Mets!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 30, 2010 at 9:55 AM
Ever since I saw your work on Metsblog.com I stop here every day to see your pictures. Everytime we win, I make it the background on my work computer.ReplyDelete
Let's Go Mets!!!


text:
Rituximab Solution for injection
What is this medicine?
RITUXIMAB (ri TUX i mab) is a monoclonal antibody. It is used commonly to treat non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other conditions. It is also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In RA, this medicine slows the inflammatory process and help reduce joint pain and swelling. This medicine is often used with other cancer or arthritis medications.
This medicine may be used for other purposes; ask your health care provider or pharmacist if you have questions.
What should I tell my health care provider before I take this medicine?
They need to know if you have any of these conditions:
blood disorders
heart disease
history of hepatitis B
infection (especially a virus infection such as chickenpox, cold sores, or herpes)
irregular heartbeat
kidney disease
lung or breathing disease, like asthma
an unusual or allergic reaction to rituximab, mouse proteins, other medicines, foods, dyes, or preservatives
pregnant or trying to get pregnant
How should I use this medicine?
This medicine is for infusion into a vein. It is administered in a hospital or clinic by a specially trained health care professional.
A special MedGuide will be given to you by the pharmacist with each prescription and refill. Be sure to read this information carefully each time.
Talk to your pediatrician regarding the use of this medicine in children. This medicine is not approved for use in children.
Overdosage: If you think you have taken too much of this medicine contact a poison control center or emergency room at once.
NOTE: This medicine is only for you. Do not share this medicine with others.
What if I miss a dose?
It is important not to miss a dose. Call your doctor or health care professional if you are unable to keep an appointment.
What may interact with this medicine?
medicines for blood pressure
some other medicines for arthritis
This list may not describe all possible interactions. Give your health care provider a list of all the medicines, herbs, non-prescription drugs, or dietary supplements you use. Also tell them if you smoke, drink alcohol, or use illegal drugs. Some items may interact with your medicine.
What should I watch for while using this medicine?
Report any side effects that you notice during your treatment right away, such as changes in your breathing, fever, chills, dizziness or lightheadedness. These effects are more common with the first dose.
Visit your prescriber or health care professional for checks on your progress. You will need to have regular blood work. Report any other side effects. The side effects of this medicine can continue after you finish your treatment. Continue your course of treatment even though you feel ill unless your doctor tells you to stop.
Call your doctor or health care professional for advice if you get a fever, chills or sore throat, or other symptoms of a cold or flu. Do not treat yourself. This drug decreases your body's ability to fight infections. Try to avoid being around people who are sick.
This medicine may increase your risk to bruise or bleed. Call your doctor or health care professional if you notice any unusual bleeding.
Be careful brushing and flossing your teeth or using a toothpick because you may get an infection or bleed more easily. If you have any dental work done, tell your dentist you are receiving this medicine.
Avoid taking products that contain aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen, or ketoprofen unless instructed by your doctor. These medicines may hide a fever.
Do not become pregnant while taking this medicine. Women should inform their doctor if they wish to become pregnant or think they might be pregnant. There is a potential for serious side effects to an unborn child. Talk to your health care professional or pharmacist for more information. Do not breast-feed an infant while taking this medicine.
What side effects may I notice from receiving this medicine?
Side effects that you should report to your doctor or health care professional as soon as possible:
allergic reactions like skin rash, itching or hives, swelling of the face, lips, or tongue
low blood counts - this medicine may decrease the number of white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. You may be at increased risk for infections and bleeding.
signs of infection - fever or chills, cough, sore throat, pain or difficulty passing urine
signs of decreased platelets or bleeding - bruising, pinpoint red spots on the skin, black, tarry stools, blood in the urine
signs of decreased red blood cells - unusually weak or tired, fainting spells, lightheadedness
breathing problems
confused, not responsive
chest pain
fast, irregular heartbeat
feeling faint or lightheaded, falls
mouth sores
redness, blistering, peeling or loosening of the skin, including inside the mouth
stomach pain
swelling of the ankles, feet, or hands
trouble passing urine or change in the amount of urine
Side effects that usually do not require medical attention (report to your doctor or other health care professional if they continue or are bothersome):
loss of appetite
muscle aches
night sweats
This list may not describe all possible side effects. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.
Where should I keep my medicine?
This drug is given in a hospital or clinic and will not be stored at home.
March 21, 2017
U.S. FDA-approved Package Insert


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<J0"-' «2T« * TAe wew department came into being none too soon since the U.S. law affecting international operations underwent a major overhaul in 1962 and has been in a constant state of evolution ever since. tQue pasa aqui? Who are these people who, when you speak of the Internal Revenue Service, respond by talking of the "fiscal authorities" or the "Board of Inland Revenue"? Mention something as well known to all of us as "taxes" and they, without correcting you, end up speaking of "impuestos," "impots" or even "levies." Most of us face up to the annual chore of preparing our personal income tax returns, even if we do so with some degree of fear and trepidation. But if you think you have it rough, consider the tax specialists in the International Tax Department, based in Executive Office. This group must attempt to be expert in the U.S. tax laws applicable to international operations and at the same time have a working familiarity with the laws of almost a hundred other countries. Headed by partner Frank Oatway, who works closely with partner Dave Bertrand, the department acts as a central source of specialized knowledge, enabling the Firm to provide authoritative answers to the tax questions raised by our multinational clients. The department was organized in the late 1950s to help deal with what was fast becoming one of the most complex areas of the U.S. tax laws. The new department came into being none too soon since the U.S. law affecting international operations underwent a major overhaul in 1962 and has been in a constant state of evolution ever since. Coordinating these laws with those of other countries presents a challenging task to the group of specialists Frank directs. While freely accepting this challenge, he is quick to point out that the department does not pretend to be the sole source of knowledge on the subject. "Many practice offices have their own designated specialists who are as expert as the members of our group. Although we frequently serve clients directly, just as often our 'client' is this domestic practice office tax specialist looking for concurrence. "Each office in the DH&S organization has experts in its geographic area. We do not attempt to duplicate these sources of knowledge. However, many of our clients' problems involve the correlation of a foreign country's laws with our own or the interrelationship of two or more sets of foreign laws. The key to successful planning is often in the ability to bring all of this H&S and DH&S expertise to bear on the one problem. This is the role that we attempt to fill. We become familiar with foreign tax systems and try to help the client make his decision not just in the context of one country, or even of one country in relation to the United States, but in the context of his entire worldwide operation." When foreign offices require information on domestic tax laws, they turn to this department as the authority on the subject unless the inquiry involves a specific client already served by a domestic practice office. "We are specialists in U.S. tax laws first," Frank points out, 'With a particular knowledge of their foreign application." In this capacity the department answers questions from the simple ("What is the amount of the personal exemption?") to the complex ("How do we devise an appropriate structure for the acquisition of a U.S. public company?"). Occasionally it is called upon to exercise diplomatic skills, for example, when a foreign office or client wants to know how the United States can insist that the foreign parent of a U.S. corporation report its subsidiary's inventories on the LIFO basis if LIFO is not an acceptable accounting practice in the parent's home country. While these direct client activities account for about half the department's time and are viewed as the prime responsibility, they are only part of the complement of services it can provide. Another major responsibility involves the coordination of the U.S. tax work of foreign offices as it relates to the program for rendering


text:
Keysight Medalist i3070 08.21pa Software Patch
Software Release Date: Jan 2012
System Requirements: Keysight Medalist i3070 or test development PC
Controller Requirements: Windows ® PC
Operating System: Microsoft Windows ® 7
Software Requirement: Keysight Medalist i3070 08.21p
The main objective of this software patch is to solve DC capacitor test that causes subsequent unpowered test with "ed" option to time out. This 08.21pa patch include enhancement with a new board setting that allow users to control the Interactive program generator (IPG) for writing AC or DC capacitor tests as well as Windows 7 specific change request. Please refer to release notes for detail of change requests.
This software patch should only be installed on Microsoft Windows systems with Medalist i3070 08.21p software release. It can be installed on systems with i3070 test system software or i3070 development software.
Installing the 08.21pa Software Patch
This software patch must be installed using the administrator login (or a login with administrator privileges).
Follow these steps to install the 08.21pa software patch on Windows systems running the Medalist i3070 08.21p software:
1 Save the Agilenti3070_08.21pa.exe file to the hard disk.
2 Close all open programs.
3 Double- click Agilenti3070_08.21pa.exe.
4 Follow the on- screen instructions for installation.
5 To validate that the software was installed correctly:
a On the Start menu, select Programs > Keysight ICT > Korn Shell.
b In the Korn Shell window, type version and press Enter.
The following software revision should be displayed:
Keysight Medalist i3070 08.21pa 1011 WN.
* Windows registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
|Release Date
|Version Description
|This 08.21pa patch include enhancement with a new board setting that allow users to control the Interactive program generator (IPG) for writing AC or DC capacitor tests as well as Windows 7 specific change request.
How to Download
- See Above
How to Install
- See Above
- Does Not Require a License
Supporting Documentation
Installs on:
Operating System
- Windows 7
- See Above
Supported Instruments
- Keysight Medalist i3070


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bluetrain needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 27 designs submitted by 16 freelance designers.
- Require a logo for GreenTeaBenefits.ca website
- Logo must have web 2.0 look to it (such as dropshadows etc)
- Ideally use greens (like Qoop Mint & Newsvine green) and colours from this colour palette: http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.u…ur-palette
- Logo will likely be placed in top left of browser window on site
open to suggestions, not a requirement
Desired Color Scheme:
Desired Style:
Web 2.0, probably not sharp points as green tea is a very natural product and therefore goes well with softer, rounder shaping.
Accepted File Formats:
Ideally would like tif, eps, and gif/jpg
GreenTeaBenefits.ca is a website that will be focused on Green Tea related questions and answers. It will have a community feel and therefore the logo must be an up-to-date style with a web 2.o look to match site.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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Now Poshbrood Can Book Travel for You Too!
Michael started SmartFlyer over 20 years ago in New York City after graduating from Washington University. His love for luxury travel sends him traveling the world year after year in search of the best the world has to offer. Michael is widely known for designing unique, once-in-a-lifetime itineraries for his discerning clients. @MrSmartFlyer
Erina was raised between Jakarta, Singapore, and Charlotte; her multicultural background sparked the passion to travel at a young age. Erina joined the travel industry in 2007 upon graduating from University of North Carolina Charlotte. She joined Smartflyer in 2010 and found her niche in designing luxury itineraries for Smartflyer discerning clienteles. Erina handles SmartFlyer marketing/PR/social media efforts and maintain the agency's relationships with vendors worldwide. @MissSmartFlyer


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Find Your Local Squeegee Squad
See all Services »
Squeegee Squad is a Window Cleaning Franchise with locations worldwide. Our Window Cleaning locations offer a variety of services, including: Residential Window Cleaning, Commercial Window Cleaning, High Rise Window Cleaning, Pressure Washing, Soft Washing, Building Restoration and Caulking, Gutter Cleaning, Light Fixture and Home Cleaning, Roof Cleaning, Solar Panel Cleaning, Christmas Lighting Services, Snow Plowing, and more.
Squeegee Squad prides itself on being friendly, dependable, experienced, and fully trained experts in all their cleaning and cleanup fields. We have window cleaning franchise locations across the globe, and are looking to expand! Squeegee Squad is an excellent franchise opportunity!
© 2020 Jack and Joe's Franchising, Inc. All rights reserved.
Web Marketing Minnesota by Perrill


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Double Storey Cluster House
Std. Lot Size
40' x 80'
Built-up Area
3,603 sq/ft
Let Your Friend Know
Let us know and drop us a message
Welcome to the website of the Daiman Group of Companies ('Daiman Group'). By viewing this website, the viewers are agreeing to comply with and to be bound by the terms and conditions as set out below.
This website belongs to the Daiman Group of Companies . The copyright to the contents of this website is owned by the Daiman Group. This website is intended for personal use, quick reference, illustration, and information purposes only and may not be copied, re-distributed, or published in any manner without the written permission of the Daiman Group. Any unauthorized use of any part of this website is strictly prohibited.
The trademarks, logos, characters and service marks (collectively called "Trademarks") displayed on this website belong to the Daiman Group. Nothing contained on this website should be construed as granting any licence or right to use any "Trademark" displayed on this website. Any use or misuse of the "Trademarks" displayed on this website, or any other content on this website, except as provided in these Terms & Conditions, is strictly prohibited.
The Daiman Group of Companies respect the privacy rights of their on-line visitors and recognizes the importance of protecting the information collected. The companies will not sell or share any personal information pertaining to their customers obtained via the website by telephone, mail/e-mail or in any other manner.
Viewers' personal information collected or obtained may include name, e-mail address, phone number, home address, date of birth, occupation, etc. may be used by the Daiman Group of companies for their own internal marketing and demographics studies to enable them to constantly improve their site to meet viewers' and customers' needs. The data or information collected on-line may be used to contact viewers periodically by post, telephone, facsimile, e-mails or short message service (SMS) to update viewers on Daiman Group's projects, new product launches or upcoming events and promotions.
Daiman Group takes the necessary precautions to safeguard viewers' personal data against loss, theft, misuse, alternation, or destruction. However, given the nature of the Internet, the Daiman Group cannot guarantee that there is "perfect security" but will make best possible efforts to ensure that the privacy of users is safe guarded.
The viewers shall indemnify and keep the Daiman Group indemnified against all claims, damages, actions, and proceedings made or brought against the Daiman Group arising from their use of this website and/or any breach of terms in relation thereto by the viewers.
This site is owned and operated by Daiman Group with the intention to provide information about the Group to the general public and stakeholders.
Daiman Group does not provide any warranty or guarantee as to the accuracy, timeliness, performance, completeness or suitability of the information and materials found or offered on this website for any particular purpose.
The users acknowledge that such information and materials may contain inaccuracies or errors and the Daiman Group expressly exclude liabilities for any such inaccuracies or errors to the fullest extent permitted by law.
Daiman Group reserves the rights, in its sole discretion, to change or discontinue any aspect, feature, content, promotion of its products, or to correct any errors or omissions in any portion of this site any time without notice.


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Using Unicode Native Format to Import or Export Data
Unicode native format is helpful when information must be copied from one Microsoft SQL Server installation to another. The use of native format for noncharacter data saves time, eliminating unnecessary conversion of data types to and from character format. The use of Unicode character format for all character data prevents loss of any extended characters during bulk transfer of data between servers using different code pages. A data file in Unicode native format can be read by any bulk-import method.
Unicode native format is recommended for the bulk transfer of data between multiple instances of SQL Server by using a data file that contains extended or DBCS characters. For noncharacter data, Unicode native format uses native (database) data types. For character data, such as char, nchar, varchar, nvarchar, text, varchar(max), nvarchar(max), and ntext, the Unicode native format uses Unicode character data format.
The sql_variant data that is stored as a SQLVARIANT in a Unicode native-format data file operates in the same manner as it does in a native-format data file, except that char and varchar values are converted to nchar and nvarchar, which doubles the amount of storage required for the affected columns. The original metadata is preserved, and the values are converted back to their original char and varchar data type when bulk imported into a table column.
For more information about native format, see Using Native Format to Import or Export Data.
Command Options for Unicode Native Format
You can import Unicode native format data into a table using bcp, BULK INSERT or INSERT ... SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET(BULK...). For a bcp command or BULK INSERT statement, you can specify the data format on the command line. For an INSERT ... SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET(BULK...) statement, you must specify the data format in a format file.
Unicode native format is supported by the following options:
Causes the bcp utility to use the Unicode native format, which uses native (database) data types for all noncharacter data and Unicode character data format for all character (char, nchar, varchar, nvarchar, text, and ntext) data.
DATAFILETYPE ='widenative'
Use Unicode native format when bulk importing data.
For more information, see bcp Utility, BULK INSERT (Transact-SQL), or OPENROWSET (Transact-SQL).
Alternatively, you can specify formatting on a per-field basis in a format file. For more information, see Format Files for Importing or Exporting Data.
The following examples demonstrate how to bulk export native data using bcp and bulk import the same data using BULK INSERT.
Sample Table
The examples require that a table named myTestUniNativeData table be created in the AdventureWorks sample database under the dbo schema. Before you can run the examples, you must create this table. In SQL Server Management Studio Query Editor, execute:
USE AdventureWorks;
CREATE TABLE myTestUniNativeData (
Col1 smallint,
Col2 nvarchar(50),
Col3 nvarchar(50)
To populate this table and view the resulting contents execute the following statements:
INSERT INTO myTestUniNativeData(Col1,Col2,Col3)
INSERT INTO myTestUniNativeData(Col1,Col2,Col3)
SELECT Col1,Col2,Col3 FROM myTestUniNativeData
Using bcp to Bulk Export Native Data
To export data from the table to the data file, use bcp with the out option and the following qualifiers:
Specifies native data types.
Specifies that the bcp utility connects to SQL Server with a trusted connection using integrated security. If -T is not specified, you need to specify -U and -P to successfully log in.
The following example bulk exports data in native format from the
myTestUniNativeData table into a new data file named
myTestUniNativeData-N.Dat data file. At the Microsoft Windows command prompt, enter:
bcp AdventureWorks..myTestUniNativeData out C:\myTestUniNativeData-N.Dat -N -T
Using BULK INSERT to Bulk Import Native Data
The following example uses BULK INSERT to import the data in the
myTestUniNativeData-N.Dat data file into the
myTestUniNativeData table. In SQL Server Management Studio Query Editor, execute:
USE AdventureWorks;
BULK INSERT myTestUniNativeData
FROM 'C:\myTestUniNativeData-N.Dat'
WITH (DATAFILETYPE='widenative');
SELECT Col1,Col2,Col3 FROM myTestUniNativeData;
See Also
Other Resources
bcp Utility
BULK INSERT (Transact-SQL)
OPENROWSET (Transact-SQL)
Data Types (Transact-SQL)
International Considerations for Databases and Database Engine Applications
ServerBCPDataFileType Property


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Ophelia Sage Wedding Invitation Sample
Wedding invitation sample pack including an RSVP, info card, string and tag, envelope and label in the Ophelia Sage Collection design.
Inspired by a sage painted stable door, a little worn and faded from the sun with a flourish of budding roses trailing up the wall alongside it. This collection would suit couples that like pastels and want a rustic garden feel for their wedding.
Wedding Invitation Samples
A sample pack includes an example of my personalised range of wedding stationery from the collection of your choice. In the pack you'll receive a folded wedding invitation card, RSVP postcard and an extra information insert card, all of which are tied up with rustic string and a tag with a recycled envelope and address label to match.
Free delivery to UK & Europe.
Please note: Samples are stationery examples in your chosen collection and are therefore not personalised. For delivery to addresses outside of Europe, please see the Delivery tab below
Delivery is free in the UK and Northern Ireland for samples and orders over £75
For orders under £75 there is a £4.50 delivery charge
Parcels will be sent via Royal Mail or courier with a transit time of 1-2 days and will need a signature on delivery.
For delivery information to Ireland, Europe and Worldwide, please see the Delivery page.
What to do and when…
Save the Dates:
Send out 9-12 months before your wedding day. 12-18 months if your wedding is abroad.
Wedding Invitations:
Send out 4-8 months before your wedding day. 8-12 months if your wedding is abroad.
On the Day Stationery:
Ideally you'll need to place your order at least 6 weeks before your wedding. If you have left it any later, it may still be possible but you'll need to get in touch
Thank You Cards:
After your wedding day, once you have your professional photos back and have chosen a suitable shot.
Please also take the lead time into consideration when placing your order. For further details, please see FAQ's


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Cameron & A-Rod Are Getting Serious — But She's Not Allowed At His Games!
As things heat up between Alex Rodriguez and Cameron Diaz, the baseball player has taken certain steps to make sure his new relationship doesn't end up like his old one!
Cameron Diaz and Alex Rodriguez have become so close they even spent last weekend together on a romantic vacation to Boston, Mass., where his team, the Yankees were playing the Red Sox, reports People. But just like all things that seem too good to be true, this new relationship has some major strings attached.
A-Rod has apparently already set ground rules for their relationship, and Cam's not allowed to come support him at his games. In other words, she's been benched!
"He doesn't want what happened to him and Kate to happen between him and Cameron," a source told Betty Confidential. "Kate was at every New York game and then some and even went to Alex's game practice. Things got too clingy too fast."
Luckily, the 37-year-old actress — who hasn't been super serious with anyone since she broke up with Justin Timberlake more than three years ago — is too busy shooting Bad Teacher and promoting her feature Knight and Day with Tom Cruise to care about whether or not she's allowed to attend Alex's games.
"Cameron is not really into baseball, so she wouldn't want to go to all the games," the source said. "She's private, too. She has her own career going and she's not going to give that up for anyone. And, right now she's booked solid, so it works for the two of them."
After seeing how poorly A-Rod, 34, treated his wife, as well as fling Madonna and most recent girlfriend Kate Hudson, we're still not sold on this new couple. Get out now, Cam, before you get hurt!
–Kirstin Benson


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With this series, I've captured the essence of the character of my subject, with focus drawn to the eyes. You can paint anything you like with figurative work but in the end, it's all about the eyes and your connection with them. We search for the eyes in a figurative painting and pause, searching for expression wanting to befriend them if possible, and then we are drawn to the rest of the painting. Then it's back to the eyes.
FOR SALE – buy the original, please enquire HERE
Size – H100 x W150cm
Medium – Oil and acrylic on linen
Original paintings will be delivered via the most respected art specialists within Australia. For international deliveries paintings will either be detached from stretcher bars, rolled and placed in a postal cylinder for safe shipment; or freighted via a respected freight service with an online tracking system.
Contact us for commercial pricing on bulk orders. Please review our full terms & conditions.


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Huge congratulations to the entire team at Groupon.
What you've accomplished in the last three years is nothing short of remarkable.
- You've invented a whole new industry
- You've built one of the fastest-growing companies in history
- You've created more than 10,000 jobs
- You've generated more $1 billion of annual revenue
- You've helped hundreds of thousands of companies get boatloads of new customers
- You've brought deals to tens of millions of consumers
- You've helped inspire a new generation of startups and entrepreneurs
- You've weathered a firestorm of criticism, and
- You've gone public at nearly a $15 billion valuation
In short, you've created something massive and important and dynamic out of nothing.
No, you're not done. Yes, there will be tough times ahead. No, it won't be easy. But then nothing worth doing ever is.
America needs more companies like you, Groupon.
Here's to you and your mind-boggling success!
SEE ALSO: Enjoy The Ride, Groupon Investors, I'm Outta Here!!!


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Hi guys how are you all doing on this fantastically hot day. I will start with another lesson that is going to be on something easy. To start, let's learn "how to draw a easy skull", step by step. Some of you may have watched me draw this skull live yesterday while the site was on a crashing kick. I do have some good news though, I can almost guarantee that there will be no more crashes, and if there is, you will only be set back for a minute or two. Anyway, I thought it would be super duper cool if I showed some of you novice artists, an easy way to "draw a skull". Skulls have got to be one of the best or popular concepts to sketch, because it is such a universal design. This lesson is going to be pretty darn simple to follow and learn from. I did a sketch of three different types of easy skulls, this way here you can pick and choose the one you want to draw. No matter what your decision might be, learning "how to draw a easy skull is going to be an awesome way to better your skills when it comes to drawing skulls. When you are done with this tutorial, try out one of the other skulls I have for intermediate artists, to test your new skills. I will be back with some other fun stuff to draw, so try and stay tuned in to see what I'm going to submit next. Adios peeps, and have a neat drawing day!
DragoArt members upload artwork and drawing tutorials! They are also allowed to leave comments on tutorials, profiles, etc. Many more features, as well; it's way better than just being a boring guest! Register Now!


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The Wabash 15 & 16 year old all star team was taking on Peru in a best of three series for the district title this weekend. After a convincing 10-0 win on the back of pitcher Nate Hembree Friday, Wabash was primed to take the title Saturday. With pitcher Remington Monce throwing bullets, Wabash cruised to an 11-0 win for the title.
Being the visitors on the scoreboard, Wabash wasted no time getting Monce a lead, scoring two runs in the first. With Kory Fuller calling the pitches, Monce was untouchable as he scattered just two hits in the shutout.
Wabash would go on to score two runs in the third, one in the fourth, one in the fifth, one in the sixth and four in the seventh to seal the deal.
Members of the team are Dustin Curless, Austin Hostetler, Remington Monce, Jordan Holley, Nate Hembree, Kody Fuller, Ben Dillon, Julian Zupata, Darren Benson, Sam Hall, Jakob Hayes, Zach Newman, Mason Hovey.
Coaches for the team are Rick Zupata, Aaron Burton, Jim Olinger.
[AFG_gallery id='29']


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Imagine tagging along with a single protein molecule inside of a living cell as it goes about its job: relaying growth signals into the cell's nucleus, repairing damaged DNA, or switching on insulin production after a meal. For the first time in history, the evolving technology of biophotonics, which uses single "quantum" units of light, holds the key to unlocking that world.
Now, thanks to brighter light emitting dyes, faster and more sensitive detectors, automation technology and computing capacity that can handle storing vast amounts of image data, it is possible for scientists to probe the molecular mechanisms of life at unprecedented resolutions. The convergence of technological advances puts the formerly unthinkable within the grasp of scientific inquiry, offering unparalleled opportunities to understand the physiology of human disease and to find new ways to treat it.
In the most general terms biophotonics is the convergence of photonics and the life sciences.
Photonics—the science and technology of generation, manipulation and detection of light—uses photons, quantum-like particles of light, instead of electrons to transmit, process, and store information. The invention of lasers, a concentrated source of monochromatic and highly directional light, revolutionized photonics in the 1960s and brought us technological advancements such as bar code scanners, CD players, and, with fluorescence microscopes, the first taste of the power of biophotonics.
Today, biophotonics is widely regarded as the key science upon which the next generation of clinical tools and biomedical research instrumentation will be based. Although nature has used the principle of biophotonics to harness light for photosynthesis and to create vision for millennia, it wasn't until about 10 years ago that a substantial transfer of photonics technologies to biological applications began to transform medical and life sciences.The main areas of biophotonics applications include:
It is difficult to overestimate the amount of information contained in visual data, making high-powered microscopes the most important tool available to molecular biologists.
The resolution of conventional optical microscopes, including fluorescence microscopes, is inherently limited by the wavelength of light. With these microscopes, objects separated by less than 200 nanometers cannot be distinguished from one another, which is insufficient to pinpoint the location of individual proteins. For the first time, super-resolution live-cell imaging allows researchers to capture short videos of fast-moving cellular processes while discerning the precise location of nearly each individual protein they are studying.
The ability to probe and image (see) tissues is leading to a wide range of novel diagnostic methods and therapeutic applications. Current examples include Coherence Optical Tomography (OCT), which has revolutionized the field of Ophthalmology by allowing the early diagnosis of macular degeneration (MD) in the retina, and Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) approaches for treatment of cancers by retarding the growth of new blood vessels and vasculature.


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Looking forward to some Fourth of July fun today? Have a great holiday and stay safe - watch this quick video to see three safety tips to keep in mind.
- Supervise children, even with sparklers.
- Stay hydrated - don't forget to drink plenty of fluids!
- Be responsible with alcohol. And always remember - don't drink and drive!
We hope you have a safe and happy fourth of July!


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This is a double post, but I think its findings merit a bump.
I got an email from KMART stating that all clearance toys were an additional 50% off. This includes their LEGO that has been clearanced.
Typically, KMART will mark something off by two or three dollars and then put it on clearance. Then, you wait for the big sale like this one.
Example: Last time this happened, Escape from Mirkwood Spiders Hobbit set was marked on clearance for $27.99, roughly 2 dollars off its retail price. This sale dropped it down to $13.99. I have found some amazing deals on KMART clearance from themes such as; Kingdoms, Castle, LOTR, Hobbit, and even personal favorite themes like Alien Conquest, Harry Potter, and Dino.
I am going out this afternoon and will be sure to report my findings. If you have any local KMART's I would highly advise you check them!


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Check out the latest RPG news | Podcasts | Twitch Streams
i hope they dont pull that $60 bs with the ps3 version. on that note does anyone know if i can use a usb hdd to expand my ps3 storage space? i have a 160gb slim and im down to 12 gigs left.
Why would $60 be unreasonable when that's the standard price of most games on the system?
Not that any of this really matters because the game will be priced at $40 on PS3.
So for those who've participated in the alpha, how are this game's chances looking? Is the combat fluid and quick enough to attract less MMO-savvy players? Does the interface work well in practice? Does it retain enough unique elements from 1.0 to separate itself from WoW?Inquisitive minds etc. etc.


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How do you find solutions? By putting two problems together.
Consider two recent California news items.
The first: the state has been unable to design and complete a new computer system. In the past week, the legislative analyst urged the state to go forward with the troubled project, albeit at a cost of $600 million.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
The second: Apple, a California-based company that is on many days the richest company in the world, has gone to great lengths to dodge paying its fair share of state income taxes. The New York Times reported recently on Apple's tax avoidance measures, which include opening an office in Reno, Nev., to process profits that might otherwise have been taxed in California.
OK, here comes the magic.
Now, on the current trajectory, the state can muddle along with its attempts to build a computer system, and Apple can battle with state officials and lawmakers who would be eager to collect more taxes.
So why not turn these lemons into lemonade?
Let Apple set up the computer system itself, handling what work it can and paying for the rest. Apple would get on the right side of taxpayers in its home state. And the state might have a computer system that actually works.
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Lead Prop Zero blogger Joe Mathews is California editor at Zocalo Public Square, a fellow at Arizona State University's Center for Social Cohesion, and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (University of California, 2010).
Send us your thoughts via Twitter @PropZero or add your comment to our Facebook page.