text:
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Niklas Backstrom turned in another strong performance with 23 saves, and the Minnesota Wild hung on to beat the crumbling Colorado Avalanche 3-2 on Wednesday night.
Antti Miettinen, Martin Havlat and John Madden scored for the Wild, who overcame a two-goal game by David Jones. The Avalanche, still waiting on Peter Forsberg's visa clearance, played without captain Adam Foote and lost another defenseman, Kyle Cumiskey, to a head injury in the first period.
The Avalanche fell to 3-8 in their last 11 games, and Craig Anderson lost his sixth straight start, giving up 21 goals over those games. He was pulled in the second period for Peter Budaj.
Backstrom improved to 16-4-2 in 22 starts against the Avalanche. He has given up two goals or less in five of six starts, with wins in four to help the Wild climb back in the Western Conference playoff race.
The first period featured three goals in a 51-second span. With Andrew Brunette screening Anderson and then deftly lifting defenseman Ryan Wilson's stick, Miettinen's power-play slap shot sped past Anderson to make him the eighth Wild player with at least 10 goals this season.
Just as the public address announcer was giving the recap, Jones snatched a loose puck off a faceoff and sent a shot between Backstrom's legs to tie it and prompt a groan from the crowd.
Havlat, however, responded with his team-high 15th goal. The All-Star produced one of his finest goals in two years with the Wild, muscling the puck away from Paul Stastny behind the net and pivoting to push a backhander past Anderson.
Jones could have had a hat trick, but his goal in the second period was immediately waved off, a ruling confirmed by the replay officials.
Madden, with Brad Staubitz screening Anderson, followed a few minutes later by reaching forward and zipping a snap shot into the back of the net as he did the splits. Budaj was summoned from the bench after that.
The Wild improved to 12-4-1 in division games, getting an important bounce back from a 1-0 loss at Phoenix on Saturday.
The Avalanche caught a break 23 seconds into the third period when Wild All-Star defenseman Brent Burns gave the puck away along the back boards. Jones snagged it and flipped a pass from behind the net that appeared to deflect off Minnesota's Nick Schultz in flukey fashion before pinballing in the net to cut the lead to 3-2.
Burns drove hard to the net midway through the final frame, aggression that the Avalanche didn't like, prompting a fight that sent three players from each team to the penalty box. Havlat and Wilson were involved in the most intense tussle.
Notes: Brunette was given a watch, a commemorative silver stick and a $15,000 check for his hometown youth hockey association in Ontario in honor of reaching 1,000 career games last week. Brunette's brother and his golden retriever led the crowd in the traditional "Let's Play Hockey!" chant before the puck drop. ... Wild C Matt Cullen, who returned from a one-game absence due to an upper body injury, notched his second multi-assist game of the season and the first since Oct. 16. ... The first intermission was stretched out by a few more minutes due to a Zamboni malfunction.


text:
Lake Kivu Fishing Boats Return to Shore - Kibuye, Rwanda
Traditional fishing boats along Lake Kivu return to shore at Kibuye after a long day. Rwanda.
Rwandan Kids - Musanze, Rwanda
A group of kids approach us in a village near Musanze, Rwanda.
Audrey & Dan Goof Off at Mount Muhabura, Rwanda
Goofing off near the extinct volcano of Mount Muhabura in northern Rwanda.
Overlooking Lakes Burera and Ruhondo - Rwanda
Overlooking the "Twin Lakes" (Burera and Ruhondo) from Virunga Lodge in the hills outside Ruhengeri, Rwanda. via Instagram http://ift.tt/1igal1t
Kibuye Fresh Market - Rwanda
Kibuye food market, Rwanda.
Laughing Kid on Fishing Boat - Lake Kivu, Rwanda
Laughing kid hanging out on a fishing boat in Kibuye - Lake Kivu, Rwanda.
Chili Peppers at the Nyamirambo Market - Kigali, Rwanda
Baskets of chili peppers and ginger root at the Nyamirambo market in Kigali, Rwanda.
Sunset on Lake Kivu - Kibuye, Rwanda
Sunset along Lake Kivu - Kibuye, Rwanda.
Mid-morning light, the deck outside our peaceful little perch ($12/night) above Lake Kivu -- near the Congo border in Kibuye, Rwanda. via Instagram http://ift.tt/1qMXH32
Young Vendor, Kibuye Market - Rwanda
A young girl works as a vendor at the Kibuye Market in Rwanda.
Friendly Vendor at the Kibuye Market, Rwanda
Friendly vendor at the Kibuye market in Rwanda.
Vegetables and Scale - Kibuye Market, Rwanda
An old scale is put to work weighing vegetables at the Kibuye market, Rwanda.
Beans of All Colors at Kibuye Market, Rwanda
Beans are a staple of the Rwandan diet. Taken at Kibuye market, Rwanda.
Lake Kivu in Late Afternoon Light - Kibuye, Rwanda
Lake Kivu in late afternoon light - Kibuye, Rwanda.
Late Afternoon Boat Crossing - Lake Kivu, Rwanda
Lake Kivu boat crossing in Kibuye, Rwanda.
Dried Fish, Beans and Onions - Kibuye Market, Rwanda
Market scene in Kibuye with dried fish, beans and onions. Rwanda.
Lake Kivu Clouds and Light - Kibuye, Rwanda
Late afternoon light and clouds at Lake Kivu, Rwanda.
Piles of Fish at Kibuye Market - Rwanda
Piles of small fish for sale at Kibuye Market, Rwanda.
Cassava for Sale at Kibuye Market - Rwanda
Piles of cassava, a staple root vegetable in Rwanda, at Kibuye market.
Lake Kivu, Calm Before the Storm - Kibuye, Rwanda
Lake Kivu, the calm before the storm hits. Kibuye, Rwanda.
Rwandan Woman Talking on Mobile Phone - Kibuye Market, Rwanda
A Rwandan woman talking on her mobile phone stopped me to take her photo at the Kibuye market, Rwanda.
Fishing Boats on Lake Kivu - Kibuye, Rwanda
Fishing boats on Lake Kivu, Rwanda.
Rwandan Boy, Smiles All Around - Musanze
Smiling Rwandan boy in a village near Musanze.
A late afternoon tandem fishing expedition before the storms roll in. A view from our deck on the edge of Lake Kivu in the town of Kibuye, #Rwanda. via Instagram http://ift.tt/1iWqNTN
Market Vendor - Kibuye Market, Rwanda
This woman was pounding cassava leaves at the Kibuye market, Rwanda.

subset: commoncrawl


text: "As I searched high and low for a birthday cake for my daughter 3rd birthday party princess and the frog themed that was reasonably priced yummy and very cute and pretty, I happen to stop by at patty's cake's. I found exactly what I was looking for red velvet with cream cheese and for the price I payed it was AWESOME!! they were able to make the princess and frog cake following a design that I created.At the party everyone loved the cake. Its was so moist and just as what its name is velvety. very good, ans the color amazing! I also purchased some cupcakes and cake balls, ooh they were SOOOSOOO good. i can say the baked goods just melt in your mouth with a rich moist texture.yum! i highly recommend this place and will go to it for any of my cake needs and also if I'm craving a cup cake or two."


text:
Blue Jackets surprise Blues in win
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- There was no sign of celebration in the locker room. Coach Ken Hitchcock stalked off after a couple of minutes at the podium.
The St. Louis Blues needed help to clinch their first Central division title since 1999-2000, stumbling at home against the NHL's last-place team. The Columbus Blue Jackets caught a team perhaps expecting to win, and then struggling to maintain its composure.
"Obviously, if we want to be a good team we can't play like that," Blues forward Andy McDonald said after the Blue Jackets' 5-2 victory Saturday night. "We just got really worked up about the officiating, about how things were going, and we weren't able to reign it in.
"It just kind of spun out of control."
R.J. Umberger scored twice and rookie goalie Allen York made it three wins in three career starts for Columbus. Jared Boll, Derek Dorset and Vinny Prospal also scored for Columbus, and York finished with 34 saves.
"It's huge for our confidence," the 22-year-old York said. "We showed that we're not the team that everyone thinks we are. We're a very dangerous team."
David Backes and David Perron scored for the Blues, who wrapped up the division when Chicago beat Nashville 5-4 not long before the final horn in St. Louis. St. Louis leads the Western Conference with106 points. A small cheer went up in the stands when that game finished, not that players seemed to notice.
While playing catchup in the third period, the Blues were whistled for eight penalties, including an unsportsmanlike conduct call on defenseman Alex Pietrangelo. That made it tough on goalie Jaroslav Halak, victimized for four goals for the second straight game.
"The officials were not the issue, not one bit the issue," Hitchcock said. "We were the issue. They called what they saw and what they saw was us taking stupid penalties. I would have made the same calls."
The Blues had been 13-1-1 in their previous 15 at home since mid-January while outscoring opponents 43-16, before inexplicably struggling against a franchise that's last overall in the NHL. The Blue Jackets have won three in a row for just the second time this season, and handed the Blues just their fifth home loss of the season, and first in regulation since a 4-2 loss to Boston on Feb. 22.
St. Louis has lost its last two, also falling 4-3 in a shootout at Chicago on Thursday night. Hitchcock said the Blues "showed probably a little bit of a lack of respect" for Columbus.
"To tell you the truth, we don't really care right now how many points we've got," said Backes, the Blues' captain. "The slate's wiped clean for playoffs, which is really the big picture.
"If we're not playing our best, whether you're the 1, 2 or 3 seed, doesn't matter."
York has been subbing for injured Steve Mason and Curtis Sanford, and has allowed no more than two goals in all three of his starts. This time he bested a St. Louis lineup that was intact for the first time in 160 games since March 30, 2010, with forwards Andy McDonald (shoulder), Matt D'Agostini (concussion) and defensive Roman Polak (lower body) returning from injuries.
Umberger scored on an unassisted breakaway off Chris Stewart's giveaway in the second period, and Dorsett scored on a 5-on-3 power play for a two-goal cushion in the third with Kent Huskins, David Backes and Alex Pietrangelo all in the penalty box.
Prospal added an empty-net goal with 1:26 to go. "They had a lot on the line with clinching the division and we just didn't want that on our time," Umberger said. "Anytime we play these guys it's always heated.
"You know the two teams hate each other."
NOTES: Among the Blues' scratches was D Carlo Colaiacovo, whose giveaway led to a goal Thursday night in a shootout loss at Chicago. ... Umberger has five goals the last three games and eight in his last six, including a hat trick against Carolina March 23. ... The crowd of 19,150 was the Blues' 23rd sellout. ... The Blues had been 13-1-1 against Columbus at home since 2007-08.


text:
It's very busy around here.
The snow is "epic". The atmosphere is festive. Grand-parents, parents, kids, cousins and friends are all having a thrill.
Un-noticed while the outside world spins is the quiet man. This particular person is working as hard as anyone at the Antlers this time of year. You need to know what goes on downstairs and what he does. A few facts and history.
One of the requirements on the original job description stated "individual must have the ability to work independently". Aniceto Quinones was looking at the classifieds in 1994 and jumped out of his chair and ran to the kitchen where his wife was cooking his favorite meal. "Ilda, Ilda, I found the job I want. I'm going to the Antlers to tell them I'm their man." Millie Barela hired him that week to take care of the overwhelming laundry situation we have here. Ever since, he's been the first here in the morning, one of the last to leave at night and he takes his job very seriously. On average, Aniceto works 10 hours a day because he wants to and as Randi put it "we have to force him to take a vacation."
He told me "I love my job and it is very important not to fall behind. If we miss one day it is very hard to catch up. Our guests would not like drying themselves after a shower with a wash cloth."
"So how much laundry is there Aniceto?" He got out a scratch pad and started writing numbers down and then multiplying them by storage closets and whoa. "Many thousands every week and do not forget that I have to do bath mats, bedding and throw rugs." He also tears and squares linens and towels that are not up to standards for guest use. Those are recycled for housekeepers to use as rags. He washes those as well.
(Honorable mentions need to go to Cristobal, Darwin, Macario, Calletano and Bryan who fill in when Aniceto sleeps, and who could forget Igor.)
Greg z.


text: Mobile network operator Orange will install Lookout's Mobile Security application on some of the Android-based tablets and smartphones it distributes starting in 2013, aiming to protect millions of subscribers in the first year alone. Starting in France, Slovakia, Spain, and the U.K., Orange will install Lookout's software on select new Android devices from early 2013, with more markets and phones to come throughout the year, the France TA(c)lA(c)com Orange said on Tuesday.Subscribers to Orange's UK joint venture EE, or to its partner T-Mobile, will also be able to buy a smartphone or tablet with the software already installed.The operator has in fact already jumped the gun by installing Lookout on Sony Xperia Ts that it sells. Other smartphones from Sony, as well as HTC and Samsung Electronics, will also get the software, but Orange isn't yet saying which models.Orange will insall the free version of Lookout's software, which scans apps, files and attachments in the hunt for the growing number of spyware and malware targeting Android devices. It analyzes phone numbers users might click to dial from a mobile website, as well.To reduce the load on the smartphone, the analysis is done in the cloud, according to Alex Abey, vice president of business development at Lookut. Users wouldn't accept the battery load resulting from doing it on the phone, he said.Lookout also helps users find lost or stolen devices and back up data. Its Signal Flare feature allows users to locate a lost phone even after the battery has died.Orange is planning to include the premium version of the software in some bundles, said Xavier Perret, vice president of strategic partnerships at Orange. It usually costs US$2.99 per month and scans every site users visit and links they click on in real-time to protect against the latest online threats, according to Lookout's website.Orange's goal is to help differentiate its smartphones from the competition, while at the same time making it easier for users to protect their devices, according to Perret.Both the free and the premium version can already be downloaded from Google's Play store.In addition to using Lookout' software, Orange is also making a strategic investment in the security company through the Orange & Publicis strategic venture capital initiative with Iris Capital.Send news tips and comments to email@example.com


text:
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text:
The time has come to talk about "the Beltway."
The term, a reference to the roadway that circumnavigates the District of Columbia and patches of its Maryland and Virginia suburbs, has long been in widespread use—as if everyone within the isolated island thinks alike, has the same amount of information and the same political opinions, simultaneously. But lately "the Beltway" has also become an epithet, hurled at those who live within it for some real or imagined transgression.
I've become used to the highly intelligent Rachel Maddow insistently asserting—and always scorning—what "the Beltway" thinks, ignores, confuses, faints over, and so on. Nevertheless, her program is informative enough that I try not to miss it. And the New York Times media reporter David Carr, one of the clearest-minded journalists and most gifted writers today and a hero of mine, recently made the "Beltway" press the bad guy, blaming the unanimous, across-the-board failure to foresee the thumping of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his primary this month on "Beltway blindness."
This metaphorical Beltway has been assigned almost mystical qualities. It's the castle in a Monty Python movie. The people within it are as isolated from the rest of the country as they are unanimous in their opinions. In order not to learn anything from anywhere else in the nation, it would appear that the "Beltway crowd" reads only local news, doesn't watch national television news or talk shows, makes no long-distance calls, and doesn't travel—or when it does it never discusses politics lest its confined collective mind be polluted by outside information. As a concept of how information and opinion move between Washington and the rest of the country "the Beltway" is epistemological nonsense.
The actual sixty-four-mile Capital Beltway was a very big deal to the area when it was built in 1964, but, like Dulles Airport, which opened two years earlier, quickly lost much of its utility and appeal. There's nothing particularly special about a beltway—some twenty cities around the country have one—and the Washington version has long since become so congested and odiferous that those who live in its environs avoid it if possible. Maybe it's time to apply the same approach to the Beltway metaphor, which is increasingly employed as a substitute for serious analysis.
To be sure, because this is the seat of the federal government, a larger proportion of people in Washington are politically minded than elsewhere, and politics consumes a high—all too high—proportion of the conversation. (One must take measures to escape.) But there are also numerous residents who are detached from the political scene. They fix shoes and sell clothes. They work in high tech or are docents at art galleries; they teach math and Latin or write novels and paint and play music. There are the many career civil servants who mainly go about the business of trying to keep the government going (and have done so heroically under some difficult circumstances). By the nature of their jobs and their dependence for their livelihoods and satisfaction on the decisions of politicians, many engage in the political conversation or are sought out by journalists for their expertise. Numerous others who live "inside the Beltway" but have nothing to do with the government are nevertheless quite ready to offer their opinions about political developments. The thing about politics—unlike, say, nuclear physics—is that it's in English, and those who care to can be eager to let others know what they think, no matter how much they know. Anyone can be an expert. Beware the dental chair.
But what is usually meant by this hypothetical Beltway are the journalists who work in Washington, some with more influence than others, and those myriad "political analysts" with dramatically different degrees of expertise who appear on television talk shows—which have a great deal of time to fill—or are eager to be quoted in print. What those who toss around the epithet actually mean is that some prevailing view forms within this collective that misunderstands, misinforms, or misleads the rest of the nation. Under this use of the term, "the Beltway" never gets it right.
There were and still are journalistic fashions—but there are also many journalists who work here who don't follow them. The metaphor first came into use in the 1960s not long after the Beltway was built. If the concept of homogeneity of outlook and opinion had any validity then, it was also a very different time. The right had yet to form "Foxland"—the collection of influential outlets on the right that include not only Fox News but also Bill Kristol's media empire and the blogs and tweets that energetically and ably get their views into the conversation. There was no cable news desperate to fill the hours; obviously there was no Internet, and Twitter wasn't imagined. The news out of Washington was in fact dominated by two or three powerful newspapers—particularly The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal—though other papers such as The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Star, The Boston Globe, and USA Today (and others that probably should be mentioned) also had some influence. The evening news broadcasts of the three television networks were a major event.
But even in that era the networks and the press weren't as homogeneous as the febrile imaginings of the right—led on by Pat Buchanan and Spiro Agnew—had it. The strong, even intimidating, pressure on television producers to present a conservative as well as a liberal point of view on their programs began during the Nixon period. (That was Buchanan's undying cause.) Yet even then there existed influential conservative outlets such as Human Events and The National Review. And now more than ever there's a cacophony of opinions emanating from the various news organizations—in fact now more heavily based in New York than in Washington, with in many instances management in New York deciding the news agenda and making the assignments.
Certainly there can form a consensus among many political reporters that's often enough off-base, especially when it gets into political prognosis. Eugene McCarthy used to speak, not inaccurately, about political reporters as blackbirds on a wire: when one flies off in another direction the others follow suit. X is ahead; no, Y is gaining. The "opinion-makers"—the most influential and visible figures—can treat seriously a rather preposterous figure until he falls flat on his face. So and so is clearly a presidential contender; then that hot prospect says something unrecoverably stupid or gets caught in a political scandal—and is quickly a goner. (This does nothing to discourage speculation about the next hot prospect.) Assumptions are made before people are tested, and an actual candidacy is a lot different from whatever is already known about a possible candidate. (A rather tired joke here refers to "President Muskie"; not many who write and affect opinion about politics saw early that Hillary Clinton wasn't a shoo-in for the 2008 Democratic nomination.)
David Carr was harshly critical of "Beltway" reporters who didn't bother to go to Eric Cantor's nearby Virginia district to see what was going on; the Beltway media, he suggested, only focus on what happens within the confines of Washington. Carr's comments won't lure me into an argument over the quality of the Washington press corps: as a whole it's too varied in talent, willingness to work hard, insightfulness, and sheer intelligence to draw any blanket conclusions. As for "the Beltway media" missing Cantor's surprise defeat, so did everyone else, including those closest to the situation: Cantor missed it. Cantor's victorious opponent, the Tea Party candidate Dave Brat, missed it. Cantor's campaign staff missed it. Cantor's pollsters missed it in a big way; in late May they told his campaign that he was ahead by thirty-four points. That was the only poll of the contest. The Republican party apparatus missed it. Even Nate Silver had it wrong.
Actually, some reporters, national as well as local, noticed that the race was tightening. But to my knowledge, no one predicted that Cantor would be defeated. I can be as curious as most people about the polls, but relying on them to make predictions and estimations is not the most useful way to spend time: their results are famously changeable since elections are dynamic, and some polls are simply wrong—based on faulty assumptions. Moreover, there have always been and will always be surprises. It's certainly not that the press wouldn't love to get to the scene of the accident before it happens. As Nate Silver pointed out after the Cantor upset, the political press loves the meme—one that began only four years ago—of Tea Party candidates upsetting mainstream Republican figures. But where to look? Silver observes that such upsets, especially in House races, are rare and random—they've occurred in 1-2 percent of all the congressional contests nationwide—and that this makes it very difficult to figure out which challenges to watch closely.
While we're on the subject of political analysis, it's also risky to overstate the meaning of any particular race. Within minutes of Cantor's defeat, television commentators (and not just those located within the Beltway) attributed his loss with virtual unanimity to the fact that he had suggested some flexibility about immigration. But on the same night Lindsey Graham, who had taken a much more positive position on immigration, easily defeated a primary challenge from the right. Nonetheless, because of the early analysis on Cantor, numerous Republican candidates are terrified of the immigration issue and clasping onto more restrictive positions.
Further, in a primary with low participation it doesn't take much to flip the result from one direction to another. In all, 65,022 people came out to vote in Cantor's district. Intensity of involvement by one side might be detected—but often isn't. Actually, Cantor's loss was caused by the fact that, increasingly, his constituents didn't like him. Cantor's a frosty figure and his attention was increasingly directed toward the Washington business lobbyists—the more than $168,000 that Cantor was reported to have spent on steakhouses during the campaign became emblematic of his loss. The anti-business view developing on both left and right, and the backing by the Chamber of Commerce this year of more mainstream Republicans over Tea Party challengers, didn't sit well with the far right. This growing sentiment tripped up Cantor, a close buddy of the chamber. But all of this became much more evident in hindsight.
And there's another problem that can come to haunt incumbents who've served a long time: accustomed to winning without a struggle, they get rusty and often a bit too removed from their constituents—who, in turn, can start to detect, or suspect, a bit of arrogance. Delivering goods from Washington isn't enough: voters want to know that their representative or senator is listening to them. (These are among the problems that put Mississippi senator Thad Cochran in reelection peril.) Also, redistricting to keep a politician safe can come back to bite him. Public opinion can develop slowly and silently and then lash out and bowl the politicians over. It can take almost everybody else by surprise, whether or not they are inside the Beltway.
There've been countless examples of election surprises: in addition to individual upsets, national ones, when political reporters, consultants, pollsters, and the candidates themselves, all over the country, didn't see the signs. Real indicators of Ronald Reagan's resounding defeat of Jimmy Carter didn't show up until the weekend before the 1980 election, and the outcome was strongly driven by a last-minute event—Carter's failure to gain the release of the Americans being held hostage in Iran. The Republican congressional sweeps of 1994 and 2010 came as largely a shock (if not to their engineers, such as Newt Gingrich in 1994). There have always been surprises and there will always be some.
At least I hope so.


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Hire Singing Guitarist in Staffordshire
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text:
Arctic Cooling Silentium T2 ECO 80 ATX Case Review
Cases & PSU/Cases by jmke @ 2008-06-20
Arctic Cooling, well known for their low noise CPU and VGA coolers, has developed their own Silentium ATX case series some time ago. We take a look at the latest incarnation, the T2 ECO 80 which comes with a high efficiency 550W PSU, HDD noise absorption system and decoupled low noise case fans. Can this case live up to their high standards? Let us find out.


text:
The Michelin Man giveth, and the Michelin Man taketh away.
A week in advance of the release of the 2013 Michelin Guide, the highly respected restaurant rating group announced the recipients of its Bib Gourmand designations, given to inspectors' favorites that deliver good value.
There are 64 Chicago restaurants on the 2013 list, up from 56 last year. Of those, 19 restaurants earned Bib Gourmand recognition for the first time. On the downside, 11 of last year's Bib Gourmand recipients were cut from this year's list.
Of the 11 culled restaurants, only one has reason to be happy: Perennial Virant, whose absence from the Bib Gourmand list may mean a Michelin star rating is in its immediate future. (A restaurant cannot be a star recipient and Bib Gourmand winner simultaneously.)
The star designations, which will be announced Nov. 14, are the gold standard for restaurants. But the Bib Gourmand designations are nevertheless significant, as they indicate quality restaurants that are affordable (less than $40 for two courses plus dessert).
Among the first-time Bib Gourmand winners are Au Cheval, Balena (which might have hoped for more), Jam, Maison, Marion Street Cheese Market (Oak Park), Pump Room, Slurping Turtle and Urban Union.
The most notable cuts from last year's list include Hopleaf, Lula Cafe (though sister property Nightwood retained its status), Mexique, M. Henry and Mundial Cocina Mestiza.
Ada Street *
Ann Sather
Antique Taco *
Au Cheval *
Balena *
Belly Shack
The Bristol
Ceres' Table
Chilam Balam *
City Tavern *
De Cero
De Colores
Frontera Grill
Gemini Bistro
Gilt Bar
Girl & the Goat
Green Zebra
GT Fish & Oyster
Han 202
Jam *
Jin Thai
Kabul House
Kai Zan *
Lao Hunan *
Lao Sze Chuan
La Petite Folie
Los Nopales
Maison *
Marion Street Cheese Market *
Maude's Liquor Bar
Mixteco Grill
Opart Thai
Owen & Engine
Paramount Room
The Publican
The Pump Room *
Purple Pig
Raj Darbar
Riccardo Trattoria
The Savoy *
Slurping Turtle *
Smoque BBQ
Sol de Mexico
Spacca Napoli
The Storefront Company *
Twin Anchors
Untitled *
Urban Belly
Urban Union *
West Town Tavern
Wood *
Xni-Pec de Yucatan
Removed from list
La Creperie
Lula Café
M. Henry
Mundial Cocina Mestiza
Perennial Virant
Taste of Peru
Thai Village


text:
Park has chance to open season 3-for-3 in majors
She already had six wins, and the LPGA Tour season was barely at the halfway point. She stamped her dominance by winning the first two majors of the year. The gap between her and the next best player was even larger than what Tiger Woods enjoyed in men's golf. Her swing was reliable. And she had the experience as a past U.S. Women's Open champion. If she had a weakness, it wasn't apparent.
A third straight major almost seemed inevitable.
But it didn't work out that way in 2005 for Annika Sorenstam. She tried to ignore a month of hype only for jangled nerves to join her on the first tee at Cherry Hills. She was behind from the opening round, and the harder she tried, the farther behind she fell.
"It was a lot of pressure," Sorenstam said last week about her Grand Slam bid. "I wanted to not necessarily ignore it, but I was trying to not let it get to me. I wanted to just focus. It's another major. It's the U.S. Open, and at the time, I had won two before. And I thought, 'I can do this.' "
She can appreciate better than most what Park In-bee faces this week.
The 24-year-old Korean didn't win the first two majors as convincingly as Sorenstam did in 2005, but she won them. Park is coming off back-to-back wins, including the LPGA Championship in a playoff, to widen her lead at No. 1 in the world. She won the Women's Open just five years ago at Interlachen.
"I'm looking forward to seeing how In-bee handles this," Sorenstam said. "She has the major experience and she's the No. 1 player in the world, so she's not necessarily brand new in this role. .?.?. We'll see how she handles Sebonack and the conditions that await."
Sorenstam didn't make it clear if she was talking about external conditions - such as wind coming off Atlantic waters on Long Island - or whatever emotions are roiling inside Park.
The U.S. Women's Open starts Thursday at Sebonack Golf Club, and Park is the latest to challenge history.
Sorenstam was only the most recent player who tried - and failed - to win three straight majors to start the season.
Woods had a chance in 2002 until he was blown away by the wind, cold and rain of Muirfield on Saturday of the British Open. Pat Bradley was going for three straight in 1986, but she shot 76 in the first round of the U.S. Women's Open and never caught up. Jack Nicklaus was on the verge of winning three straight majors in 1972 until Lee Trevino beat him at Muirfield. Arnold Palmer, who created the modern version of the Grand Slam in 1960, lost out by a shot to Kel Nagle that year at St. Andrews.
The last player to start the season by winning three straight majors was Babe Zaharias in 1950, back when the LPGA Tour only had three majors. Ben Hogan won all three he could play in 1953, when the PGA Championship was held at the same time as British Open qualifying.
It's different now.
Sorenstam said of Park, "I've been in her shoes," but only as it relates to her bid to win three straight majors. Sorenstam was going after the Grand Slam in 2005. The LPGA Tour now counts the Evian Masters, which gives it five majors. The trouble is, a grand slam only scores four runs. Or as Jeff Sluman so famously said in 2003, "When you go to Denny's and order the Grand Slam breakfast, they don't give you five things, do they? They give you four."
What do you call winning five majors in one year? That's a question Park would love to have someone answer.
The next stop is Sebonack, whether nothing figures to be easy - not the course, not the competition, not the pressure.
"I think there is no way that you won't feel the pressure," Park said Tuesday. "Because you will always feel the pressure. But it's just the more you experience it, you just feel it a little less and less over the time. Now when I'm in the position where I am, and when I'm in the winning position - and I've been there a lot - it's just knowing what I have to do. I think that's been a big help for me."
A bigger help is how she's playing.
"This is the best I'm playing in my career so far," Park said. "I'm trying to keep this going."


text:
Nov. 1, 2012 — -- During the worst of Hurricane Sandy, just moments before the storm was about to make landfall, many in the affected states heard a noise over the wind and the rain. It came from their smartphone.
For some, it was a loud buzzing with an emergency alert image, explaining that they should take shelter. For others, it was actually a female robotic voice, informing them of an emergency.
Those notifications were what FEMA and the FCC call wireless emergency alerts or WEAs. They were designed to alert people via their phones about three types of emergencies -- imminent threats (including extreme or severe weather), AMBER alerts, and presidential alerts (alerts issued by the president). The alerts, which are not done via text message, were launched last year in many parts of the country and in May came to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and other carriers.
"We have close to 100 carriers that are providing the service," Chris Guttman-McCabe, vice president, regulatory affairs for the CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, told ABC News. "We purposely made it so people didn't have to sign up for the service. We worked with FEMA and others to make sure it doesn't get abused. That's when people will only really pay attention to it."
Guttman-McCabe said that users can disable the imminent and AMBER alerts, but not the presidential ones. The alerts are not text message-based by design.
"WEA messages ensure that emergency alerts will not be delayed by network congestion, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services," a FEMA spokesperson told ABC News.
But that means that they are also dependent on the carriers and the phones.
"It's a technology upgrade," Guttman-McCabe said. "As new phones come out, there is extreme likelihood that they can receive these."
Most of the phones that are supported are smartphones; not older-style flip or clamshell phones.
Currently, Verizon supports at least 35 phones, including the iPhone and some of the recent Android phones, like the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S III. Verizon lists the phones on its website, though is missing some of the newest phones that support the service.
The iPhone is also missing from that list, but ABC News confirmed that the iPhone 4S and 5 on Verizon's network got alerts during the storm.
AT&T, by comparison, only supports 11 phones. On the flipside, AT&T's iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 do not support the service. An AT&T spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that AT&T's LTE network does not currently support WEAs.
Sprint, like Verizon, also has a wide selection of phones. In fact, all the smartphones on the network released since 2011 support WEAs.
Apple also confirmed to ABC News that only Verizon and Sprint support the alert function, at the moment. Apple added the WEA alert option in iOS 6. You can turn on the feature under the settings and then the notifications menus on the phone.
The feature is also supported on Android smartphones and is enabled automatically on many of them. Google has even added alerts cards to its Google Now service.
But Guttman-McCabe made it very clear: The goal is to have this service on all phones.
"The goal is to get it out to as many people as we can," Guttman-McCabe said. "The percentage of people with access to the alerts will climb dramatically."


text:
That is the question one man posed to each of the presidents of Ohio's Division 1-A public universities. In the context of increased concussion-related litigation and the skyrocketing cost of attendance that many schools use to fund athletics, each president was given one month to answer a very simple question about the future of the program burning the candle at both ends. Each president's response was the same: there wasn't one.
From the website:
With states across the country cutting funding for higher education, the head of any state-supported university faces serious budget concerns. One multi million dollar cost that's now on the president's plate is the potential cost of concussion litigation. Unlike the NFL, the university's mission is not to maximize profit and entertain. The university's mission is education. Unlike the NFL players who are represented by a union, college players have no representation. So how do those two differences between the NFL and college football affect the risk of litigation? What's the potential cost?
He also gets a couple of attorneys to weigh in on topics ranging from the NCAA's founding purpose (spearheaded by Teddy Roosevelt to protect the safety of college athletes) to the concept of assumption of the risk. It's all a little out there, maybe, but that's a legitimate question he's asking and someone in charge should answer it.
Here's a version of the letter he sent to, among others, the presidents of The Ohio State University, Kent State and Cincinnati.
Photo credit: Getty


text:
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Obama's Last Stand
About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
23 comments:
knish, you are truly a force of nature....ReplyDelete
i feared you would be spreading yourself thin with all the places you are writing for lately.
but in fact, you are more prolific, more far-reaching, and more profound, with each passing week.
i dont know how you keep this pace up. you write em faster than i can read them.
you are truly like the canary in the coal mine, tweeting faster and faster and ever faster as the oxygen runs dangerously down
u go boi
-- spanky
ps. forgot to mention: saturday night posts -- that is totally new from you. amazing....ReplyDelete
-- spanky
Well more works means more readers and we're at a crucial point now where people need to be reached with this informationReplyDelete
Speak out, Daniel, there is hardly a more noble effort than to champion truth. You can rest later, knowing you gave it all you had, whether they listened or not.ReplyDelete
"Disillusioning people is a thankless task and quite plainly does not come under the category of making friends and thinking positively. Nevertheless it must be done if we are to rescue lost men from the consequences of their delusions. So let me say boldly that it is not the difficulty of discovering truth but the unwillingness to obey it that makes it so rare among men."
A.W. Tozer
"...And if he falls, then his party falls with him.ReplyDelete
Lets hope !
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
(Emily Dickinson)
The reality seems quite transparent and apparent and obvious .. until the magician writer Daniel comes along and starts mopping the glass wall with his magical broom (and frequently the glass floor and the glass ceiling too).ReplyDelete
Let us hope the smoky icons dissipate, and glassy mirrors shatter.ReplyDelete
If Obama loses – and I'm sure he will, in spite of the DNC's best efforts to discourage, distract, beguile, and belittle the electorate – the Democratic Party may also fail and experience well-deserved humiliation and repudiation, but it will stick around as a kind of annoying ambulance chaser, ready to offer the usual patent medicine panaceas, advice and explanations which only halfwits will listen to. By the same token, I don't expect anything radical from Romney, such as a move to dissolve about half the alphabet soup federal agencies such as the EPA and the ATF, ridding us of all the czars, and a repeal of the income tax amendment. Romney is a creature of the status quo, he is of the political establishment, he will not do anything he thinks will frighten the electorate.ReplyDelete
Perhaps the best thing that would happen if the Democrats lose their oomph as a party of influence is the creation of a vacuum that would allow the formation of a genuine third party that would actually pursue some of the aforesaid goals. And then it would be Romney, the establishment man, in the hot seat. Romney is not a nihilist, as Obama is – which is why he must be tossed out of the Oval Office by the seat of his pants – but he can author the same kind of destruction by default as Obama has authored by intent. Remember, it was a pair of Bushes, alleged conservatives, who helped to expand the welfare state as much as did Clinton and his predecessors.
I might have also mentioned two other Bush foreign policy disasters: the Gulf War, in which we expended blood and treasure to rescue an oil sheikdom from a secular invader, Iraq, and Iraq itself, for even more blood and treasure. And neither Bush would face Islam as an enemy, neither would counter-declare war on Islam.ReplyDelete
I agree with the premise of your essay but not the elements that you have chosen to illustrate it.ReplyDelete
I think that conservatives are better served to demonstrate the radical shift in the Democratic party in less than a generation. To do that, I think that you elevate Kennedy by highlighting two things:
1. Cuban missile crisis. Charisma and principles on display. Compare and contrast with the modern version which is Iran.
2. "Ask not what your country can do for you....," speech. Compare and contrast with the modern entitlement state.
I think that to win the hearts and minds of cultural Democrats (i.e. Jews, blue collar, etc.), we need to make a strong case that Obama is the anti-Kennedy. Kennedy will always be a be-sainted icon, and for good reason.
My fear is that either in the face of a looming electoral loss, or after, Obama will attempt to seize power. The Left is too close to their utopia, and Obama's handlers too close to denigrating America and relegating it to the trash heap of history, to simply shrug their shoulders collectively and walk away from a loss.ReplyDelete
that's certainly a pragmatic approach... just keep in mind that in a generation you'll be elevating Obama and citing his speeches to show that our new Democratic president, Satan McHitler is no patriot like Barack Obama wasReplyDeleteReplies
- Raymond in DC22/10/12
Maybe I've been around too long, but I've never been enthralled by Obama's speeches. (I've certainly heard better.) His 2004 DNC speech, his 2008 "race" speech, his State of the Union speeches, his Oval Office speech promoting ObamaCare - none of them won me over. Yes, he's got that baritone voice and some decent cadence. But I also pay attention to the *substance* of the speech and the quality of the arguments - neither of which impress.Delete
I recall watching the election results from an IDF army base, where I was volunteering. While many of my fellow volunteers were classic "Jewish liberals", I and a few others didn't share their enthusiasm. I could only hope my trepidations weren't realized. They were, and then some.
The Democrats have won because they have replaced the whites since 1965. Browns and Blacks especially but also Yellows are entering the USA as legal immigrants to the tune of 1,200,000 each year. Add to that the tens and tens of thousands of Africans and other third world low IQ non-whites being brought into the country by Catholic Charities and the like NGOs. Then add the illegal alien influx.ReplyDelete
The Democrats are well on their way to victory.
Dan Kurt
"Muslim terrorism began its ascent under JFK..."ReplyDelete
Daniel ,can you elaborate on this? I seem to remember Muslim terrorist acts a lot earlier than that.
Only one problem with your analysis: It wasn't Zero who coined the phrase ''islam is a religion of peace'' nor was the first President to see America's sacred duty to ''bring freedom and democracy'' to muslims nor was he the first President to have an administration infested with muslims and muslim sympathisers.ReplyDelete
While I can't stand Zero myself, to me it seems he merely continued the policies toward islam that were in place before he even became a US Senator.
Whether Romney finally gets realistic about islam remains to be seen, but I see little to be hopeful about.
For God's sake at current course and speed, the cable news channels will be reporting whatever results they like absent reality. It wouldn't shock me if MSNBC has already decided to call the vote for Obama no matter what. And stick with it.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous22/10/12
Mr. Knish it is too bad you are not at a university (come to think of it a man with your opinions would not be welcomed in academia). Two things I have to disagree with you on - JFK despite his reprehensible personal morals was not sympathetic towards communism and Chiang Kai-shek lost China.ReplyDelete
- Avery H.22/10/12
JFK was very anti Communist.ReplyDelete
I have personal knowledge of that fact.
Obama is not at all like John F. Kennedy. He can only wish that he were.
send gift to BangladeshReplyDelete
chocolate birthday cake
valentines day gift ideas
online shopping bangladesh
send gifts on friendship day,Mothers'day,Fathers'Day to Dhaka,Bangladesh
- Anonymous1/2/19
If there's a Father's Day and Mother's Day, how come there is no GayReplyDelete
Parent Day? Why would you need it? They are either the mother
or the father. Gay or not. How does gay change that?


text:
Florian Brillet
Born in Rennes, France in 1978, Florian Brillet is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Bretagne.
Since his studies his interest has been the depiction of complex forms, most notably developing the roof structure of the St Petersburg Opera House for Dominique Perrault and the auditorium of the Paris Philharmonia for the Ateliers Jean Nouvel.
Since 2007 he has been working in Paris as an independent architect and designer. He divides his time between furniture design and interior design.


text:
(Feb. 24, 2012) On February 8, 2012, the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg, Russia's second largest city and one of the constituent components of the Russian Federation, approved on a second reading a bill amending the Law of St. Petersburg on Administrative Violations (Misdemeanors). When this Law is passed, the promotion of information among minors about homosexuals, bisexuals, transgendered persons, and lesbians will be prohibited in St. Petersburg and will be punishable by a fine in an amount equal to approximately US$170 if conducted by private citizens and up to US$1,700 if performed by officials. The fine will increase up to approximately US$17,000 for legal entities. (Parlament Peterburga Prinial vo Vtorom Chtenii Zakon Protiv Geev (Petersburg's Parliament Passed an Anti-Gay Law on Its Second Reading), NEWSRU.COM (Feb. 8, 2012).)
According to the text of the amendments published on the website of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, the bill defines public actions aimed at promoting gay activities as "targeted and uncontrolled distribution of information that may damage the health, moral, and spiritual development of minors and form among them a wrong understanding of social equality between traditional and untraditional marriage relations." (Amendment to the Bill on Amending the Law of St. Petersburg on Administrative Violations [in Russian], St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly website (last visited Feb. 21, 2012).)
Simultaneously, the bill prohibits actions aimed at "creation of a wrong understanding that intimate relations between an adult and a minor are socially adequate and acceptable." Such acts are recognized as advocacy of pedophilia and are subject to the same punishment. (Id.)
Established legislative procedures provide that a law is passed after it is approved by city legislators in three readings. As a rule, all substantive changes to the bill are made during the second reading. Usually, the third reading is used for finalizing the act, and only editorial changes are made at that stage. (St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Resolution No. 9 of December 12, 1994, on Approving Rules of Internal Procedure [in Russian], art. 59, Legislative Assembly website (last visited Feb. 21, 2012).)
Similar laws against the dissemination of information about homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexualism, and lesbianism were recently passed in three other constituent components of the Russian Federation. (Petersburg's Parliament Passed an Anti-Gay Law on Its Second Reading, supra.)


text:
Why stop at the penthouse when you can put something on the penthouse? Something like a traditional Chinese pagoda, an American style suburb, or even a mountain? Time to scale China's unusual—and often illegal—high rise structures.
Building on buildings is not a new thing in China—or in many cities with tall buildings. For years now, people have put pigeon coops on apartment and office buildings without permission. There have been shanty structures erected on apartment buildings—sometimes without permits. Below you can see illegally built pigeon coops in Fuzhou from 2010:
In the last few years, there have been an increasing number of "rooftop structures" (楼顶搭 or "lou ding da"). Or rather, there have been an increasing number of people noticing them. Some of the structures are built by the building owners and are apparently overlooked or ignored by the local governments.
The problem with these buildings are the obvious structural concerns. They were built without permits, so they might be hazardous, which worries residents. Sometimes people who build these structure even lock the rooftop fire escapes, blocking access to them. Then, there's a feeling that these structures are ignoring things like, well, rules. They are public displays of people doing whatever the hell they want.
Let's have a look at some of these rooftop structures from over the years. Note that not all of them are still standing.
Originally, this rooftop villa in Shanghai was supposed to be a pigeon coop, but other residents complained. So, the resulting structure ended up like this and is connected to the top floor apartment. The above photo is from 2010.
Spotted in Zhangzhou last year. A resident complained that someone was building an illegal rooftop home sans permit. The fire escape door to the roof was locked, too, blocking outside access.
Sometimes the rooftop structures are simple and relatively hard to spot, such as this 2011 rooftop metal housing, located in Fuzhou.
In Suzhou, there's a Jiangsu style complex on top of an apartment building. It's rumored to belong to a government employee and went up in 2007. On People's Daily, one of China's largest news sources, there's speculation that the structure went up illegally. That is, however, unconfirmed.
There's a shopping mall in Henyang with a rooftop apparently as big as several football fields. Twenty-five dwellings were built on top, but since they were built without a permit, the owner was repeatedly told to tear them down. According to BackChina.com, an agreement seems to have been reached: the houses cannot be sold, and thus, they won't be torn down. Demolishing the houses could possibly cause the building's roof to leak.
And here are four rooftop houses on a shopping center in Zhuzhou.
This is perhaps the most infamous rooftop structure in China. First erected in 2007, the opulent add-on mountain looks like something the last boss of a video game would inhabit. The building's owner, Zhang Biqing, has been building this rooftop lair for the past six years. However, the Beijing government ordered its demolition. Work began on that last Thursday, reports China Daily.
Photos: FZNews, FJsen, People's Daily, T3, HF365, WinCn, Sohu, Sohu, 163
Fly over video: ShanghaiIst
Eric Jou contributed to this report.
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.


text:
A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. The most famous example in English is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in which the name of the central character, Pilgrim, epitomizes the book's allegorical nature. Kay Boyle's story "Astronomer's Wife" and Christina Rossetti's poem "Up-Hill" both contain allegorical elements.
The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." Hopkins, "In the Valley of the Elwy."
Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE. An anapestic meter rises to the accented beat as in Byron's lines from "The Destruction of Sennacherib": "And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, / When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee."
A character or force against which another character struggles. Creon is Antigone's antagonist in Sophocles' play Antigone; Teiresias is the antagonist of Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King.
Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play. In Shakespeare's Othello, Iago voices his inner thoughts a number of times as "asides" for the play's audience.
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the following lines: "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself."
A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover. John Donne's "The Sun Rising" exemplifies this poetic genre.
A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. The Anonymous medieval ballad, "Barbara Allan," exemplifies the genre.
Blank verse
A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's sonnets, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" include many lines of blank verse. Here are the opening blank verse lines of "Birches": When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
A strong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardy's "The Man He Killed" contains caesuras in the middle two lines:
He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand-like--just as I--
Was out of work-had sold his traps--
No other reason why.
The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play. One example is the dueling scene in Act V of Hamlet in which Hamlet dies, along with Laertes, King Claudius, and Queen Gertrude.
The purging of the feelings of pity and fear that, according to Aristotle, occur in the audience of tragic drama. The audience experiences catharsis at the end of the play, following the catastrophe.
An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona is a major character, but one who is static, like the minor character Bianca. Othello is a major character who is dynamic, exhibiting an ability to change.
The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions. Readers come to understand the character Miss Emily in Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" through what she says, how she lives, and what she does.
A group of characters in Greek tragedy (and in later forms of drama), who comment on the action of a play without participation in it. Their leader is the choragos. Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus the King both contain an explicit chorus with a choragos. Tennessee Williams's Glass Menagerie contains a character who functions like a chorus.
The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. The climax of John Updike's "A&P," for example, occurs when Sammy quits his job as a cashier.
Closed form
A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" provides one of many examples. A single stanza illustrates some of the features of closed form:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better. In comedy, things work out happily in the end. Comic drama may be either romantic--characterized by a tone of tolerance and geniality--or satiric. Satiric works offer a darker vision of human nature, one that ridicules human folly. Shaw's Arms and the Man is a romantic comedy; Chekhov's Marriage Proposal is a satiric comedy.
Comic relief
The use of a comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments. The comedy of scenes offering comic relief typically parallels the tragic action that the scenes interrupt. Comic relief is lacking in Greek tragedy, but occurs regularly in Shakespeare's tragedies. One example is the opening scene of Act V of Hamlet, in which a gravedigger banters with Hamlet.
An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work. Frank O'Connor's story "Guests of the Nation" provides a striking example, as does Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal."
A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters. Lady Gregory's one-act play The Rising of the Moon exemplifies both types of conflict as the Policeman wrestles with his conscience in an inner conflict and confronts an antagonist in the person of the ballad singer.
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play.
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. Shakespeare's sonnets end in rhymed couplets, as in "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry. The following playful lines illustrate double dactyls, two dactyls per line:
Higgledy, piggledy,
Emily Dickinson
Gibbering, jabbering.
The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following lines from Peter Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words:
To be specific, between the peony and rose
Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes;
Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves--
and always serve bread with your wine.
But, son,
always serve wine.
The resolution of the plot of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses. During the denouement Fortinbras makes an entrance and a speech, and Horatio speaks his sweet lines in praise of Hamlet.
Deus ex machina
A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. The Latin phrase means, literally, "a god from the machine." The phrase refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play.
The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.
The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can also refer to a poet's diction as represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction.
Dramatic monologue
A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we overhear the speaker in a dramatic monologue. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" represents the epitome of the genre.
Dramatis personae
Latin for the characters or persons in a play. Included among the dramatis personae of Miller's Death of a Salesman are Willy Loman, the salesman, his wife Linda, and his sons Biff and Happy.
A lyric poem that laments the dead. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W.H. Auden's "In Memory of William Butler Yeats" and his "Funeral Blues."
The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. Alexander uses elision in "Sound and Sense": "Flies o'er th' unbending corn...."
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line. In the opening lines of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," for example, the first line is end-stopped and the second enjambed:
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now....
A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values. Examples from western literature include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Milton's Paradise Lost.
A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope's "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog" exemplifies the genre:
I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. Ibsen's A Doll's House, for instance, begins with a conversation between the two central characters, a dialogue that fills the audience in on events that occurred before the action of the play begins, but which are important in the development of its plot.
A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. Fables typically include animals as characters. Their most famous practitioner in the west is the ancient Greek writer Aesop, whose "The Dog and the Shadow" and "The Wolf and the Mastiff" are included in this book.
Falling action
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution. The falling action of Othello begins after Othello realizes that Iago is responsible for plotting against him by spurring him on to murder his wife, Desdemona.
Falling meter
Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. The nonsense line, "Higgledy, piggledy," is dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two syllables following falling off from that accent in each word. Trochaic meter is represented by this line: "Hip-hop, be-bop, treetop--freedom."
An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. Ibsen's Nora is fictional, a "make-believe" character in a play, as are Hamlet and Othello. Characters like Robert Browning's Duke and Duchess from his poem "My Last Duchess" are fictional as well, though they may be based on actual historical individuals. And, of course, characters in stories and novels are fictional, though they, too, may be based, in some way, on real people. The important thing to remember is that writers embellish and embroider and alter actual life when they use real life as the basis for their work. They fictionalize facts, and deviate from real-life situations as they "make things up."
Figurative language
A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.
An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time. Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" includes flashbacks.
A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story. Laertes, in Hamlet, is a foil for the main character; in Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foils for Desdemona.
A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost's line "Whose woods these are I think I know" contains four iambs, and is thus an iambic foot.
Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. Ibsen's A Doll's House includes foreshadowing as does Synge's Riders to the Sea. So, too, do Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" and Chopin's "Story of an Hour."
Fourth wall
The imaginary wall of the box theater setting, supposedly removed to allow the audience to see the action. The fourth wall is especially common in modern and contemporary plays such as Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Wasserstein's Tender Offer, and Wilson's Fences.
Free verse
Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is one of many examples.
The physical movement of a character during a play. Gesture is used to reveal character, and may include facial expressions as well as movements of other parts of an actor's body. Sometimes a playwright will be very explicit about both bodily and facial gestures, providing detailed instructions in the play's stage directions. Shaw's Arms and the Man includes such stage directions. See Stage direction.
A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star."
An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in to-DAY. See Foot.
A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation entirely and include only images. Among the most famous examples is Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro":
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. Imagery of light and darkness pervade James Joyce's stories "Araby," "The Boarding House," and "The Dead." So, too, does religious imagery.
A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs. In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. Flannery O'Connor's short stories employ all these forms of irony, as does Poe's "Cask of Amontillado."
Literal language
A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. See Figurative language, Denotation, and Connotation.
Lyric poem
A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. The anonymous "Western Wind" epitomizes the genre:
Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose,"From Burns's "A Red, Red Rose." Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" is built entirely of metaphors. Metaphor is one of the most important of literary uses of language. Shakespeare employs a wide range of metaphor in his sonnets and his plays, often in such density and profusion that readers are kept busy analyzing and interpreting and unraveling them. Compare Simile.
The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. See Foot and Iamb.
A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." See Synecdoche.
A speech by a single character without another character's response. See Dramatic monologue and Soliloquy.
Narrative poem
A poem that tells a story. See Ballad.
The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. For example, the narrator of Joyce's "Araby" is not James Joyce himself, but a literary fictional character created expressly to tell the story. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" contains a communal narrator, identified only as "we." See Point of view.
An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet.
A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject, such as Horace's "Eheu fugaces," but sometimes a more lighthearted work, such as Neruda's "Ode to My Socks."
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. The following line from Pope's "Sound and Sense" onomatopoetically imitates in sound what it describes:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow.
Most often, however, onomatopoeia refers to words and groups of words, such as Tennyson's description of the "murmur of innumerable bees," which attempts to capture the sound of a swarm of bees buzzing.
Open form
A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. E.E. Cummings's "[Buffalo Bill's]" is one example. See also Free verse.
A brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual. Examples include "The Prodigal Son," from the New Testament, and the Zen parable, "Learning to Be Silent." See Fable.
A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation. Examples include Bob McKenty's parody of Frost's "Dust of Snow" and Kenneth Koch's parody of Williams's "This is Just to Say."
A quality of a play's action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. Pathos is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in comedy as well.
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification.
The unified structure of incidents in a literary work. See Conflict, Climax, Denouement, andFlashback.
Point of view
The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: first person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything.
Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play. The Christmas tree in A Doll's House and Laura's collection of glass animals in The Glass Menagerie
are examples.
The main character of a literary work--Hamlet and Othello in the plays named after them, Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis, Paul in Lawrence's "Rocking-Horse Winner."
A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables ("of the").
A four-line stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet.
The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. Sophocles' Oedipus comes to this point near the end of Oedipus the King; Othello comes to a similar understanding of his situation in Act V of Othello.
The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story. See Plot.
The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. Oedipus's and Othello's recognitions are also reversals. They learn what they did not expect to learn. See Recognition and also Irony.
The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. The following stanza of "Richard Cory" employs alternate rhyme, with the third line rhyming with the first and the fourth with the second:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him;
He was a gentleman from sole to crown
Clean favored and imperially slim.
The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined:
I said to my baby,Baby take it slow....Lulu said to Leonard
I want a diamond ring
Rising action
A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. See Climax, Denouement, and Plot.
Rising meter
Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to a stressed syllable. See Anapest, Iamb, and Falling meter.
A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a famous example. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal and O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," have strong satirical elements.
A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian sonnet. Examples: Petrarch's "If it is not love, then what is it that I feel," and Frost's "Design."
A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line.
The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. The stories of Sandra Cisneros are set in the American southwest in the mid to late 20th century, those of James Joyce in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century.
A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose."
A speech in a play that is meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage. If there are no other characters present, the soliloquy represents the character thinking aloud. Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech is an example. See Aside.
A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is arranged as three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba cde cde or abba abba cd cd cd.
A metricalfoot represented by two stressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK.
Stage direction
A playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play. Modern playwrights, including Ibsen, Shaw, Miller, and Williams tend to include substantial stage directions, while earlier playwrights typically used them more sparsely, implicitly, or not at all. See Gesture.
The spectacle a play presents in performance, including the position of actors on stage, the scenic background, the props and costumes, and the lighting and sound effects. Tennessee Williams describes these in his detailed stage directions for The Glass Menagerie and also in his production notes for the play.
A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another. The stanzas of Gertrude Schnackenberg's "Signs" are regular; those of Rita Dove's "Canary" are irregular.
The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques. See Connotation, Denotation, Diction, Figurative language, Image, Imagery, Irony, Metaphor, Narrator, Point of view, Syntax, and Tone.
What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is about the decline of a particular way of life endemic to the American south before the civil war. Its plot concerns how Faulkner describes and organizes the actions of the story's characters. Its theme is the overall meaning Faulkner conveys.
A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot. The story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern forms a subplot with the overall plot of Hamlet.
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. The glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, the rocking horse in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the road in Frost's "The Road Not Taken"--all are symbols in this sense.
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." See Metonymy.
The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:
"Whose woods these are I think I know."
A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character. Petronius' "The Widow of Ephesus" is an example.
A three-line stanza, as the stanzas in Frost's "Acquainted With the Night" and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The three-line stanzas or sections that together constitute the sestet of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet.
The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. See discussion of Dickinson's "Crumbling is not an instant's Act."
The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example, Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony.
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the worse. In tragedy, catastrophe and suffering await many of the characters, especially the hero. Examples include Shakespeare's Othello and Hamlet; Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus the King, and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. See Tragic flaw and Tragic hero.
Tragic flaw
A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero. Othello's jealousy and too trusting nature is one example. See Tragedy and Tragic hero.
Tragic hero
A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering. Sophocles' Oedipus is an example. See Tragedy and Tragic flaw.
An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-ball.
A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. The last line of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."
The idea that a play should be limited to a specific time, place, and story line. The events of the plot should occur within a twenty-four hour period, should occur within a give geographic locale, and should tell a single story. Aristotle argued that Sophocles' Oedipus the King was the perfect play for embodying the unities.
A nineteen-line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. The first and third lines alternate throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas --five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Examples include Bishop's "One Art," Roethke's "The Waking," and Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."


text:
- The Dock
- AWN window navigator and
- The shared library 'libawn' which is used to develop applets which enhance the functionality of AWN. The applets can be coded in either 'C' or 'Python' language.
To install AWN on your Linux machine, it has to meet certain conditions. Them being -
- Xgl or AIGLX installed - in short your computer should be capable of compositing support. This mostly means if you have an Nvidia or ATI video card, you should download and install the proprietary drivers.
- A compositing manager installed. A few examples of compositing managers are Beryl/Compiz/Compiz Fusion, Cairo, Xfce, Metacity, xcompmgr and so on.
In Ubuntu you can enable compositing manager by clicking System>Preferences> Appearance and then enabling Visual effects from the 'Visual Effects' tab in the Appearance dialog.
It opens the "Software sources" dialog box.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator awn-manager
A few AWN tips
- To add applications to the AWN dock, just drag and drop icons from the Applications menu or from Nautilus (/usr/share/applications).
- You can right click on the AWN dock and select properties to open the 'Avant Window Manager' dialog where you can change the look and feel of the dock and add additional applets.


text:
Friday, June 02, 2006
Pondering levees...
Watching the news a bitch was struck by how completely out of fucking touch some people are. How the hell can the advice be to get 3 days worth of hurricane preparedness shit together when most folks are living paycheck to paycheck? And aren't there still people in the Gulf region living in trailers…in unlivable houses…in chaos?
Lawd, have mercy.
While indulging in a good moment of complete disgust, a bitch actually picked up some shit a talking head was saying about the Army Corps of Engineers and the admission that the levees protecting New Orleans may have been engineered incorrectly. My first instinct was to curse them, but then…well, it's kind of comforting to have someone involved in the shit spiral that is levee based protection admit that they fucked up.
Listening to the ongoing debate over all things engineering and levee related reminded this bitch of economics. Specifically, the massive pile of stank bullshit economics that gets hurled out towards the citizen masses during political campaigns.
After 230 years one would think that economists would have latched onto some fucking consistent theory regarding what makes the economy thrive and what makes it all go to shit.
They probably have figured it out, but if you listen to the debates soon to come you'll begin to wonder if folks are living in the same country. The systems won't jive, the analysis of the current situation will be stone crazy and both sides will have some multi-degreed expert stating his or her case with authority.
Sadly, this bitch now considers it all bullshit…if it walks like it and talks like it, then fuck it all the hell.
Which brings me back to engineering and the levees. The multiple departments, organizations and crowds of engineers are all stating different and conflicting shit…with authority.
It would be bullshit…it walks like it and talks like it…but people's lives are at stake.
Nope, in the case of engineering miscalculations and pontifications a bitch is declaring gross negligence.
Catch that knee before it jerks…listen to the debate a while…and ask yourself if you'd sleep well in a house built on land protected by any levee built by those crazy talking and in love with argument for argument's sake people, who willfully contradicting each other only to hear the sound of their own voice and talk in terms of 'a wide range of errors' instead of acknowledge the body count that resulted from those errors.
Thought so.
8 comments:
You are so spot on. Here in Florida, south of Orlando, is Osceola County and Kissimmee. Entire neighborhoods still have blue tarps from the 2004 season. I was one of those people until a few months ago, when I sold my very damaged home. I had no insurance, it was canceled when State Farm realized it was a wood structure over 50 years old. FEMA, well I was very fortunate in that respect, I recieved assistance to find someplace to live and replacements for many damaged items. I know no on in MS, LA, AL & TX are anywhere near ready, and with us here in FL still in 2004. This season could be far more dangerous. Insurance Companies make threats to raise rates upward of 70% or abandon the state all together. Some kind of insurance needs to be handled by the government, through FEMA, but only if it seperated from Homeland Security...ugh. I'll be stocking up on my own supplies...Vodka, cran, cran grape...ambien.
Speaking as an engineer, we as human beings are capable of great works. Look at the Soviet Union - they accomplished almost everything they set out to do, including some engineering works that stagger the imagination.
But - we as human beings don't know as much as we like to think, and there also seems to be an underlying amount of uncertainty in the universe that steps in and kicks us in the knees whenever we get too arrogant. The Soviet Union provides good examples (N-1 moon rocket? Oops, there goes our entire space program in one explosion. Chernobyl of course), but we have several of our own not least the New Orleans levees.
But don't get too arrogant yourself: those levees on either side of the Missouri (say north of Hwy 40) are built the same way as the ones in New Orleans. Let's us have a couple of hurricanes come up the Mississippi River valley and give us another 1993, and we'll see what happens to OUR regional economy.
- Shark-Fu said...
Tell it, Cranky!
A bitch is all too aware of my multi-river levee vulnerable self...shudder.
Shit, when it rains for two days this bitch gets nervous.
Lawd, hurricanes coming up the valley! Talk about the end of days...
- nolapoet said...
My poor city... the only thing keeping Noo Awlins and the regionin danger is a lack of political WILL to fix this shit.
Damn gurl, you be wrappin that shit up with a tight ass bow! Mmmhmmm. That's what I say.
- AOB said...
AWWWWW...and I thought you were talking about the FAA.
- Willendorf said...
Hey y'all... our End of Days is much more realistic than that... we will get a major earthquake here at some point.
I admit to being a disaster geek... Red Cross disaster action team training, etc., and I have had plenty of hard pointy elbows in my ribs.
But you hit on one of my big focus points right now - I do not want the women I work with to be the next Katrina Victims. Engineering or not, there is going to be considerable damage to the older buildings in St. Louis, which is the impoverished, primarily black, areas of the city.
It is clear that we cannot count on the govt or quality engineering or the Red Cross to help us out of the emergency of a disaster. We MUST look at ways to tend to ourselves.
How, if you are on a tight budget? One extremely simple step - don't throw away a plastic container with a lid; fill it with water, mark the date on it, and either add a little bleach or change it out every 6 mos. The absolute worst part of watching the horror on TV was watching people dehydrate in the heat surrounded by polluted water.
There are other ways to prepare "cheap", and each and every one of us owes it to ourselves and our neighbors to plan ahead.
I have this very "rural" concept of trying to get to know my neighbors and prepare an evacutation plan with them, but haven't gotten far enough to even know who lives in my building...
Regardless, we each need to prepare ourselves and tend to our neighbors, cause the govt is far more invested in power-over death and destruction rather than power-with community organizing.
Keep in mind, two of the hurricanes last year did make it up to St. Louis. One sat just below tropical storm level right over St. Genevive for 3 days, blasting the area with rain the whole time. I happened to be camping in the area at the time ;-(
Two years ago I was involved in cleaning up the mess at a site in Pittsburgh, when for the second time in 3 weeks the remains of a Gulf hurricane made its way up the Ohio valley dumping first 10 and then 14 inches of rain on the metro area. Let's just say that no one up in the Alleghenies 1100 miles north of the Gulf coast expected to be affected by hurricanes, but the valleys around there did not take kindly to 24 inches of rain in 3 weeks.
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