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All too often when reporters are discussing Democrats caught in scandals, they develop a peculiar speech impediment that prevents them from uttering the "D" word. However, when members of the GOP stumble, the word "Republican" cascades out of the mouths of reporters.
When news broke on February 15 that former Democratic Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was charged with improperly spending campaign funds on (among other items) Michael Jackson and Bruce Lee memorabilia, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network anchors and reporters struggled to get their lips to form the word "Democrat." In 15 total stories on Jackson, reporters failed to utter the "D" word in 11 of them (73 percent). On the February 21 CBS This Morning Jackson was labeled a Democrat, but only in an on-screen graphic.
When word got out that the FBI was investigating New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez's jaunts (that may have included solicitation of prostitutes) with a campaign contributor to the Dominican Republic, the Big Three networks whistled past the scandal by airing a total of just eight stories since the story broke on January 24.
The reluctance to attach the "D" label to Jackson and give limited coverage to Menendez are typical examples of the liberal media's reluctance to tarnish the Democratic Party with its more ethically- challenged members. It's a courtesy that they have not extended to scandalized members of the GOP.
Over the years, the MRC has chronicled the vast disparity in how GOP politicians embroiled in scandals are covered compared to how sullied Democrats are covered, or in some cases, not covered.
The Following Scandal is Rated R (for Republican)
A prime example of network reporters withholding the "D" label came in October 2011. On Halloween of that year, MF Global Holdings filed for bankruptcy with a shady mystery: some $1.6 billion was missing from their customers' accounts. Financial analysts blamed the company's CEO, Jon Corzine, a former Democratic U.S. Senator and Governor of New Jersey, who became the center of an FBI investigation. In 22 total stories and briefs following the news that Corzine's brokerage firm filed for bankruptcy, and his subsequent testimony before the Senate only once was Corzine's party affiliation mentioned, when Kelly O'Donnell noted it, in her December 8, 2011 NBC Nightly News report.
When former Democratic New York Governor Eliot Spitzer found himself mired in a prostitution scandal in 2008 an MRC study found that within the first week of news coverage Spitzer was only identified as a Democrat 20 percent of the time.
This is in sharp contrast to the coverage former South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford received when he admitted, in 2009, to having flown to Argentina to carry on an extramarital affair. Within the first 24 hours of Sanford's confession he was identified as a Republican 100 percent of the time, during coverage on all the networks. In just the first week since Sanford admitted the tryst there were 49 stories on the Big Three network morning and evening shows.
In 2008 former Democratic Mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick was sent to jail for violating the terms of his bond after he had been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about his affair with his chief of staff, as well as their roles in the firing of two police officers. In 40 total Big Three network stories and briefs on Kilpatrick's troubles in the entire year of 2008 he was called a Democrat on just two occasions, both times on CBS.
In 2008 Kilpatrick, and the aforementioned Spitzer, weren't the only pols caught in sex scandals. A look at the ABC, CBS, NBC morning and evening shows in the days after scandals for Senators David Vitter (for prostitution) and Larry Craig (for bathroom stall toe-tapping) their party affiliation was included on every show. The key difference separating Vitter and Craig from Spitzer and Kilpatrick being that they were Republicans.
When an intern to former Democratic Congressman Gary Condit went missing back in 2001 the networks flooded their programs with stories on the search for Chandra Levy and speculated on Condit's involvement. Curiously, most of these stories did not include the Congressman's party affiliation. An MRC study done at the time looked at the ABC, NBC and CBS's morning and evening news programs from May 14 through July 12 of that year and found that in a total of 179 stories the Democratic label was applied only 14 times or less than 8% of the stories. Six of those labels came paired with adjectives such as "conservative" or "right-wing," so as to distance Condit from other party members.
Even further back from the Condit scandal, the networks, for the most part, covered up the party label of disgraced Democratic Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. On May 9, 2000, the former four-term governor was convicted on 17 counts of fraud and racketeering. CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News passed on the news with no Democratic label. The late ABC World News Tonight's Peter Jennings avoided the D-word around his conviction, but later arrived at the party identification indirectly: "He got support from old line white Democrats, blacks and Cajuns. He was one of them."
Democratic Scandal? What Democratic Scandal?
It's bad enough that the Big Three networks forget to label Democrats in scandal stories, sometimes they don't bother to mention the scandals at all. In 2009 a number of Democrats were faced with various scandals that went completely unreported on ABC, CBS and NBC.
Democratic Representative Charles Rangel, the then Chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, was forced to pay $75,000 in unpaid taxes and the House ethics committee launched an investigation into whether a Carribean trip he and four other Democrats took was improper.
Network coverage of the Rangel scandals: 0 stories.
In addition to Rangel, Democratic Congressmen John Murtha, Pete Visclosky and Jim Moran were linked to a scandal involving the PMA Group, a lobbying group that was forced to close in 2009 after being raided by the FBI. According to the New York Times Its top lobbyist was suspected of funneling "bogus" campaign contributions to the aforementioned Democrats in exchange for directing more than $100 million to PMA clients.
Network coverage: Just three stories on Murtha. Visclosky and Moran were never mentioned in any network story.
In 2008 ex-Democratic Congressman William Jefferson lost a run-off election late that year after investigators found $90,000 in cash stuffed in the congressman's freezer. In January 2009 NBC made brief references to the charges against Jefferson in a profile of his successor, Republican Joseph Cao. However, Jefferson's bribery trial that began on June 9, 2009 in which prosecutors said he received $400,000 in bribes to help orchestrate business deals in Africa — was never mentioned on the networks.
The lesson seems clear. While members of both parties have had falls from grace, in the eyes of the Big Three network reporters and anchors, the GOP is the only party that deserves to be punished for the sins of a few.


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
This 30"h x 24"w Angle Iron Frame and Sign Panel aluminum composite is a great alternative to wood sign or MDO board. It is made of painted aluminum over a solid plastic core and can withstand the harshest of elements. The panel is printed on both sides. Also known as the Gibraltar frame, the angle iron frame is powder coated for rust resistance and a smooth finish. Strike tabs at the top of the frame and gussets under the foot push for strength, make installation easy.
50 inches
24 inches
12.42 lbs
(*indicates a required field)
Notice: Pricing and specifications are subject to change without notice. Lowen reserves the right to correct typographical errors. The design and contents of this catalog are copyrighted.


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Arts Education Associate
Riggio Galleries
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, NY 12508
Dia Art Foundation is expanding its arts education and public engagement initiatives at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, and is seeking an experienced museum education professional to fulfill the position of Arts Education Associate and implement new school and teacher programs. Building on the current Arts Education programs in New York City and Beacon, the Arts Education Associate will create new learning opportunities around Dia¹s collection and oversee and manage school and teacher programs, internships, and community outreach initiatives. The Arts Education Associate will report to Dia Art Foundation¹s Curator and the Managing Director of Dia:Beacon and will work closely with the Senior Arts Education Associate in New York City.
Dia Art Foundation¹s education philosophy grows out of a belief that children should be exposed to artworks in conjunction with a radical approach to teaching that engages unconventional methodologies aimed at engendering and sustaining creative freedom and diversity in opinions. Dia encourages interdisciplinary exploration in Dia:Beacon¹s Riggio Galleries while presenting the exceptional opportunity to consider questions of visual literacy and its relationship to the natural and social sciences, mathematics, and the humanities. In keeping with the innovative works in the collection, Dia¹s Arts Education Programs foster rigorous, inquiry-based observations and associative thinking while providing tools for critical engagement and direct exchange.
The Arts Education Associate represents Dia Art Foundation in the Beacon community, in particular with elementary, middle school, and high school principals and teachers. The Arts Education Associate must develop strong relationships with the learning community in the Hudson Valley, attend meetings at schools, and implement innovative education initiatives in response to Dia¹s goals and priorities. The Arts Education Associate position encompasses a wide range of duties including: the development of thematic tours, specifically to elementary, middle, and high school groups based on Dia¹s collection; monthly training of guides, teaching artists, gallery attendants, and staff associated with the implementation of school tours (thematic
guided tours); school partnerships (with 6 Beacon City Schools); teacher development programs; family programs (Community Free Days); and an internship program. The position supervises part-time guides; part-time teaching artists; and part-time college-level interns.
This is a full-time position based at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York. Working hours will be 40 hours per week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Friday and occasional weekends required. The Arts Education Associate reports to the Curator of Dia Art Foundation and to the Managing Director of Dia:Beacon.
M.A. in art history, museum studies, art education or related field.
Minimum of 5 years of modern or contemporary museum experience in museum education or educational institution. Must demonstrate success in developing, implementing, and sustaining innovative education initiatives and working with students, youth, and teachers and the general public is essential. Must possess strong writing skills, and have the ability to communicate regarding major developments of 20th and 21st century art. Must have knowledge of critical, pedagogical, and related theories; a strong commitment to work with diverse populations;
and experience supervising guides, volunteers, and interns; and strong budget and administrative skills. The individual must be well organized, and have excellent planning and implementation skills with a high level of professionalism and commitment to the mission of Dia Art Foundation.
The Arts Education Associate must have strong communication skills and be experienced and comfortable with public speaking. The candidate must be fluent or knowledgeable in digitalmedia and presentation software. Experience in audio-visual skills including production/editing of simple audio and video content is also desired. Frequent local travel is required and reliable transportation is necessary.
Dia Art Foundation enables artists¹ visions by initiating, supporting, and preserving extraordinary art projects which exceed the scope of traditional museums and galleries. A nonprofit founded in 1974, Dia collects in-depth the work of some of the most renowned artists of the last half-century; presents long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, in New York City, and on Long Island; executes new commissions and an ongoing series of original artists¹ projects produced for the web; and produces scholarly publications related to its exhibitions and collection.
Dia:Beacon opened in May 2003 as the home for Dia Art Foundation¹s distinguished collection of art from the 1960s to the present. The museum features works by a focused group of some of the most significant artists of the last half century, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Michael Heizer, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Imi Knoebel, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Max Neuhaus, Gerhard Richter, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Andy Warhol, and Lawrence Weiner. It also features significant exhibitions and projects by artists who came to prominence during this period as well younger generations working today. In addition to its collection, Dia:Beacon hosts an innovative performance program that has included works by Joan Jonas, Robert Whitman, Merce Cunningham, and Trisha Brown.
Located on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon, New York, and easily accessible by train or car, the museum occupies a former Nabisco box-printing facility that Dia renovated with artist Robert Irwin and architect OpenOffice. Dia:Beacon¹s expansive galleries comprise 240,000 square feet of exhibition space illuminated by natural light.
Competitive salary and benefits accompany this position.
For consideration, send cover letter, resume, 2 writing samples (academic or museum related material essay, interpretative tools, arts education curriculum, etc.), and 3 professional references and contact information to the address below:
Attn: Arts Education Associate Search
Dia Art Foundation
535 West 22nd Street, 4th floor
New York, NY 10011
DEADLINE: April 30, 2011
Submissions will only be accepted by postal mail only, no calls please.


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A DVB PCI card or DVB set-top-box (STB) usually consists of the following main hardware components:
Frontend consisting of tuner and DVB demodulator
Here the raw signal reaches the DVB hardware from a satellite dish or antenna or directly from cable. The frontend down-converts and demodulates this signal into an MPEG transport stream (TS). In case of a satellite frontend, this includes a facility for satellite equipment control (SEC), which allows control of LNB polarization, multi feed switches or dish rotors.
Conditional Access (CA) hardware like CI adapters and smartcard slots
The complete TS is passed through the CA hardware. Programs to which the user has access (controlled by the smart card) are decoded in real time and re-inserted into the TS.
Demultiplexer which filters the incoming DVB stream
The demultiplexer splits the TS into its components like audio and video streams. Besides usually several of such audio and video streams it also contains data streams with information about the programs offered in this or other streams of the same provider.
MPEG2 audio and video decoder
The main targets of the demultiplexer are the MPEG2 audio and video decoders. After decoding they pass on the uncompressed audio and video to the computer screen or (through a PAL/NTSC encoder) to a TV set.
Figure 8.1, "Components of a DVB card/STB" shows a crude schematic of the control and data flow between those components.
On a DVB PCI card not all of these have to be present since some functionality can be provided by the main CPU of the PC (e.g. MPEG picture and sound decoding) or is not needed (e.g. for data-only uses like "internet over satellite"). Also not every card or STB provides conditional access hardware.


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By Jason Keyser, Associated Press
CHICAGO -- Hearing the screams of 14-year-old lynching victim Emmett Till from inside a Mississippi barn left a teenage field hand with an unbearable choice. He could tell a courtroom and risk paying for it with his life or keep quiet and let those screams eat away at his conscience.
Grisly photos of Till's mutilated body, discovered three days later by a fisherman in the Tallahatchie River, left Willie Louis with no doubt about what he would do: testify at the trial of two white men accused in the black teen's slaying.
"In the pictures, I saw his body, what it was like. Then I knew that I couldn't say no," Louis recalled in a 2004 "60 Minutes" interview about the testimony he gave half a century earlier.
Louis died July 18 at age 76 at a hospital in a suburb of Chicago, the city he fled to in fear of his life after the 1955 trial, his wife, Juliet Louis, said in an interview Wednesday, a few hours before her husband's funeral service.
Till's torture and killing in the Mississippi Delta galvanized the civil rights movement. The Chicago boy was visiting an uncle and had been warned by family to be on his best behavior in the segregated South. On Aug. 28, 1955, two white men abducted him from his uncle's home because he had whistled at one of their wives. They admitted to the kidnapping, but claimed they just wanted to scare the boy and that they eventually turned him loose.
When his body was pulled from the river, his left eye and an ear were missing, as were most of his teeth; his nose was crushed, and there was a hole in his right temple. His body had been weighted down with a cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.
The only witnesses prosecutors had were the boy's uncle and a cousin, and all they could say was that they had seen Till taken away. Then, news reporters helped track down Willie Louis, who had heard the beating taking place for hours.
Despite his testimony, an all-white jury took barely an hour to acquit the two men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam.
A few months later, after assurances they couldn't be tried again, the two men confessed to the killing in a magazine article for which they were paid a few thousand dollars for the "true" story.
For his own safety, Louis had to be smuggled out of his native Mississippi and taken to Chicago. Then known as Willie Reed, he changed his last name, and was put under police protection.
Louis, a central figure in one of the most pivotal moments in America's troubled history with race, soon drifted into obscurity.
For years, he told his story to no one, not even his future wife, who had followed the trial closely as an 11-year-old growing up in Till's home city.
"I never really put that together that he was actually the young man that testified at the trial," she said of her husband.
"We thought he was crazy. I know my mom said they going to kill him too."
The couple met in the early 1970s at a hospital they worked at on Chicago's far South Side when Louis cheekily asked the nurse's aide for a kiss as they were lifting a patient together onto a gurney.
"So I went over to the other side and kissed him on the jaw. And that's how we started seeing one another," she said with a laugh.
They married in 1976, but it wasn't until eight years later that she discovered the connection with the Till case when one of Louis' aunts mentioned it.
She was shocked but understood that talking about it was painful for him.
"He used to have real nightmares and things," Juliet Louis said. "All his life it bothered him. When he would talk about it, sometimes tears would be in his eyes."
Till's relatives, historians and documentary makers, meanwhile, had been searching for Willie Reed, wondering what had become of him.
A New York filmmaker eventually tracked him to his home in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, and later introduced him to Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley.
"She just cried when they took him over there," Juliet Louis recalled. "They always kept in touch after that."
Till's mother died in 2003.
Gradually, Willie Louis began telling his story. On "60 Minutes," he said Emmett's screams haunted him.
"I heard this screaming, beating, screaming and beating," he said. "And I said to myself, I said, 'You know, man, they're beating somebody in the barn.'"
Besides his wife, Louis is survived by a stepson, seven grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.


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text:
A new study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education flips upside down the notion that students learn best by first independently reading texts or watching online videos before coming to class to engage in hands-on projects. Studying a particular lesson, the Stanford researchers showed that when the order was reversed, students' performances improved substantially.
While the study has broad implications about how best to employ interactive learning technologies, it also focuses specifically on the teaching of neuroscience and underscores the effectiveness of a new interactive tabletop learning environment, called BrainExplorer, which was developed by Stanford GSE researchers to enhance neuroscience instruction.
The findings were featured in the April-June issue of IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.
"Our results suggest that students are better prepared to understand a theory after first exploring by themselves, and that tangible user interfaces are particularly well-suited for that purpose," said Bertrand Schneider, a GSE graduate student who led the research under the direction of Paulo Blikstein, an assistant professor of education. The two other co-authors of the research paper are Roy Pea, a professor of education, and Stanford undergraduate Jenelle Wallace.
The study draws on data gathered from students using the BrainExplorer, a tabletop tool that simulates how the human brain processes visual images. It features polymer reproductions of different regions of the brain and eyes, as well as cameras and infrared pens.
Students use the pen to manipulate and explore the neural network; by severing and reconfiguring the connections, they can see how perceptions of the visual field are transformed. (Schneider developed the device in collaboration with Wallace as a final project for a course, Beyond Bits and Atoms, taught by Blikstein.)
The study involved 28 undergraduate and graduate students as participants, none of whom had studied neuroscience. After being given an initial test, half of the group read about the neuroscience of vision, while the others worked with BrainExplorer. When tested after those respective lessons, the performance of participants who used BrainExplorer increased significantly more – 30 percent – than those who had read the text.
Next the researchers had each of the two groups do the other learning activity: Those who had used BrainExplorer read the text, while those who had read the text used BrainExplorer. All the participants then took another test, and the findings revealed a 25-percent increase in performance when open-ended exploration came before text study rather than after it. (A follow-up study showed identical results for video classes instead of text.)
"We are showing that exploration, inquiry and problem solving are not just 'nice to have' things in classrooms," said Blikstein. "They are powerful learning mechanisms that increase performance by every measure we have." Pea explained that these results indicate the value for learning of first engaging one's prior knowledge and intuitions in investigating problems in a learning domain – before being presented with abstracted knowledge. Having first explored how one believes a system works creates a knowledge-building relevance to the text or video that is then presented, he said.
The research comes out as the idea of a "flipped classroom," in which students first watch videos or read texts and then do projects in the classroom, has been growing in popularity at colleges and graduate schools. The study's conclusion suggests that the current model of the flipped classroom should itself be flipped upside down. The researchers advocate the "flipped flipped classroom," in which videos come after exploration and not before.
The authors chose neuroscience as the discipline for the study because it is a rapidly changing field that relies heavily on computers rather than paper texts or lectures. But the results extend beyond neuroscience. Similar technology could be projected onto other emerging data-intensive fields such as genomics and nanotechnology, which are quickly making their way into undergraduate and high school education everywhere.
The BrainExplorer system is a proof-of-concept that may have applications in any field where teaching demands visualization and exploration of complex systems. "Part of our goal," the researchers write, "is to create low-cost, easy-to-scale educational platforms based on open source, free software and off-the-shelf building blocks such as web cameras and infrared pens so that our system can be easily and cheaply deployed in classrooms."
The study buttresses what many educational researchers and cognitive scientists have been asserting for many years: the "exploration first" model is a better way to learn. In addition to these published findings, the researchers spoke at an American Educational Research Association meeting earlier this year about another study that used instructional video instead of text and obtained the same results. The team is now conducting follow-up studies.
"With this study, we are showing that research in education is useful because sometimes our intuitions about 'what works' are simply dead wrong," said Blikstein.
The study was funded with support from the National Science Foundation.
David Plotnikoff writes frequently for the Graduate School of Education.
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Let Texas schools keep the Exemplar CSCOPE Lessons
Dear Senator Dan Patrick, My name is Sammy Wyatt and I am the principal of a high school in a little west Texas community near Midland/Odessa. You do not represent my area, but what you do affects me greatly as an educational leader. The abolishment of the CSCOPE lessons is not good for the students and educators of this state. Sure not all CSCOPE lessons are perfect, but they are much better than anything we have used before in Texas schools. These lessons are more than just activities that are used to teach students. These lessons also present a variety of progressive teaching strategies for teachers to use and learn from. Why "throw the baby out with the bath water?" I am speaking for nearly every superintendent and principal in the West Texas area. Schools such as: Rankin, Crane, Fort Stockton, Fort Davis, Alpine, Andrews, Midland, Odessa, Kermit, Balmorhea, Monahans, McCamey, Big Lake, Irion County, San Angelo, and others served by the Region 18 Service Center. This week I will be attending the Texas Association of Secondary Schools conference in Austin from June 11th-14th. About 90% of the 1,500 administrators at this conference will be joining together against your recent action because it ultimately hurts the education of students in Texas. I am formally starting a petition and will get as many signatures on it as possible. I have made many phone calls in the last several days including calls to Senator Duncan and Congressman Pete Gallego and shared these opinions. CSCOPE is not perfect, but it is an exceptional system for the education of students in Texas. It is developed by teachers in Texas, it is transparent, it is ever-changing, it is better than a textbook, it has systematic curriculum-based assessments along the way, it provides Texas schools with an aligned curriculum, it provides example lessons for teachers to experiment with to improve their own teaching, and it is good for the students of this great state. Lastly, this should not be a decision the Texas legislature is making on behalf of schools. Let teachers teach in the way that best fits them. Let local districts and schools determine which curriculum and instructional programs meet their needs in teaching the TEKS. I hope this recent move to abolish CSCOPE exemplar lessons is not political in nature, but I fear it is. I feel that politics has prevailed at the expense of education in Texas. It would make much more sense to just change the lessons that are questionable in content and presentation, rather than abolish all of the lessons. The hand of our Texas government is truly overextending. It is time to pull it back! If you agree, please support this petition. Sammy Wyatt Principal Rankin High School


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I was in the grocery store the other day when these made me stop in my tracks. I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I mean slice 'n bake cookies are one thing, but cupcakes… come on! So I tried to muffle my laughter and walked away.
Then I walked back. These were just too bizarre to pass up. So I figured I would try them out so you wouldn't have to.
Let's look inside and see what $2.99 got me…
Sliceable cupcake batter (I can't wrap my head around this one), chocolate frosting, rainbow sprinkles and six white baking cups.
Okay, is it just me, or does this seem wrong. Wait, I think I can hear my stomach turning.
These cupcake chunks can't possibly work. Could all my effort gathering ingredients, measuring, waiting for things to get to room temperature, mixing in just the right way and cleaning be for nothing. Could it be this simple?
Now for the frosting. Come on…come on…squeeze a little harder… you can do it.
Now I just need to add the sprinkles and voila…
Wow, they look kinda good. But what about the inside?
I give up! I wanted these to bomb, but they weren't half bad. The inside was light and fluffy and the pudding-like frosting was, well… okay. I guess in a cupcake emergency, I might make these again. But only in an emergency. I have to draw the line somewhere you know. Now I have to go buy some break and bake chocolate chip cookies.
Got a guilty pleasure? Go ahead… spill it… you'll feel better.


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Domestic Selection: Rsv. Sauvignon Blanc, 1986. Concannon
The Concannon Vineyard is factually a piece of California history, California Historical Landmark No. 641, to be exact. Over 100 years ago James Concannon founded this venerable operation 50 miles east of San Francisco in the Livermore Valley. This area distinguishes itself from other wine regions of California by its striking similarities to the great… read more »


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Sonic Unleashed
From Sonic Retro
- For the mobile game of the same name see Sonic Unleashed (mobile).
|Sonic Unleashed
|System(s): PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation Now
|Publisher: Sega
|Developer: Sonic Team
|Supporting companies: Visual Entertainment R&D Dept. Katsugekiza (motion capture)
|Peripherals supported: Nintendo GameCube Controller
|Genre: Action Adventure
|Number of players: 1
| Official in-game languages:
Sonic Unleashed, called Sonic World Adventure (ソニック ワールドアドベンチャー) in Japan, is a video game released as part of the the Sonic the Hedgehog series in late 2008. It was launched for the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 as a reformed and reworked take on the Sonic franchise, likely to counter criticism of the earlier 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog game. Sonic Unleashed sees the hedgehog hindered by a new "Werehog" form at night, and travels to both return to his normal form and stop Dr. Eggman from breaking up the world.
Unleashed debuted with a rendering system dubbed by Sonic Team as the "Hedgehog Engine", designed specifically to handle the drawing of 3D geometry and environments in a fast-paced setting. As this suggests, Sonic Unleashed is a much faster game than its predecessors, being a mixture of 2D and 3D gameplay with the boost mechanic which debuted in Sonic Rush.
This was the last Sonic the Hedgehog game released for the PlayStation 2 in Western territories (in Japan this title goes to Sonic Riders).
- 1 Story
- 2 Gameplay
- 3 Characters
- 4 History
- 5 Versions
- 6 Downloadable content
- 7 Production credits
- 8 Manuals
- 9 Promotional material
- 10 Artwork
- 11 Physical scans
- 12 Technical information
- 13 External links
- 14 References
The story starts as Eggman's battle fleet is in orbit around Earth, and Sonic goes to stop him. Using one of his robots, Eggman is eventually able to capture Sonic, only to have the robot destroyed as Sonic turns super. With his creation destroyed, Eggman flees with Super Sonic pursuing. Eggman lures Super Sonic into a chamber which rips the Chaos Emeralds from him and harnesses their power to break the world apart. This causes a beast to awaken from the center of the planet.
Eggman's machine, however, caused some unintended side effects: The chaos emeralds are changed somehow, and they turn Sonic into a Werehog. Sonic then falls toward the broken planet, and meets a small creature who has lost his memory. Feeling remorse that he may have caused the creature's amnesia, Sonic decides that he must find someone who knows his new friend, and put the planet back together with the help of Tails, Amy, and Professor Pickle. In order to fix the planet, Sonic must find shrines (known as the Temple of Gaia) to reawaken the Chaos Emerald's positive energy and with their power, they will restore a piece of the planet back to surface.
While restoring the sixth continent in Adabat, Chip regains his memory and reveals that he is actually Light Gaia, the opposite of Dark Gaia. The Gaias go through of cycle of the Dark breaking the planet and the Light restoring it . However, due to being released prematurely, Chip lost his memory and Dark Gaia was broken apart. Afterwards, Sonic and Chip reach EggmanLand with the help of Tails' Tornado bi-plane and get to the final temple. However, they are interrupted by Eggman and battle his Egg Dragoon. After defeating it though, a now nearly complete Dark Gaia rises from the Earth.
Eggman orders Dark Gaia to destroy Sonic and Chip, but this backfires with Dark Gaia blowing him away. Dark Gaia then absorbs Sonic's Werehog powers, curing him of it. With no other choice, Chip calls all Gaia Temples and merges all of them together with him, creating the Gaia Collosus. The Gaia Collosus then begins to battle Dark Gaia and distracts him, giving Sonic a chance to attack. Sonic and Chip seem to have defeated Dark Gaia but Dark Gaia then transforms, engulfing the planet in darkness. Dark Gaia has became Perfect Dark Gaia.
After Dark Gaia's transformation, the newly revived Chaos Emeralds then transform Sonic into Super Sonic and the final fight begins. In the 360 & PS3 version, you must get to Perfect Dark Gaia's shield and destroy it by defeating the Dark Gaia monsters that create it as Super Sonic and the rings fill in your Health Bar. Then, you battle Perfect Dark Gaia through quick time events. In the Wii & PS2 version, you must defeat Dark Gaia by collecting rings in order to do the Super Sonic Boost to attack Dark Gaia's eyes while dodging meteors at the same time.
Super Sonic and Gaia Collosus defeat Perfect Dark Gaia and light is restored to the planet. Super Sonic, now having used up all his energy, loses consciousness and the time comes for the two Gaias to go back inside the planet. Chip's final move is saving Sonic by warping him to the planet. Sonic crashes and wakes up, finding Chip, but it turns out to be an illusion. Chip necklace, though, turns out to not be and Sonic puts it on as a bracelet, hearing Chip's saying that he'll never forget him and reminds Sonic that he is now part of the planet again. The game ends with Sonic speeding off with Tails flying behind him via the Tornado.
Sonic travels though various levels, each of which takes place on a different continent. Unleashed contains two different styles of gameplay, noted by the separation of day and night, and of Sonic and his Werehog form.
In daytime gameplay, Sonic must race through various stages while dodging obstacles and destroying enemy robots, all while trying to get through the level in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible. Some levels contain branching pathways and semi-hidden areas where the player can collect bonuses such as extra lives. As such, daytime levels have some light platforming. The 2D sections of the level design are reminiscent of the side-scrolling Sonic games.
Sonic retains most of the moves he has in previous games, such as the Wall Jump and Homing Attack. In addition he also has new moves: the Quick Step allows for Sonic to quickly dodge left or right, the Drift allows Sonic to turn around corners at high speed without slowing down, the Sonic Boost will increase Sonic's speed and allow him to smash through objects and access different level paths. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions have an on-screen "Ring Energy" meter which displays how much boost is left, which can be increased by collecting Rings, though taking damage will cause Sonic to drop a set number of Rings to decrease it (for example, taking a hit with 330 Rings will knock the player back to 60). The PlayStation 2 and Wii versions of the game represent the "Ring Energy" amount with bars and is increased by performing "Action Chains" (attacking a string of enemies), or by collecting Rings.
In nighttime gameplay, Sonic transforms into a Werehog where he moves substantially slower, but is much stronger. Additionally, his arms have the ability to stretch; useful in both attacking and in grabbing onto ledges, poles, and various other level elements. Thus, platforming gameplay is heavily emphasized. Another special move, called "Unleashed", increases the strength of his attacks for a limited amount of time.
In most cases nighttime levels normally take longer to play than daytime levels, while daytime levels tend to be physically longer since Sonic is moving at a greater speed. Throughout the game, the player can collect Sun and Moon Medals which allow further level progression.
In addition to the two gameplay types explorable "hub-worlds" are also available. These Hub-worlds are a bit different depending on the version played. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are 3D and fully explorable and contain townspeople to converse with. Side quests can be undertaken to gain experience or unlock items such as artwork, videos, and music tracks. Sun and Moon medals can also be found in these versions. These versions also have a hotdog stand, and somewhat amusingly the manuals allude to the fact that Sonic loves Chili Dogs. This was mentioned in the American cartoons but was never mentioned in the games until this point. The PlayStation 2 and Wii versions feature a menu-based map system which players simply make menu selections to talk to townspeople and find information.
The playable characters are Sonic and his new werehog form. Tails is also playable, although in mini-games rather than actual 'Sonic' gameplay. Chip is also playable as the Gaia Colossus in the final boss stage.
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Sonic's role in Unleashed is to put Earth back together by collecting the chaos emeralds and putting them in "Chaos Shrines" that reside every chunk of the planet.
- Sonic the Werehog: During the night, Sonic transforms into a were-creature (called "werehog" by SEGA) that, while looking sinister, still retains his will to do good. He cannot run as fast as he normally can, but in return he has enhanced physical strength and the ability to stretch his arms very long distances.
- Dr. Eggman: Seemingly the cause of all the problems in this story. He turns Sonic into the Werehog, blows Earth into pieces, and unleashes the monster that has been living in the core of the planet for centuries.
- Chip: He is about the same size as a Chao and looks like a reddish-purple dog with wings. His purpose reflects that of Omochao, Tikal, the Duke of Soleanna (voice only), and Shahra, giving Sonic information as he runs along the stages. He likes chocolate and offers chocolate to every good person in the game, show both his kindness, and his hunger.
- Tails: Using his Tornado, Tails assists Sonic in traveling to the various continents.
- Amy Rose: Appears only in cutscenes, and is rescued by Sonic during a part of the game.
- Professor Pickle: Eggman captures Professor Pickle, and is later rescued by Tails. He is an odd scientist obsessed with cucumber sandwhiches and is very helpful to Sonic.
- Dark Gaia: Eggman splits apart the earth in order to use Dark Gaia to build his Eggman Empire. He is the final boss in the game, being fought by the Gaia Colossus and Super Sonic.
|Main article: Sonic Unleashed/Development
"Sonic Unleashed" was trademarked by Sega on March 12, 2008. Screenshots of cutscenes and gameplay were posted on March 22, 2008 along with a video shortly after. The same site that first posted the screenshots later indicated that Sega had confirmed them as official material. It was originally intended to be the third installment of the Sonic Adventure series, but the development team began to introduce enough new innovations to separate it from the Sonic Adventure titles, and so the idea was dropped.
Sales data
|Copies sold
|Cumulative sales
Platform differences
- In sections of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, the player may choose to advance the time of day in order to play as either Sonic or the Werehog. The Wii and PlayStation 2 versions advance the time of day automatically.
- The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game include the Empire City and Mazuri levels, while the Wii and PlayStation 2 versions contain only a limited version of Mazuri.
- The Wii version of the game also expands upon the ratio of night-time levels to daytime, with more than three times as many night-time levels (twenty-five in all).
- 360 and PS3 versions contain explorable hub worlds and town stages, while in the Wii and PS2 versions they are replaced by static backgrounds.
- The Wii and PlayStation 2 Versions of the game feature an entirely different engine rather than the Hedgehog Engine.
- Tornado Defense is not present in the Wii and PS2 versions.
- The level-up system in the Wii and PS2 versions only applies to the Werehog, and is far less complex.
- In the Wii and PS2 versions, the Interceptor enemy behaves differently. Instead of using lasers and creating shockwaves by slamming the ground, it uses its wheels to try to run Sonic over. The robot can also be attacked and defeated in the Wii and PS2 versions by boosting into it when the camera pans behind it. In addition, the day boss music begins to play when it is encountered in said versions.
- The Dark Guardian boss battle is vastly different between the two versions. In the 360 and PS3 versions, the player must move boxes to one side of the arena to defeat the boss, while stunning it occasionally and defeating the enemies it spawns. In the Wii and PS2 versions, the boss does not spawn any enemies and is more of a 1-on-1 fist fight.
- In Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, rings are pulled into the bar that says Ring Energy. In the Wii and PlayStation 2 versions, rings simply disappears once touched by Sonic during day stages.
- The Perfect Dark Gaia battle is completely different between the two sets of platforms. The higher end platforms have a five part battle that consists of Super Sonic making his way to the boss, destroying the force field it ups up, and then freeing the Gaia Colossus from Dark Gaia's grip. The Colossus then must use a 60 button quick time event to block a point black laser shot, and then Super Sonic dashes to deliver the final blow. The lower end versions simply have Super Sonic dodging attacks and putting Dark Gaia's eyes out.
- Additionally, in the higher end versions, Super Sonic has a health meter instead of the traditional reliance on Rings found in the lower end versions.
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions have both voice language tracks included in the game disc and feature an option that allows to switch between both English and Japanese voice language, which is present in all the regional variations of both versions. While the game is entirely multi-lingual in all regional versions of the game, the text language is automatically defaulted by the console language settings.
The Wii and PlayStation 2 versions feature only one voice track in the game disc and according to the regional version, due to size constraints. The Western versions have the English voice language whereas the Japanese version has the Japanese one, while the text language is entirely multi-lingual in all regional versions. Since the PlayStation 2 version was never released in Japan, this version lacks the Japanese voice language completely. The text language is entirely multi-lingual and manually selectionable in all the regional variations of both versions, although the Japanese text language is manually selectable in the North American PlayStation 2 version; in the European and Australian PlayStation 2 version it can only be accessed if the console language settings are in Japanese.
Downloadable content
Several Stages in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of the game have a downloadable "Adventure Pack" which gives the game some replay value. These include Empire City & Adabat, Apotos & Shamar, Mazuri, Holoska, Spagonia, and Chun-nan, that also give a 'Hard mode' to the original stage, however, this got critical reception due to being most Sonic games having these modes included with the original game, such as Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog and others.
|Main article: Sonic Unleashed/Downloadable content
Production credits
|Main article: Sonic Unleashed/Production credits
Voice actors
|Main article: Sonic Unleashed/Manuals
Promotional material
Leaked Trailer
Teaser Trailer
Gameplay Trailer
Spagonia Trailer
Pre-E3 Trailer
E3 Trailer
Chun-nan Trailer
Shamar Trailer
Adabat Trailer
Mazuri Trailer
NL advert (2008)[25]
Box art
Physical scans
Wii version
|Wii, BX†
PlayStation 2 version
|PlayStation 2, BX†
|PlayStation 2, SE/DK/NO/FI
PlayStation 3 version
| PlayStation 3, SE/DK/NO/FI
|PlayStation 3, AS†
Xbox 360 version
|Xbox 360, DE (Classics)
|Xbox 360, RU
|Xbox 360, AS†
Technical information
ROM dump status
|Build Date
|BD-ROM (US/Asia)
|Disc (US)
|Disc (EU)
|Disc (JP)
External links
- Sega of Japan catalogue pages: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
- Official website on Sonic Channel (Japanese)
- Night of the Werehog - A short standalone film used to promote Sonic Unleashed
- Sonic Unleashed director blog run by Yoshihisa Hashimoto
- Sonic Unleashed hamidashi (jutting out of bounds) blog run by Natsuha Matsubara and Utako Yoshino
- Nintendo catalogue pages: US
- Sonic Unleashed on PlayStation.com: PlayStation 2: US; PlayStation 3: JP, US, UK, KR
- Sonic Unleashed on PlayStation Store: JP, US, UK (Digital), UK (Retail), AU (Digital), AU (Retail)
- Sonic Unleashed on Xbox Marketplace: JP, US, UK, AU, KR
- ↑ http://www.nintendo.com:80/games/detail/YRxqY0cCguYDR30su4uZ2cVET6merVen (Wayback Machine: 2017-01-16 06:51)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://sega.jp/wii/sonicwa/ (Wayback Machine: 2008-10-30 02:50)
- ↑ https://www.techshout.com/internet/2009/16/e-xpress-to-bring-four-sega-titles-for-ps2-in-india/ (Wayback Machine: 2019-06-16 14:55)
- ↑ http://www.us.playstation.com/games/suggested?link=Franchise&SceaId=ULUS-10195 (Wayback Machine: 2008-10-30 02:06)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 PlayStation Store (en-us; UP0177-NPUB31204_00-SONICUNLEASHED01) (Wayback Machine: 2018-04-04 23:10)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 PlayStation Store (fr-fr; EP0177-NPEB01347_00-SONICUNLEASHED01) (Wayback Machine: 2018-04-04 23:13)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 PlayStation Store (de-de; EP0177-NPEB01347_00-SONICUNLEASHED01) (Wayback Machine: 2018-12-16 02:14)
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 PlayStation Store (en-gb; EP0177-NPEB01347_00-SONICUNLEASHED01) (Wayback Machine: 2018-04-04 23:11)
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 PlayStation Store (en-au; EP0177-NPEB01347_00-SONICUNLEASHED01) (Wayback Machine: 2018-04-04 23:11)
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 http://www.jp.playstation.com/software/title/bljm60112.html (Wayback Machine: 2009-02-20 18:50)
- ↑ http://www.playstation.co.kr/game/1356 (archive.today)
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 [ ]
- ↑ http://sega.jp:80/cgi-bin/csgame.cgi?hw=8 (Wayback Machine: 2009-07-21 16:15)
- ↑ http://sega.jp:80/x/sonicwa/ (Wayback Machine: 2009-06-09 09:46)
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Xbox LIVE Marketplace (en-US; media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80253450812) (Wayback Machine: 2009-10-28 03:04)
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Xbox LIVE Marketplace (en-GB; media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80253450812) (Wayback Machine: 2009-11-08 04:51)
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Xbox LIVE Marketplace (fr-FR; media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80253450812) (Wayback Machine: 2009-11-27 05:41)
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Xbox LIVE Marketplace (de-DE; media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80253450812) (Wayback Machine: 2010-03-02 15:51)
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Xbox LIVE Marketplace (en-AU; media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80253450812) (Wayback Machine: 2010-05-29 16:50)
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Xbox LIVE Marketplace (ja-JP; %E3%82%BD%E3%83%8B%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF-%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%82%A2%E3%83%89%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%BC/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80253450812) (Wayback Machine: 2010-12-20 16:19)
- ↑ Xbox LIVE Marketplace (ko-KR; media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80253450812) (Wayback Machine: 2009-01-22 14:04)
- ↑ http://www.jp.playstation.com/software/title/bljm60112.html (Wayback Machine: 2015-10-23 05:39)
- ↑ https://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/ir/library/pdf/settlement/2009/e_200903_3q_pre.pdf
- ↑ https://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/ir/library/pdf/settlement/2009/e_200903_4q_pre.pdf
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwSrcNVT4Uo&ab_channel=NLAlbumAds
|Sonic Unleashed
Main page
HUB Worlds:
Songs: "Endless Possibility" | "Dear My Friend"
|Sonic the Hedgehog games for the following systems
|2006 Sonic the Hedgehog 2008 Sonic Unleashed 2009 Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection 2010 Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing 2011 Sonic Generations 2012 Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
| 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog 2008 Sonic Unleashed 2009 Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection 2010 Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing | Sonic Free Riders 2011 Sonic Generations 2012 Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
Demos Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 Xbox Live demo) | Sonic Generations (Demo 1/2)


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Movie Review ~ Where Do We Go Now? A Lebanese film by Nadine Labaki
When I heard the premise of this film, I knew I had to see it—a bittersweet comedy about a group of Lebanese women who try to ease the religious tensions between the Christian and Muslim men in their village.
This is the second film by Nadine Labaki, who wrote, directed and starred in this movie which won Best Narrative Film at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, as well as the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival.
Where Do We Go Now? (in Arabic with English subtitles) is the story of a remote village in Lebanon where both Christians and Muslims live together in relative peace. In this fictitious village, the mosque and church stand side by side. Equally important is the religiously-divided cemetery which looms beyond.
The film opens with a scene of the women of the village attending to the graves of their loved ones. Virtually all these women, both Muslim and Christian, have lost a husband, father, son or brother to past conflicts in Lebanon. This scene of loss and heartache sets up the foundation and motivations for rest of this tragicomedy.
While these women continue to mourn, sectarian conflict in the region and escalating violence swirl around the village and threaten to upset the delicate stability between the two groups. And so, the movie follows the antics of the clever women of the village as they distract and confuse their hot-headed sons and husbands. The goal of these women is to avoid a religious war, as they have lost enough already.
I watched this film in a packed cinema listening to the laughs and sobs of the mostly-Arab audience. The film was long (almost 2 hours) but it was one of those movies in which I lost sense of time and became totally engaged in the characters and their story.
This timely and relevant film opened yesterday, November 10th, in the UAE. It's unclear when it will be released in the US, but I suggest keeping an eye on this film. Where Do We Go Now? is Lebanon's 2011 entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category for the Academy Awards. If it gets an Oscar nomination, I'll be rooting for it.


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1. Definitions
1.1 "Magnetic Exchange" ("Service", "we", "us", "our") is an automated web-service located in the Internet at the address https://magnetic-exchange.org, which renders its services to all users through a special program interface.
1.2 "User" means any person who acting individually or on behalf of an institution/business and who has accepted the rules offered by the Service in the form of the current Agreement.
1.3 "Electronic Currency(-ies)", "E-currency", "Title Unit" means accounting units of the respective issuer (Electronic Currency System) denoting a definite volume of on-demand promissory note to be redeemed in monetary or another form.
1.4 "Electronic Currency System", "E-currency system", "Electronic Payment System", "Online Payment System" means a third-party developed complex of software and hardware components employed in the title units accounting.
1.5 "Payment" means transfer of accounting units from the sender to the recipient.
1.6 "Order" means the information submitted in a digital form by using the interface of Magnetic Exchange, expressing the intention of using the Services on the conditions offered by Magnetic Exchange and stated in the properties of the Order.
2. General Provisions
2.1 This User Agreement regulates relationship between the User and the Service in respect of the sevices provided by Magnetic Exchange and cancels any previous agreements between the Service and the User on this subject.
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2.3 By using or accessing Magnetic Exchange and/or forming any Orders you unconditionally accept all provisions of this Agreement. The Orders you submit while using the Service are considered unalienable appendices to this Agreement.
2.3.1 The properties and conditions of an Order are considered a public offer.
2.3.2 The actions aimed at submitting an Order are considered an acceptance of the public offer and the conditions stated by the Service, right before the Order is submitted by the User.
2.3.3 The date and time of the acceptance as well as the properties of the Order are recorded by the Service at the moment of the User's submitting of the Order.
2.3.4 The User has 40 (forty) minutes to accept the transaction offer on the conditions stated in this Agreement.
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2.7 The Service reserves the right to modify this User Agreement without notice to the User, on condition of immediate publishing the up-to-date version of the Agreement at the current page.
3. The Subject of the Agreement
3.1 The subject of this agreement is the paid services of exchange, buying, and selling title units of electronic payment systems, rendered on the User's Order, as well as other services described on this website.
4. Rendering of Service
4.1 Processing of the User's Orders is fulfilled by the Service in compliance with the Privacy Policy (chapter 5 of the Agreement) and with the Anti-Fraud and Money Laundering Prevention Policy (chapter 6 of the Agreement).
4.2 Ordering of Magnetic Exchange services, administrating of the transaction process and checking of the transaction status are fulfilled only by the means of the user interface provided on the Magnetic Exchange website.
4.3 The record-keeping of the transactions with Title Units is processed according to the rules and regulations of the respective Electronic Payment Systems.
4.4 Any completed transaction of exchanging, buying or selling Electronic Currency, as well as any other transaction completed by the means of Magnetic Exchange, is considered irrevocable, thus can not be canceled upon being completed, i.e. upon the User's receiving the Title Units or other financial means that are supposed to be transferred to the User by the previously accepted conditions.
4.5 In case the funds are not transferred to the account given by the Service, within one hour from the moment the Order has been submitted by the User, the agreement based on the conditions specified in the order will be unilaterally canceled by the Service without notice.
4.5.1 Any electronic currency transferred afterwards is subject to return within the following 24 hours, with transaction fees charged. We do not assume responsibility for any delays unless they are caused by the Service.
4.6 In case the amount of funds transferred by the User differs from that indicated in the Order, the Service shall treat it as a request to recalculate the Order in accordance with the received amount.
4.6.1 If the amount of funds transferred differs from that indicated in the Order by more than 10%, the transaction may be unilaterally canceled by the Service. The funds shall be returned within 24 hours from the moment of cancellation, with transaction fees charged. We do not assume responsibility for any delays unless they are caused by the Service.
4.7 In case of non-receipt of the Title Units by the User within 24 hours from the moment the Order has been submitted, the User may request a termination of the transaction and return the title units in full in case no particular reason for the suspension of transaction.
4.7.1 The transaction will be terminated on the User's request only if the funds have not been sent to the User's account using the account details provided in the Order.
4.7.2 In case of termination, the return will be fulfilled within 24 hours from the moment the termination request has been filed. The Service assumes no responsibility for any delays incurred during the return process unless they are caused by the Service.
4.8 In order to carry out the obligations stated in this Agreement, the Service reserves the right to use third-party labor.
4.9 The Service reserves the right to terminate any transaction being processed and return the Electronic Currency and/or financial means previously uploaded by the User, without explanation.
4.10 We reserve the right to refuse service in case the User has violated any provision of this Agreement.
4.10.1 In case we refuse service, we will notify the User by email or over the phone. After this, we suspend all current Orders of the User. Finally, we refund the title units received from the User, using the original account details, during 24 hours from the moment the termination Order was filed. The expenses incurred in connection with the refund are paid by the User. We do not assume responsibility for any delays unless they are caused by the Service.
4.10.2 All further Orders submitted by the User after we refuse service, will be suspended automatically. The accounts connected with these Orders will be blocked.
4.11 Magnetic Exchange does not render services for, and does not accept Orders or honor account creation requests from individuals who are not of legal age pursuant to the laws of their country of residence.
4.12 Magnetic Exchange does not render services for, and does not accept Orders or honor account creation requests from citizens or residents of the United States of America, as well as the United States territories, including dual citizens and individuals who are citizens of more than two countries. Attempting to circumvent this restriction may result in serious legal repercussions for the perpetrator.
5. Privacy policy
5.1 For rendering services for and interacting with the User, Magnetic Exchange accepts the User's personal data to be stored encrypted and treated as confidential information, without sharing with a third party, except for the cases stated in the paragraphs 5.4, 6.5 of this Agreement, in strict compliance to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, 216/679/EU).
5.2 All the transactions and personal data transfers between the Service and the User are secured with 256-bit SSL encryption.
5.3 The Service reserves the right to search and collect additional information about the User, if necessary, without notice. All this information should remain confidential, shall not be transferred to a third party except for the cases stated in the paragraphs 5.4, 6.5 of this Agreement.
5.4 Provided the confidential status of the data is maintained, the Service has the right to share User's personal data and details on the performed operations with:
— law-enforcement agencies upon an official written request or upon a court decision;
— law-enforcement agencies on its own initiative in case there is a reasonable suspicion that the User is involved in activities related to laundering proceeds of criminal behavior, financing of terrorist organizations, and other fraudulent or illegal activities;
— the electronic payment system upon an official request from the latter for them to execute the payment order related to the exchange order, as well as to conduct internal investigations;
— the User upon receiving the respective request;
— partners of the Service (without the right to store and independently use the data) for them to send emails to the User.
5.5 In accordance with the anti-money laundering legislation, all the data concerning the User, as well as the details of their transactions, is to be stored in the database of the Service during 10 years from the moment the last Order was submitted by the User.
5.6 Usage of cookies:
5.6.1 To ensure its website works properly, the Service and/or third parties involved by the Service to collect anonymized statistical data, may place small data files on the User's computer, also known as "cookies". Such files are used to:
— facilitate the User's interactions with the website;
— record the results of the User's participation in our partner program, if any;
— collect anonymized data regarding the User's behavior on the Service's website.
5.6.2 The Service encrypts its cookies so that only the Service can interpret the data contained therein.
5.6.3 The User may opt out of installing the Service's cookies by adjusting his browser settings accordingly.
6. Anti-Fraud and Money Laundering Prevention Policy
6.1 In accordance with the international legislation, Magnetic Exchange adheres to a number of rules that are directed at money prevention of money laundering (i.e. activity aimed at concealing the source of illegally obtained money or other capital assets) and other unlawful activity.
6.2 In order to prevent possible unlawful transactions, the regulations are established as follows:
6.2.1 The sender of the payment must be the same person as the payee. Any payments in favor of a third party are strictly prohibited.
6.2.2 All the contact details stated in the User's Order as well as any other personal data must be truthful and correct.
6.2.3 Orders formed through anonymous proxy-servers, or any other anonymous Internet connections, are strictly prohibited.
6.3 In order to prevent unlawful activity, the Service:
— uses the internal automated system analyzing transactions and users' behavior (also called "fraud prevention system"), blocking any suspicious activity.
— sets limits on users' transactions, depending on the level of their verification and the country of residence.
— observes the Know-Your-Customer policy.
— performs verification of the data provided by the User, employing any available means.
6.4 The Service reserves the right to suspend the account of the User and their current Orders until the User provides scans/copies of a government-issued photo IDs, as well as the proof of the funds' origin and other documents requested by the service in connection with the issue, in the following cases:
— if a violation of the paragraph 6.2 of this Agreement is present;
— if the Order is suspended by the Fraud Prevention System;
— if the amount of transactions done by the User during the last 30 days totals more than 500 U.S. dollars / 500 euros (or the respective equivalent in other currencies).
— In case of a grounded suspicion of the User's abusive/illegal actions, which may or may not involve money laundering.
The User pledges to provide the required document during 7 days from the moment it was requested, or ask for the cancellation of the transaction.
6.4.1 In case of the User's failure to provide the required documents, the Service reserves the right to refuse service in further, and take the actions described in the paragraph 4.10 (with subparagraphs) of this Agreement.
6.5 We reserve the right to refuse service, take the actions described in the paragraph 4.10 (with subparagraphs) of this Agreement and then share all the information connected with the User and their transactions:
— in case an episode of activity related to: money laundering, financing terrorist organizations, fraud of any kind, as well as any other unlawful activities;
— in case of a grounded suspicion that the ID provided by the User is fake/expired/invalid;
— in case the source of the User's funds is suspicious according to the information from a law enforcement agency;
— in case of the User's attempts to inflict a negative influence over the hardware and software complex of the Service;
— in case of the User's attempts to steal any data and/or other material or intellectual property of the Service;
— in case of the User's attempts to cause damage of any kind to the Service.
6.6 The Service reserves the right to verify all the data provided by the User, employing any available means.
7. Limitation of Liability
7.1 The Service is not a bank. The Service processes Orders 24 hours a day 7 days a week and will apply any effort possible to ensure the seamless operation of the hardware and software complex.
7.2 Magnetic Exchange provides the Services on the "as is" basis, i.e. as they are described on this website, without additional warranties of any kind.
7.3 By using this site, the User accepts that the liability of the Service is limited by the means received from the User for processing the required transaction; the User accepts that the Service gives no additional warranty and assumes no additional responsibility; neither does the User, except for the cases described in the paragraph 7.9.
7.4 Magnetic Exchange will strive for providing the User with uninterrupted functioning of the Service but does not guarantee its accessibility. Magnetic Exchange assumes no responsibility for any loss or damage that might be caused by using its services or inability to use them.
7.5 Magnetic Exchange assumes no responsibility and does not compensate for any loss or damage as well as any expenses caused by delays in processing any bank transfers or electronic currency transfers.
7.6 Magnetic Exchange assumes no responsibility for any damage, loss of profit and/or any User's expenses caused by their false expectations in respect of the fees, exchange rates, profitability of the transactions or any other subjective conditions.
7.7 Magnetic Exchange assumes no responsibility for any loss or damage caused by any inaccuracy in the information provided by the User.
7.8 By using the Service, the User assumes responsibility to pay taxes in accordance with the tax laws and regulations of the country of their residence. The Service does not act as a tax agent and will not notify the User of any tax burden expected in connection with using the Service.
7.9 The User shall reimburse losses and damages of the Service (the management company, directors and employees) in case of claim or demand, directly or indirectly related to the using the Service by the User, unless they are caused by the actions of Magnetic Exchange.
7.10 The User guarantees that they own or is authorized to use the funds they dispose of in connection with using the Service.
7.11 The User must refrain from using the Service for making unlawful transactions. The User understands that unlawful activity may result in public prosecution. The activity of the User may be considered unlawful in accordance with the User's country of residence, the country where the Service is registered, or both.
7.12 The User agrees not to forge communications streams associated with the operation of the Service, not to interfere in the functioning of its software and/or hardware components and not to influence the regular operation of the Service in any other way, otherwise public prosecution may follow.
7.12.1 In case of forging communications streams or any negative influence on regular functioning of the Service directly or indirectly related to the User's Order, the processing of the transaction shall be terminated. The further actions are described in the paragraph 6.5.
7.13 The User admits that the contents of this website is copyright-protected. The illegal use of the contents will face prosecution.
7.14 Neither Magnetic Exchange nor the User assume any responsibility for delays or inability to fulfill its obligations stated in this Agreement due to natural disasters, power surges or failures, strikes or labour disputes, acts of God, war, civil disturbances, acts of civil or military authorities or the public enemy, or other causes beyond either party's control, as well as irregular functioning of the Electronic Payment System(s), power supply systems or wireless network / Internet providers.
7.15 Electronic Payment Systems and/or financial institutions assume sole responsibility for the funds entrusted to them by the User. The Service may not be a party in a relationship between the User and an Electronic Payment System and/or a financial institution and assumes no responsibility for the User's misusing or illegal use of the Electronic Payment System. Mutual rights and duties of the User and the Electronic Payment System are regulated by the respective contracts and agreements.
8. Making Claims and Dispute Resolution
8.1 Claims and issues associated with the subject of this Agreement are settled by negotiations with the administration of the Service, accordingly to the provisions of the Agreement.
8.1.1 Any claim under this Agreement may be taken by the Service in electronic form. The User should file a claim by sending a message using the contact details that are specified on the website of the Service.
8.2 In case it is impossible to resolve a claim through negotiations, it will be resolved in compliance with the regulations of the territory where the Service is registered.
Current edition: August 27, 2019


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Kate Hudson and Matt Bellamy made it through a rough winter. It was reported around Oscar time that they were re-evaluating their engagement. She was partying on her own, happily, and without the ring. Then, in the spring, a rebirth. Now that it's summer, it would appear that their relationship is as strong as ever. Here they are on holiday in Ibiza.
I would like to make a note about her breasts that may or may not be appropriate. Kate nursed two children and then had a pick-up. A modest pick-up. So that she wasn't really changing the general shape of her body. As previously mentioned, this is what I'd like to give my cousin Cat as a birthday present when she turns 40 this year. What's it like to shop for breasts? I feel like this might be a really fun thing to do together.


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I have sold a property at 414 333 WETHERSFIELD DR in Vancouver.
COME AND BE WOWED by this completely renovated, bright, sophisticated home! Soaring vaulted ceilings, gleaming hardwoods, crown molding, sky-lights and a travertine ledgestone-encased wood-burning fireplace create an upscale Westside feel. The open concept features a custom kitchen w/travertine backsplash, under-counter lighting, stainless appliances, black pearl granite and more! After 18 holes at Langara Golf Course select a bottle of wine from your built-in wine fridge and unwind on your private balcony or retire to your king-size master. The spa-like ensuite has heated floors that extend into a curb-less shower featuring a 12" rain head. Two additional large bdrms and a stunning bath complete this immaculate home. Canada Line, Golf, YMCA, Langara College & Oakridge Centre steps away!


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On Thursday, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) added language to the FY2018 Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee bill to ensure that the Seafood Import Monitoring Program for shrimp is fully implemented on the same timeline with all other species.
"We are so pleased that Chairmen Cochran and Shelby inserted language in the Senate CJS Appropriations bill to make sure that shrimp is included in this important program to provide traceability of U.S. seafood imports," says Dr. David Veal, Executive Director of the American Shrimp Processors Association. "They understand that since shrimp comprises 65 percent of U.S. seafood imports, it is vital that the species is included in the program."
"Chairmen Cochran and Shelby showed once again today that they care about the survival of the U.S. shrimp industry and continued economic opportunity and job growth for coastal Gulf communities," says Edward T. Hayes, Gulf Counsel for the American Shrimp Processors Association. "This measure will make sure that the health and safety of the American consumer is foremost when it comes to aquaculture shrimp imports."
"Including shrimp in the Seafood Import Monitoring Program will help with trade enforcement by making it easier to combat import fraud," continues Dr. Veal. "We also appreciate that Secretary Wilbur Ross and the U.S. Commerce Department worked very hard to implement the rule on the overall program."
"The leaders of NOAA and of the Commerce Department understand that illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) foreign fisheries cause harm for consumers and the domestic seafood industry. We are also grateful for the broad support of the rule by Gulf state Senators. We commend Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in particular for leading two Senate letters on this topic, which clearly moved the ball forward. It is nice to see the Congress and the Trump Administration team up on this issue," Hayes concluded. For more information and to view the letter from Senator Bill Cassidy, click here.
News and information presented in this release has not been corroborated by WTWH Media LLC.


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If $\mathcal F^\bullet$ is a chain complex of sheaves, to compute the hypercohomology, you take the cohomology of an injective resolution of $\mathcal F^\bullet$, i.e., a chain complex of injectives $\mathcal I^\bullet$ which is quasi-isomorphic to $\mathcal F^\bullet$.
It seems to be a well-known fact that for the algebraic de Rham complex $\Omega^\bullet_{X/S}$ you can compute this hypercohomolgy in practice by taking the total cohomology of the Cech/de Rham double complex $(\check{C}^i(X,\Omega^j), d, \check{d})$.
Does anyone know of a reference for this (somewhere in EGA?), or is there an easy proof ?


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Recent research by the Institute for Theme Park Temporal Coherence reveals that a Disneyland fan's age can accurately be determined by examining how much you remember about Disneyland. We're not sure how useful this is, since — in our experience — most Disneyland fans already know how old they are.
Anyway, if you are interested in trying this theory out for yourself, we have put the Disneyland Age Test online. Leave a comment to this post comparing your results with your actual age (in Disney terms).


text: The FBI has fallen short on assessing the privacy risks and accuracy of a\u00a0huge facial recognition database used by several law enforcement agencies, a government auditor has said.A new report, released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office Wednesday, shows the FBI's use of facial recognition technology is "far greater" than previously understood, said Senator Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat who requested the GAO report.The FBI's\u00a0Next Generation Identification-Interstate Photo System (NGI-IPS),\u00a0which allows law enforcement agencies to search a database of more than 30 million photos of 16.9 million people, raises serious privacy concerns, Franken added in a press release."Facial recognition technology is a new and powerful tool that holds great promise for law enforcement," he said. "But if we don\u2019t ensure its accuracy and guard against misuse, I am concerned about the risk of innocent Americans being inadvertently swept up in criminal investigations."The FBI's use of NGI-IPS has lacked transparency because the\u00a0agency has been slow to assess the privacy impact when changes are made to it, according to the GAO report.Before NGI-IPS became fully operational in April 2015, the agency also conducted only limited accuracy tests of the service, the GAO added.\u00a0The FBI "has not assessed how often errors occur," the report said.\u00a0The agency isn't conducting operational tests of the system, added\u00a0Diana Maurer, a homeland security director at GAO. While the FBI has tested the system in controlled settings, "what we don't know is how accurate it is in real-world use," she said in a GAO podcast.The FBI agreed with a handful of recommendations from the GAO but disagreed with two others. The agency and the Department of Justice don't need to re-evaluate the way they assess the privacy impacts of the system because those assessments were done and because the DOJ "continually strives to assess and refine its internal processes and procedures," the FBI said.The FBI searches photo databases "in strict compliance with state and federal law," the agency added.Concerns about the accuracy of the system are overstated, according to the FBI. NGI-IPS is not used for a positive identification of a criminal suspect, but instead "provides a gallery of likely candidates that are to be used as investigative leads."The FBI has no authority to enforce the accuracy of photos coming from other sources, it added.Photos in NGI-IPS come from criminal mug shots, drivers' license applications, and other sources.As of December 2015, the FBI had agreements with seven states that allow them to search NGI-IPS and was working with more states to grant access.


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Were you ever bullied in a toilet at school, or was it something you only saw on Grange Hill? At the Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre, which opened last year on the Harrow Road, the toilets have been designed by architects specifically to counter bullying: individual cubicles with floor-to-ceiling partitions come off a corridor with exits at both ends, making it difficult to trap or harass another kid out of sight of teachers.
Such is the level of thought that goes into the basic fabric of an Academy School. Westminster, which took its first students last year, replacing half of the North Westminster Community School (recently celebrated by the Serpentine), is open on Open House weekend. L and K opt to be shown round by a pair of enthusiastic students, while P, who has a school to build himself, and I go for the architectural tour, led by Susan Le Good of AHMM, the architects currently shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling prize for their work on the building.
It's quite spectacular, both inside and out. Layered in rising terracotta greens and yellows on the outside, on the inside gallery floors rise around a central atrium, with a single narrow staircase linking top floor to bottom. Many of the walls are bare concrete, both to save budget on coverings, and for its thermal properties, keeping the building at an even temperature. Sound is deadened by wood wool boards and curious little acoustic baffles hanging from the ceiling everywhere, colour-coordinated with the citrus theme. The sun coming in through the atrium's ceiling is tempered by an array of rectangular angled boards, in fact no more than painted door blanks.
Hemmed between the Harrow Road and the Westway, the building is a self-contained box: windows don't open, keeping noise and pollution out. Air is circulated mechanically below the raised floors. Almost everything about the building is self-consciously 'inspirational': emblazoned on the outside walls of classrooms are quotes from everyone from Nelson Mandela to Khalil Gibran (the Academy's prospectus opens with a quote from Malcolm X, though it's not the one about chickens coming home to roost). On the third floor, a window gallery hosts a semi-permanent exhibition of Naoki Honjo's large format tilt-shift photographs of Tokyo.
The school's curriculum and ethos is oriented around some kind of idea of global business. On one level, it seems like a totally appropriate vision for a school in which English is not the first language of 89% of the students. Transparent windows are overlaid with iconised skylines of other 'global cities'; the back wall of the cafeteria shouts the names of a global menu, from ackee & saltfish to sushi. It's slightly more sinister that the central atrium is known as 'the marketplace', and another set of windows carries a bizarre alphabetical list of financial trading terms like 'hedge fund' and 'vulture capital', as if to be uncritically learned by rote. Merits and gold stars have been replaced by Vivo Miles, a smart card identity and rewards system (the keen student guides were getting fifty apiece for their extracurricular participation). The equation of the world with world markets seems like a particularly pernicious bit of Blatcherite ideology, though Susan assures us that the kids learn the normal curriculum. I refrain from asking whether with their concentration on the global economy the kids have been upset by the credit crunch.
I also wonder (aloud), how much of the architectural thought that went into the school concentrated on the monitoring and control of students, creating an environment where nothing is unseen. It's not just for the kids, either: there's minimal staffroom space for the teachers, who eat and socialise with students. Another tour participant, a teacher involved in the early planning stages of the building says that on the contrary it's all about making the students feel safe in school, a place where they haven't always felt secure. And despite the physically and socially sealed box of the school (no leaving at lunchtime), the entrance is at least welcoming, without barriers or cardswipes. The other half of North Westminster was absorbed by the Paddington Academy. From the outside it certainly looks more like a prison than a school, and it wasn't open for Open House.
And who is Naim Dangoor? He's the self-proclaimed Babylonian Exilarch, ex coca-cola magnate and self-appointed leader of Iraqi jews in Britain, moved to educational philanthropy for the refuge England offered him when the pre-Saddam Ba'ath party purged Iraqi jewry. The Dangoor family stepped in to support the Academy, when the original sponsors, Chelsfield (who proposed the whole global business thing, so you can hold your stereotypes right there) dropped out.
They get a lot of bang for their sponsorship buck: Academy sponsorship involves putting up a couple of million quid, about ten percent of the capital budget, for the build itself (DCSF or whatever it's called this week, supplies the rest in public money), and no ongoing revenue funding for maintenance, equipment teachers etc. In return, you get naming rights in perpetuity (the building is built to last fifty or more years), and the power of appointment to the school's governing body.
The Dangoor family are members of the congregation of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Lauderdale Road, also open for Open House this weekend. It's a Sephardi synagogue, an extension of the Bevis Marks synagogue (the oldest in England, established not long after Cromwell's readmission of jews to England), opened in 1896 for a jewish community moving away from the East End at the same time as thousands of Ashkenazi fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe were arriving. In comparison to the more modest places of worship being established on the outskirts of the City, Lauderdale Road has an understated kind of grandeur, with a white-banded red brick exterior, brown marble columns inside and Moorish-domed ark. A cheerful man plays us choral music from iTunes on his laptop and explains the continual, social nature of a typical three-hour Saturday service at the synagogue.
I think it'll be a while before I feel like queuing up outside the Bank of England or Lloyds of London again: sometimes just-down-the-road is the best bit of Open House.
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