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This week we look ahead to Palm Sunday, the beginning of the end of Lent. After briefly rejoicing as Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly (in the "processional Gospel" for the day), we plunge immediately into Jesus' betrayal and crucifixion in the Gospel for the day. It is a fitting preparation for the solemnity of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter vigil.
The readings for today are a study of contrasts: Jesus is both king and lowly, both God and man, God's anointed who is forsaken on the cross, the sacrifice and the high priest. He humbles Himself, God exalts Him. The unbelieving Romans correctly declare Him "King of the Jews" while the mocking chief priests correctly declare that Jesus trusts God, and that God will save Him if He truly is the Messiah. His disciples desert Him in despair, but the Pharisees remember His promise to rise on the third day. No one but God could foresee the death-shattering consequences of Jesus' submission, sacrifice, and coming resurrection.
The Old Testament lesson is from the book of Zechariah, chapter 9, verses 9-12:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
and the warhorses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit.
Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope;
even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.
The Epistle lesson is from Philippians, chapter 2, verses 5-11:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The Gospel for Palm Sunday is from Matthew, chapters 26-27:
When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, "As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified."
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. "But not during the festival," they said, "or there may be a riot among the people."
While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. "Why this waste?" they asked. "This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."
Aware of this, Jesus said to them, "Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."
Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.
On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?"
He replied, "Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, 'The Teacher says: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.'" So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover.
When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, "Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me."
They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, "Surely you don't mean me, Lord?"
Jesus replied, "The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born."
Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, "Surely you don't mean me, Rabbi?"
Jesus answered, "You have said so."
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."
Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."
When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Then Jesus told them, "This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written:
"'I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.'
But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee."
Peter replied, "Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will."
"Truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times."
But Peter declared, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the other disciples said the same.
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me."
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."
Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour?" he asked Peter. "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
He went away a second time and prayed, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done."
When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!"
While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: "The one I kiss is the man; arrest him." Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, "Greetings, Rabbi!" and kissed him.
Jesus replied, "Do what you came for, friend."
Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?"
In that hour Jesus said to the crowd, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.
Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled. But Peter followed him at a distance, right up to the courtyard of the high priest.He entered and sat down with the guards to see the outcome.
The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward.
Finally two came forward and declared, "This fellow said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.'"
Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, "Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?" But Jesus remained silent.
The high priest said to him, "I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God."
"You have said so," Jesus replied. "But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?"
"He is worthy of death," they answered.
Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, "Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?"
Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. "You also were with Jesus of Galilee," she said.
But he denied it before them all. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, "This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth."
He denied it again, with an oath: "I don't know the man!"
After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, "Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away."
Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, "I don't know the man!"
Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: "Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." And he went outside and wept bitterly.
[27] Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people made their plans how to have Jesus executed. So they bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate the governor.
When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. "I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood."
"What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your responsibility."
So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.
The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: "They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter's field, as the Lord commanded me."
Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"
"You have said so," Jesus replied.
When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. Then Pilate asked him, "Don't you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?" But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor.
Now it was the governor's custom at the festival to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas. So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, "Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?" For he knew it was out of self-interest that they had handed Jesus over to him.
While Pilate was sitting on the judge's seat, his wife sent him this message: "Don't have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him."
But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.
"Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" asked the governor.
"Barabbas," they answered.
"What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" Pilate asked.
They all answered, "Crucify him!"
"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"
All the people answered, "His blood is on us and on our children!"
Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. They came to a place called Golgotha (which means "the place of the skull"). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.
Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'" In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" (which means "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?").
When some of those standing there heard this, they said, "He's calling Elijah."
Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him."
And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, "Surely he was the Son of God!"
Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's sons.
As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb.
The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. "Sir," they said, "we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, 'After three days I will rise again.' So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first."
"Take a guard," Pilate answered. "Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how." So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.
Christ on the Cross, from The Passion of Christ – Anonymous, after Hendrick Goltzius
The Metropolitan Museum of Art [Public Domain]


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AR 88-3(7) (Rescinded 6/10/2002 — 67 FR 39781)
AR 88-3(7): McDonald v. Bowen, 800 F.2d 153 (7th Cir. 1986), amended on reh'g, 818 F.2d 559 (7th Cir. 1987) Entitlement to Benefits Where a Person Returns to Work Less Than 12 Months After Onset of Disability
Does a person's return to substantial gainful activity (SGA) within 12 months of the onset date of his or her disability, and prior to an award of benefits, preclude an award of benefits and entitlement to a trial work period?
Sections 223, 222(c) and 1614(a)(3) and (4) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. Section 423, 422(c) and 1382c(a)(3) and (4)); 20 C.F.R. Sections 404.1505, 404.1592, 416.905, 416.992; SSR 82-52
McDonald v. Bowen, 800 F.2d 153 (7th Cir. 1986), amended on reh'g, 818 F.2d 559 (7th Cir. 1987)
This Ruling applies to determinations or decisions at all administrative levels (i.e., initial, reconsideration, administrative law judge hearing and Appeals Council).
Ida McDonald, a 52-year old woman with an eleventh grade education, worked, since 1962, as a feeder inserting paper into a machine that binds magazines and catalogs. In 1980, she began to require hospitalization for back problems.
Ms. McDonald stopped working on October 25, 1982, because she was unable to bend as required by her job as a feeder. She filed an application for disability insurance benefits on February 28, 1983. This claim was denied on April 28, 1983, on the basis that Ms. McDonald could return to her past work as a feeder. She then requested reconsideration and the denial of her claim was upheld on August 5, 1983, on the grounds of insufficient evidence. She requested a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) on August 10, 1983. A hearing was held on December 15, 1983. At the hearing Ms. McDonald testified that she returned to her job as a feeder on May 16, 1983. She worked 3 weeks but then was unable to work for another 6 weeks due to back pain. She returned to work but soon was disabled again for approximately 2 weeks due to back pain. At the time of the December 1983 hearing, plaintiff was back at the bindery working as a feeder earning $9.29 per hour.
The ALJ first considered, under the five step sequential evaluation process, whether Ms. McDonald was working and engaging in substantial gainful activity. The ALJ found that "[e]ven though the claimant is presently working and has engaged in some work activity on a scale modified from her usual past work . . . such work has not been substantial gainful work activity pursuant to Regulation Section 404.1572 and is considered part of the 9- month trial work period which Regulation Section 404.1592 allows." The ALJ then considered the medical evidence under steps 2 and 3 of the sequential evaluation process and found that Ms. McDonald was suffering from a severe impairment listed in Appendix 1, Subpart P, Regulation No. 4. The ALJ concluded that Ms. McDonald had been disabled within the meaning of the Social Security Act since October 25, 1982. Further, Ms. McDonald was entitled to a trial work period.
On its own motion, the Appeals Council reviewed the ALJ's decision and found that the ALJ erroneously concluded under step 1 that Ms. McDonald had not engaged in substantial gainful activity for a continuous period of 12 months. Although the Appeals Council noted that the claimant had a severe back impairment commencing October 25, 1982, it found that the impairment had not precluded her from engaging in substantial gainful activity for 12 continuous months as required for a finding of disability. The Council further found that she had been engaging in substantial gainful activity since September, 1983, when she had returned to work full-time. In reversing the ALJ's decision, the Appeals Council did not consider whether Ms. McDonald was entitled to a trial work period.
Ms. McDonald sought review in the district court. The district court granted the Secretary's motion for summary judgment, holding that the Secretary's decision that Ms. McDonald was engaging in substantial gainful activity as of September 1983, was supported by substantial evidence. The court reasoned that "a finding of substantial gainful employment precludes a finding of disability whether a person is involved in a trial work period or not." Ms. McDonald then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that
- . . . under the Act's definition of disability, one need not actually be impaired for twelve months to be entitled to benefits. An applicant may be entitled to benefits if he or she suffers from an impairment which is expected to last for a minimum of twelve consecutive months. Whether an individual is actually disabled for twelve months as originally anticipated is not controlling with respect to the determination of disability. The Act requires only a prediction that the disability will continue for at least twelve consecutive months after the onset of the disability. The requirement is therefore forward-looking and is not to be nullified by hindsight. Sierakowski v. Weinberger, 504 F.2d 831, 834-35 (6th Cir. 1974). When an individual has been disabled for five consecutive months and suffers from an impairment which can be expected to last for a continuous period of twelve months, that person is entitled to disability benefits. And, even after qualifying for such an entitlement, one may engage in a trial work period. 42 U.S.C. Section 422(c)(3).
The court noted in an order amending its opinion on rehearing that an individual who returns to work more than 5, but less than 12, months after his or her onset of disability "must be prepared to show that, at the time [he or] she returns to work and thereafter [his or] her disability is still expected to last at least twelve continuous months from its alleged onset date; otherwise [he or] she will not receive benefits."
STATEMENT AS TO HOW McDONALD DIFFERS FROM SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY:
SSR 82-52 contains a clear statement of Social Security policy on this subject:
- When an individual whose entitlement is established on the basis of expected duration returns to work which demonstrates ability to engage in SGA after an award of benefits but within the 12-month period after onset, benefits should be terminated (subject to the possible entitlement of the individual to a trial work period). The prior award should not be reopened and reversed.
- When the return to work demonstrating ability to engage in SGA occurs before approval of the award and prior to the lapse of the 12-month period after onset, the claim must be denied. When an individual returns to SGA during the waiting period and such work continues, the claim for benefits must be denied if the award has not been approved. If the award was previously approved, the claim must be reopened and revised to a denial.
The holding in McDonald is inconsistent with this policy in that it would permit a benefit award and give a trial work period to a person who returned to substantial gainful activity within 12 months of the onset of his or her disability and before an award of benefits is made.
This ruling applies only to cases in which the claimant resides in Illinois, Indiana or Wisconsin at the time of the determination or decision at any level of administrative review, i.e., initial, reconsideration, administrative law judge hearing or Appeals Council review.
A claimant for title II disability insurance benefits or child's insurance benefits based on disability should be allowed and granted a trial work period if the following conditions are met:
- The claimant establishes that, at the time he/she returned to work and thereafter, the disability was still expected to last for at least 12 consecutive months from the date of onset;
- the person returns to work more than 5 months after the onset date (but within the 12-month period following the onset date); and
- the return to work demonstrating ability to engage in substantial gainful activity occurs before approval of the award.
A claimant for title XVI benefits based on disability should be allowed and granted a trial work period if the following conditions are met:[1]
- The claimant establishes that, at the time he/she returned to work and thereafter, the disability was still expected to last at least 12 consecutive months from the date of onset;
- the person returns to work after the onset date (but within the 12-month period following the onset date); and
- the return to work demonstrating ability to engage in substantial gainful activity occurs before approval of the award.
Date of Publication 3/1/88
[1] Pursuant to statutory amendments made by Public Law 99-643, effective July 1, 1987, the trial work period provisions are no longer applicable to title XVI disability claims. Beginning July 1, 1987, a disabled individual, who was eligible to receive "regular" SSI benefits (section 1611) for a month and subsequently has earnings ordinarily considered to represent substantial gainful activity, will move directly to section 1619 status rather than be accorded a trial work period. This Ruling extends to such individuals, i.e. claimants for title XVI benefits based on disability should be allowed and granted section 1619 status if the return to work is on or after July 1, 1987, and the same conditions are met.


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A modern classic
Some things never really change. Sharks, for example, have existed for millions of years. These creatures have witnessed the birth and extinction of countless species. They endure as time ceaselessly marches forward. A constant in an ever-changing world, they remain the spitting image of ancestors that once patrolled the oceans at a time when dinosaurs walked the earth.
Like sharks, the Japanese role-playing game is essentially a living fossil. The venerable genre has seen others rise from the primordial soup, evolve, wither, and perish. A product of a bygone age, the JRPG still remains very much akin to its early paradigms.
The Tales series epitomizes this abstraction. Refreshingly old-fashioned, the franchise continues to tiptoe toward perfection while many of its peers struggle to reinvent themselves. Tales of Xillia stays true to its roots, providing a largely traditional experience with some unique twists.
Tales of Xillia (PlayStation 3)
Developer: Namco Tales Studio
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Released: August 6, 2013 (NA), August 9, 2013 (EU)
Tales of Xillia tells a classic story following a motley band of heroes on a journey to save the world from disaster. The narrative centers around a powerful weapon that threatens both the environment and a tenuous peace between two nations on the verge of war. Naturally, it's your mission to destroy the device before things get too out of hand.
The adventure begins with a chance encounter in an underground research facility. There, a divine guardian known as Milla Maxwell crosses paths with a young medical student by the name of Jude Mathis, both of whom are investigating matters of personal importance. Of course, things go awry. The unlikely pair stumbles upon more than they bargained for and their lives are irrevocably altered because of it.
Setting out to stave off the looming calamity, players will be poised with a choice of which character to follow. While the duo's destinies are intertwined, their paths will diverge and reconvene at certain points throughout the story. Each arc features unique scenes and scenarios, which provide a nice incentive for players to revisit the thirty-plus-hour campaign a second time around.
Beneath the title's timeworn premise and a fair number of anime and JRPG tropes is a winding plot that takes some unexpected turns. The narrative is garnered with thought-provoking themes and allusions to contemporary societal issues. However, as compelling as some of the underlying thread work can be, it's the charming characterization that really stitches the experience together.
The central protagonists are joined by a supporting cast that steadily take up arms with our heroes along the way. It's a group with disparate backgrounds ranging from the puckish mercenary to a young girl with hidden powers, and a vexatious talking doll. It's this ensemble that makes Tales of Xilla such a joy to experience.
Strewn between story sequences are vignettes that provide a great deal of insight into the title's colorful personalities. Having spent her life in isolation, Milla is blissfully ignorant when it comes to human society and particularly sensible attire. In his own ways, Jude is similarly oblivious. His coming-of-age story is laden with playful jabs at sheltered adolescents. These little asides are such a nice addition in fleshing out the characters and bring a levity to an otherwise dark tale.
Along the way players will visit a myriad of different locales. Sadly, there just isn't much to explore. Apart from some stunning architecture and scenery in the distance, towns and dungeons leave a lot to be desired. In contrast with the vibrant characters and a brilliant soundtrack that plays beautifully to each situation, the environments themselves oftentimes feel lifeless, repetitive, and dull.
It's clear that a lot of time and effort was allocated toward the title's combat system, which alongside the narrative is a real highlight of the experience. Equal parts action and strategy, combat takes place at a rapid pace and requires both a plan and split-second timing to execute it.
Battles typically have their genesis in the overworld, where dungeons are populated with dozens of roaming monsters. The manner in which an enemy is approached will likely have as much of an impact on an encounter than another other aspect of the contest. Sneaking up on enemies is advantageous for two reasons. Surprise attacks leave foes with only a fraction of the health that they would possess in a head-on clash and cause them to begin the fight momentarily stunned. Conversely, players will be at a disadvantage at the outset of battle should an enemy ever get the jump on them.
Once initial contact is made, the game transitions into an isolated arena where the player can field up to four members of the party at any one time. Individuals can be swapped out with other conscious party members at the player's discretion. In fact, the player can take an authoritative role in battle, dictating when and what type of spells and physical attacks characters should be using and against which enemies.
To that end, there is a vast array of ways in which the player can customize how each party member will act in combat while they aren't being micromanaged. Personally, I enjoyed giving my team various support roles and leaving them alone for the most part. Most of my attention was dedicated to controlling a single character on the front lines, only issuing commands when the tide of battle critically depended on them.
Characters can be tweaked even further with various active and passive abilities that really change one's approach to battle. These play an especially important role in combat thanks to the new linking system. Pairs of party members can be tethered during combat to more readily assist one another and blend their unique skillsets into devastating special attacks. It's a subtle addition, one that makes for some incredibly engaging fights.
Even something as mundane as leveling up has an interesting spin on it. Typical progress bars are replaced by webbed diagrams called Lilium Orbs. Leveling up earns points that can be allocated toward activating various statistical nodes, adding yet another hue of mutability.
In terms of difficulty, standard battles generally feel appropriately challenging. Some of the lengthier dungeons can be treacherous, but there's fast travel along with plenty of waypoints and a quick-save feature should you ever get in a tight spot. The importance of items is paramount and it pays to be fully stocked when leaving a town for your next destination.
As one might expect, bosses offer a much stiffer challenge than conventional enemies. I found one of the encounters toward the end of Milla's campaign to be particularly unforgiving. After being brought to a seething rage after falling victim to what's essentially an instant kill for the umteenth time, I swallowed my pride took advantage of the difficulty slider in order to progress.
Tales of Xillia never strays terribly far from the formula set forth by its predecessors. Firmly rooted in the past, it instead introduces a selection of new elements and subtle enhancements that make it feel refreshing while still very familiar. The story and characters are delightful, and an engaging battle system rounds out a mesmeric package. Simply put, Tales of Xillia is one of the finest role-playing games in recent memory.


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Figure 1. Multicolor image of the free-floating planet PSO J318.5-22 from the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope, in the constellation of Capricornus. The planet is extremely cold and faint, about 100 billion times fainter in optical light than the planet Venus. Most of its energy is emitted at infrared wavelengths. The image is 125 arcseconds on a side. Image Credit: Pan-STARRS PS1 Science Consortium
Figure 2. Artist rendition of PSO J318.5-22. Image Credit: MPIA/V Ch. Quetz
Observations using the Gemini Near-Infrared Imager (GNIRS) at the Gemini North telescope have confirmed one of the lowest mass free-floating planet known, perhaps the very lowest.
The discovery team, led by the University of Hawaii's Michael Liu, discovered this reddest known field dwarf using the Pan-STARSSS1 survey telescope on Maui's Haleakala. The team's follow-up observations on Gemini were made over three nights in late June and early July of this year. From the Gemini (and other observations) the object, known as PSO J318.5-22, appears to have a mass only six times that of Jupiter and likely formed about 12 million years ago at a neighborly distance of about 80 light-years away.
In a UH Institute for Astronomy (IfA) press release issued on October 9, 2013, Liu is quoted: "We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone." Liu continues, "I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do."
In addition to Gemini spectroscopic observations, the Canada-France-Hawaii and NASA Infrared telescopes provided critical data for the work. The research is described in a paper recently accepted for publication and can be found at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0457
See the full IfA press release here.


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by Anthony Watts
There has been a lot of buzz about the Menne et al 2010 paper "On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record" which is NCDC's response to the surfacestations.org project. One paid blogger even erroneously trumpeted the "death of UHI" which is humorous, because the project was a study about station siting issues, not UHI. Anybody who owns a car with a dashboard thermometer who commutes from country to city can tell you about UHI.
There's also claims of this paper being a "death blow" to the surfacestations project. I'm sure in some circles, they believe that to be true. However, it is very important to point out that the Menne et al 2010 paper was based on an early version of the surfacestations.org data, at 43% of the network surveyed. The dataset that Dr. Menne used was not quality controlled, and contained errors both in station identification and rating, and was never intended for analysis. I had posted it to direct volunteers to so they could keep track of what stations had been surveyed to eliminate repetitive efforts. When I discovered people were doing ad hoc analysis with it, I stopped updating it.
Our current dataset at 87% of the USHCN surveyed has been quality controlled.
There's quite a backstory to all this.
In the summer, Dr. Menne had been inviting me to co-author with him, and our team reciprocated with an offer to join us also, and we had an agreement in principle for participation, but I asked for a formal letter of invitation, and they refused, which seems very odd to me. The only thing they would provide was a receipt for my new data (at 80%) and an offer to "look into" archiving my station photographs with their existing database. They made it pretty clear that I'd have no significant role other than that of data provider. We also invited Dr. Menne to participate in our paper, but he declined.
The appearance of the Menne et al 2010 paper was a bit of a surprise, since I had been offered collaboration by NCDC's director in the fall. In typed letter on 9/22/09 Tom Karl wrote to me:
"We at NOAA/NCDC seek a way forward to cooperate with you, and are interested in joint scientific inquiry. When more or better information is available, we will reanalyze and compare and contrast the results."
"If working together cooperatively is of interest to you, please let us know."
I discussed it with Dr. Pielke Sr. and the rest of the team, which took some time since not all were available due to travel and other obligations. It was decided to reply to NCDC on a collaboration offer.
On November 10th, 2009, I sent a reply letter via Federal Express to Mr. Karl, advising him that we would like to collaborate, and offered to include NCDC in our paper.. In that letter I also reiterated my concerns about use of the preliminary surfacestation data (43% surveyed) that they had, and spelled out very specific reasons why I didn't think the results would be representative nor useful.
We all waited, but there was no reply from NCDC to our reply to offer of collaboration by Mr. Karl from his last letter. Not even a "thank you, but no".
Then we discovered that Dr. Menne's group had submitted a paper to JGR Atmospheres using my preliminary data and it was in press. This was a shock to me since I was told it was normal procedure for the person who gathered the primary data the paper was based on to have some input in the review process by the journal.
NCDC uses data from one of the largest volunteer organization in the world, the NOAA Cooperative Observer Network. Yet NCDC director Karl, by not bothering to reply to our letter about an offer he initiated, and by the journal not giving me any review process opportunity, extends what Dr. Roger Pielke Senior calls "professional discourtesy" to my own volunteers and my team's work. See his weblog on the subject:
Professional Discourtesy By The National Climate Data Center On The Menne Et Al 2010 paper
I will point out that Dr. Menne provided thanks to me and the surfacestations volunteers in the Menne et al 2010 paper, and I hear through word of mouth, also in a recent verbal presentation. For that I thank him. He has been gracious in his communications with me, but I think he's also having to answer to the organization for which he works and that limited his ability to meet some of my requests, like a simple letter of invitation.
Political issues aside, the appearance of the Menne et al 2010 paper does not stop the surfacestations project nor the work I'm doing with the Pielke research group to produce a peer reviewed paper of our own. It does illustrate though that some people have been in a rush to get results. Texas state Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon suggested way back at 33% of the network surveyed that we had a statistically large enough sample to produce an analysis. I begged to differ then, at 43%, and yes even at 70% when I wrote my booklet "Is the US Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, which contained no temperature analysis, only a census of stations by rating.
The problem is known as the "low hanging fruit problem". You see this project was done on an ad hoc basis, with no specific roadmap on which stations to acquire. This was necessitated by the social networking (blogging) Dr. Pielke and I employed early in the project to get volunteers. What we ended up getting was a lumpy and poorly spatially distributed dataset because early volunteers would get the stations closest to them, often near or within cities.
The urban stations were well represented in the early dataset, but the rural ones, where we believed the best siting existed, were poorly represented. So naturally, any sort of study early on even with a "significant sample size" would be biased towards urban stations. We also had a distribution problem within CONUS, with much of the great plains and upper midwest not being well represented.
This is why I've been continuing to collect what some might consider an unusually large sample size, now at 87%. We've learned that there are so few well sited stations, the ones that meet the CRN1/CRN2 criteria (or NOAA's 100 foot rule for COOPS) are just 10% of the whole network. See our current census:
When you have such a small percentage of well sited stations, it is obviously important to get a large sample size, which is exactly what I've done. Preliminary temperature analysis done by the Pielke group of the the data at 87% surveyed looks quite a bit different now than when at 43%.
It has been said by NCDC in Menne et al "On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record" (in press) and in the June 2009 "Talking Points: related to "Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?" that station siting errors do not matter. However, I believe the way NCDC conducted the analysis gives a false impression because of the homogenization process used. As many readers know, the FILNET algorithm blends a lot of the data together to infill missing data. This means temperature data from both well sited and poorly sited stations gets combined to infill missing data. The theory is that it all averages out, but when you see that 90% of the USHCN network doesn't meet even the old NOAA 100 foot rule for COOPS, you realize this may not be the case.
Here's a way to visualize the homogenization/FILNET process. Think of it like measuring water pollution. Here's a simple visual table of CRN station quality ratings and what they might look like as water pollution turbidity levels, rated as 1 to 5 from best to worst turbidity:
In homogenization the data is weighted against the nearby neighbors within a radius. And so a station might start out as a "1" data wise, might end up getting polluted with the data of nearby stations and end up as a new value, say weighted at "2.5". Even single stations can affect many other stations in the GISS and NOAA data homogenization methods carried out on US surface temperature data here and here.
In the map above, applying a homogenization smoothing, weighting stations by distance nearby the stations with question marks, what would you imagine the values (of turbidity) of them would be? And, how close would these two values be for the east coast station in question and the west coast station in question? Each would be closer to a smoothed center average value based on the neighboring stations.
Essentially, in my opinion, NCDC is comparing homogenized data to homogenized data, and thus there would not likely be any large difference between "good" and "bad" stations in that data. All the differences have been smoothed out by homogenization (pollution) from neighboring stations!
The best way to compare the effect of siting between groups of stations is to use the "raw" data, before it has passed through the multitude of adjustments that NCDC performs. However NCDC is apparently using homogenized data. So instead of comparing apples and oranges (poor sited -vs- well sited stations) they essentially just compare apples (Granny Smith -vs- Golden delicious) of which there is little visual difference beyond a slight color change.
We saw this demonstrated in the ghost authored Talking Points Memo issued by NCDC in June 09 in this graph:
Referencing the above graph, Steve McIntyre suggested in his essay on the subject:
The red graphic for the "full data set" had, using the preferred terminology of climate science, a "remarkable similarity" to the NOAA 48 data set that I'd previously compared to the corresponding GISS data set here (which showed a strong trend of NOAA relative to GISS). Here's a replot of that data – there are some key telltales evidencing that this has a common provenance to the red series in the Talking Points graphic.
When I looked at SHAP and FILNET adjustments a couple of years ago, one of my principal objections to these methods was that they adjusted "good" stations. After FILNET adjustment, stations looked a lot more similar than they did before. I'll bet that the new USHCN adjustments have a similar effect and that the Talking Points memo compares adjusted versions of "good" stations to the overall average.
There's references in the new Menne et al 2010 paper to the new USHCN2 algorithm and we've been told how it is supposed to be better. While it does catch undocumented station moves that USHCN 1 did not, it still adjusts data at USHCN stations in odd ways, such as this station in rural Wisconsin, and that is the crux of the problem.
Or this one in Lincoln, IL at the local NWS office where they took great effort to have it well sited.
Thanks to Mike McMillan for the graphs comparing USHCN1 and USHCN2 data
Notice the clear tendency in the graphs comparing USHCN1 to USHCN2 to cool off the early record and leave the current levels near recently reported levels or to increase them. The net result is either reduced cooling or enhanced warming not found in the raw data.
As for the Menne et all 2010 paper itself, I'm rather disturbed by their use of preliminary data at 43%, especially since I warned them that the dataset they had lifted from my website (placed for volunteers to track what had been surveyed, never intended for analysis) had not been quality controlled at the time. Plus there are really not enough good stations with enough spatial distribution at that sample size. They used it anyway, and amazingly, conducted their own secondary survey of those stations, comparing it to my non-quality controlled data, implying that my 43% data wasn't up to par. Well of course it wasn't! I told them about it and why it wasn't. We had to resurvey and re-rate a number of stations from early in the project.
This came about only because it took many volunteers some time to learn how to properly ID them. Even some small towns have 2-3 COOP stations nearby, and only one of them is "USHCN". There's no flag in the NCDC metadatabase that says "USHCN", in fact many volunteers were not even aware of their own station status. Nobody ever bothered to tell them. You'd think if their stations were part of a special subset, somebody at NOAA/NCDC would notify the COOP volunteer so they would have a higher diligence level?
If doing an independent stations survey was important enough for NCDC to do to compare to my 43% data now for their paper, why didn't they just do it in the first place?
I have one final note of interest on the station data, specifically the issue of MMTS thermometers and their tendency to be sited closer to building due to cabling issues.
Menne et al 2010 mentioned a "counterintuitive" cooling trend in some portions of the data. Interestingly enough, former California State Climatologist James Goodridge did an independent analysis ( I wasn't involved in data crunchng, it was a sole effort on his part) of COOP stations in California that had gone through modernization, switching from Stevenson Screens with mercury LIG thermometers to MMTS electronic thermometers. He sifted through about 500 COOPs in California and chose stations that had at least 60 years of uninterrupted data, because as we know, a station move can cause all sorts of issues. He used the "raw" data from these stations as opposed to adjusted data.
He writes:
Hi Anthony,
I found 58 temperature station in California with data for 1949 to 2008 and where the thermometers had been changed to MMTS and the earlier parts were liquid in glass. The average for the earlier part was 59.17°F and the MMTS fraction averaged 60.07°F.
A 0.9F (0.5C) warmer offset due to modernization is significant, yet NCDC insists that the MMTS units are tested at about 0.05C cooler. I believe they add this adjustment into the final data. Our experience shows the exact opposite should be done and with a greater magnitude.
I hope to have this California study published here on WUWT with Jim soon.
I realize all of this isn't a complete rebuttal to Menne et al 2010, but I want to save that option for more detail for the possibility of placing a comment in The Journal of Geophysical Research.
When our paper with the most current data is completed (and hopefully accepted in a journal), we'll let peer reviewed science do the comparison on data and methods, and we'll see how it works out. Could I be wrong? I'm prepared for that possibility. But everything I've seen so far tells me I'm on the right track.


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Do-It-Yourself till you bleed
It was in the late eighties that I was really getting desperate. Being born in 1962, I was part of the "punk"-generation and became really addicted to its more strange off-spring. I am talking of bands like The Slits, Swell Maps, Pere Ubu, Birthday Party, The Fall, The Popgroup that are typical for that era but timeless nonetheless. Ten years after this golden period, things more or less came to a grinding halt. Nothing happened and countless were my visits to record-stores & libraries without finding anything fresh or worthwhile. Than there was this day in the spring of 1988. I visited a clothing store that also had a few trays of sell out-records. Without much hope I started browsing.
Interview by Alfred Boland (June 2000)
Then I saw this thick green-red coloured double-album titled EVERYTHING by the artist R. Stevie Moore. As someone once mentioned: The name R. Stevie Moore is often noticed but seldom realized. This was exactly the case, I had heard the name before but I always imagined R. Stevie Moore to be a somewhat dull person because of the rather dull name .... How wrong one can be. I was intrigued by the sleeve that had a nice cover, good song titles, pictures of a guy stuck in a messy room chockfull of tapes, recorders & musical instruments. I decided to take the gamble, after all, the thing was really cheap. I got home & put it on the turntable anticipating an anti-climax. I played it the whole afternoon and was addicted instantly. What struck me most was the great variety of the songs. This guy seemed to master all the styles one could possibly imagine and used them with great taste and in a way that really blended it into a universe that still was a logical whole. With that great voice on top I was sold for good. In the years that followed I bought all his existing albums, all second-hand or very cheap sell-out.
What was the matter? Was I the only one interested in R. Stevie Moore? Then there was this: most albums had an address of the R. Stevie Moore Cassette club in the liner-notes. That sounded too good to be true. On top of all the albums there appeared to be a whole bunch of cassettes to be obtained. I wrote a letter & send it .... I never got a reply (after the later events it's probable that it got lost in the mail). Years went by and I kept on playing my precious ten albums. I never encountered a word about the man anywhere.
Ten years later: the Internet came and along with it a nifty invention: the search engine. Well off course one of the first things to look for was R. Stevie Moore. It hit right upon what we now know as www.rsteviemoore.com. That was an eye-opener of the first kind. YES!! R.Stevie Moore was still around and his cassette club was still operational and had a whopping 247 items for sale. I wrote another letter and to my great enjoyment I received a package in the mail with three cassettes along with a very kind letter by the artist himself. The cassettes were incredible, I always imagined that they would be nice but would have lots of duplicates and tracks that weren't good enough to put out on album, something for die-hards like myself. Much to my surprise they turned out to be as rich as his albums. The greatest songs sometimes hidden at the end of C-90's. I really felt like discovering a musical paradise. So here I am. A happy man with a (fastly) growing collection of R.Stevie Moore tapes. (www.rsteviemoore.com/catalog.htm) The addiction demands about a cassette per month in my case, I've got 20 untill now, with 227 to go I will remain happy until February 2019.
But now to our main character, how about him? Were does he stand after thirty years of making music (& on top of that video-tapes, radio-shows, Internet pages & you name it R. Stevie Moore touches it and its gold). He hasn't got the success that he deserved, that's for sure, but does he care? Let's find out. The follow interview was held through mutiple exchanges of e-mail
PSF: Tell us something about your musical influences ... there must be quite a few since you seem almost like a medium that picks styles out of the blue air.
Blue air indeedy. That question, yes. I hate interviews. But I love this one. Er, ahem...My influenzas are many & varied, from the West-coast bebop jazz records my dad would bring home when I was growing up in Nashville, to the pop hits of the fifties/sixties; British invasion stuff like the Beatles etc. Changed my boylife. Top 40 was religious. (Ironically, seminal country music did not enter my sphere of interest until much later when I moved up to New Jersey.) Hot garlicky spaghetti suppers often sat on my record player. Still do. C'mon, musical influence means bunk. My biggest audio inspiration could truly be the glorious sound of pure silence. But I dig Bartok too. XTC? Fabian. Mingus? Sparks. Ray Stevens? Public Image Ltd. Asylum Choir? George Jones. Oasis? Allen Sherman. John Lee Hooker? (How many do you need?) The Move. Presley? The Troggs. James Brown? Cobain. Sinatra? Shaggs. Pet Sounds? Pet Shop Boys. Roxy Music? Patsy Cline. Zappa? Crappa. Too fucking many to mention! Isn't that the general consensus?? Muzak to noise. Man, I've been a slave to "all" music since 1955. A better question would be: "tell us the music you hate." (Don't ask.)
PSF: Not only do you use many musical styles, the moods of the songs shift from Syd Barrett-like depressed tunes to crazed Daniel Johnston-like absurdities. By mixing these your tapes almost feel like radio shows. How do you blend them together? Do you just add-on as you move on?
You hit the nail on the head with regard to radio show programming. Radio in the sixties and seventies was much more free-form than in recent years. It was like putting all styles of music together in a blender. Talking about individual genres didn't come into play until the late eighties. I wanted everything that I ever heard that touched me to find its way into my musical presentation. It never was a conscious effort. It just was a natural part of me to mix and match. Narrow-mindedness has always infuriated me. Layers of influence were like making a tasty meal. A musical smorgasbord. A thoroughly laundered bedsheet & pillow-case, lightly scented with orchid petals and aired out to dry during a late April afternoon. Station identification. In my opinion, Daniel Johnston does not quite warrant becoming an absurdist's "reference point." Another station identification. Break to commercial.
PSF: Tell us something about your cassette club .... how many items do you sell .... to how many people .... which tapes sell best ..... how do people pick from such a large catalogue?
The RSMCassetteclub (now known as the CDRSM club) has had its ups and downs. At press time, I guess I've got over 300 separate titles available. Now available on old-school cassette or as a freshly burned-to-order CD-R. A core of 20-30 great customers will keep placing orders for a stretch of time, and then others will order the odd three or four titles. I've never kept records beyond hand-written index cards kept in a little metal file box. Most of them are yellowed with age. The big hits from the catalog are "acknowledged" ones that contain my pop classics of the peak 74-80 era. (Countless folks have said that some of those songs should have been pop hits, if only they were out there for the masses to hear. I guess they know best.) Not really sure if fans were prone to make their choices based on my "listenability quotient" ratings (from the old paper snail-mail catalog), or just as based on recommendation from friends.
By the way, I haven't made xerox copies of that catalog for several years. All ordering info is now exclusive to the glorious internet, from the main www.rsteviemoore.com site to my dozens of homemade pages. Somehow, people find their way to all the music. Thank goodness! The very concept of having too much to choose from is really not of interest to me. That's the rub! Ya gonna approach Beethoven's greatest hits CD, or are ya gonna do some research? Ask around? Experiment? In other words, a long slow pleasant shower & shampoo, followed by typical Johnson & Johnson baby powder, stick deodorant, Mennen skin-bracer after shave, Visine eyedrops, Ultra-Brite toothpaste, Q-tips ear cotton-swabs, and milk 'n cookies.
PSF: How do you feel about your musical career ... are you satisfied with what you achieved? .... what would you do differently if you could do it again?
Ah, a pithy question. I would be more satisfied if I had a staff of promotion people, an art department on call and a talent agent/manager to do the things that I've had to do myself. But, time & time again, that's my ultimate curse: I've gotta D.I.Y. till I bleed, for 100% quality control. RSM fans know that. No assembly-line product here. They expect to get a personalized package completely dubbed, assembled, wrapped & mailed by the artist himself. Over the decades, I've barely lucked out to get the occasional gig or placed with some indie record company who wanted to release my music on vinyl or CD, but it's never been a case of making a real career out of what's more like a dedicated hobby. What amazes many people is that I've done what I have for such a long time. To put it succinctly, approximately 65 degrees, partly sunny, humidity 45 per cent, light wind from the southwest, at 1:30 pm EST.
PSF: What record companies did pick you up?
Too many to list. Check the discography! Oh, alright... (Ahem): New Rose, Fan Club (Fr); Cuneiform, Natural Enemies, Singles Only, Fruit of the Tune, Flamingo (USA); Recommended, Hamster, Cordelia, Heliotrope, Imaginary (UK); Jarmusic, Pink Lemon/Megafon (Ger.)...
PSF: How about the New Rose era?
How 'bout that!?! By far the most devoted label this boy's ever had. They didn't sell many copies, but they stayed with me for quite awhile.
PSF: Were you really a pop star in -of all places- France?
Slight exaggeration on my part. Beg your pardon.
PSF: How about the re-releases of your first albums ....
Just my first, Phonography, available now.
PSF: Delicate Tension out yet?
Ah, the classic second album is only obtainable as a CD-R, directly from me.
PSF: More to follow?
PSF: Tell us something about what the effect was of moving from Nashville up North ... this must have been a special time for you because at just about the same time the whole punk/DIY movement evolved.
ĀExtraordinary era! Moving from Tainuhsee to Joizey was not unlike Dorothy traveling to the Land of Oz; especially at first, with so many early promises of opportunity. Met a lot of really creative and sharp people who unexpectedly made some important contributions to my cause like Kurt Loder, Ira Robbins and David Fricke, each of whom wrote some very influential RSM reviews that got my name out there fairly quickly. It was all genuine praise and it happened at such a prime time in what's become a golden era for attentive music fans.
PSF: When did you realize that suddenly a lot of similar minds stood up & started working the way that you must have been doing for quite some time .... could you name some influences from that era?
Oh, I suppose you mean groups like Sebadoh or Guided By Voices. Never followed them or anybody else, really. There was a time when reviews of my work would make mention of those groups, I guess for the kids to have a reference point, but I didn't have an idea as to what they sounded like. I was more interested in absorbing the sounds of the past, obscurities that didn't really mean much to any scene. Heck, I wasn't recording on my own back in 1973 to start a trend or a goddamn movement. I guess, like Dadaists, I was reacting to what was around me and putting myself forth into the world.
PSF: Did you ever get into trouble through your bluntness ... I'm referring to songs about sex or taping yourself whilst visiting the toilet that are so deliciously politically incorrect (especially for that time)
Thankfully, I was never incarcerated nor interrogated by the feds because of my music. If I've got a musical idea in my head, it doesn't matter if it's inspired by masturbation or an ironic sandwich I ate. Would you question Lenny Bruce's material when he brilliantly rants about the verb to come and makes it so frigging entertaining? It's all about sharing our humanity and all of the mundane or profane things we do. With that said, I gotta go pee. Be right back.
PSF: I did not mean the authorities here but more some of your potential audience.
Unclear. It's who I am. May scare off some, may lure others. I never ever determine when or when not to appear "blunt" in what i issue to the public. Self-censorship? Bah!!
PSF: Try and describe a RSM fan ... are they as diverse as your music is?
It takes all kinds. There's no "stereotypical" RSM fan. Thank Christ. Would you expect there to be? One constant: they're all "individualists." Whatever that means. In addition: it's naturally difficult to determine if there's any discernible difference between the guy that orders 1 or 2 RSM cassettes, and the guy who orders 50 to 100 RSM CD-R's (except in his disposable income budget). I love 'em all equally. Not!
PSF: Can you describe a typical RSM day in the year 2000 .... how does it differ from lets say 1990 or 1980?
Too personal to reveal. Don't wanna depress you.
PSF: OK... but how about making music ... are you still productive?
Not compared to 1975-1995.
PSF: How about your forthcoming European tour? What can we expect?
Brief crazed acoustic duo sets, an easy task I look forward to pulling off without a hitch. it's what I do. not much to worry about, nothing to prove. I am the generally acknowledged father of home recording. Alas, this lunatic can't quite be expected to fill Wembley stadium. (note: tour was canceled early april by the organiser because of lacking financial resources, AB)
PSF: What about the internet: Your personal site is growing so fast it seems that it'll soon choke the entire net .... how did you do it? Got any help?
I do it all using WebTV which is a simple internet terminal that is set up to use your TV as a monitor. It's got a basic modem and allows you to go everywhere on the web. Storage is on a WebTV account on their server. Sheesh! When my wife and I first got it, I told her that she was going to be the one to use it and I would have to be an innocent bystander. You see, I have zero computer experience and still don't do windows. : ) I started out getting addicted to email and surfing the net how to use HTML and where to go for all the widgets & stuff to create my own webpages. Like my foray into video, I've used the internet to become a diarist. If I were to get a computer with a webcam, watch out! R. Stevie Moore 24/7.
PSF: Do you think the Internet has led to a second DIY era?
For me? Emphatically yes. For DIY in general? I haven't noticed. Everybody else in the "www.underground" continues to appear aiming for the mainstream, yes? All style, no content. Correct me if I'm wrong. Honestly, I firmly believe that what I'm now doing with my websites runs smoothly parallel with what I was doing 25 naive years ago. The exact same vision, whatever it may still be.
PSF: Do you think you're disabled by talent? I mean, would you be a rich man if you'd only specialised more into one area?
By all means. Modern talent from the underground has no inkling of a chance in today's market. To be such a versatile artist is suicide. Always was my downfall. It sure has made it harder to be dumb and play the music biz game. But, these days, the record companies are starting to tremble at the prospect of no longer being able to do things like they used to. Adventure is obsolete. This author has no clue. Burnt to a crisp.
PSF: Can you make a living out of it as it is right now?
No sir. A dying, crying shame.
PSF: Tell us something about WFMU .... do you still work for them?
They've got a long history as being a pioneering freeform college radio station with no formats, each DJ was in complete control of what they played. Uncertain of what their relevance is today. Don't listen that often even though they still play my music. I'm a proud alumnus. Have had no direct connection since the mid-'80s. Many pals, come & gone there. FMU, too, has had to adapt to the changing times.
PSF: What about your videotapes ... I never saw one ... could you tell us something about them?
Slapdash visual tomfoolery, intimately revealing soliloquies & rants, genre-jumping musical vignettes, decades of all of my friends, classic RSM songs lip-synced or performed, radio shows, historical footage, silly skits, art exhibits, low-quality editing, many live concert gigs, TV appearances, infamous kinfolk & guest stars, questionable redeeming social values, homemade uncontrolled mayhem.....(Just like the audiotapes, but for the eyes).
PSF: What do you consider to be your best work (tape .... album ..... song)
ĀPSF: C'mon R. Stevie, try harder! There must be some items that you like best ... how do you pick songs for your albums?
Honestly cannot rate preferences for my 30 years of music-making. Variety rules. Love the worst noise as much as the best melody. My 1988 album Teenage Spectacular is my most accessible, by normal standards. So be it. Yet, I'll also forever stand by my most wretched, hissy home demo innocence. Doesn't matter to compare. I simply can't. I'm proud of every note I've ever taped. Which may or may not hint at the answer to "how I pick songs for albums." No, they pick themselves. Automatic understanding.
PSF: Seems to me that the way you always let your listeners into your life is kinda analogue to the way people who have a webcam ... is this going to be the next step on your internet path .... where does this behaviour come from ... does it have to do with exhibitionism .... do you really share your whole life .... Is it all fact or is there some fiction?
Please rephrase the query. How could I ever confess the truth, when I am so innocently ignorant to that? Mets win! Giants lose! You want honesty or calculated iconoclasm? I expertly excel at hiding from loved ones, as well as spilling slimy guts onto all my art. Paradox? Or something different? Needle-nosed pliers notwithstanding, god steers me towards the prevention of carbonated beverages losing their fizz. What performer in the arts / entertainment is not half-exhibitionist / half-inhibited mysterioso?? Name me one, and I'll certainly play the local lottery. Showing off is what kids do. A severe sort of desperation, psychologists would claim. Got milk? On Ebay?
PSF: Where did your musical career start .... at what point did you first do your first typically RSM things?
Piano lessons 1961? First guitar 1965? School chorus 1966? First immature recordings 1967. First accomplished "songs" 1972. First hit 2001. Ah, youth. The only thing that matters. A bitter 20 year old is no match for a bitter 50 year old. With cream, no sugar. Retired.
PSF: Can you mention some of the people whom you have worked with ... who were really influential?
Influenza to me, or the Great Society?? Father Bob, Dave Gregory, Chet Atkins, Perry Como, Jerry Reed, the Manhattans, Connie Smith, Terry Burrows, Bill Anderson, Irwin Chusid, Pete Drake, uncle Harry Palmer, Earl Scruggs, et al. Get this: somebody once told me: John Lennon allegedly heard & had a favorable comment about, my 1975 Beatles instrumental tape. Ripley's believe it or don't. Sheesh, what kinda gossip-igniting question izzat? No, no. Nobody. Just me.
PSF: Did you ever have the feeling that you were part of a larger musical or cultural movement?
As if. Got a match?
PSF: What do you do apart from making music .... Do you ever have any free-time?
Bad news. Making music? Ha! Been there done that. I'm barely able to attend to filling RSM orders. Ill health has confined this old geezer to merely loitering in cyberspace: building webpages, playing in the e-mail sandbox, & mindlessly surfing the www for a cosmic answer. Poor little fool. Recent biggest rebellious accomplishment? Growing a free-flowing ZZ.Top beard! Time's running out, pal. Gonna seek a job as a hobo. Here's my resume. Can you read my pencil shavings? (cough) Goodnight sweetheart.
PSF: One last thing; did you ever go from C major to C minor in one of your songs?
162 times. I'll compile all of those progressions into some sort of "happy / sad" suite, each a quick edit, and....... send you a copy.
PSF: What's your favorite color?
PSF: Favorite movie?
PSF: Favorite favorite?
Present tense.
PSF: Any children?
Yes, 160 daughters & 2 sons. They're all in college, sitting on daddy's lap. Maybe that's why this interview is unusable, eh?
PSF: Should I call you "R" or "Steve" or "R. Stevie" or....
PSF: Could you sing for us?
Well that should give some insight on our hero. Check him out yourself on the RSM official page (including cassette-club): www.rsteviemoore.com Or go to RSM's own pages, a good starting point: www.angelfire.com/nj2/rsmkjo/index.html (beware! you might get lost here) Write him an email: email@example.com. But above all: BUY HIS MUSIC!!
Thanks to Richard M., Ubu Roi, Mickey D. & Bertie Brinta for feedback. If you have any comments, please mail me at firstname.lastname@example.com, check www.ozemail.com.au/~mack2/redbol/index.htm for my regular work.
Also see some of R. Stevie Moore's least favorite music
ĀAnd... an exhaustive discography
Plus... a later PSF article on R. Stevie
this page mirrored from http://www.furious.com/perfect/rsteviemoore.html


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Som jeg skrev for noen dager siden, har det blitt rullet opp en mulig Formel 1-skandale fra Renault. Hvor det hevdes at Nelson Piquet har blitt bedt om å med vilje krasje ut av Singapore Grand Prix i fjor for å gi Fernando Alonso en fordel. Fernando Alonso hadde bare kvalifisert seg til 15. startposisjon under kvalifiseringen og med at Nelson Piquet kræsjet ut rett etter at han hadde gjort unna sitt første depotstopp, var det rett og slett en gavepakke til Fernando Alonso. Fernando Alonso var plutselig først i feltet bak sikkerhetsbilen når alle de andre førerne valgte å stupe inn i depoet når sikkerhetsbilen kom ut. Det hadde også bevisst blitt valgt en spesiell sving for å sørge for at sikkerhetsbilen skulle måtte sendes ut, siden det ikke var noen tilgjengelig kraner i akkurat denne svingen. FIA har nå offentliggjort hele forklaringen til Nelson Piquet:
Full statement given by Nelsinho Piquet to the FIA regarding the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix:
I, Nelson Angelo Piquet, born July 25, 1985 in Heidelberg, Germany…say as follows:
1. Except as otherwise stated, the facts and statements contained in this Statement are based on facts and matters within my knowledge. I believe such facts and statements contained in this Statement to be true and correct. Where any facts or statements are not within my own knowledge, they are true to the best of my knowledge and belief and, where appropriate, I indicate the source of that knowledge and belief.
2. I make this Statement voluntarily to the FIA and for the purposes of allowing the FIA to exercise its supervisory and regulatory functions with regard to the FIA Formula One World Championship.
3. I am aware that there is a duty upon all participants in the FIA Formula One World Championship and all Super Licence holders to ensure the fairness and legitimacy of the Championship and I am aware that serious consequences could follow if I were to provide the FIA with any false or misleading statement.
4. I understand that my complete statement has been recorded on audio tape and that a full transcript of my audio recording will be made available to me and the FIA. The present document constitutes a summary of the main points made during my full oral statement.
5. I wish to bring the following facts to the FIA's attention.
6. During the Formula One Grand Prix of Singapore, held on 28 September 2008 and counting towards the 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship, I was asked by Mr. Flavio Briatore, who is both my manager and the Team Principal of the ING Renault F1 Team, and by Mr. Pat Symonds, the Technical Director of the Renault F1 Team, to deliberately crash my car in order to positively influence the performance of the ING Renault F1 Team at the event in question. I agreed to this proposal and caused my car to hit a wall and crash during lap thirteen/fourteen of the race.
7. The proposal to deliberately cause an accident was made to me shortly before the race took place, when I was summoned by Mr. Briatore and Mr. Symonds in Mr. Briatore's office. Mr. Symonds, in the presence of Mr. Briatore, asked me if I would be willing to sacrifice my race for the team by «causing a safety car». Every F1 race driver knows that the safety car is deployed on a track when there is an accident which leads to the track being blocked either by debris or a stationary car, and where it is difficult to recover a damaged car, as was the case here.
8. At the time of this conversation I was in a very fragile and emotional state of mind. This state of mind was brought about by intense stress due to the fact that Mr. Briatore had refused to inform me of whether or not my driver's contract would be renewed for the next racing year (2009), as is customarily the case in the middle of the year (around July or August). Instead, Mr. Briatore repeatedly requested me to sign an «option», which meant that I was not allowed to negotiate with any other teams in the meantime. He would repeatedly put pressure on me to prolong the option I had signed, and would regularly summon me into his office to discuss these renewals, even on racing days – a moment which should be a moment of concentration and relaxation before the race. This stress was accentuated by the fact that during the Formula One Grand Prix of Singapore I had qualified sixteenth on the grid, so I was very insecure about my future at the Renault team. When I was asked to crash my car and cause a safety car incident in order to help the team, I accepted because I hoped that it could improve my position within the team at this critical time in the race season. At no point was I told by anyone that by agreeing to cause an incident, I would be guaranteed a renewal of my contract or any other advantage. However, in the context, I thought that it would be helpful in achieving this goal. I therefore agreed to cause the incident.
9. After the meeting with Mr. Symonds and Mr. Briatore, Mr. Symonds took me aside to a quiet corner and, using a map, pointed me to the exact corner of the track where I should crash. This corner was selected because the specific location of the track did not have any cranes that would allow a damaged car to be swiftly lifted off the track, nor did it have any side entrances to the track, which would allow a Safety Marshall to quickly move the damaged car away from the track. Therefore, it was felt that a crash in this specific position would be nearly certain to cause an obstruction on the track which would thus necessitate the deployment of a safety car in order to allow the track to be cleared and to ensure the safe continuation of the race.
10. Mr. Symonds also told me which exact lap to cause the incident upon, so that a strategy could deployed for my team-mate Mr. Fernando Alonso to refuel at the pit shortly before the deployment of the safety car, which he indeed did during lap twelve. The key to this strategy resided in the fact that the near-knowledge that the safety car would be deployed in lap thirteen/fourteen allowed the Team to start Mr. Alonso's car with an aggressive fuel strategy using a light car containing enough fuel to arrive at lap twelve, but not much more. This would allow Mr. Alonso to overtake as many (heavier) cars as possible, knowing that those cars would have difficulty catching up with him later in the race due to the later deployment of the safety car. This strategy was successful and Mr. Alonso won the 2008 Formula One Grand Prix of Singapore.
11. During these discussions, no mention was made of any concerns with respect to the security implications of this strategy, either for myself, the public or other drivers. The only comment made in this context was one by Mr. Pat Symonds who warned me to «be careful», which I took to mean that I should not injure myself.
12. I intentionally caused the crash by letting go of control of the car just before the relevant corner. In order to make sure I would cause the incident during the correct lap, I asked my team several times via the radio to confirm the lap number, which I would not normally do. I was not injured during the accident, nor was anyone else.
13. After the discussions with Mr. Briatore and Mr. Symonds discussed above, the 'accident strategy' was never discussed again with either of them. Mr. Briatore discreetly said «thank you» after the end of the race, without mentioning anything further. I do not know if anyone else was aware of this strategy at the start of the race.
14. After the race I informed Mr. Felipe Vargas, a family friend and advisor, of the fact that the incident had been deliberate. Mr. Vargas further infirmed my father, Mr. Nelson Piquet, some time later.
15. After the race several journalists asked questions about the accident and asked me whether I had caused it on purpose, because they felt it was 'suspicious'.
16. In my own team, the engineer of my car questioned the nature of the incident because he found it unusual, and I replied that I had lost control of the car. I believe that a clever engineer would notice from the car's telemetry that I caused the incident on purpose as I continued accelerating , whereas a «normal» reaction would be to brake as soon as possible.
Statement of Truth
I believe and swear that the facts set out in this statement are true.
This statement was made at the FIA Headquarters in Paris on 30 July 2009 in presence of Mr. Alan Donnelly (FIA Chairman of the Stewards), Mr. Martin Smith and Mr. Jacob Marsh (both of investigations firm Quest, retained by the FIA to assist with its investigation). Notes were taken by Ms. Dondnique Costesec (Sidley Austin LLP).
Nelson Piquet Jr.
Statement courtesy of F1SA
Hvor skal egentlig dette ende? Det blir (unødvendig) spennende å følge utviklingen av denne saken fremover. Men det er ihvertfall bare Flavio Briatore og Pat Symonds som er i søkelyset til FIA, ikke Fernando Alonso. Renault på sin side har i dag saksøkt Nelson Piquet junior og Nelson Piquet senior for det de mener er falske anklager.


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It's kind of starting to be a joke, this copy and paste thing. The latest promising-looking implementation, CopierciN (for jailbreak only via Cydia), acts as a middle man, importing text messages, your most recent emails, or your notes into a standard text editor, where you can then select what you want to "copy" and then "paste" that text into a new message or note (in their native apps). And in a new twist, CopierciN was written as a first project by someone who just taught himself how to program in Objective C. So now students are doing your dirty work and besting you, Apple-'bout time for you to jump in this ring, no? Read more here, and check it out (in early, rough beta form) via Cydia. [CopierciN]
Taylor Lorenz Talks "Extremely Online"


text:
Hi there!
It is time for a new challenge at the wonderful
The theme is Summer.
And here is my card.
The image is from the I belive in Unicorn Collection 2017,
and is called Tiara Tilda.
She has such a beautiful hair,
which I have put some Liquid Pearls in.
I have coloured the image with Distress Ink, re-inkers and Markers.
I use The Langton watercolour paper to stamp on,
and I stamp with a Memento ink pad,
rich cocoa.
I have added Stickles - Star Dust on to the tiara
which is falling from her head :)
The shape of the card is made with a GoKreate die.
The circle dies for the image is from Spellbinder.
And all other dies used are from Magnolia.
The pattern papers are from Maja Design.
Now some details.
The text on the tags follows if you buy the Tiara Tilda.
Thank you so much for visiting my blog!
Please have a visit to the AAM Challenge blog
to be inspired by my very talented team mates!
Hope to see your card there:)
I wish you a lovely Monday.
With love,


text:
Things You May Not Know About Loneliness
But for other people, loneliness is a way of life, one that may stem not from the number of people around them but from a lack of connection with others. And, research has showed, chronic loneliness can have adverse consequences for your health.
Scientists are still examining the link between mental and physical health and how loneliness affects our bodies. But you may not know about some of their findings over the years.
It may affect your brain in a way similar to physical pain
As CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta writes in a column for O Magazine regarding a 2003 study:
"A remarkable study led by Naomi Eisenberger, an associate professor of social psychology at UCLA, found that being excluded -- which can push you to the social perimeter and, as a result, cause feelings of loneliness -- triggered activity in some of the same regions of the brain that register physical pain.
"From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense; our prehistoric ancestors relied on social groups not just for companionship, but for survival. Staying close to the tribe brought access to shelter, food, and protection. Separation from the group, on the other hand, meant danger.
"Today when we feel left out, our bodies may sense a threat to survival, and some of the same pain signals that would engage if we were in real physical danger are flipped on. In the chronically lonely, levels of the stress hormone cortisol shoot up higher in the morning than in more socially connected people and never fully subside at night."
It can keep you from getting a good night's sleep
People who feel lonely tend to experience more nighttime sleep disruptions than those who don't, a small 2011 study found.
Researchers found that the link between sleep disruptions and loneliness persisted even after marital status and family size were taken into account, suggesting that loneliness depends on how people perceive their social situation rather than the situation itself.
The 95 participants in the study all had strong social connections and were part of a close-knit, rural South Dakota community. Yet, researchers found, even small differences in their degrees of loneliness were reflected in their sleep.
It can increase your risk for dementia
In a 2012 study of nearly 2,200 older adults living in Amsterdam, researchers found that participants who reported feeling lonely -- regardless of the number of friends and family surrounding them -- were more likely to experience dementia than those who lived alone.
Study participants were ages 65 to 86 did not show signs of dementia and did not live in institutions such as nursing homes. About half lived alone, and 20% reported feeling lonely. Nearly two-thirds were women.
After adjusting for factors like age, the researchers found that feeling lonely raised the risk of dementia by 64%. But, they cautioned, that does not prove that loneliness causes dementia and noted that the opposite could be true as well, because dementia and its accompanying mood changes could contribute to some of the social withdrawal of loneliness.
It may contribute to premature death
Two other 2012 studies found that living alone -- or just feeling lonely -- may increase a person's risk of early death.
One study followed nearly 45,000 people ages 45 and up who either had heart disease or were at high risk for it. Those living alone, the study found, were more likely to die from heart attacks, strokes or other complications over a four-year period than those living with family or friends or in some other communal arrangement.
A second study focused on those 60 and older and found that men and women were 45% more likely to die during the study period (six years) if they reported feeling lonely, isolated or left out. But those who reported loneliness -- 43% of the study population -- weren't necessarily living alone. Researchers said the link between lonely feelings and health problems held even after living situation, depression and other factors were taken into account.
It may break your heart (literally)
People who report being chronically lonely may have an overexpression of genes connected to cells that produce an inflammatory response to tissue damage, according to a 2011 study of 93 adults.
Although that inflammatory response may be good in the short term, long-term inflammation can lead to heart disease and cancer.
The study found only a correlation between gene expression and loneliness, so it's not certain that one can cause the other. However, study co-author Steven Cole suggested that anti-inflammatory drugs may be helpful for people who can't shake lonely feelings.
- Credit: Ashley Hayes/CNN
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Smash has been sent packing. The musical drama will finish its season on Saturday nights. While the peacock network hasn't said that the show's been cancelled, there's no way they're bringing it back for a third season.
Smash follows a cast and production team in New York as they try to mount a new Broadway musical. This season, the ensemble cast includes Debra Messing, Christian Borle, Katharine McPhee, Jack Davenport, Megan Hilty, Anjelica Huston, Leslie Odom Jr., Jeremy Jordan, Krysta Rodriguez, and Andy Mientus.
Last season, Smash was a moderate success for NBC, thanks in part to the strong lead-in support from The Voice. It averaged a 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 6.74 million total viewers.
This season, Smash has really suffered without the reality competition's support. The six episodes that have aired thus far have averaged a mere 1.0 in the demo with 3.48 million.
Other than Fashion Star on Friday nights, Smash is currently NBC's lowest-rated series.
While there's no way NBC will be making a third season, there is positivenews. NBC appears to be commited to letting the remaining 11 episodes air. Smash will start running on Saturday nights on April 6th, at 9pm.
What do you think? Are you sad about Smash's fate? Do you like the show this season?


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AD FS 2.0 Design Guide
Applies To: Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0
You can use AD FS 2.0 in a federation services provider role to seamlessly authenticate your users to any Web-based services or applications that reside in a resource partner organization, without the need for administrators to create or maintain external trusts or forest trusts between the networks of both organizations and without the need for the users to log on a second time. The process of authenticating to one network while accessing resources in another network—without the burden of repeated logon actions by users—is known as single sign-on (SSO).
For more information about how AD FS 2.0 works and how to set up AD FS 2.0 in a test lab, see the following resources:
You can find additional AD FS 2.0 resource links at the AD FS 2.0 Content Map page on the Microsoft TechNet Wiki. This page is managed by members of the AD FS 2.0 Community and is monitored on a regular basis by the AD FS Product Team.
About this guide
This guide provides recommendations to help you plan a new deployment of AD FS 2.0, based on the requirements of your organization (also referred to in this guide as deployment goals) and the particular design that you want to create. This guide is intended for use by an infrastructure specialist or system architect. It highlights your main decision points as you plan your AD FS 2.0 deployment. Before you read this guide, you should have a good understanding of how AD FS 2.0 works on a functional level. You should also have a good understanding of the organizational requirements that will be reflected in your AD FS 2.0 design.
This guide describes a set of deployment goals that are based on three primary AD FS 2.0 designs, and it helps you decide the most appropriate design for your environment. You can use these deployment goals to form one of the following comprehensive AD FS 2.0 designs or a custom design that meets the needs of your environment:
Federated Web SSO to support business-to-business (B2B) scenarios and to support collaboration between business units with independent forests
Web SSO to support customer access to applications in business-to-consumer (B2C) scenarios
For each design, you will find guidelines for gathering the required data about your environment. You can then use these guidelines to plan and design your AD FS 2.0 deployment. After you read this guide and finish gathering, documenting, and mapping your organization's requirements, you will have the information necessary to begin deploying AD FS 2.0 using the guidance in the AD FS 2.0 Deployment Guide.
In this guide
Author: Nick Pierson
Technical Reviewers: Matt Steele, Lu Zhao (Migration/Topologies), Jen Field (Capacity Planning/Topologies), Jan Alexander (Claims Engine/Pipeline/Language), Krish Shenoy (Planning Federation Servers and Federation Server Proxies)
Editor: Jim Becker


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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — State health officials say the man hospitalized in Indiana with the first U.S. case of a mysterious virus that has sickened hundreds in the Middle East is improving.
The Indiana Department of Health says in a statement late Saturday that the patient remains at Community Hospital in Munster in good condition and is "improving each day."
The statement also says that as of Saturday, no other cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, have been identified. Representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived at the hospital Saturday morning.
The man fell ill with MERS after flying to the U.S. late last week from Saudi Arabia.


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MesoMap Live Weather Balkans (PWS and metars)
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