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JOLIET, Ill., and FONTANA, Calif. -- Like nearly everyone else in Joliet without good job prospects, Uylonda Dickerson eventually found herself at the warehouses looking for work.
"I just needed a job," the 38-year-old single mother says.
Dickerson came to the right place. Over the past decade and a half, Joliet and its Will County environs southwest of Chicago have grown into one of the world's largest inland ports, a major hub for dry goods destined for retail stores throughout the Midwest and beyond. With all the new distribution centers have come thousands of jobs at "logistics" companies -- firms that specialize in moving goods for retailers and manufacturers. Many of these jobs are filled by Joliet's African Americans, like Dickerson, and immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.
But many bottom-rung workers like Dickerson don't work for the big corporations whose products are in the warehouses, or even the logistics companies that run them. They go to work for labor agencies that supply workers like Dickerson. Last year, she found work as a temp through one of the myriad staffing agencies that serve big-box retailers and their contractors. Thanks largely to the warehousing boom, Will County has developed one of the highest concentrations of temp agencies in the Midwest.
Dickerson, grateful to have even a temp job, was taken on as a "lumper" -- someone who schleps boxes to and from trailers all day long. As unglamorous as her duties were, Dickerson became an essential cog in one of the most sophisticated machines in modern commerce -- the Walmart supply chain. Walmart, the world's largest private-sector employer, had contracted a company called Schneider Logistics to operate the warehouse. And Schneider, in turn, had its own contracts with staffing companies that supplied workers.
The experience would change the way Dickerson saw the retail industry -- particularly during the frenetic run-up to the holidays, when workers are under tremendous pressure to get products out the door and into stores.
"I don't think people know what the people in those warehouses have to go through to get them their stuff in those stores," Dickerson says. "If you don't work in a warehouse, you don't know."
Dickerson quickly discovered that the work wasn't easy, if there was any work at all. Each morning she showed up at her warehouse, she wasn't sure whether she'd be assigned a trailer and earn a day's pay. She says there were days that she and many temps were told simply to go home, without pay, since there wasn't as much product to unload as expected. Sometimes Dickerson was told they didn't have any trailers light enough for a woman, she says.
But on most days the warehouse teemed with lumpers, many of them wearing different colored t-shirts to signify the different agencies they worked for. Dickerson herself would work for two different labor providers within the same warehouse in a little more than a year.
The difficulty of a lumper's day often went according to chance. A lucky lumper might be assigned a container filled with boxes of Kleenex or stuffed animals, while an unlucky lumper might pull a container filled with kiddie swimming pools or 200-pound trampolines. For the heaviest lifts, Dickerson would be assigned a partner, and the two would split the pay for the trailer, moving the massive boxes onto pallets by hand.
The job was fast-paced and stressful. Dickerson says supervisors would walk along the warehouse's bay doors, marking the workers' progress over time. The supervisors, Dickerson and other workers say, often told them to speed it up if they wanted to be invited back. Many of the workers were temps with no job security and no recourse. And the local unemployment rate, then around 11 percent, promised a long line of potential replacements.
"By the end of the day, your body hurts so bad," says Dickerson, who was among a small minority of females working as lumpers at the warehouse. "You tell them you can't do it the next day, ... they'll tell you, 'We've got four more people waiting for your job.'"
For a while, Dickerson worked according to "piece rate" -- she was paid not by the hour but by the trailer -- a stressful pay scheme meant to encourage her and her colleagues to work faster and faster, and one that the labor movement worked hard to abolish in many industries in the 20th century. Each paycheck was different than the last, and most of them were disappointingly low, she says. In her year at the warehouse, Dickerson says she never had health benefits, sick days or vacation days. If she didn't unload containers, she didn't get paid.
"It all depends on how fast you work," she says. "It's like a race. You're racing to get done with the trailer so you can get another one. Otherwise, you won't get enough money."
The warehouse floor wasn't a very welcoming place for a woman, Dickerson says. As one of the relatively few female lumpers, she says she was often fending off crude overtures from male co-workers. And then there were the bathroom issues. While it was piece rate when it benefited the boss, the clock came on for break time. Each day Dickerson had two 15-minute personal breaks in addition to her lunch, but the warehouse was so sprawling -- it covered ground equal to several football fields -- that it could take her five minutes to walk each way to get some air or use the bathroom, leaving her with only five minutes of personal time.
"When I used to go to the bathroom, I literally had somebody counting down the minutes," Dickerson says.
It was particularly difficult when she was having her period and felt she couldn't use the restroom when she needed to. Eventually, she was being reprimanded for too many breaks, she says. Worried about losing her job, she says she tried so hard to avoid using the bathroom that she eventually developed a bladder infection.
Physically and emotionally drained, Dickerson stopped showing up at the warehouse earlier this year.
"My body still is not the same," she says. "I still have aches and I still have pains. I have migraines because of the stress I went through working at that place."
Dickerson says she's now living in a house where the electricity and water have been shut off, sharing a cell phone with some of her neighbors. She's on government-sponsored health care, just as she was while working at the warehouse, and she now relies on food stamps to get by.
The one place she refuses to take her food stamps is Walmart.
* * * * *
Walmart may have been the end beneficiary of Dickerson's sweat, but the big-box retailer wasn't directly responsible for her low pay or her aching body. That's one of the many benefits to an employment arrangement based on outsourcing and subcontracting: The corporation at the top indemnifies itself from any unpleasantness at the bottom, thanks to the smaller corporate players in the middle. Many American companies have woken up to this fact, with broad implications for the future of blue-collar work.
"It seems to be spreading like wildfire," Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of American labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says of such outsourcing, particularly as it relates to temp workers like Dickerson. "All of these companies, wherever they possibly can, they want to create a workforce that doesn't work for them. The question is, Why? What is the incentive?"
"They're smart," he says. "They run the numbers."
Earlier this year, temporary workers at a Pennsylvania plant packing Hershey products staged a mass walkout over what they described as abusive working conditions. The workers, who were students from Asia and Eastern Europe here on J-1 guest visas for the summer, said they were required to lift 50-pound boxes throughout the day and were threatened with deportation if they couldn't keep up. Although they packed Hershey goods, the students were employed by a staffing company twice removed from Hershey, which had more than $5 billion in revenues last year. Similar outsourcing has spread to much of the American food-packing industry.
But such sub-contracting isn't contained to warehouses and plants. In an effort to cut costs, even hotels have started quietly contracting out a considerable chunk of their back-of-the-house workforce to labor agencies. Hyatt, for example, has replaced many of its housekeepers with cheaper temp workers. Hyatt's direct hires now work alongside many lesser-paid agency workers, some of whom work on a temporary basis for years on end, tracking the minimum wage.
Such subcontracting enables corporations to essentially take workers off their books, foisting the traditional responsibilities that go with being an employer -- paying a reasonable wage, offering health benefits, providing a pension or retirement plan, chipping into workers' compensation coverage -- conveniently onto someone else. Workers like Dickerson, of course, aren't accounted for when Walmart touts that more than half of its workforce receives health coverage.
Infographic by Chris Spurlock.
As manufacturing jobs continue to head overseas, Americans need new sectors that can provide good, middle-class work for millions of people. Driven as it is by the consumer economy, the retail supply chain should be one of those sectors. But plenty of workers who are lucky enough to have jobs in the industry find themselves earning poverty wages. And while workers get squeezed in the name of lower prices, the overall benefits to consumers may be illusory. By many measures, the middle class is shrinking -- and not just because of the Great Recession. There are simply fewer jobs that pay good wages. More than 46 million Americans -- roughly one in six -- are now living in poverty, the highest number ever recorded by the Census Bureau. Between 2001 and 2007, as the economy boomed, poverty expanded among working-age people for the first time ever during a period of growth. Workers on the whole made less at the end of the boom than they did at the beginning.
In the case of the warehouse industry, where permanent temps are now common, many workers performing the most difficult jobs don't even enjoy the status of basic employees. They work at the pleasure of the agencies employing them. For many of them, getting hurt or slowing down means the end of their gig with no parting compensation -- similar to the arrangement detailed in a devastating expose of an Amazon warehouse by the Pennsylvania Morning Call in September.
"We have the re-industrialization of America in this distribution nexus," says Lichtenstein. "It's a booming sector of our economy. The kind of work they do is factory labor, and they should be earning [good wages] with benefits. But instead, it's insecure, and it's low-wage.
"This is the blue-collar working class that should be replacing the steel worker," he says.
* * * * *
Until a year ago, Debora Terkelson worked in the Costco warehouse near Mira Loma, Calif. She ran one of the cigarette machines, handling boxes of smokes, until she threw her back out moving a heavy load in April 2010, she says. She worked a few months of light duty but eventually even that proved too painful. No longer able to work, she's now collecting workers' compensation.
"I don't think I'll ever be able to lift again," says Terkelson, 48. "Just doing my laundry each day is a new adventure in pain."
Her life-altering injury notwithstanding, Terkelson had it pretty good by warehouse standards, and in many ways she's lucky to be collecting workers' comp benefits. She says the Costco distribution center is one of the good players in the Inland Empire, an area of Southern California that encompasses San Bernardino and Riverside counties and is now home to one of the largest warehouse clusters in the world.
Costco's well-earned reputation for treating its in-store employees well carries over to its warehouse. The Costco warehouse does not rely on temp workers. It hires employees directly, it pays pretty well and it has a safety representative and even stretching classes. Despite all that, the company still manages to provide some of the lowest prices available to consumers.
"We tend to not outsource even if we could save money by doing it," says Richard Galanti, Costco's chief financial officer. "We recognize it might cost more but we think it's the right thing to do. ... Everyone in the building feels like they're employed."
That attitude makes Costco an outlier in the area, Terkelson says. Her son worked in a nearby shoe warehouse for a temp agency. He came home exhausted each day, with little to show for it, though she guesses the agency made pretty good money off of his work. "They hire them, and as soon as they don't need them, they get rid of them," she says. "They don't care. They treat them like a slave. I'm sorry."
Despite the economic downturn, the Inland Empire is still in the midst of a long-term warehousing boom. Some of the first arrived in the 1990s, when retailers and developers took notice of the area's relatively affordable land and lax regulatory atmosphere. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and Lowe's all picked up warehouse space in the area. They continue to sprout up today, creeping further eastward, some of them with footprints covering more than a million square feet.
As in Joliet, locals and politicians in Southern California have hoped warehouse work might replace the decent blue-collar jobs that disappeared with much of the American manufacturing sector in the late decades of the last century. Even if we no longer manufacture much in America, we will always need workers to handle all the clothing, electronics, furniture and toys that come here from Asia. And with its proximity to the ports in and around Los Angeles, where the cheap imports from China and elsewhere tend to land, the Inland Empire seemed poised as well as anyone to net a lot of working-class jobs.
There's no doubt that retailers and logistics companies have benefited from the Inland Empire's warehouse boom. The question is whether blue-collar workers have benefited in kind.
John Husing says they have. An economist who's consulted to local governments dealing with the logistics industry, Husing says, "for blue collar workers, the decline in manufacturing shut off their access through that sector to the middle class. In Southern California in particular, logistics has become an alternative to get to the same place."
Others are less boosterish, including Juan De Lara, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California who's studied the logistics industry in the region. "It's been good to many workers who get paid decent wages for higher-skilled jobs as direct employees," says De Lara. "But it's also been pretty terrible for the workers that work for these temporary agencies."
There are now more than 125,000 direct-hire, full-time jobs in the Inland Empire's logistics industry. Available data makes it difficult to know just how many temp jobs there. Husing doubts it's more than 10,000. Others believe it's several times that number -- perhaps even half of all jobs in logistics, according to Warehouse Workers United, a union-backed group that now advocates on behalf of the area's lowest-paid warehouse workers. (Husing dismisses the group's numbers: "The people who throw that stuff around are ideologues. They don't want that sector to survive because they consider it to be dirty.")
The group says the number of temp jobs in the region has skyrocketed in the last two decades, thanks largely to the explosion in the number of warehouses. The industry relies so heavily on temp work that many temp agencies actually have offices inside the warehouses themselves.
Sheheryar Kaoosji, an organizer with Warehouse Workers United, says a decade ago, the ratio of direct hires to temps was 80 percent to 20 in many warehouses.
"Now, it's the opposite. And it's accelerated with the [economic] crash," Kaoosji says. "The way that these guys work -- the way a Walmart operates -- every year they're going to push costs down on each of their contractors. Every year, they're coming back, 'This is going to cost less.' Every year you do that, it's going to have an effect. The conditions are going to go down.
"At this point, the wages in some of the facilities have gone down below the federal and state minimums," he says.
* * * * *
With most retailers getting the same products from the same place -- i.e., Asia -- the supply chain has become one of the few arenas where big-box chains can compete. This competition has led to a tremendous pressure to move goods as quickly as possible. Even the word "warehouse" itself has become something of a misnomer; the idea is no longer to house goods but to keep them moving, from port to rail to tractor-trailer to store display. That's why many warehouses have morphed into what's called a "cross dock": the products come in one side of the warehouse and almost immediately go out the other, barely touching the ground.
Despite modern automation, most warehouses still require bodies, and the pressure to move goods faster and faster often falls on the ones at the bottom. It doesn't help that many of the workers toiling inside the Inland Empire's distribution centers are believed to be undocumented workers from Mexico -- a workforce that's generally grateful for whatever pay it can get and far less likely than American citizens to report workplace abuses, for fear of deportation.
There's plenty of opportunity for exploitation. According to charges filed by the California labor department this fall, a company operating in a warehouse handling Walmart goods was allegedly breaking labor law by not providing workers with legitimate earnings statements. Officials allege most of the lumpers were being paid on a piece rate plan that many of them couldn't understand, in what officials have described as a "concerted effort" to cheat the workers out of their wages. The state issued more than $1 million in fines.
The two labor suppliers cited, Tennessee-based Impact Logistics and North Carolina-based Premier Warehousing, apparently have contracts with Schneider, which, in turn, has a contract with Walmart. Neither Schneider nor Walmart has been accused of any wrongdoing, precisely the outcome the contractor arrangement facilitates.
Julie Su, the California labor commissioner, told HuffPost at the time that the layers of outsourcing can make it nearly impossible to hold big players accountable -- a huge collateral benefit in addition to any cost-cutting that goes with subcontracting. "Warehouses are one example of the ever-increasing contracting out of labor," Su said. "It's difficult for enforcement, and in many instances it's a deliberate effort to avoid compliance."
Six lumpers at the warehouse filed a class-action lawsuit on the heels of the state investigation. Everardo Carrillo and his co-workers say they've been moving Walmart goods in a warehouse where the temperature regularly climbs to over 90 degrees, walking in and out of 53-foot-long steel containers that get even hotter baking in the Southern California sun. After working for a set hourly wage, the workers claim that a year and a half ago they were switched to a piece-rate pay plan -- an arrangement largely out of a bygone era. Their bosses told them they would earn "much more money" under the new scheme, which paid them according to the container, but their earnings actually fell, according to the lawsuit.
The workers claim it was never made clear how their pay was supposed to break down -- an allegation apparently bolstered by the state's investigation. They claim that when they complained about their confusing paychecks, their supervisors responded by sending them home without pay or refusing to give them work the following day. The lumpers were working on a temp basis. According to the lawsuit, the majority of workers were direct hires as recently as 2006; now, three out of every four workers are temps.
When asked if a Schneider executive could be interviewed about allegations from temp workers in its warehouses, a spokesperson sent HuffPost a statement, saying its labor suppliers are "separate corporate entities": "The only legal avenue which Schneider has to enforce their compliance would be to terminate the contract with these vendors. We have no plans to terminate the contracts with our vendors; our expectation is that they will comply with all applicable statutes, regulations and orders."
Walmart, whose products the workers were handling, also kept an arm's length from the charges. When HuffPost reported on the state investigation and lawsuit in October, a Walmart spokesman said the retailer is "not involved in this matter." When a similar lawsuit was filed in April in Illinois -- again, naming low-level companies contracted to move Walmart products -- the company asserted its distance from the allegations then as well, a spokesman noting that "the facility isn't operated by Walmart nor are the people who work in it employed by Walmart."
In an interview, Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman declines to say how much of Walmart's logistics work is outsourced, but he says the company has 147 distribution centers across the country, the majority of them owned and operated by Walmart itself. Indeed, the jobs at Walmart's smaller, more regional distribution centers are known to be good, highly coveted jobs. When asked why the company would outsource the work at some of its largest and most important facilities, Fogleman says there are times when a third-party can simply do it better, faster and cheaper.
"Since the early days of our company, the ability to move products quickly and efficiently has really been a driver for our success," Fogleman says. "We're looking for every opportunity to improve our efficiencies. Sometimes that means doing it ourselves; sometimes we're using partners to achieve that. ... We're an advocate for our customers. We're doing everything we can to provide them with low prices." As for the allegations from contracted workers in the Inland Empire and elsewhere, Fogleman says, "We have serious concerns when our contractors or sub-contractors are cited for those types of violations. We hold all of our contractors to the highest standards."
A promotional video for Impact Logistics, a company recently fined by the California labor department.
Ana Sanchez, a 46-year-old from Mexico, says immigrants like her in the Inland Empire inevitably find themselves looking for work at the warehouses. In 2007, Sanchez herself took a job through a labor agency wrapping and labeling boxes on pallets inside a warehouse she says moved products for Sears and K-Mart, among others. Sanchez was surprised to learn that the work there was as strenuous as it was back in Mexico.
She started at $6.75 an hour and says her wage climbed to more than $8 over time, though it was outstripped by a growing workload. Sanchez' gig required carrying a roll of shrink wrap that, when full, weighed around 50 pounds, and slapping labels on boxes at a dizzying pace; she went through between 5,000 and 8,000 labels on a typical day, she says.
"I would often get the heaviest loads of work because I was so fast," Sanchez says. "Whenever there was a rush order they would call on me because I was two rolls quicker than the other girls."
The job also required a lot of stooping over in tight spaces. One day in 2009, Sanchez threw out her back while working on a rush order. She hoped to be put on light duty or trained for a new, less intensive job, but she says she was being passed back and forth between the company that ran the warehouse and the labor company that she technically worked for. Soon she was fired for allegedly botching an order, she says.
"When you go in to work for a warehouse you give it your all," she says. "When you get hurt, they treat you as though it doesn't matter."
Sanchez hasn't been able to do manual labor for two years. So what does she do for money?
"I have a lot of friends and relatives who place orders for me to cook tamales," she says with a shrug.
To some people in the Inland Empire, the warehouses have come to represent a dubious bargain. Some good salaries have certainly come with the logistics industry; a directly hired forklift operator, for instance, can expect to make a decent living. But there weren't supposed to be so many temporary positions with measly wages and no benefits. In fact, critics say that temp salaries weren't even figured into the economic projections trotted out by industry boosters and developers who sold the public on the logistics industry. What they did include were the theoretical salaries of unionized warehouse workers and even airplane pilots.
The Inland Empire's thousands of warehouse jobs may also have come at a cost to public health. What used to be dairy fields and vineyards two decades ago are now warehouse tracts. Buffeted by mountains to the north and east, and absorbing winds coming from Los Angeles to the west, the Inland Empire has a geological gift for trapping particulate pollution. The area boasted some of the worst air in the country before the logistics boom; residents say it's now even worse.
Mira Loma Village, a community of 101 stucco townhouses populated mostly by Latino families, has been hemmed in by warehouses on all sides, with several thousand trucks rolling past the community each day. According to a study done by researchers at the University of Southern California, kids in Mira Loma have abnormally weak lung capacity and slow lung growth. And more warehouses are on their way.
"I see it. I smell it. I can feel it," says Laura Borrayo, 42, a Mira Loma resident whose backyard is often coated in a layer of soot from the truck traffic. She says some of the neighborhood children have developed asthma due to the bad air.
Citing some of the worst diesel pollution in the country, Mira Loma residents have filed a lawsuit to stop the latest logistics project -- an additional 24 warehouses, covering 1.4 million square feet and expected to bring another 1,500 trucks per day, according to the L.A. Times. Residents say the project will occupy what has become the last shred of their buffer zone against the warehouses, taking away their view of the mountains in the process. The lawsuit has put the project on hold for the moment.
Among the residents in Mira Loma Village opposed to more warehouses is Terkelson, the Costco warehouse employee.
"I've lived in this area for years. When I was a kid, it was beautiful out here," Terkelson says. "But everything went downhill. People don't even realize what they're breathing. The soot, it's nasty. I don't wash my car no more, because it doesn't do no good."
Residents haven't had much luck fighting warehouses in the past, having been cast as opponents of much-needed jobs. Riverside County has an unemployment rate hovering around 14 percent. Penny Newman, director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, which filed the Mira Loma lawsuit, says the kinds of jobs brought by the warehouses aren't worth the costs.
"There was a lot of fanfare about goods movement being the economic engine of the future," says Newman. "We've discovered that these are not the kinds of jobs anyone should have under the conditions they're facing. ... They're temp jobs and they're low-paying and the conditions are bad."
"The money is made by others," Newman says.
* * * * *
For a lot of the goods that enter the U.S. through the Inland Empire, the next stop is the greater Joliet area, among the largest rail hubs in the country. Within a day's drive of two-thirds of the country, Joliet itself is now home to not one but two massive "intermodal terminals" -- the two modes being rail and truck -- receiving freight from the West Coast that's then hauled to the area's warehouses and, later, to stores across the U.S.
For one former Teamster who found himself unemployed last year, the growth of the logistics industry in Will County looked like his ticket back into the middle class. Last year this Joliet native, who's in his 50's, responded to an ad in the local paper; a labor agency was bringing on workers to move goods for a major retailer. The firm promises to save its clients on labor costs while simultaneously boosting worker efficiency. (Due to ongoing litigation, neither the worker nor the company will be identified.)
Demonstrating just how booming the logistics industry is in Joliet, the man says the firm was actually sending vehicles out into the community as part of a mobile hiring effort, a bit of proactive recruitment that's hard to find in this economy. He was quickly hired, probably due to his past experience, and to what he pitched as his greatest strength: "I don't miss days."
The fact that this man found himself working as a warehouse temp speaks to his diminished opportunities. He'd been a Teamster for 12 years, driving a truck for a bread company that was eventually shut down, and then for a waste-management company that was relocated to the other side of Chicago, making the commute untenable. It was the kind of good living that's now hard to find. Aside from whatever highly desired jobs remain at the area's lingering refineries, he sees little work outside of the area's new warehouses.
"That's all that's out here," he says.
His trucking experience landed him a pretty cherry gig at the warehouse. He worked primarily as a "spotter," pulling loaded trucks from the bay doors and parking them for the drivers who would take them away to other, smaller distribution centers. He was paid $12 per hour to start, about a buck more than most other new hires, he says. Though he was merely a temp without job security, he considered himself pretty lucky.
"I kind of liked the job," he says. "It wasn't a bad job."
But about six months in, he says he started to understand how everything worked by design. He was shocked by the warehouse's turnover rate, as new workers constantly came and went, often leaving under bad terms. He guesses the average worker lasted three months, many of them eventually being "pointed out." As in many of Joliet's warehouses, he and his colleagues were working under a demerit system, receiving points for being tardy, missing shifts or not "making rate." Once you hit 10 points, you're gone, he says.
He now argues that workers don't last in part because they're not supposed to. New workers, after all, are cheaper workers. And he also says the little-known temp agencies are there largely to facilitate the churn.
"That's part of the trick -- to put as many people between [the retailers] and the actual workers, so they don't have to deal with the actual workers," he says. "They don't have this headache. ... They put these temp services between them and the people."
The former Teamser's duties evolved at the warehouse, and eventually he found himself filling online orders to be shipped directly to customers' homes. Working off an order list, he was expected to pick 500 boxes during his 12-hour shift -- tight but doable. The problem, he says, is that sometimes the products weren't where they were supposed to be, which cut into his efficiency rate. He says he was supposed to hit a perfect 100 percent each day, but sometimes he dropped into the 90s due to missing products. He clashed with a supervisor over the issue. "How do you expect me to be perfect when the system isn't perfect?" he asks.
One year into his job, he says he was canned after barely missing his rate three days in a row, earning three consecutive writeups -- a fireable offense. He wasn't shocked. Having just hit his one-year anniversary, he had become expensive, at least by warehouse standards. His pay had risen to $14 an hour -- still not a living wage for the area by some measures, but more than many lumpers will ever see. He had also just started to accrue paid vacation time. Or at least he thought he had.
According to a lawsuit the man filed earlier this year, his company had agreed to give employees one week of paid vacation after they'd worked for the company for a full year. When he was terminated, he was told he'd come up a mere 40 work hours short of earning vacation. But the man says management's tally ignored the considerable overtime he'd worked during the peak season.
The company wouldn't relent, so he and a colleague sued. In addition to the vacation issue, they sued the company for not paying workers for a minimum of four hours on days when they were sent home early or without any work at all, as an Illinois law now mandates. The company has denied the allegations.
Like many warehouse workers interviewed for this story, the former Teamster has spent a lot of time wondering how much money the agency made off of his work merely for supplying him. The way he sees it, the reliance of Walmart and others on temp agencies is the reason most of the warehouse jobs will never lead to stable living, just the financial anxiety of someone who's temping in perpetuity.
"You can't build on working at these warehouses," he says. "I can't say, 'Sweetheart, let's get married. Let's have a baby.' Because I don't know how long it's going to last. I know I'm working now, but will I be working six months from now? And how much money are they going to screw me out of?"
* * * * *
The Chicago area has long been home to warehouse jobs, and the vast majority of them used to be decent, blue-collar jobs, says Mark Meinster, international representative with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Union, or UE, which is leading an organizing effort of warehouse workers in Joliet. Meinster says that over the last two decades the jobs have changed along with the retail industry.
With a growing focus on efficiency and cost-cutting within the supply chain, what had been secure and well-paying union jobs are now often low-paying temp jobs, he says. A UE-backed group called Warehouse Workers for Justice interviewed workers at more than 150 area warehouses in 2009, finding that despite plenty of good managerial positions, about 63 percent of the workers in local warehouses are temps earning less than direct hires. One in four avail themselves of food stamps or welfare, and more than a third have to work a second job to make ends meet. (Warehouse Workers for Justice has no affiliation with the California group Warehouse Workers United.)
"As late as the mid '90s, you saw many warehouse jobs that paid a living wage," says Meinster. "In Chicago, we define that as $15.87 an hour. Now, we're finding that the average wage is somewhere around $9 an hour. Only 4 percent of the workers get sick days. Many are on government assistance. Sixty-two percent earn below the federal poverty line."
John Grueling isn't so bearish. As the head of the Will County Center for Economic Development, a nonprofit development corporation that did much to attract the industry to Joliet, Grueling says the logistics industry has brought some much-needed jobs to the area as manufacturing has declined. Although he admits that the proliferation of temps is something that concerns him, he says the good jobs outweigh the bad.
"The competition is so severe that they're going to do what they have to do, and in some cases, what they can get away with it," Grueling says of the companies operating in the warehouses. "But we think the industry as a whole is very healthy for us." (Grueling says his group no longer tries to lure logistics operations with juicy tax breaks the way they used to.)
Whatever the savings may be, there's another benefit to the subcontracting model for the likes of Walmart: the splintered workforce among all the temp agencies creates a tremendous obstacle to unionization. Plenty of workers who aren't necessarily conspiracy theorists consider it a form of strategic disorganization emanating from down on high. Unionization drives are easily scuttled. When it became apparent that temps were organizing at a Joliet warehouse for vacuum manufacturer Bissell two years ago, the workers soon found themselves out of a job.
Fragmented though they are, dozens of warehouse workers have managed to file class-action lawsuits alleging wage theft in the last couple of years, many of them with the help of a Chicago lawyer named Chris Williams, co-founder of the Working Hands Legal Clinic, which litigates on behalf of low-wage workers. Williams wrote a piece of legislation called the Day and Temporary Labor Services Act, an attempt by Illinois to wrap its hands around its booming and shadowy temp labor industry.
The law requires that labor agencies register with the state and also provide workers with written forms explaining what kind of work they'll be doing and how much they'll be paid for the assignment. Such rudimentary protections are needed, Williams says. He and other worker advocates have discovered fly-by-night temp agencies operating out of area garages, convenience store parking lots and, in one case, a Super 8 motel room.
In a lawsuit filed last month, 18 workers at the Walmart-contracted warehouse accused a temp company called Eclipse of not paying them the minimum wage and failing to pay them for all the hours they worked. One worker, Roberto Gutierrez, says he worked 21 hours in his first week and was paid a mere $57. On his paystub the company says Gutierrez worked only 12.5 hours, though by their math he still doesn't seem to have been earning the minimum wage. According to another lawsuit, one of the temp agencies charged applicants for their own employment background checks; when the cost was deducted from their first checks, it pushed their pay below the minimum wage. Such lawsuits are fast becoming a cost of doing business for the temp companies.
"There's a huge problem with people being shorted," says Williams. "In aggregate, it's millions and millions in savings" for the companies.
So far, most of the energy from gadflies like Williams has been devoted to the Walmart supply chain. Like others, Williams argues that Walmart has trailblazed the temp-worker model within the retail world, and that other major retailers are simply following its path, as they often do.
None of the lawsuits involving the Walmart warehouse have touched Walmart itself. But the way Illinois' temp labor law was written, a company at the top of a contracting tree could feasibly be held accountable for abuses at the bottom. In one case, Williams discovered that there were four companies separating Walmart from the workers who were handling Walmart goods at the warehouse.
"I believe Walmart is experimenting," Williams says. Of the area's warehouses generally, he adds, "You'll see temp agencies that supervise temp agencies that deal with temp agencies. It just adds another level of distance."
According to worker Demetrie Collins, the presence of temp companies has been growing just as the conditions and pay have been deteriorating. Collins says he earned a pretty good wage running a forklift at one of the warehouses five years ago. Then, after a break from work and a prison stint for a drug charge, he says he returned to the warehouses to see temp workers everywhere. He got on as a lumper at a warehouse but was fired earlier this year, he says. Unemployed, he now volunteers at Warehouse Workers for Justice.
"Hell yeah, there's more temp agencies," says Collins. "Used to be they'd pay you good. But now, the warehouses are paying you shitty, and there's nothing you can do about it. Fire them today, temp services gonna replace them tomorrow. They can treat the workers however they wanna treat them."
The downsides of temping go well beyond lower wages and fewer benefits. Many workers have to call in to the warehouse each morning to see if they still have a job for the day, essentially making them job seekers-in-perpetuity. The supplication can be demoralizing. One former lumper told HuffPost his temp status once cost him a loan -- from a payday lender. The lender apparently thought he posed too great a risk, seeing as he had no guarantee on his employment from week to week.
Meinster, of the UE, says the temp system creates an entire tier of workers who are basically second-class.
"Despite the fact that these workers are paid poverty-level wages, we estimate that about a trillion dollars comes through Chicago on an annual basis," says Meinster. "That's about $6 million per warehouse worker. Each worker is responsible for moving $6 million worth of goods through that supply chain. These are the workers who, collectively, if they don't show up for a day, these companies would stand to lose a lot of money.
"That's something these companies need to pay attention to," he says.
* * * * *
A few months ago, the former Teamster heard about 50 job openings at the warehouse for Central Foods, a food wholesaler based in Joliet. The positions were similar to ones at the warehouse where he'd temped, but the pay and benefits seemed to be from another world. The Central Foods jobs were union jobs, starting out at a livable $16 an hour, with good health coverage, an annual raise, a 401(k) and a chance to make as much as $24 an hour after a few years, he says.
"What was the difference?" the former Teamster asks rhetorically. "No temp service."
Unfortunately, word about the direct-hire jobs had apparently spread throughout Joliet, with the competition so fierce that it made the local news. "Here they have health benefits and a pension," one man told the Joliet Herald-News in wonderment. "I never had a job that could do that for me." Another applicant bemoaned all the temp warehouse jobs on his resume. "It makes me look like a job hopper, but I'm not," he said.
When the former Teamster arrived to apply, scores of eager jobs seekers were already there, with a line coming out the door and snaking around the corner. Ultimately, more than a thousand people threw their hats in the ring, many of them boasting previous warehouse experience. The former Teamster waited nearly three hours to put in his application and make his trusty pitch: "I don't miss days."
Must be a great gig if you can get it, he thought.


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For Customized monthly packages please call +91-2143-202455 or send mail to email@example.com
I was delighted to receive the beautiful bouquet of fall flowers the other day You all have some of the best designs thanks! ...
I was looking for a florist and put in the city and found one of the best florist in our small town...
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While many of us have a strong desire to pursue our passion, few are able to channelize their dreams and transform it into a profession. Champali Garden is an 'act that is straight from the heart', wherein an intense passion for flowers has been creatively directed towards something productive.
At Champali Garden, we deliver fresh, high quality cut flowers and flower decorations to a very broad client base, right at their doorstep. We have our own farm which produces a wide range of fresh cut flowers like Roses, Gerberas, Chrysanthemum, Asiatic Lilium, Oriental Lilium and Heliconias along with cut foliage. We serve as a one-stop-shop for cut flowers − for professional florists and wholesale flower traders across India and abroad.
In order to ensure that the flowers remain fresh, we have established our own Cold chain so that the quality of the flowers is preserved during delivery. We offer flowers with proper cooling and with well-treated, post- harvest solutions. This assures an extended vase life for every product, while also maintaining its freshness in colour and appearance.
The quality of our flowers combined with the passion of our florists enable us to serve discerning clients such as Hotels, Corporate offices and Event Managers with personalized solutions that make the offerings truly 'something to remember'.
Whatever be the occasion, we fully understand the thought that goes behind every floral creation: be it a Hand bunch, a Basket bouquet, flower vase or a designer flowers arrangement – they are not only a gift but also an extension of your feelings. We are always ready to make any occasion truly memorable and special: be it Valentine's Day, Friendship Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Anniversaries, Birthdays, Felicitations, Welcome or Get Well Soon Wishes.
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We deliver nature in all its colour and vibrancy, right at your door step. Our garden-fresh, harvested flowers are also made available to you at wholesale prices. Our weekly packages for home supply offers you a range of choices for making desirable flower arrangements for a variety of flower vases. We also help you by offering guidance and flower food supplements to extend the vase life and freshness of your flowers.

subset: commoncrawl


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Mira and Jesse's Wedding(s)... April 26 & 29, 2014
Equal parts legendary, appropriate and expected.. First night lobster dinner in Puerto Nuevo, Mexico. After-party in Las Gaviotas, Rosarito. Wedding at The Castle in Rosarito followed by epic reception and after-party at Papas & Beer. (After-after party at Bada Bing.. After-after-after party back at Las Gaviotas... The party that simply would not stop!). Official civil ceremony post-recovery on Tuesday in San Diego followed by lunch at C Level restaurant on the water. Beautiful from start to finish.Read More


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Ryan Seacrest's ex-stylist who accused the TV personality of sexual misconduct was put in physically inappropriate situations on multiple occasions, according to a former co-worker who said he witnessed the alleged harassment.
"She would go to tie his shoe and Ryan would shove her head toward his crotch," the former co-worker, whose name is being withheld because he still works in Hollywood and fears retaliation, said in an exclusive interview aired on "Today" Wednesday. "I saw that more than once."
Suzie Hardy, a former stylist at the cable channel E!, had accused Seacrest, 43, of sexual misconduct last year but finally went public with her claims on Monday.
Seacrest's attorney described Hardy's allegations as "untrue" and said the stylist had sought $15 million, which Hardy's attorney denied. And E! conducted an independent investigation into the allegations and said in a statement that it found "insufficient evidence to support the claims against Seacrest."


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Measure for Measure Summary
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare in which Duke Vincentio disguises himself as a friar in order to observe how his officials runs the city in his absence.
Duke Vincentio of Vienna pretends to leave the city. He disguises himself as a friar to see how Angelo, an appointed official, runs the city.
Angelo abuses his power and imprisons Claudio and Juliet, a young couple, for fornication. Angelo demands that Claudio's sister have sex with him to secure her brother's release, but she refuses.
- The Duke stages his supposed return to Vienna, denounces Angelo, and frees Claudio and Juliet.
Last Updated on August 27, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 1191
The growing political and moral corruption of Vienna is a great worry to its kindly, temperate ruler, Duke Vincentio. Knowing that he himself is as much to blame for the troubles as anyone because he has been lax in the enforcement of existing laws, the duke tries to devise a scheme to revive the old discipline of civic authority.
Fearing that reforms instituted by himself might seem too harsh for his people to accept without protest, he decides to appoint a deputy governor and to leave the country for a while. Angelo, a respected and intelligent city official, seems just the man for the job. The duke turns over the affairs of Vienna to Angelo for a certain length of time and appoints Escalus, a trustworthy old official, to be second in command. The duke then pretends to leave for Poland. In reality, he disguises himself as a friar and returns to the city to watch the outcome of Angelo's reforms.
Angelo's first act is to imprison Claudio, a young nobleman who got his betrothed, Juliet, pregnant. Under an old statute, now revived, Claudio's offense is punishable by death. After being paraded through the streets in disgrace, the young man is sent to prison. He asks his rakish friend, Lucio, to go to the nunnery where Claudio's sister, Isabella, is a young novice about to take her vows and to ask her to plead with the new governor for his release. At the same time, Escalus, who has known Claudio's father well, begs Angelo not to execute the young man. The new deputy remains firm, however, in carrying out the duties of his office, and Claudio's well-wishers are given no reason to hope for their friend's release.
The duke, disguised as a friar, visits Juliet and learns that the young couple had been very much in love and had, in fact, been formally engaged; they would have been married but for the fact that Juliet's dowry had become a matter of legal dispute. There is no question of heartless seduction in the case at all.
Isabella, going before Angelo to plead her brother's cause, meets with little success at first, even though she has been thoroughly coached by the wily Lucio. Nevertheless, Angelo's cold heart is somewhat touched by Isabella's beauty. By the second interview, he has become so passionately aroused as to forget his reputation for saintly behavior. He tells Isabella frankly that she can obtain her brother's release only by yielding herself to his lustful desires, otherwise Claudio will die. Isabella is shocked at these words from the deputy, but when she asserts that she will expose him in public, Angelo, amused, asks who will believe her story. At her wit's end, Isabella rushes to the prison where she tells Claudio of Angelo's disgraceful proposition. When he first hears the deputy's proposal, Claudio is outraged, but the thought of death so terrifies him that he finally begs Isabella to placate Angelo and give herself to him. Isabella, horrified by her brother's cowardly attitude, lashes out at him with a scornful speech, but she is interrupted by the disguised duke, who has overheard much of the conversation. He draws Isabella aside from her brother and tells her that she will be able to save Claudio without shaming herself.
The friar tells Isabella that five years earlier, Angelo had been betrothed to a high-born lady named Mariana. The marriage did not take place, however. After Mariana's brother had been lost at sea with her dowry, Angelo broke the engagement, hinting at supposed dishonor in the young woman. The friar suggests...
(This entire section contains 1191 words.)
that Isabella plan a rendezvous with Angelo in a dark, quiet place and then let Mariana act as her substitute. Angelo will be satisfied, Claudio released, Isabella still chaste, and Mariana provided with the means to force Angelo to marry her.
Everything goes as arranged, with Mariana taking Isabella's place at the assignation. Cowardly Angelo, however, fearing public exposure, breaks his promise to release Claudio and instead orders the young man's execution. Once again the good friar intervenes. He persuades the provost to hide Claudio and then to announce his death by sending Angelo the head of another prisoner who has died of natural causes.
On the day before the execution, a crowd gathers outside the prison. One of the group is Lucio, who accosts the disguised duke as he wanders down the street. Furtively, Lucio tells the friar that nothing like Claudio's execution would take place if the duke had been ruler. Lucio confidentially says that the duke cares as much for the ladies as any other man and also drinks in private. In fact, says Lucio, the duke beds about as much as any man in Vienna. Amused, the friar protests against this gossip, but Lucio angrily asserts that every word is true.
To arouse Isabella to accuse Angelo publicly of wrongdoing, the duke allows her to believe that Claudio is dead. Then the duke sends letters to the deputy informing him that the royal party will arrive on the following day at the gates of Vienna and will expect to be welcomed. The command also orders that anyone who has grievances against the government while the duke is absent should be allowed to make public pronouncement of them at that time and place.
Angelo grows nervous upon receipt of these papers from the duke. The next day, however, he organizes a great crowd and a celebration of welcome at the gates of the city. At the prearranged time, Isabella and Mariana, heavily veiled, step forward to denounce Angelo. Isabella calls him a traitor and violator of virgins; Mariana claims that he will not admit her as his wife. The duke, pretending to be angry at these tirades against his deputy, orders the women to prison and asks that someone apprehend the rascally friar who has often been seen in their company.
Then the duke goes to his palace and quickly assumes his disguise as a friar. Appearing before the crowd at the gates, he criticizes the government of Vienna severely. Escalus, horrified at the fanatical comments of the friar, orders his arrest, seconded by Lucio, who maintains that the friar had told him only the day before that the duke is a drunkard and a frequenter of bawdy houses. At last, to display his own bravado, Lucio tears away the friar's hood. When the friar stands revealed as Duke Vincentio, the crowd falls back in amazement.
Angelo realizes that his crimes will now be exposed, and he asks simply to be put to death without trial. The duke orders him to marry Mariana first, and he tells Mariana that Angelo's goods, once they are legally hers, will secure her a better husband. The duke is surprised when she begs for Angelo's pardon, in which entreaties she is joined by Isabella, but he relents. He does, however, send Lucio to prison. Claudio is released and married to Juliet. The duke himself asks Isabella for her hand.


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You may get .psd* file of "Golden apple tree" Photoshop tutorial by making a payment. Put the tutorial title in "Add special instructions to seller" line of PayPal and it will be sent to you shortly.
- Image source: http://www.cgtextures.com/ - BarkDecidious0104 (Texture: #16050) .
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- Open bark picture in Photoshop.
- Separate bark from background using Layer Mask or Extract Filter (you may find detailed description here: http://www.alfoart.com/digital-photo-retouching-1.html .
- Draw branches using brush with size dynamic option.
- Load selection for branches, fill them with tree texture using Stamp Tool.
- Add some Layer Style effects for branches.


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Many people heard the buzz about the Companion Animal Alliance (CAA) in Baton Rouge, LA and their supposed no kill efforts. Local volunteer Amanda Brice has put together a well documented 14 page recent history of the pound, aptly title "Not No Kill". If you are unfamiliar with CAA's story and/or if you would like to see how a volunteer can make an important contribution simply by documenting online activity, please take a look at this document.
Ms. Brice used to help out with the cats at the Companion Animal Alliance. She stopped visiting the facility because her offers to care for the stray cats, whom she felt needed the most help, were refused and she no longer feels welcome there. Management advised her that volunteering with the stray cats is a "privilege, not a right".
Ms. Brice says that CAA does not vaccinate all pets upon intake and the sick cats are not separated from the healthy ones. One employee has been in charge of caring for the stray cats at CAA but when that person took a leave of absence, Ms. Brice says she saw the cats were being neglected. She offered to help but her offer was refused by management.
Ester was cat ID #34488 at CAA. Ms. Brice selected her to photograph and network because she had a URI and was being housed in the stray area which the public is steered away from at the pound. Ester's photo was posted on a rescue group's Facebook page on November 15, 2011. An adopter wanted her and called the pound on November 17 but no one ever got back to her. Amanda says Ester was killed shortly thereafter. I requested Ester's records from CAA but the response was that her ID number was "not in system". What happened to Ester's records?
Delan was cat ID #24439 at CAA. Ms. Brice says an adopter wanted him and paid for him on November 17, 2011 but he wasn't scheduled for neuter surgery until November 23. The adopter asked if she could take him home during that period and bring him back for the surgery but CAA refused, keeping him housed in the stray area. While waiting, Ms. Brice says Delan fell over dead in his cage. I requested Delan's records from CAA but the response was that his ID number was "not in system". What happened to Delan's records?
I will be posting a follow up to review apparent discrepancies in the records of the other cats on the above list.
I reached out to CAA director Kim Sherlaw for comment but have not received a response.
Thank you Amanda Brice for speaking up for the stray cats at CAA.


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The question at the center of this Times magazine profile of Kristen Wiig is whether someone known for playing excruciatingly irritating characters can carry her own movie. Or more precisely, be "charming," which sounds like a variant on America's sweetheart, only with more slapstick.
No answer is forthcoming (personally, I think I would be more sure in answering yes if the movie were about a quarter shorter, and in any case it's ensemble-driven), but there are some fascinating details about how producer Judd Apatow and director Paul Feig intervened Wiig and best friend Annie Mumolo's script.
Writer Susan Dominus says, "You can pretty much guess which scenes Apatow and Feig added to Wiig and Mumolo's script, beginning with the opening shot: a loud, slapsticky sex scene between Wiig and a cad played by Jon Hamm." (That scene is hilarious. And Jon Hamm is in it). Mumolo tells her that Apatow didn't want any scenes where the characters just "sit and talk." And both writers needed convincing to include a drawn-out, filthy scene that (spoiler) involves food poisoning and lots of poop.
What were Wiig's reservations? She shot a look. "Just that it was a huge scene about women vomiting" and defecating in their pants. "We wrote the script, and we didn't really have anything in that tone, and it seemed to be such a big statement," she says. Apatow assured her that if it did not work, they could cut it. Wiig and Mumolo - a writing partner from her Groundlings days - ultimately agreed that it did work.
As these things go, adding more poop and more sex seems like a reasonable compromise, though it's not clear whether these changes were made to make things funnier or to make them more marketbale. As I've mentioned, I saw the movie with a bunch of female comedians, including Jamie Denbo and Jessica Chaffin, whose comedy pilot had been directed by Feig, and who were warmly greeted by Wiig backstage. Afterward, Denbo praised that very gross-out scene for its sheer daring, hilariousness, and break with the girl-movie cliche. (Of course, "pretty girls being gross" is its own genre cliche, but this takes it to an unseen level.)
Dominus portrays Wiig as unassuming, grateful, and reserved, which may be why she refuses to describe her movie as a pathbreaker:
Try to suggest that her film has the potential to alter the market for female-driven comedies, and she resists. "Well, there's 'Baby Mama' and 'Romy and Michele's High School Reunion,' " she says, naming two movies that came out more than a decade apart. "There are definitely movies where the cast is predominantly women."
Or maybe she just knows being asked to conclusively prove women aren't funny is a shitty deal.
Can Kristen Wiig Turn On The Charm? [NYT]
Earlier: The Stakes Are High For The Funny Girl Movie


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Sustainability Planning 101 for Business Owners
Wise businesses are now weaving environmental sustainability into their long-term strategies, and they're doing it by writing comprehensive sustainability plans. The point: to identify key areas of eco-friendly opportunity and give your business a roadmap of how to maximize of those opportunities.
Needless to say, a sustainability plan requires more than just quickly pounding out some inspirational goals on computer. Here are some key steps to getting the most out of sustainability planning:
1. Assess the baseline. Before a business can figure out where it needs to go, it needs to know where it is. This involves doing a thorough analysis of its environmental footprint, from transportation and waste habits to pollution to energy and water use. The assessment should include real numbers: How much trash (in pounds) does the business produce each year? How much currently gets recycled and what waste does and what doesn't? How much water does the business use each year? How many miles do employees drive and how much does that cost you? Some of this information can be found with a thorough examination of company and employee practices; others may require a professional audit or consultant.
2. Identify best opportunities. Once you have a complete snapshot of your business's environmental toll, you should more easily be able to identify areas for improvement. This can also require some research about alternatives to your current practices. You might find, for instance, that you aren't recycling certain items that can be recycled. Or you might get an energy audit and find that you have many opportunities to reduce your gas or electricity use.
3. Plan implementation steps. Once you have your broad goals, you need to formalize how you will achieve those goals and the necessary steps to getting there. If you decide, say, to recycle more of your business's paper waste, how will you ensure that happens? Why is more paper not currently recycled? Perhaps you purchase separate containers specifically for paper waste or put up signs reminding yourself or employees to put paper in the recycle bins. Even further, you might commit to purchasing recycled paper products.
4. Set deadlines. Give your plan a framework by assigning a deadline by which each implementation step will occur. If the company is bigger, the plan should also indicate who is in charge of pursuing each step.
5. Keep revisiting it. Anyone who's written a business plan knows the most valuable ones are the ones that keep evolving and are continually revised and revisited. Don't let your sustainability plan gather dust. Keep it handy and relevant by reviewing it regularly and ensuring you're meeting the goals you set out. If you're not achieving them, revise the plan but figure out what's gone awry.


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The 2008 Kentucky Derby is over, but the memories will not fade.
Here at 2008 Race Tracker, we'd like to dedicate this website unofficially to the memory of Eight Belles, one of the most tragic stories in recent horse racing history.
As a filly, Eight Belles had a lot to prove. Nine years had passed since another lady had competed in the Derby; she was only the fortieth filly in the Derby's entire history. Nevertheless, she came through in great style — taking second-place to the nearly unbeatable Big Brown.
She ran so hard, in fact, that she suffered multiple compound fractures and collapsed at the close of the race, which resulted in her immediate euthanization. She couldn't even be moved off the track first.
It's a common problem, unfortunately. All of Native Dancer's descendants are both powerful and fragile, which is why many who love the sport are trying to get new blood into the breeding. Unfortunately, people seem to be more interested in online blackjack. And on that note…
…despite what you may think, getting approved for a mortgage refinancing loan is nothing like online blackjack. There's really very little luck involved at all, unless you count the fluctuations of LIBOR…
Here at www.2008racetracker.com, we love horseracing. More than that, we live for betting on horse races.
Online makes betting on horses gloriously easy. With the wide variety of betting options available on line and the inexhaustible wagering types, there's no better place. As well, punters can will find that they have more time to focus and plan betting strategies better online. With all of the betting tools that you'll find at your disposal, you'll be able to fully analyze trends thereby increasing your win likelihood.
And here's the kicker: not only can you bet on horses at our recommended online sportsbooks, you'll also be able to wager on greyhounds, football, basketball, hockey, tennis, snooker, current events and just about anything else that you can dream up.
One of our favorite online gambling spots to bet on horse races has to be at Bodog. At Bodog, you can place wager on daily races and race futures across more than 80 thoroughbred and harness racetracks (including Churchill Downs, Santa Anita, Saratoga, Del Mar, and Belmont). One of the best things about Bodog is the promotions and bonuses specific to horse racing that they'll give you: you'll receive a 10% cash bonus on your initial deposit, and there's also a competitive discount that you can receive each and every week. Each Tuesday, you'll receive a percentage of your bets from the previous week, even if they were losing bets.
At Bodog, it doesn't have to (and probably shouldn't!) stop with the horses – you'll be able to find every sport AND many NON-sport events to wager on at this premium sportsbook.
If you need to defend your reputation turn to seo experts.


text: As an essential business, the clock never stops. Optional is just not an option. It's your job to serve the needs of others, and all eyes are on you. So, give them something to remember you by! Make an impact with our collection of custom branded products across some of the most crucial industries so you can be essential – AND influential.


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(visited by Wang Jun)
English Narrative
05-Oct-2012 -- 昨天探寻了42°N 127°E,两点多坐火车到了松江河镇,这里是从长白山西坡看长白山主峰白头山天池的必经地。长白山天池也是中国最深的湖泊,水深平均204米,最深373米。下午在街上闲逛,联系旅行社,定了长白山天池一日游。
04-Oct-2012 -- Visited 42°N 127°E yesterday, train to Sōngjiānghé (松江河镇), along the way here view of the western flank of Chángbái Mountains, main peak Báitóushān (白头山), 2744 m high dormant volcano, about 3 km from the shore of its crater lake Báitóushān Tiānchí. Tiānchí is the deepest lake in China, the average water depth of 204 meters, the deepest 373 meters. Wandering the streets during the afternoon, contact a travel agent for Chángbáishān-Tiānchí day trips.
7:30 in the morning at the train station in car, one hour to reach the foot of the mountain to start climbing, sit in tour bus traveling 45 minutes later, nearly 1,441 steps to the top of the hill. Despite brilliant blue sky at the foot of the mountain, cold and windy on top, people have to rent coats. I spent half an hour on summit, it's cold, views are not good. GPS display 2.43 km from the CP point.
Head down the mountain on foot to look for the CP. A return bus driver has discouraged travel on foot, said visitors are not allowed to walk down the mountain, perhaps too close to the border, I have no reason to follow his advice.
Visibility is very bad, I walk very carefully. GPS shows the CP on the ridge side, close to the border; for safety reasons, I decide to give up to reach to CP, the GPS shows 1.33 kilometers to the CP


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- Adventure
- Tips and Advice
Adventure Town: Burlington, Vermont
Plan a long weekend getaway with our Burlington adventure guide, featuring great outdoor escapes, where to stay, and where to eat.
Pop. 38,531
Burton Snowboards is headquartered here for a reason. This city, nestled on Lake Champlain, has just about everything you could want, rising to the adventure challenge in any season.
From a vibrant music scene (Higher Ground, Nectar's) to troves of hiking and riding trails in the surrounding Green Mountains (Stowe, Smuggler's Notch, Sugarbush), heady breweries (Magic Hat), fine dining (Leunig's Bistro, Papa Frank's), and even teddy bear construction (Vermont Teddy Bear Co.), there's no lack of attractions. Believe it or not, you can catch rays and real sand at North Beach, and cliff jump off adjacent Lone Rock Point. And yes, you can milk a cow: Shelburne Farms is a 1,400 acre (567 hectare) working farm offering some of the most resplendent views around (Winslow Homer was a fan), especially during foliage season. Try wagon rides and runs around the expansive property by day, and sample the wares at the on-site farm store. P.S. The farmhouse cheddar cheese here is nationally renowned.
Just about anywhere. Red Onion Café on Church Street serves drool-inducing sandwiches for pocket change (+1 802 865 2563), and New World Tortilla and its Thai Chicken Wrap are the kings of cheap eats in this town (www.newworldtortilla.com). But don't miss out on breakfasts at Sneakers Bistro & Café (www.sneakersbistro.com) and Penny Cluse Café (www.pennycluse.com), which are nothing short of legendary for their flavors and fresh ingredients.
- Nat Geo Expeditions
The Shelburne Farms Inn is upscale country living at its finest, with colonially appointed rooms (doubles from $150; www.shelburnefarms.org). For something a little closer to town, try the Willard Street Inn, a town staple a short walk from Church Street with delicious breakfasts and cozy digs (doubles from $140; www.willardstreetinn.com).


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I've actually made this dough 2 days ago together with the mushroom pie I did yesterday :D This morning just chop chop chop prepare the fillings. I just used up what I've have after making the mushroom pie, like fresh mushroom and capsicum instead of using canned mushroom and mixed vegetable as stated in the recipe. This pie is really delicious! especially the buttery & flaky crust :D....
Recipe adapted from Baking Mum
Ingredient (makes 1 20cm pie & 2 medium muffin size pie)
- 200 gm butter, cubed & chilled
- 250 gm plain flour
- 100 gm plain yoghurt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- A pinch of salt
- 1 tsp dried rosemary
- Combine flour, sugar & salt in a mixing bowl. Add in cubed cold butter and knead with fingertips till crumbly.
- Add in yoghurt and egg yolk and mix to a dough. (I use a fork to stir to bind into dough). Dough will be very soft so need to keep it refrigerated for at least 30 mins. (I chilled it overnight)
- 2 russet potatoes, cubed & steamed
- 1 big onion diced
- 70gm mixed vegetable
- 100gm sliced fresh mushrooms
- 2 chicken breast diced
- 1 tbsp corn starch or potato starch mixed with 2 tbsp water
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1 beaten egg for glazing
- In a clean wok, heat 2 tbsp oil. Fry the onion until transparent. Add mixed vegetable, mushroom, chicken. Fry for a while to break up chicken. Add in potatoes. Add in ½ cup of water and cook for abt 5 mins. Add in salt, sugar and pepper. Add in the cornstarch and stir to thicken mixture. Set aside for later use.
- Roll out the dough between 2 sheets of plastic (abt 250gm) to fit a 20cm tart mould. Poke hole on the base using a fork and place ingredients on top. Roll out another piece of dough to cover the top. Poke a few more times using fork on the cover of the pie and brush with 1 beaten egg.
- Baked in a preheated oven at 180 deg cel for 30 mins until golden brown.


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Christmas tree worms (Spirobranchus)
A good view of their bright orange, banana-shaped eyes.
Christmas tree worm close up
A nice view of the twin branchial spires, used for feeding and respiration, in Spirobranchus.
Fan worm from Belize
Christmas tree bouquet
Numerous multicolor Spirobranchus radiole spires protruding from a Porites coral head.
Fan Worm from Belize
Bispira melanostigma captured at Carrie Bow Cay, Belize
Fan worm (Bispira sp.) from Belize. You can see tiny, paired compound eyes on the backs of the feeding tentacles.
Radiant Flatworm
Pseudobiceros bedfordi from Lizard Island, Australia
Megalomma peeking
The fan worm, Megalomma interrupta peeking the compound eyes at the ends of its feeding tentacles out of its tube.
Acromegalomma bouquet
3 individuals of the same species of fan worms from Lizard Island, Australia.
Pomatostegus stellatus
Serpulid, from Carrie Bow Cay in Belize.
The large camera-type eyes of an alciopid worm.
A pelagic polychaete with some inordinately large eyes.
Sabellastarte in the Mangrove
Sabellastarte fan worms living amongsts the mangrove roots at Twin Cay in Belize.
Sandcastle worms
A colony of Sabellaria alveolata worms at Bude, UK.
Sandcastle worm reef
A colony of Sabellaria alveolata worms on an intertidal bolder at Bude, UK.
Bispira Brunnea
A colony of Bispira Brunnea fan worms.
The head of a syllid
A four-eyed syllid worm from Lizard Island, Austrailia.
Syllid with epitokes
Feather Duster
Sabellastarte fan worm from Hawaii.
Four Eyes
The head of the marine ragworm, Platynereis dumerilii. These polychaetes have two sets of eyes, one facing forward and another facing up.
Platynereis dumerilii head
The closeup of the head of the marine ragworm, Platynereis dumerilii. These polychaetes have two sets of eyes, one facing forward and another facing up.
Split-Crown feather duster
A split crown feather duster worm (Anamobaea) from Belize
All photographs copyright Michael Bok


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President Obama is mulling an executive order to force big government contractors to disclose their political spending. He should issue it immediately. But he should go further – banning all political activity by companies receiving more than half their revenues from the federal government.
Consider Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest contractor. It has received more than $19 billion in federal contracts so far this year. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lockheed has already spent more than $3 million lobbying Congress this year.
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Lockheed supports a platoon of Washington lawyers and lobbyists dedicated to getting more federal contracts. Sixty-four of Lockheed's lobbyists are former congressional staffers, Pentagon officials and White House aides. Two are former members of Congress. As such, they used to be on the public payroll, representing us. Now we continue to pay them, indirectly, through the government contracts Lockheed gets. But their job is to improve Lockheed's bottom line.
Lockheed also has been spending more than $3 million a year on political contributions to friendly members of Congress. On top of this, Lockheed gives money to the Aerospace Industries Association to lobby for a bigger defense budget and to support members of Congress who will vote accordingly. But we don't know how much because it's secret. We don't even know how much Lockheed is giving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lobby against the president's proposed executive order requiring disclosure of its political activities. That's secret, too.
Don't we have a right to know? After all, you and I and other taxpayers are Lockheed's biggest customer. As such, we're financing much of this lobbying and donating. Lockheed's political activities are built into its costs. So when Lockheed contracts with the federal government for a piece of military equipment, you and I and other taxpayers end up paying for a portion of these political activities.
It's one of the most insidious conflicts of interest in American politics.
Lockheed is hardly alone in using taxpayer money to get fatter contracts from taxpayers. All of the 10 biggest government contractors are defense contractors. Every one of them gets most of its revenue from the federal government. And every one uses a portion of that money to lobby for even more defense contracts.
That's one reason the defense procurement budget keeps expanding. Next year's expected drawdown of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq is supposed to save money. But Lockheed and other giant defense contractors have made sure all anticipated savings will go to new weapons systems.
Lockheed recently delivered a budget bombshell with a proposed tab of more than $1 trillion for a fleet of F-35 joint-strike fighter jets. That doesn't even include $385 billion that the Defense Department will spend to buy 2,500 of the stealth planes.
Tom Burbage of Lockheed acknowledged that the "T" word, as he gently put it, "causes a lot of sensational reaction … because no one ever dealt with 'T's before in the program." That's an understatement. Congress is nonetheless willing to fund these mammoth projects as if the nation didn't have a long-term budget crisis.
Brace yourself. In the wake of last year's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, there's no limit on what Lockheed and other defense contractors can spend on politics.
But why should you and I and other taxpayers pay Lockheed to lobby for the trillion-dollar F-35 and support politicians who will vote for it? Why should we pay for the political activities of Northrop Grumman and Boeing to come up with even more aerospace weapons systems? Or for Raytheon and General Dynamics to procure more high-tech weapons? Or for Blackwater and Halliburton to procure more private military contract workers?
The answer is, we shouldn't.
Over half a century ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of an unbridled military-industrial complex, as he called it. It's now a military-industrial-congressional complex. And after Citizens United, it's more unbridled than ever.
That's why the president shouldn't stop with an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their political contributions. He should ban all political activities by corporations getting more than half their revenues from the federal government. Put an end to this increasingly expensive conflict of interest.
Briefly, we wanted to update you on where Truthout stands this month.
To be brutally honest, Truthout is behind on our fundraising goals for the year. There are a lot of reasons why. We're dealing with broad trends in our industry, trends that have led publications like Vice, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic to make painful cuts. Everyone is feeling the squeeze of inflation. And despite its lasting importance, news readership is declining.
To ensure we stay out of the red by the end of the year, we have a long way to go. Our future is threatened.
We've stayed online over two decades thanks to the support of our readers. Because you believe in the power of our work, share our transformative stories, and give to keep us going strong, we know we can make it through this tough moment.
At this moment, we have 24 hours left in our important fundraising campaign, and we still must raise $19,000. Please consider making a donation today.


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Published by Alex Coles
I am cofounder and senior yacht charter broker at Bespoke Yacht Charter. We are a London and French Riviera based yacht brokerage offering crewed luxury yacht charters and boat rentals in the south of France, throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. View all posts by Alex Coles


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Orlando, Florida – January 9, 2014 – (INTUITION by Perspective Group) – Worldwide vacation exchange provider, DAE, is making localized customer service a priority of their organization as they expand their services into key timeshare markets around the world.
The world's largest independently-owned vacation exchange company now has offices in 12 locations including Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, South Africa, India, Thailand, China, the United Kingdom and the United States, with a new office in Egypt opening last year.
CEO Francis Taylor said the company's growth was guided by their customers' best interests. "As a company that listens to what our customers want above all else, DAE has always understood that our members want simple, quick service that delivers results in one phone call," said Mr Taylor.
"The opposition to centralized call centers has grown stronger in recent years, which is why DAE is committed to a decentralized approach to customer service.
"In 2013, our capacity expanded to 12 locations around the globe – providing locally based customer service to individual regions.
"This is particularly important for servicing our members in their own region, where different nationalities and languages are present. Our localized service providers can cater to the cultural needs of members in their region and are sensitive to how different cultures prefer to travel.
"DAE's local customer service professionals also understand the local travel market they work in, making them an asset to our members all over the globe who can now travel to new and exciting regions with the help of our local DAE experts.
"As demand grows, we are building our capacity to better service individual markets – for example, more Spanish-speaking customer service consultants in North America to cater for the increasing number of owners in Latin America.
"Our multi-skilled consultants are highly trained to deal with every member's request – so members can deal with one consultant directly to answer all of their concerns. That's the model of legendary customer service that we are known for.
"These are just some of the ways we are growing our business to ensure our customers' needs are always put first, and it's why DAE is home to the happiest vacation exchange members in the world."
About DAE (Dial An Exchange)
DAE has grown significantly since it first opened its doors in 1997. A strong focus on quality customer service has led to their continued growth as over 50% of their new memberships have been the result of personal referrals. Today, the company services over 1 million timeshare owners (including 500,000 direct members) at resorts and clubs through 12 offices worldwide, and is a truly viable option for all timeshare, points and fractional owners to exchange their weeks and points or credits products. DAE's robust set of membership benefits makes it easy for owners to truly enjoy their vacation ownership experience. Their simple, flexible and innovative direct to consumer approach has evolved into a range of business development and support tools for their business partners such as resorts, management companies and Home Owners Associations who are looking for a competitive edge to support their rapid growth.
DAE offers a value added Gold Advantage benefits program along with low exchange fees, a 3-year credit for every banked week, 24/7 live access to exchange weeks, personalized customer service, worldwide vacation availability, discounted rental weeks in prime locations and informative monthly e-Newsletters providing travel tips, destination ideas and money saving promotions and offers. At DAE, the timeshare owners' needs come first and foremost and quality of service is never compromised. For more information, please visit www.daelive.com


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Scotland is already seeing a payoff for vaccinating adolescent girls for human papillomavirus (HPV).
Since the vaccine became routine about a decade ago, cervical cancer cases in young Scottish women have plummeted, a new study reports.
HPV is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections. Vaccination protects against HPV types 16 and 18, which cause 70% of cervical cancer cases worldwide.
In 2008, Scotland began a national HPV immunization program. The vaccine, which protects against HPV 16 and 18, has become routine for girls aged 12 and 13, and a catch-up program is offered up to age 18.
The impact of routine vaccination on a large population had been unclear, according to Tim Palmer of the University of Edinburgh and his colleagues. Palmer is Scottish clinical lead for cervical screening.
So, the researchers looked at vaccination and screening records for nearly 139,000 women born between 1988 and 1996 who had a cervical screening test result recorded at age 20.
Specifically, the investigators looked at levels of abnormal cells and cervical lesions, known as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). CIN is divided into grades: CIN1, 2 or 3. The higher the number, the greater the risk of invasive cervical cancer.
The findings were published April 3 in the BMJ.
Compared with unvaccinated women born in 1988, vaccinated women born in 1995 and 1996 had an 89% reduction in CIN grade 3 or worse; an 88% reduction in CIN grade 2 or worse; and a 79% reduction in CIN grade 1, the researchers reported in a journal news release.
The younger the age at vaccination, the more effective the vaccine, the findings showed. There was an 86% reduction in CIN grade 3 for women vaccinated at age 12 or 13, compared with 51% for those vaccinated at age 17.
Unvaccinated women also showed a reduction, possibly due to what is known as "herd protection," the study authors said. In herd protection, vaccines provide some protection for those who don't receive a shot, because fewer germs are being transmitted from person to person.
The findings show that routine immunization with the bivalent HPV vaccine is highly effective against high-grade cervical disease, Palmer's team said.
"The findings emphasize the credibility of using high-risk HPV infection as an early marker of the effectiveness and success of the vaccine and underpin the recent call for global action on cervical cancer from the World Health Organization," the authors concluded.
In an accompanying journal editorial, Julia Brotherton called the study results "dramatic." She's medical director at VCS Foundation in Australia.
"We must work towards a world in which all girls and their families are offered, and the majority accept, HPV vaccination, wherever they live," Brotherton wrote. "We must also actively develop, resource, and scale-up more effective, feasible and culturally acceptable strategies for cervical screening, such as self-collection of specimens, if we are ever to effectively reduce the global burden of cervical cancer."
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on HPV vaccination.


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Take A Look At That Baby by John Fahey (1939-2001)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style.
Acoustic. Time Signature 4/4. Key of C. 39 measures. 4 pages. capo 3.


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Babel / Development Status Meetings / 2009-09-21
- Babel Release - post 0.7
- focus on packaging and polishing works for the translation server, message editor, and other tools
- We need more time to finish the code and test. Re-target to SR2.
- Translation assistance tools
- Mori-san: A set of translation assistance tools version 1.0 is available on SourceForge. JP as a name of "Benten" project. By the way, almost all source codes are written in EPL, and we intend to donate them to Babel. But we have recognized a few license issues for the donation. I would like to discuss this point.
- Can the tool co-exist in both SourceForge and Eclipse Foundation? Anyone knows how to proceed?
- CQs
- bug 261958 Language pack should integrate the translated help; Japanese help files for WTP and Mylyn attached; CQ 3533 submitted; CQ not approved yet
- bug 289014 BIRT 2.5.0 Translation for 6 languages in group 1; CQ 3533 submitted; CQ not approved yet
- Eclipse Community Forums
- Denis, do we have to do anything?
- bug 290004
- Babel Language Pack for eclipse in French - jars not available
- Denis, can you check to see if it's a server problem?
- bug 261958
- CQ not approved yet, but I started to create a langauge pack to include the doc translations
- Tried to use the Babel Language Pack Build Tool; encountered a few problems; opened bugs; assigned to Tod
- I created the language pack manually; was able to see the WTP doc in Japanese
- However, WTP included UI plugins and doc plugins into one feature
- I can either see WTP doc in Japanese and UI strings in English, or WTP doc in English and UI strings in Japanese
- We have to build both UI plugins and doc plugins together
- Hacked the UI plugins and doc plugins together; a langauge pack including the WTP doc in Japanese is ready
- Need longer term solution


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This icon is a part of a contemporary Greek set of the Holy Evangelists Matthew (S146), Mark (S166), Luke (S143), and John (S141). St. John the Evangelist and Theologian dictated to his disciple, St. Prochorus, the sacred writings that he composed for the Church. These include his Holy Gospel which is of such a lofty spiritual composition that St. John's symbol is the eagle who flies high above this earth. St. John also composed three Universal Epistles and the Revelation of the things that will come.
St. John, the youngest of the 12 Apostles, was beloved by Christ, and leaned against His breast at the Passover meal in the Upper Room. He was at the Holy Transfiguration, the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and stood at the foot of the Cross with the Virgin Mary while Christ suffered and died for us. He was the guardian of the Virgin after Christ's Death. Although boiled in oil, St. John was miraculously preserved by God to live until old age, and preached in Asia Minor, living for many years in Ephesus. When his time came to leave this earth, he laid down in a grave and asked to be covered up. His grave was empty three days later.


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Our editors will review what you've submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
- Key People:
- Otto I
- Related Topics:
- Holy Roman emperor imperialism tennō chanyu dominate
emperor, feminine empress, title designating the sovereign of an empire, conferred originally on rulers of the ancient Roman Empire and on various later European rulers, though the term is also applied descriptively to some non-European monarchs.
In republican Rome (c. 509–27 bce), imperator denoted a victorious general, so named by his troops or by the Senate. Under the empire (after 27 bce), it was regularly adopted by the ruler as a forename and gradually came to apply to his office.
In medieval times, Charlemagne, king of the Franks and of the Lombards, was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day, 800. Thenceforward until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 there were two emperors in the Christian world, the Byzantine and the Western. The term "Holy Roman emperor" is now generally used, for convenience, to designate the Western sovereigns, though the title was at first simply "emperor" (imperator; the German form Kaiser being derived from the Roman caesar), then "august emperor," then, from 971, "Roman emperor." The addition of "Holy" to the designation of the emperor, in historical writing, follows from its having been added to that of the empire (sacrum imperium, 1157).
The dissolution of Frankish Europe into separate kingdoms led eventually to the imperial title's passing in 962 to the East Frankish or German king Otto I, who was also king of Italy (the kingdom of Burgundy was further acquired by Conrad II in 1032). Thenceforward to 1806, though not all German kings were emperors (crowned by the pope), there were no emperors who were not German kings, so that election to the German kingship came to be de facto necessary for attainment of the imperial title—with the final result that from 1508 to 1806 the style "emperor elected" or, more briefly, "emperor" was given to the German king in anticipation of his coronation by the pope (only one such coronation, that of Charles V in 1530, actually took place in the period).
Outside the Frankish and German sphere of influence the title emperor was sometimes assumed by princes supreme over more than one kingdom: thus Sancho III the Great of Navarre styled himself "emperor of Spain" on his annexation of Léon (1034); Alfonso VI of Léon and Castile called himself "emperor of the Two Religions," to show his supremacy over Christians and Muslims alike; and Alfonso VII took the title "emperor of all Spain" (1135). The Russian tsar Peter I the Great assumed the title imperator on October 22, 1721. From that point on male rulers were conventionally called tsar, whereas female rulers were always called empress; both males and females held both titles, i.e., tsar (or tsaritsa) and imperator (or imperatritsa).
After the French Revolution had destroyed the kingdom of France, Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804, having been anointed by Pope Pius VII, crowned himself emperor of the French as Napoleon I. His claim to be the successor not of Louis XIV but of Charlemagne, together with his organization of the Confederation of the Rhine in Germany, was a threat to the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburg dynasty. Seeing this, Francis II, to retain an imperial title, took that of "hereditary emperor of Austria" before he dissolved the old empire in 1806. His successors retained it until 1918.
Napoleon III was emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870–71 (the French Second Empire). Between 1871 and 1918 the kings of Prussia—William I, Frederick III, and William II— were German emperors, or kaisers. Victoria of Great Britain took the title empress of India in 1876, but her great-grandson George VI renounced the imperial title when India became independent.
In the Western Hemisphere Jean-Jacques Dessalines was emperor of Haiti from 1804 to 1806; princes of the house of Bragança were emperors of Brazil from 1822 to 1889; Agustín de Iturbide and the Austrian archduke Maximilian were emperors of Mexico from 1822 to 1823 and from 1864 to 1867, respectively. The title emperor also is generally and loosely used as the English designation for the sovereigns of Ethiopia and of Japan, for the Mughal rulers of India, for the former sovereigns of China, for the Inca rulers of Peru, and for the Aztec rulers of Mexico.


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Arista Networks this week rolled out its next generation network operating system which, among other features, includes support for application containers.
Arista's EOS operating system powers the company's data center and cloud switches. Its modularity and extensibility is considered key to Arista's success in the switching market.
+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Arista decouples switch, software pricing+
This new version is targeted at improving cloud infrastructure, including hybrid public/private clouds, and container support.
On the container front, Arista's new EOS adds the ability to run Docker containers and track performance with a feature called Container Tracer. Container support in EOS offers customers the ability to load container-based applications directly onto the EOS platform, Arista says.
Container Tracer delivers placement and monitoring capabilities for emerging container-based applications. It complements existing visibility tools for bare metal and hypervisor designs, such as VM Tracer, Arista says.
Another key feature of the new EOS is NetDB, a network-wide state repository designed to increase scalability, and network efficiency and resilience. It is built upon EOS's SysDB system-level state repository, which is essentially the core of EOS.
With NetDB, EOS now supports in excess of 1 million routes and 100,000 tunnels for increased cloud scale, Arista says. NetDB also provides the ability to aggregate the network state of all EOS devices to a common point through the company's CloudVision management platform.
From there, NetDB can stream network-wide telemetry data to augment network operations visibility and historical analytics, Arista says.
EOS also now supports agents written in the Go programming language, as well as OpenConfig APIs and data models. This is designed to broaden the range of agent support for tasks such as configuration management, operational status monitoring, etc.
For hybrid clouds, EOS now features support for workload migration between private and public workloads, and CloudVision management for hybrid clouds.
The new EOS and its features will be generally available this quarter.


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A handmade work of Chinese art, with a tradition going back thousands of years. This pot is made from rare "zi sha" clay ("purple sand"), which is found only in the city of Yixing, in Jiangsu province. These often elaborate and whimsical pots are traditionally used for gongfu steeping, where tea is served in small cups over the course of many very short infusions.
Ideal teas for this are oolongs and pu'erhs, although some black teas will be quite lovely, as well. The unglazed tea pot will become "seasone


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The Community Bulletin (Abilene, Texas), No. 1, Saturday, August 19, 1967
Description: Weekly newspaper reports on church and community events, civil rights, political races, educational changes, and the job market. Regular feature highlights famous African Americans in history. Includes editorial.
Date: August 19, 1967
Creator: Caver, Howard & Caver, Clara
Item Type: Refine your search to only Newspaper
Partner: Abilene Public Library


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Who can resist this cute looking toddler shirt with Cookie Monster's face all over it? Dress the whole family with our Sesame Street character shirts for that special first birthday party. This royal blue standard fit tee is made from 100% cotton. Be sure to check out our Size Chart to get an idea of the average size and dimensions of this Cookie Monster Face Toddler tshirt style. Check back often for some of our new Sesame Street clothing and other Sesame Street Merchandise at great prices only at AnimationShops.com.
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