text:
- 1. Think about the impact on the overall gameplay and the other factions when making a suggestion.
2. Be as detailed as possible if you desribe a balance issue.
3. When making a suggestion, also describe the possible influence on balancing and why you think it wouldn't imbalance the game.
4. Replay/Screenshot or it didn't happen!
5. If you want a new vehicle or something else added there should be a model available for it.
6. Do not make suggestions for the AI.
1. Before posting a balancing suggestion please imagine for yourself, how the suggestion may influence the gameplay or what influence it would have on the other players/enemies.We know that everyone has his favorite faction/doctrine, but keep in mind that adding more units to them or changing the style of them also inflicts the overall balancing of BK and might heavily imbalance the game. I'll try to make some examples that have been voiced over and over again:
Include the Sturmtiger in BK
It would be expensive, need a lot of popcap, would cost a lot fo ammunition to fire and would have a huge cooldown.
It would be devastating, yes, but most of the time it would only stand around and be useless. So from a gameplay point-of-view it wouldn't make sense to include it, sorry.
Why not include German off-map railway artillery?
They would be DEVASTATING.
With BKs damage values a single hit of a 28 cm+ shell would nearly wipe out an entire base. How could this be balanced? Even if a salvo would cost 500+ ammunition this would still be imbalanced. Giving the allies the A-Bomb or a B-17 carpet-bombing run would lead to the same problem. I hope you get the point. Before you suggest a balance change, make sure you test the unit you think is overpowered/underpowered out by yourself. Play the faction that you think is imbalanced. Often you will find out that a certain unit isn't as good as it might seem in the first place. I can't stress this enough: please try to imagine the consequences of the desired change and imagine yourself in the opponents role facing the change. Often you'll find out that the impact on the gameplay would be heavier then you thought.
2. Be as specific as possible if you describe a situation. Any detail can be helpful to us. For example, if you refer to a Infantry vs. Infantry fight, we need to know the exact amount of Squads, their equipment (any weapon upgrades?) and the cover they had been in. Anything like this will be helpful to us. Posts like "My infantry X lost versus infantry Y" aren't detailed and if f.e. your Squad X was Veterancy 0 with standard weapons and the enemy Squad was Veterancy 5 with a lot of additional awesome weapons, that was most likely not a balancing issue. I think you'll get the point: a lot infos = very useful for us. Posted Image
3. When making a suggestion, also post the possible influence on balancing this might have and your reasons, why it wouldn't affect it in a negative way. It is pretty easy to figure out what influence a change could have if you imagine yourself as the enemy. How would you deal with your new suggested change? Would it be hard to counter or even be unfair? Please show us, that you made up your mind about this too. A lot of suggestions are ignoring this very important issue and it is crucial to know, which effect a change would have on the gameplay and balancing before making one.We might instantly close every thread that does not fulfil these few simple rules. We are the ones that have to be convinced by those suggestions so put up some good arguments and also consider the opposite side to keep balancing in mind. If pro and contra arguments have been considered in a suggestion, the chance to get our attention are a lot higher.
4. Show us a replay (if needed, best used to show balancing problems that couldn't be presented with a screenshot) or a screenshot (often sufficient, best for bugs) as a proof. We often get strange reports that often describe impossible situations that are neither reproducible or just impossible to happen code-wise. If you claim a Pershing-Ace was destroyed by a 20 mm cannon, show us a replay. Often things get heavily exaggerated and we don't want to waste our time on false claims. No proof, no right to complain.
5. Since the Blitzkrieg team does not has it own modeller or modelling team we can not create models for new vehicles or other stuff you want in the mod. I know many of you want a certain model vehicle added into the game. But without a proper model for this with animations and preferably a skin this is not going to happen.So if you want a vehicle being added into Blitzkrieg make sure it has a working model with animations and a skin.Do note this: We need the unit modeled and ready to be included. Else we can't include it. We can't let a useable model appear magically.
6. Do not make suggestions for the AI like the abilities the AI can use. Or what the AI can see or similar stuff.You can however make a suggestion about helping us complete the AI. For example someone has found a way to let the AI work better with reward units.


text:
Being blocked by someone
There are a couple of indicators that you may be blocked:
- You can no longer see a contact's last seen or online in the chat window. Learn more here.
- You do not see updates to a contact's profile photo.
- Any messages sent to a contact who has blocked you will always show one check mark (message sent), and never show a second check mark (message delivered).
- Any calls you attempt to place will not go through.
If you see all of the indicators above for a contact, this could mean that the user is blocking you. However, there are other possibilities. We have made this intentionally ambiguous in order to protect your privacy when you block someone. Thus, we cannot tell you if you are being blocked by someone else.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
solutions to common problems
Welcome to the Poolife® solution center – a helpful, comprehensive resource for pool care troubleshooting. Choose the problem you are trying to address from the drop down menu below and we'll help you return your pool to its ideal condition. We have highlighted the most common pool problems. If you need specialized attention, please consult your local professional Poolife® dealer.


text:
The Truth About Saturated Fats
By Sally Kuzemchak, RD
For years you've been told that the saturated fat you eat is public enemy No. 1 in the battle against obesity and heart disease. Turns out, it may actually be -- gasp! -- good for you.
Related: Get Sweetener Savvy: The Need-to-Know Facts
Good Fats Versus Bad Fats
I was a card-carrying skinny-latte-drinking low-fat girl. I ordered frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, grilled chicken instead of steak, and I snacked on low-fat cheese and reduced-fat crackers. With a family history of high cholesterol (my own number hovered slightly beyond the healthy range), I figured that limiting saturated fat was smart.
But in the past couple of years I've made some changes. Inspired by the movement to eat locally, I started shopping at my farmers' market: I bought a quarter of a grass-fed cow and stocked my basement freezer with the beef, which I ate once a week. I also splurged on local bacon sometimes. When my store was out of skim milk, I discovered I preferred creamier 1 percent. I began eating dark chocolate daily. At the same time, I bought fewer packaged crackers, granola bars, and other snacks.
At a recent checkup, I was shocked: Even though I was eating foods rich in saturated fat and a seemingly more indulgent diet, my total cholesterol was down 10 points, my "bad" LDL cholesterol was stellar, and my "good" HDL was the highest it's ever been. And bonus: I hadn't gained any weight! How was that possible? Actually, the health benefits I experienced may be surprisingly common, a growing number of experts say.
What We're Told
Since the epic fail of the fat-free craze of the '80s and '90s, we've learned a lot. The hope was that by cutting fat from our diets, we would trim inches from our figures. Instead, the exact opposite happened: Because fat-free cookies, cheese, chips, and crackers were missing the critical fat that makes us feel full, we ate double -- sometimes triple -- the usual portion. And because manufacturers dumped extra sugar into these foods to make them taste better, we took in just as many calories and often many more. "The low-fat message backfired," says Frank Hu, MD, PhD, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "It led to a proliferation of products that were loaded with sugar, refined carbohydrates, and calories."
These days, advice about fat has shifted away from "Eat less fat" to "Eat the right fats." Fats are now labeled "good" and "bad." The good guys are unsaturated fats: monounsaturateds (MUFAs), found in foods like olive oil and avocados, and polyunsaturateds (PUFAs), found in sunflower and corn oils, among others, and in the omega-3s in salmon and walnuts. Both types earned gold stars because they've been shown to lower blood cholesterol and the risk for heart disease.
The villain, we've long been told, is saturated fat. The conventional wisdom, which dates to the 1950s, is that saturated fat, which is present in meat, dairy, and some plant products, increases our total cholesterol and chance for heart disease and stroke. Trans fat, a relative newcomer that dominated packaged goods and fast food, is another bad guy: It not only ups our LDL cholesterol but also lowers our HDL cholesterol (the kind that helps sweep bad cholesterol out of the body). The American Heart Association recommends limiting your intake of saturated fat to less than 7 percent of your total calories (if you eat 2,000 calories a day, that's 16 grams, roughly the amount in a chocolate milk shake) and of trans fats to no more than two grams a day.
Related: 10 Foods to Never Eat
Saturated Fat Is Wrongfully Accused
After decades of bashing saturated fat, the medical community was stunned by a 2010 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In a research analysis, scientists discovered that there wasn't enough proof to link saturated fat to either heart disease or stroke. It wasn't the first time this fat had been vindicated: Four years earlier the Women's Health Initiative study found that eating less saturated fat didn't result in lower rates of heart disease or stroke. The 2010 analysis, however, was so big and so thorough -- involving 21 studies and nearly 350,000 people -- that it grabbed experts' attention. "Everyone had just assumed that the evidence against saturated fat was strong," says study author Ronald Krauss, MD, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who was surprised by the finding and the controversy it created. "We had to work hard to get our study published. There was an intrinsic mistrust of this kind of result."
Researchers say there were even earlier clues that saturated fat didn't deserve its reputation as top dietary villain. The decades-old "diet-heart hypothesis" -- the idea that saturated fat is bad for the heart -- was mostly based on animal studies and short-term trials that looked only at people's cholesterol levels, not at whether they actually had heart attacks. "Those studies are great for making hypotheses but not for making widespread recommendations," says Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher of diet and heart health. "When we started getting evidence from longer trials and observations, we realized that the truth is more nuanced than we thought."
What researchers discovered was that cutting out saturated fat didn't make much difference, until you considered what people ate in place of it. Swapping animal fats for vegetable oils -- for instance, using soybean oil instead of butter -- appeared to lower LDL cholesterol levels and disease risk. But trading your a.m. bacon for a bagel didn't do the trick. "When you replace saturated fats with refined carbs, your triglycerides can go up and your good HDL cholesterol can go down," explains Alice H. Lichtenstein, the director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University. High triglycerides and low HDL are risk factors for cardiovascular disease and criteria of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of health problems linked to diabetes and heart disease.
Eating less saturated fat doesn't seem to help your weight, either. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people on a low-carb diet shed pounds faster and had better cholesterol levels than those on a low-fat diet, even though the low-carb group was taking in relatively more saturated fat. This may be because people eating fewer carbs release less insulin, which may reduce fat storage, control hunger, and influence metabolism in a way that helps keep cholesterol in check.
The Different Kinds of Fat
So why, despite the explosion of positive study findings, is saturated fat still considered evil? One major factor: It's not a single fat. There are more than two dozen kinds, and "they're not created equal," says David Katz, MD, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center. So it's difficult to make a general recommendation about saturated fats as a whole. Yet that's exactly what the Dietary Guidelines for Americans do. Here are the four major types of saturated fats in our diet, according to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee:
(1) Palmitic and (2) myristic acids At first glance, palmitic acid (found in palm oil, butter, and eggs) and myristic acid (found in cheese, milk, butter, and beef) fit the bad-guy profile. They appear to increase inflammation and LDL cholesterol. But here's where things gets tricky: The rise in LDL is at least partly due to an increase in the size of each LDL particle in the body, which may not be as dangerous as an increase in the number of particles. These saturated fats also raise HDL in the process, so the net effect may be neutral, not bad.
(3) Stearic acid This saturated fat, present in chocolate and beef, doesn't raise LDL at all. In fact, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee stated in its scientific report that the acid should not be considered a "cholesterol-raising" saturated fat. (Though the committee itself continues to recommend cutting back on saturated fat and doesn't mention stearic acid. Confused? Us too.) In fact, this type of saturated fat is an important reason dark chocolate gets the green light from most health experts. "The stearic acid in dark chocolate has no negative effect on blood cholesterol," Dr. Katz says.
(4) Lauric acid There's some indication that lauric acid may not be harmful either. It's found in coconut oil, the latest superfood, which has been touted to do everything from lower stress to whittle your waist. But those claims are overblown. "Lauric acid is probably an innocuous fat," Dr. Katz says. "But no studies indicate that coconut has any edge over other oils that we know confer a benefit, like olive oil."
Related: What to Eat Before and After a Workout
The Real Villain
Some researchers believe that saturated fat may simply be a convenient scapegoat for the true problem with our diets: the food we eat. The top three sources of saturated fat for Americans are cheese, pizza, and such grain-based desserts as cookies and cakes. The foods that saturated fat is found in might actually contribute to the risk to your health. Case in point: Two slices of pizza with meat toppings at a popular chain not only pack 20 grams of saturated fat but also nearly 1,000 calories, more than a day's supply of sodium and a gram of trans fat. In a recent study that linked red meat to a higher rate of death, processed meat, which is high in sodium and other preservatives, was found to be especially dangerous. "We should stop focusing on just one chemical in food and instead look at the overall package it comes in," Dr. Krauss explains.
Modern diets are a veritable perfect storm of unhealthiness, according to Dr. Mozaffarian. He and his colleagues analyzed the number of deaths from various risk factors and singled out five dietary patterns to study: high in trans fat, high in saturated fat, high in sodium, low in fruits and vegetables, and low in omega-3 fatty acids from fish (all pretty darn common in our superprocessed society). When they looked at deaths associated with each pattern, diets high in saturated fat came in, well, dead last. "If you eat a lot of salt and trans fats and few fruits, vegetables and fish, you're at a high risk for heart disease no matter what your saturated fat intake is," Dr. Mozaffarian says. "Conversely, higher or lower saturated fat will have a small effect if you're doing everything else right."
Bottom line: Saturated fat doesn't deserve its bad-guy reputation. That's why shifting the focus to more pressing dietary problems -- for example, too many refined carbs or a dearth of produce -- is critical, experts say. Read on for eight easy ways to do just that. And pass the dark chocolate, please.
8 Rules to Eat By
So saturated fat is not the evil you thought. But what does that mean for your diet? These eight must-dos cut through the confusion.
1. Load up on whole foods. If you eat mostly heart-healthy, nutrient-rich produce, whole grains, nuts, beans, and fish, then saturated fat shouldn't be a problem.
2. Don't overdo it. Saturated fat may not be a culprit, but it doesn't offer the same health benefits as unsaturated fat. So don't start cooking with butter or eating more meat. Fish, beans, and lentils are still healthier protein sources than red meat.
3. Choose low-fat dairy. Low-fat milk and yogurt are good choices because they have fewer calories and just as much calcium and vitamin D as full-fat versions.
4. Beware of health halos. Local organic cream from the farmers' market is still cream, and it packs loads of calories. Foods like ice cream and bacon should be considered splurges. And a product labeled "No saturated fat" may be full of sodium, sugar, and refined flour.
5. Don't go loco for coconut. Choose liquid vegetable oils, such as canola and olive, that are a mix of MUFAs and PUFAs. Though some people are switching to coconut oil, there's no evidence that it's as beneficial as these oils are.
6. Steer clear of trans fats. They're very bad for you, and they mostly appear in processed foods. Avoid anything that has "partially hydrogenated oils," a code name for trans fats, in the ingredients list.
7. Consider your carbs. Get most of your carbohydrates from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, not from sugary and refined starches, like crackers and desserts.
8. Treat yourself to dark chocolate. Indulge in a small piece -- about one ounce -- every day. The saturated fat in it won't harm your health, and the chocolate packs flavonoids that act as antioxidants, protecting cells from damage.
More from FITNESS Magazine:
13 Healthy Quinoa Recipes
Get a Grip! 20-Minute Kettlebell HIT Workout
FITNESS Gear Guide: The Best Sports Bras of 2013


text:
Free-to-Play FPS juggernaut Team Fortress 2 is finally releasing its long-rumored cooperative mode. After years of team-based deathmatches and flag captures, this week we'll see the release of the game's Mann vs. Machine update, which is expected to add a new mode that deploys a legion of robotic foes (shaped like TF2 classes, of course) for you to destroy with the help of up to 5 friends.
As usual Valve has orchestrated a three-day reveal of all the new modes, features, and weapons in their new patch. We can expect two more updates with even more news as the week continues. But the update already includes a new map along with 2 hilarious comics and the aforementioned confirmation of robotic hordes in TF2.
In other Team Fortress 2 news, Robot Entertainment's iOS strategy game Hero Academy is now available for purchase on Steam for $5, and doing so will also unlock a Team Fortress 2 team pack. We're big fans of Hero Academy's stripped-down approach to turn-based strategy games and now that you can play as all the characters from TF2 (and the game is available for PC through Steam) there's even more reasons to sneak in a few rounds during your free moments. Hero Academy is available now on Steam for $5, and purchasing it through Valve's digital distribution service will also unlock the Team Fortress 2 team. If you already own the game on iOS, you can unlock the TF2 Hero Academy team for a small fee. The Mann Vs. Machine update is coming very, very soon (August 15th, in fact) and both games should give you new and exciting ways to watch serious men in silly hats blow things to smithereens.


text:
|#!/usr/bin/env python
|# Copyright (C) 2012 The Android Open Source Project
|# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
|# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
|# You may obtain a copy of the License at
|# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
|# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
|# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
|# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
|# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
|# limitations under the License.
|Prints to stdout the package names that have overlay changes between
|current_overlays.txt and previous_overlays.txt.
|Usage: diff_package_overlays.py <current_packages.txt> <current_overlays.txt> <previous_overlays.txt>
|current_packages.txt contains all package names separated by space in the current build.
|This script modfies current_packages.txt if necessary: if there is a package in
|previous_overlays.txt but absent from current_packages.txt, we copy that line
|from previous_overlays.txt over to current_packages.txt. Usually that means we
|just don't care that package in the current build (for example we are switching
|from a full build to a partial build with mm/mmm), and we should carry on the
|previous overlay config so current_overlays.txt always reflects the current
|status of the entire tree.
|Format of current_overlays.txt and previous_overlays.txt:
|<package_name> <resource_overlay> [resource_overlay ...]
|<package_name> <resource_overlay> [resource_overlay ...]
|import sys
|def main(argv):
|if len(argv) != 4:
|print >> sys.stderr, __doc__
|f = open(argv[1])
|all_packages = set(f.read().split())
|def load_overlay_config(filename):
|f = open(filename)
|result = {}
|for line in f:
|line = line.strip()
|if not line or line.startswith("#"):
|words = line.split()
|result[words[0]] = " ".join(words[1:])
|return result
|current_overlays = load_overlay_config(argv[2])
|previous_overlays = load_overlay_config(argv[3])
|result = []
|carryon = []
|for p in current_overlays:
|if p not in previous_overlays:
|elif current_overlays[p] != previous_overlays[p]:
|for p in previous_overlays:
|if p not in current_overlays:
|if p in all_packages:
|# overlay changed
|# we don't build p in the current build.
|# Add carryon to the current overlay config file.
|if carryon:
|f = open(argv[2], "a")
|for p in carryon:
|f.write(p + " " + previous_overlays[p] + "\n")
|# Print out the package names that have overlay change.
|for r in result:
|print r
|if __name__ == "__main__":


text: Elvis Presley was a singer, actor, and musician. A cultural icon, he is commonly known simply as "Elvis", and is also sometimes referred to as "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" or "The King". In 1954, Presley began his career as one of the first performers of rockabilly, an uptempo fusion of country and rhythm and blues with a strong back beat. Presley had a versatile voice and had unusually wide success encompassing other genres, including gospel, blues, ballads and pop. To date, he has been inducted into four music halls of fame. Take home this Elvis Presley Sun Records Playing Card Set today! Tin measures about 4-inches tall x 5 1/2-inches wide x 1-inch deep.


text:
CT Gov. Announces New Fund on Sandy Anniversary
NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — The state of Connecticut is creating a low-interest revolving loan fund to help homeowners and businesses elevate and flood-proof their structures, in preparation for future severe weather and floods.
Governor Dannel P. Malloy announced Tuesday that $2 million in Department of Energy and Environmental Protection funds has initially been set aside for the new program. Malloy said he plans to ask the General Assembly to approve an additional $25 million when lawmakers return in February, but acknowledged more money may be needed. Loans will range from $100,000 to $300,000.
The governor announced the new initiative in the coastal city of New London, on the one-year anniversary of when Superstorm Sandy hit the state.
Many coastal homeowners are facing massive flood insurance premium increases if they don't elevate their properties.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


text:
UPDATE: Lance Armstrong responds: "He has no proof."
(Tim Reynolds / AP) Disgraced American cyclist Floyd Landis has admitted to systematic use of performance-enhancing drugs and accused seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong of paying international cycling officials to cover-up a positive test, according to e-mails obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for doping but had always denied cheating, sent a series of e-mails to cycling officials and sponsors acknowledging and detailing his long-term use of banned drugs.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the details of the e-mails.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
NEW YORK (AP) – Disgraced American cyclist Floyd Landis has admitted to systematic use of performance-enhancing drugs and accused seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong of involvement in doping, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for doping but had always denied cheating, sent a series of e-mails to cycling officials and sponsors acknowledging and detailing his long-term use of banned drugs, the newspaper said.
The report said Landis wrote in the e-mails that he started doping in 2002, his first year racing with the U.S. Postal Service team led by Armstrong. Landis also admitted to doping in an interview with ESPN.com.
Landis also accused American riders Levi Leipheimer and Dave Zabriskie and Armstrong's longtime coach, Johan Bruyneel, of involvement in doping, the Journal reported.
Armstrong is currently competing in the Tour of California and couldn't be reached for comment. Neither could Bruyneel, Leipheimer or Zabriskie.
International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid said Landis' allegations were "scandalous and mischievous."
"These guys coming out now with things like this from the past is only damaging the sport," McQuaid told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday. "If they've any love for the sport they wouldn't do it."
The governing body said it regretted that Landis accused former teammates without allowing U.S. cycling and anti-doping authorities time to investigate.
"An impartial investigation is a fundamental right as Mr. Landis will understand having contested, for two years, the evidence of his breach of the anti-doping rules in 2006," UCI said in a statement.
McQuaid said it was up to U.S.A Cycling and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to look into the allegations.
USA Cycling did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
USADA CEO Travis Tygart released a statement Thursday morning saying he would not comment on "the substance of any doping investigation."
"It is important to re-emphasize USADA's position that all athletes are innocent until and unless proven otherwise through the established legal process," Tygart said. "Attempts to sensationalize or exploit either the process or the athletes are a disservice to fair play, due process, and to those who love clean sport."
WADA president John Fahey said in a statement that "we are very interested in learning more about this matter and we will liaise with the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and any other authorities with appropriate jurisdiction to get to the heart of the issues raised."
The Journal said it had seen copies of three e-mails sent by Landis between April 30 and May 6, and that he had copied in seven people on the messages, including officials with USA Cycling and international governing body UCI.
Landis served a two-year ban after testing positive for elevated testosterone levels at the 2006 Tour. He was the first rider stripped of a Tour de France title.
"I want to clear my conscience," Landis told ESPN.com. "I don't want to be part of the problem any more."
He also said he was speaking out now in part because the WADA's eight-year statute of limitations was close to running out.
"If I don't say something now then it's pointless to ever say it," Landis said.
He told ESPN.com that his most difficult phone call was to his mother to tell her the truth for the first time.
Landis' parents did not immediately return a phone message left at their home in Lancaster County, Pa. Paul and Arlene Landis, devout Mennonites, had always defended their son against doping accusations.
McQuaid questioned Landis' credibility and said he would be "a pariah" in the cycling community.
"What's his agenda?" McQuaid said. "The guys is seeking revenge. It's sad, it's sad for cycling. It's obvious he does hold a grudge."
McQuaid said he received copies of the e-mails sent by Landis to the U.S. cycling federation, but declined to comment on their contents. He said Landis' allegations were "nothing new."
"He already made those accusations in the past," McQuaid said. "Armstrong has been accused many times in the past but nothing has been proved against him. And in this case, I have to question the guy's credibility. There is no proof of what he says. We are speaking about a guy who has been condemned for doping before a court."
In the ESPN.com interview, Landis detailed extensive use of the blood-boosting drug EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone and blood transfusions, as well as female hormones and a one-time experiment with insulin. He said the doping occurred during the years he rode for the U.S. Postal Service and Swiss-based Phonak teams.
Phonak owner Andy Rihs issued a statement saying Landis' claims were "lies" and a "last, tragic attempt" to get publicity.
"Floyd Landis personally signed that he would uphold our code and use no illegal practices when he joined our former racing group," Rihs said.
The whole team was convinced that he was upholding this until his doping was revealed at the 2006 Tour.
"Neither I, nor the leadership of the team, knew that Floyd Landis doped," Rihs said.
In one of the e-mails seen by the Wall Street Journal, dated April 30, Landis said he flew to Girona, Spain, in 2003 and had two half-liter units of blood extracted from his body in a three-week interval to be used later during the Tour de France.
According to the newspaper, Landis claimed the blood extractions took place in Armstrong's apartment. He said blood bags belonging to Armstrong and then-teammate George Hincapie were kept in a refrigerator in Armstrong's closet and Landis was asked to check the temperature of the blood daily.
When Armstrong left for a few weeks, he asked Landis to "make sure the electricity didn't go off and ruin the blood," according to the e-mail quoted by the Journal.
AP Sports Writers Samuel Petrequin in Paris, Graham Dunbar in Geneva and Associated Press Writer Mike Rubinkam in Allentown, Pa., contributed to this report.


text:
Russian and US Exercise for Conducting on-site Inspections under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty 2001
From WikiLeaks
Unless otherwise specified, the document described here:
- Was first publicly revealed by WikiLeaks working with our source.
- Was classified, confidential, censored or otherwise withheld from the public before release.
- Is of political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance.
Any questions about this document's veracity are noted.
The summary is approved by the editorial board.
See here for a detailed explanation of the information on this page.
If you have similar or updated material, see our submission instructions.
- Release date
- September 9, 2008
A United States/Russian Federation Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty on-site inspection joint tabletop exercise took place in Snezhinsk, Russia, from 19 to 24 October 1998, under the auspices of the bilateral CTBT Joint Working Group Three. The objectives of the exercise were to examine the functioning of an inspection team (IT) in a given scenario, to evaluate the strategies and techniques employed by the IT, to identify ambiguous interpretations of Treaty provisions that needed clarification, and to assess the overall utility of tabletop exercises to assist in developing an effective Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) verification regime.
To achieve these objectives, the United States and Russian Federation (RF) agreed that two scenarios would be conducted. The first would be developed by the RF, who would act as controller and as the inspected State Party (ISP), while the United States would play the role of the IT. The roles would be reversed in the second scenario; the United States would develop the scenario and play the ISP and act as the game controller, while the RF would play the IT. A joint exercise planning team, comprised of members of both the U.S. and Russian teams, agreed on ground rules for the two scenarios and established a joint evaluation team to evaluate the entire exercise. .
Further information


text:
Everybody loves shaped bokeh images. So do I. Shaped bokeh images are those cool images that have all the blurred lights spear as a heart or star or any other shape.
This is why I wanted to share a very cool new gadget that's out there for creative photographers – The Bokeh Masters Kit. It is a pro level tool that achieves the same effect as we did with the "Create Your Own Bokeh" post way back when we just started the blog.
Now, I am going to be completely open about it and tell you that I was the chief engineer on this product so I not completely without bias :)
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words – This is the kind of effect you can get with the kit (Click any image to see it larger)
And even more samples here. Now, I know you are thinking Christmas tree images right now, it is inevitable.
The Bokeh Masters Kit allows you to achieve the shaped bokeh effect easily and repeatedly by using a lens-adaptor and bokeh discs system.
The lens adapter attaches to your lens with a rubber band and allows for quick and convenient bokeh disks changes. The kit comes with a variety of shaped Bokeh disks which are made from durable plastic, and are laser cut to precision.
The kit comes in three flavors:
Demo – the most basic kit with the lens adapter and five "classic" discs like stars, hearts and smileys (15$).
Advanced – which adds 16 more shaped bokeh discs with icons, animals, sports, and more (25$)
Masters – which adds 8 empty discs for you to make your own shapes and a discs "wallet" (list 35$ 25$ during introduction period).
It is also worth noting that the kit will work best with 50mm f/1.8 lens or the lenses specified in this page.
To kick things off, I'll be giving away three Masters Edition kits. There are three ways to enter the raffle (and you can do all three):
Comment on this post (make sure you leave a valid site URL/Flickr account as site so I can reach you).
Follow @diyphotography and Tweet this post: "Coolest Photography gadget ever giveaway: the Bokeh Masters Kit #BMK. RT to enter. http://bit.ly/8KIUvK". You can tweet this as much as you'd like, but please no more than once a day – otherwise your followers will get totally sick from it.
Grab one (or a group) of the small people in this image on Flickr by making a note around it (them).
Comes Tuesday, I'll randomly select one winner from each group, and post it on the site. If you can't hold your breath that long, just order the kit here.


text:
Hempel A/S Corporate Movie - EN subtitles
4,250 views
Watch our corporate movie telling the story of Hempel, each segment and the many functions of our company around the world.
The Hempel corporate movie provides imagery of how Hempel paints your world stronger. How much value we place in the processes involved in being able to provide our customers with coatings that are more efficient, durable, look better and last longer.
This movie also illustrates the story of Hempel, how our company has grown since 1915 when it was founded by J. C. Hempel.
(With English subtitles)


text:
March 21, 2006: Are you tired of monitoring several email accounts and checking each one for incoming messages? We have something for you! To help you solve this problem, we've developed an Crawler.com webmail feature that allows you to control all your POP3 email accounts in one place - your Crawler.com email account.
With this new Crawler.com feature you won't have to access your email accounts individually to read your mail anymore!
It's simple! Just go to your Crawler.com email settings, within the "Email Options" tab click on the "External POP3 Accounts" link and use the "Add new account" button to add each of your email accounts one by one to the list of monitored email accounts. Setup the added accounts just like if you were adding them to your mail client, such as MS Outlook. Learn how to setup your POP3 account...
To help you not lose track of where your messages came from, Crawler.com lets you manage folders where messages from email accounts that you specify will be automatically stored when you receive them. Learn how to create your custom folders...
Crawler.com gives you the option to leave copies of messages in your other email accounts or to conveniently download them all into your Crawler.com account and not leave copies in the old accounts anymore. If you want to keep a copy of downloaded emails in your other email account, you must select the "Leave a copy of downloaded emails on the server" checkbox when you're adding a new account.
If you want your Crawler.com email account to check your other email accounts for incoming messages, select the "Automatically check for new messages" checkbox. Even if select this, you can still check for incoming messages by clicking on the "Check now" link on your External POP3 Accounts list.
We believe you'll greatly enjoy this convenient feature. If you have any problems, please review the Crawler.com webmail help or contact our support team.
Crawler Group News | Promote Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Uninstall Info
© 2023 Crawler Group. All rights reserved. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.


text:
The have identified poor regulatory and judicial enforcement as a significant impediment to shareholder protection and foreign investment in emerging markets.
Deficiencies in emerging market enforcement have helped make arbitration of company law disputes (ACLD) the preferred method of dispute resolution for private-equity investors in many key emerging markets, such as Russia and China.
The OECD has therefore initiated an ACLD programme to:
More information
Related Documents


text: In the outset of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, the Major is described as feeling the weight of his age, but on page 320, the morning after his romantic evening with Mrs. Ali at Colonel Preston's Lodge, Simonson writes that "a pleasant glow, deep in his gut, was all that remained of a night that seemed to have burned away the years from his back." Do you think love is ageless? Can transform us at any point in our lives?


text:
Twenty five years ago this week the Solidarity trade union called for a four hour warning strike, with a general strike threatened to follow four days later. Participation in the warning strike was 100 percent. Maybe the Belarusian opposition should take note..?
On the March 27, 1981, at 8 a.m., workers all over Poland downed tools and stopped work for four hours. Communist Poland came to a standstill. In the streets the flags of Poland and Solidarity hung from every conceivable point, fluttering in the early spring breeze. Every second person was wearing a badge – the red and white of the local branch of the trade union, the silver and black of a specially made image of the Solidarity monument, which now stood proudly near the gates of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, the home of Solidarity.
At 12 noon workers all over the country picked up their tools again and re-started work. The message was clear to the communist authorities. Solidarity now had the power, and the solidarity, to bring the regime to its knees. Would they heed that warning in Spring 1981 and stop breaking the promises that they had made in the August Agreement the previous year, which officially recognized Solidarity as the first free and self-governing trade union in the communist block?
But just how was it possible to organize such a strike in what were extremely oppressive circumstances?
This is a question maybe the opposition in Belarus might be asking themselves today. The presidential election last Sunday ended in a landslide for what many call the 'last dictator in Europe', Alexander Lukashenko, a strange figure who seems nostalgic for the good old days of the Soviet Union. This Charlie Chaplin-esque character, who would indeed make a great comic supporting actor in a Buster Keaton or Keystone cops movie, if he wasn't so paranoid and oppressive a personality - received 86% of the vote, according the Belarus electoral commission, that is.
Landslide? (snigger!)
Of course, nobody believes this figure, maybe not even Lukashenko himself. The OECD has said that the elections were anything but 'free and fair'; the opposition candidates received very little coverage on the state controlled television channels at all; candidates were harassed, and in some incidences, beaten. Independent newspapers and other media have been shut down.
Lukashenko was not taking any risks with the actual result of the election, so he appears to have all but fixed it before hand.
Many in the West and certainly Poland were waiting, hoping, that another Orange or Rose Revolution would take place as it did in Ukraine or Georgia, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in a show of 'People Power'.
On the night of the election, about ten thousand filled the main square in Minsk, the capital. The next day, however, the numbers had slipped to only around five hundred.
It looks certain there will be no 'Denim Revolution' this time.
But why? The opposition complains, rightly, that there isn't a level playing field and that people are scared to say and act as they really feel.
All true, but how did Solidarity do what they did in even more difficult circumstances 25 years ago?
Between August 1980, the beginning of Solidarity, to just eight months later in March 1981, the union had organized itself into what was an alternative civil society in waiting. Out of 12.5 million workers eligible to join, the Solidarity trade union had nearly ten million members.
There were underground newspapers: Solidarnosc printed in Gdansk, Niezaleznosc (Independence) printed in Warsaw. There was what they called 'Solidarity Radio' in Wroclaw, which was actually a cassette recording duplicated and played over the works radio all over the region. There was a Solidarity Press Agency. There was the underground printers Nowa, churning out translations of Orwell's Animal Farm and other forbidden material. There was telephone and fax networks connecting up all parts of the union, which was organized into regions and local chapters, with a Central Committee coordinating the whole thing, and Lech Walesa sitting, almost king-like, at the top of the pyramid.
Geo-political reality
After the warning strike on the Friday, twenty-five years ago, a hectic weekend of negotiations with the communist government followed. Eventually, and at the very last minute, Walesa decided that the risk of a general strike was just too great. Not because he though that the strike would not get the support it needed – people were ready to take the plunge – but because of what they called then the 'geopolitical reality'. That meant the Soviet Union and the tanks on the border; that meant 1956 in Hungary, it meant 1968 in Prague.
But it shows that in Poland then, politics was not the art of the possible but the nearly impossible. If it weren't for the constant threat of an invasion from the East, the communist state in Poland would have been history.
Today, for sure, President Putin would not have been too happy about the prospect of another show of 'people power' on Russia's borders, but nobody is suggesting that he would have sent in the tanks if he didn't like the result of the Belarus presidential elections.
The reality in Belarus is that, though Lukashenko definatly doesn't have 86% of the people behind him he does have a significant amount of popularity – especially among the old, the unemployed and in rural areas. He is also faced with a fragmented opposition.
In those circumstances it's a mystery why he feels so paranoid that he has to use the oppressive measures he does. Maybe he could have won the election without them.
The difference between Solidarity twenty-five years ago and Belarus today is one of imagination, organization and ultimately, Solidarity.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Politics: the art of the nearly impossible
Posted by beatroot at 3/21/2006
10 comments:
- Romerican said...
A nice lesson of comparisons. Not being in Belarus, I've little idea what ingenuity could have sparked larger numbers to turn out (tonight, in particular)... but surely it is lacking. You're right to point out the other factors as organization may very well have much to do with this apparent lack of motivation (creativity).
Solidarity is helpful when it's there, but not always necessary in the Walesa sense. Ukraine was fairly divided (although, perhaps not in the capital). Romania was lucky (i.e., no solidarity whatsoever)... and, in some ways, their election triumph still goes unrecognized.
Once again, your piece was sober and thoughtful.
- 5:56 pm
- beatroot said...
Thank you, sir. Although that is the first time anyone has called me 'sober'!
Ukraine was not a 'peoples' revolution'. It was the half the country that had western backing. And they have turned out to be not much better than the previous bunch of cronies.
Solidarity worked because it was a genuine grass roots movement. It wasn't a revolution by ex-Soviet bankers like they have in Ukraine.
And the Belarus opposition are hopeless and not very popular. Lots of the vulnerable in that country just don't want capitalism.
- 11:49 pm
- Frank Partisan said...
Very well written post.
- 7:00 am
- sonia said...
Belarus opposition are hopeless and not very popular
Maybe the people of Belarus look at the Ducks and ask themselves: is it worth overthrowing Lukashenko only to end up with bozos like those 16 years later ????
All revolutions (socialist, communist or "colored" ones) always end up disappointing their supporters...
- 9:25 am
- beatroot said...
You are damn right about that Sonia. Look at the Ukrainian fiasco. Look at Serbia. That's becuase these were not mass movements in the sense that they were led from the bottom-up (unlike Solidarnosc)...they were essentially changes in the ruling elites...and those types of 'revolutions' quickly loose momentum.
- 12:08 pm
- sonia said...
Yes, but I would go further - even authentic mass movement revolutions like Solidarity's end up disappointing people - especially in the country where they actually take place. Revolutions are like fires that might warm some neighboring countries's hearts, but they often devour their own children.
- 7:09 pm
- beatroot said...
Correct. The parties in power now are all from solidarity...and the main opposition is from Solidarity. But at least it was a grass roots thing, whuch means it represented the will of the people...and it got society ready for what would come after communism.
So it was a good start and not democracy imposed from outside.
- 8:27 am
"You are damn right about that Sonia. Look at the Ukrainian fiasco. Look at Serbia. That's becuase these were not mass movements in the sense that they were led from the bottom-up (unlike Solidarnosc)...they were essentially changes in the ruling elites...and those types of 'revolutions' quickly loose momentum."
Oh, its even worse than that. There used to be 150 million Russians. There's 143 million now, and there's about 750,000 more deaths than births there every year. There used to be 52 million Ukrainians. There's 46 million now, and there's about 350,000 more deaths than births there every year.
There used to be 10 million Belarussians. And there still are, precisely because their government rejected "reform". And that's what has the US and other Western governments upset... Luka's made their minions look bad.
- 5:17 am
It is not fair to compare Solidarnosc with the Orange Revolution. The OR was not just about Yushchenko; Solidarnosc was not just about Walesa. The OR was spontaneous, unlike Poland's struggle in the 1980s. The OR was a different kind of people's movement, but a people's movement nonetheless.
"It had Western backing." You've been reading too much of the Guardian. The Western press greatly simplified events in Ukraine to sell to an audience that last read about Ukraine when Chernobyl blew up. Having lived in Ukraine during the OR, I have a different perspective...
What does "democracy imposed from the outside mean" in real terms? I mean, you actually think America forced or paid millions of Ukrainians to protest for three weeks in 2004 in sub-zero temperatures? I don't think so.
For Ukrainians, orange was a symbol for so much more than "democracy" or "stopping corruption" or "freedom." It meant different things for different people.
About the Ukraine parliamentary election: Poland provides a good case. Remember when Kwasniewski beat Walesa? Was this a revanche on democracy? Was Solidarnosc a failure?
The goals of the OR will not be comprimised as misinterpreted by the Western press.
- 5:16 am
- beatroot said...
'The Orange Revolution was spontanious'? I don't think so. Do you think the concert stage and all the equipment was magiced out of think air? It was planned for months. And it was not a 'revolution' at all. It was a battle within the elt. bThe western supporting part won, the Russian supporting part lost. And then the western part split over corruption and broekn promises and now we are back where we started.
Revolutions ain't what they used to be.
- 9:21 am


text:
Gisele Bündchen was clocked doing 70 m.p.h. in a 55 zone while driving on Cape Cod this weekend. Two children were in the Cadillac S.U.V., presumably her son Benjamin and step-son Jack, and Bündchen was let off with a warning. The state trooper's son later Tweeted that she autographed the citation, with kisses. [BH]
Coincidentally — or not — Bündchen is the star of a lingerie campaign in Brazil, the theme of which seems to be "Gender roles of the 1950s and how they were awesome, with boobs." In one, Bündchen demonstrates the "correct" way to inform one's husband that one has crashed his car (again!): while wearing lingerie. In another, she shows the "correct" way to cop to maxing out hubby's credit cards: also while wearing lingerie. And Betty Friedan wept. [Copyranter]
15-year-old Tavi Gevinson is channeling 14-year-old Tavi Gevinson on the new 90th anniversary edition cover of L'Officiel. [TFS]
Abbey Lee Kershaw wears some serious false eyelashes on the latest cover of i-D. [Models.com]
Katy Perry has pink hair on the cover of InStyle magazine. What will she think of next! [InStyle]
Lindsay Lohan will be the next face of a designer named Philipp Plein. We've never heard of him, and his last ads featured a model wearing a leather jacket and a bedazzled skull merkin. So this bodes well. [Fashionista]
19-year-old Karlie Kloss, who started modeling in earnest at age 14, posed for a five-page spread of implied nudes, shot by Mario Testino, in the latest issue of Allure. She covers her breasts alternately with her hands, her arms, a bra top that she holds up, and, as pictured, bubble bath froth. Some people are upset by this. [Fashion Copious]
People currently aged 18-29 — "millennials," if you will — are coming of age (and learning to shop) in straitened times. This has retailers nervous. "It could be up until 2020, 2025 until people get to a situation where they feel they can spend freely," says one analyst. "They're probably going to have less credit card debt because they saw what happened to mom and dad." Horrors. [WWD]
There is news of Kanye West's fashion line, brought to us by an anonymous mole inside the operation. Apparently, the samples are being made by Central St. Martins fashion students in a giant now-defunct London nightclub. The students toil under the supervision of a rotating cast of editors/stylists/designers/the head of their M.A. program/Yeezy himself. This has led to some disorganization, and some to-ing and fro-ing and to-many-cooks-ing on the "ideas" front, and some attendant frustration; the mole says the process is "slightly excruciating" and that s/he would be "amazed" if the collection is ready for Paris Fashion Week, "and that's quite likely the reason it wasn't shown last week at New York Fashion Week after all." And it's sort of samurai-inspired? "That sort of sports-luxe thang." And at least some of it will be too expensive to produce. There is gold chainmail. [Grazia]
Franca Sozzani told Newsweek reporter Jacob Bernstein that Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy should "hire back John Galliano" to head up the house of Christian Dior. "It's really a pity," she said of the convicted racist's estranged relationship to the fashion industry. "And I will never believe he believed what he said. I think he was drunk and alone in a bar. When people go crazy, they go crazy. It's a human case, it's not political or religious. He didn't kill anyone!" Now she doesn't want those comments "to become a big deal. I understand that it's getting a big story. But it was not in this way that I wanted to say. I said that — Jacob was writing what I thought, so everything was perfect[ly accurate]....I only say that what he did with his talent was genius, what he did was very good for the shows and all of his collections and that he is a really talented person who made a bad mistake. But I didn't mean hire bring him back. I only say that it's a pity that he'll not be there anymore. It's completely different." Completely. [HuffPo]
The garment industry was once Haiti's largest employer, and with new international investments announced at the Clinton Global Initiative yesterday, it may once be again. Twenty thousand new jobs are promised with the construction of a new industrial park free-trade zone, anchored by a South Korean apparel manufacturer and textile miller. "Haiti's close proximity to the U.S. gives it the advantage of shorter delivery times when nowadays speed-to-market is so important," said the head of the Korean company. [WWD]
The garment industry remains a dangerous place for the many (mostly) women and girls who work in it. A Jordanian factory that fills orders for Wal-Mart, Target, Land's End, Hanes, Macy's, and Sears has recently seen five more of the Bangladeshi guest workers who largely comprise its staff come forward and accuse company managers of rape. "He said, if you try to do anything now, I'll kill you right here," says one garment worker in testimony collected by investigators working for the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. "Then he put his hands on me…he violated me. I want his judgment and that he go to jail, with that I'd be happy. So he can't do this to another woman again." Feel better about having missed out on that Target for Missoni sweater now? [Ecouterre]
Anna Wintour made Hamish Bowles try out for The X Factor. He sang "Oops!... I Did It Again." Also, Anna Wintour is completely tone-deaf. [Racked]
Model agent Carole White, who is credited with managing Naomi Campbell's career during its crucial early and middle stages, says the industry isn't the place for "spoiled girls." "British girls aren't so brave. I think they're spoiled and their education maybe isn't that good. Modeling's difficult, and British girls often give up if they have a boyfriend, or they didn't do that well in a casting or a shoot; they often say the traveling's too hard, and they'd rather go to the festivals in the summer than actually go to New York for the shows. And they don't have that self-discipline that Brazilian or Eastern European girls have — they really want it. And most of them are sending money back home for a reason. They come from poor backgrounds. English girls are particularly spoiled. They haven't got any guts. That's my biggest challenge, I have to make them all have guts." God forbid someone should want some kind of life outside of her job. The girls who have no choice but to work, because of poverty and/or agency debt, they're just so much more open-minded. [The Cut]
Meanwhile, White is one of the people upset by Marc Jacobs' and Gucci creative director Frida Giannini's alleged model-hogging ways. Jacobs moved his New York show to Thursday night, the very last moment of New York fashion week, which angered some editors who are traditionally already en route to London by that time. But then there were all the models he had on hold until the last minute. "We're not just talking about one or two big girls," says White, "Jacobs had numerous models holding on options right up until the day of his show meaning they all stayed in New York just in case they got cast." That meant Friday, the opening day of London Fashion Week, was missing a lot of top models. And on Saturday, well: "Gucci demanded that girls fly to Milan on Saturday to meet Frida to see if she would consider them for her show, which meant Saturday got trashed. Then the girls were expected to fly straight back to London, and if Gucci were interested, fly back to Milan again on Sunday for another round of casting, then for fittings on Monday...I find it insulting that a designer like Frida thinks London is so insignificant that she would do that. Where's the camaraderie?" asked White. Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that a lot of models who were perhaps not traditionally considered show-worthy got a chance at some of London's top fashion week gigs. Although for designers, losing girls at the last minute can be nerve-wracking. Todd Lynn lost 10 out of his original cast of 19. "We were getting calls from agents at 1.30am on the morning of the show pulling girls we had just fitted, while other girls just didn't turn up to fittings at all after they'd been confirmed," said an anonymous source close to the designer. "When we called their agencies to find out where they were, we were told sorry, they've gone to Milan." [Telegraph]
Andrej Pejic, on modeling: "You can't eat much if you want to do this...To do womenswear I have to be disciplined. My waist has gone from 29 to 25 inches, my hips are 35 inches." [Daily Mail]
Although it may be tramped on by Jacobs and Gucci, London Fashion Week has some supporters in high places. Samantha Cameron held a cocktail reception for U.K. designers at 10 Downing Street. [WWD]
And Alice Temperley says, "London's better than New York Fashion Week now. It's so creative here, whereas New York's more commercial." The designer thinks London Fashion Week should be longer. [Telegraph]
Chloe Green, the daughter of Topshop founder Sir Philip Green (a legal resident of Monaco for tax purposes!), is launching a line of footwear called CG. The shoes will have green soles. [Daily Mail]
Stylist June Ambrose, who has dressed Sean Combs, Alicia Keys, Kim Cattrall, and, uh, the Dave Matthews Band is getting a reality show. This news has been greeted with some predictable negative comparisons to Rachel Zoe's existing show — it doesn't help that Ambrose's has the working title The June Ambrose Project — but Justin Fenner of Styleite is excited: "What could be that different from the dog and pony show Zoe has on Bravo? Well, a lot, actually. Ambrose has a very different client base (think rock stars, not Oscar winners) and a much different aesthetic when it comes to styling. And while Zoe is still figuring out motherhood, Ambrose is an old pro. Which sort of leads us to believe that her program won't be dominated by the same brand of catty backstabbing and infighting that Zoe's show has been known to spawn, but instead by sage lessons about life and clothes we can actually put to good use." [Styleite]
Harper's Bazaar is dropping to ten issues a year. [WWD]
West Hollywood is moving to ban sales of fur clothing within city limites. [WWD]
A show dedicated to Marc Jacobs' work for Louis Vuitton, curated by Katie Grand, is opening in Milan. It includes the horrifying precessionary $42,000 Louis Vuitton frankenbag which we'd nearly managed to forget about, aaaah! [WWD]
Here is the sartorial analysis of the Republican presidential candidates you've been waiting for. [WSJ]
And now, a moment with Susan Orlean, who profiles Jean-Paul Gaultier in this week's New Yorker. Gaultier says he turned down the top job at Givenchy when Bernard Arnault offered him the chance to succeed John Galliano there in 1996. He also says that he designs everything in each of his many collections himself, which sounds somewhat less than plausible. Here is Orlean on a fitting:
Upstairs in a workroom, Gaultier was doing a final fitting of a sheer navy-blue gown, trimmed with mink, on Karlie Kloss, an American teen-ager with important-looking eyebrows and a delicate mouth. The gown had drapes and folds and looked impossibly complicated, but Gaultier dismissed it by saying, "It's just a scarf, and a little fur trim, and that makes a dress. It's nothing, nothing!" It was actually quite something, regal and feminine and luxuriously classic. Gaultier became famous for designs that referenced bondage and sexuality, but many of his clothes, like the navy-blue dress, are quietly beautiful and well tailored, without any attempt to shock.
When I came into the workroom, Gaultier was pinching bits of fabric and adjusting the dress on Kloss, and then stepping back to consult with his corset-maker, who goes by the name of Mr. Pearl. Gaultier was wearing his usual attire of a black polo shirt and black jeans and a pair of scuffed shoes. Mr. Pearl, a small South African man who himself has worn a corset for years and at one time achieved a sixteen-inch waist, was studying the dress and rotating Kloss by pressing one hand on her hip. All the while, multiple conversations were going on, between Mr. Pearl and Gaultier, and Gaultier and his head seamstress, who scurried in and out of the room, and Gaultier and Kloss, who was saying, apropos of nothing, that she thought that someday scientists would be able to clone people. "I hope not," Gaultier said, with a gasp. "I like that everybody's unique."


text:
ISSAQUAH, Wash. -- Seattle Seahawks linebacker Leroy Hill was arrested after police say he assaulted his girlfriend and kept her in his home against her will.
According to a release from the Issaquah Police Department on Wednesday morning, Hill was arrested on investigation of unlawful imprisonment-domestic violence and third-degree assault-domestic violence. Issaquah police said Hill would be booked into the King County Jail, although records Wednesday morning indicated he had yet to be booked.
Both charges are felonies in Washington state. It's at least the fourth time Hill, 30, has been arrested and the second time he's been accused of domestic violence.
Police said they responded to Hill's home around 4 p.m. Tuesday. A 26-year-old said she had been assaulted several times and was kept in Hill's home against her will. The women told police that Hill blocked the doorway and took her cell phone. She was able to escape the home when Hill used the bathroom, police said.
She was treated at a hospital and released. A Seahawks spokesman said the team is aware of the situation.
Hill played last season on a one-year contract with the Seahawks. He played in 13 games, starting 12, and recorded 47 tackles and 1½ sacks. Hill is one of two players still on the Seahawks roster from their lone Super Bowl appearance when they lost to Pittsburgh. He's played all eight NFL seasons with the Seahawks and has started 89 of 97 games in his Seattle career.
Hill is scheduled to become a free agent this offseason.
For much of his career, off-field problems have followed Hill. He was arrested less than a year ago for marijuana possession in Atlanta, but the charge was later dismissed. His first arrest came in 2009 in Georgia for marijuana possession where he was sentenced to 12 months of probation.
Then in April 2010, Hill was arrested by Issaquah police on a fourth-degree assault-domestic violence charge. Hill avoided trial on that charge after agreeing to a stipulated order of continuance that required him to avoid legal troubles for 18 months and complete a one-year, state-certified domestic violence treatment program.
Hill was suspended by the NFL for two games during the 2010 season.
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press


text:
Using Microsoft Office on a tablet is probably high on your wish list if you work in more than one location. And while Microsoft promises to help on that front once Windows 8 tablets are in the wild, upstart CloudOn jumped the gun in January by providing a virtualized Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the iPad. It became the top free app in the AppStore literally overnight.
Now that app is expanding globally and broadening its features to do more than Office does alone. Although CloudOn first focused purely on providing access to Microsoft's productivity suite, its next goal is to build on top of Office.
"We're trying to look at Office as a platform; with one billion users it's even bigger than Facebook," CEO Milind Gadekar told PCWorld.
Today's CloudOn 2.5 release adds annotation and tracking capabilities to its iOS app (with Android support coming later). Using CloudOn's annotations on an iPad, it was a snap to draw an ellipse or rectangle in a Word doc with my finger, then type out a text note. Markups are preserved within the file–saved to your Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive accounts–no matter what platform you use later to run Office. This doesn't revolutionize the Office experience, but it should get more interesting when video and voice are supported.
To help collaboration, the new CloudOn FileSpace feature provides a real-time stream of data about changes to documents. This offers context about your workflow on a project, information that might otherwise get lost within a stream of emails.
"It's no longer an individual productivity world, it's a group productivity world," Gadekar said, adding that many corporate emails are among some 2 million users who have signed up. The majority of people are probably bringing CloudOn to their devices rather than having the app introduced by their workplace.
In addition, as a "building block" toward working on ever-smaller devices, CloudOn 2.5 is optimizing Microsoft's ribbon toolbar for touch gestures. Roomier icons make it easier to edit fonts, check spelling, and track changes.
With users in 80 countries, CloudOn now supports all the languages and keyboards that Office does.
It does all this with through official partnerships with Microsoft and Adobe.
It's worth noting that CloudOn is running a virtualized version of Office 2010. It's considering the upcoming 2013 suite but doesn't have immediate plans for that yet.
Microsoft, meanwhile, will ship its much-anticipated Surface RT tablet inititally with Office Home and Student 2013 RT Preview. When the final code appears there is unknown, and Redmond continues to deny rumors that it will soon offer Office for Android and the iPad.
CloudOn 2.5 is available here for the iPad and here for Android Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich tablets 3.1 and higher.


text:
Facebook Privacy Basics
In an effort to make their terms and policies easier to understand and to control, Facebook is rolling out Privacy Basics on January 1, 2015.The post, in it's entirety is featured below.
Updating Our Terms and Policies: Helping You Understand How Facebook Works and How to Control Your Information
Over the past year, we've introduced new features and controls to help you get more out of Facebook, and listened to people who have asked us to better explain how we get and use information.
Now, with Privacy Basics, you'll get tips and a how-to guide for taking charge of your experience on Facebook. We're also updating our terms, data policy and cookies policy to reflect new features we've been working on and to make them easy to understand.
These updates take effect on January 1, 2015. As always, we welcome your feedback about our policies.
Privacy Basics
Privacy Basics offers interactive guides to answer the most commonly asked questions about how you can control your information on Facebook. For example, you can learn about untagging, unfriending, blocking and how to choose an audience for each of your posts. This information is available in 36 languages.
Along with our privacy checkup, reminder for people posting publicly and simplified audience selectors, Privacy Basics is the latest step we've taken to help you make sure you're sharing with the people you want.
Helping you get more out of Facebook
Every day, people use our apps and services to connect with the people, places and things they care about. The updates to our policies reflect the new products we've been working on to improve your Facebook experience. They also explain how our services work in a way that's easier to understand. Here are some highlights:
Discover what's going on around you: We're updating our policies to explain how we get location information depending on the features you decide to use. Millions of people check into their favorite places and use optional features like Nearby Friends (currently only available in some regions). We're working on ways to show you the most relevant information based on where you are and what your friends are up to. For example, in the future, if you decide to share where you are, you might see menus from restaurants nearby or updates from friends in the area.
Make purchases more convenient: In some regions, we're testing a Buy button that helps people discover and purchase products without leaving Facebook. We're also working on new ways to make transactions even more convenient.
Find information about privacy on Facebook at the moment you need it: To make them more accessible, we moved tips and suggestions to Privacy Basics. Our data policy is shorter and clearer, making it easier to read.
Understand how we use the information we receive: For example, understanding battery and signal strength helps make sure our apps work well on your device. We ask for permission to use your phone's location when we offer optional features like check-ins or adding your location to posts.
Get to know how the family of Facebook companies and apps work together: Over the past few years, Facebook has grown and we want to make sure you know about our family of companies, apps and services. We use the information we collect to improve your experience. For example, if you're locked out of your Instagram account, you can use your Facebook information to recover your password. Nothing in our updates changes the commitments that Instagram, WhatsApp and other companies have made to protect your information and your privacy.
Your information and advertising: People sometimes ask how their information is shared with advertisers. Nothing is changing with these updates—we help advertisers reach people with relevant ads without telling them who you are. Learn more about adsand how you can control the ads you see.
Giving you more control over ads
We've heard from some of you that it can be difficult to control the types of ads you see if you use multiple devices and browsers. In the past, if you opted out of certain kinds of advertising on your laptop, that choice may not have been applied for ads on your phone. We know that many people use more than one phone, tablet or browser to access Facebook, so it should be easy for you to make a single choice that applies across all of your devices.
That's why Facebook respects the choices you make about the ads you see, across every device. You can opt out of seeing ads on Facebook based on the apps and sites you use through the Digital Advertising Alliance. You can also opt out using controls on iOS and Android. When you tell us you don't want to see these types of ads, your decision automatically applies to every device you use to access Facebook. Also, we're now making ad preferences available in additional countries, beginning with Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the UK.
We hope these updates improve your experience. Protecting people's information and providing meaningful privacy controls are at the core of everything we do, and we believe these announcements are an important step.
So what does this mean to the average Facebook user? More simple controls over your privacy, right at your fingertips. This has needed to happen for some time now, and Facebook is finally responding to requests for a more simplistic and easier to understand policy system. BUT, as with all terms of service within the digital world, these privacy controls are only as good as the user. So take this opportunity to review Privacy Basics and to review your own privacy settings on Facebook and other social platforms.


text:
Holiday stories: What Marvin taught me about Santa
Fire service holiday stories give us fits of disbelief, laughter and tears
And with that Christmas is upon us and the year is almost over. I have amassed a lot of memories of the holidays in my many, many years — some pleasant, some not.
One of my fondest memories growing up in Gibbstown, N.J. was that special Saturday in December when the local volunteer fire department would transport Santa around town giving out candy canes. I couldn't wait. I wish I had a photo of that now.
I am not addicted to peppermint or anything like that; I just wanted to see the fire truck up close.
Years later when I started doing the Santa thing, I never realized the importance of the whole operation. We took great pain to ensure that if we had dual Santas out on two trucks they were not seen together. That would probably be emotionally scarring to a child.
Fruitcake cookies
One year during our peppermint odyssey, an average looking woman was standing on the corner dressed as Mrs. Claus handing out Christmas cookies. We paused and all took a cookie from her. Her costume was quite remarkable. Everybody on the truck took a cookie. She did this every year.
Then one fine day we were called to the local elementary school to meet with the school officials. A young student had set a fire in a restroom. It was nothing more than a waste can, but the event still led to utter chaos.
Soon, the mother arrived and I immediately recognized her as Mrs. Claus. She seemed pleasant and reasonably normal. The school principal questioned her as to the whereabouts of the boy's father.
She told us she wasn't sure then went off into a rambling dissertation on how she was impregnated by the mother ship hovering over her house before it returned to the home planet.
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have eaten any of those cookies.
We even had a drunken Santa one year. It was curious that on the way to the event he fell asleep. However, when the door was opened he stood up, yelled, "Ho, ho, ho," and took a dive (ala belly flop) to the pavement. We laughed until we hurt.
However, the Santa story that will always stick in my mind involved me learning the true meaning of Santa.
Unhappy holiday
I was doing the medic-unit thing when we were called to an apartment complex late one afternoon. Earlier in the day an infant had been found dead at the same complex and the police were suspicious of the situation.
We arrived and I met Marvin, which is not his real name. Marvin was about eight. He had a sister too.
Marvin and his sister lived in the apartment where the dead infant had been found, which was now a murder investigation. Neighbors found Marvin and his sister wandering around the apartment complex. The police wanted us to take the kids to a children's hospital for evaluation.
For some reason, Marvin's sister didn't want to sit down in the back of the ambulance. She was a year or two younger than Marvin.
When the paramedic I was with removed the diaper it was plain to see why she didn't want to sit down. The skin was completely burned off her rear end. She had been horribly abused.
Wonderment of childhood
As we left the apartment complex, news helicopters hovered above for the live shot for the evening news. The trip down town was uneventful. When I opened the red doors on the medic unit Marvin popped out. His eyes were wide with wonderment at the lights and big buildings in downtown Houston.
At the triage desk nurses were wiping away tears as they looked at the little girl's injuries. Phone calls were being made for the child psychologist team on call.
Meanwhile, I noticed a large Christmas tree in the lobby. I told Marvin to come with me and check out the big tree in the lobby.
While we gazed at the 10-story tree I felt a gentle tug on my pants. I looked down and Marvin motioned for me to come closer. Marvin hadn't said a word through the entire ordeal. He looked up at me and said, "Do you think Santa will find me? I have really tried to be good."
Oh my gosh! I was dumbfounded. For the first time in my life I understood the whole concept of Santa and how important he is to kids. I stood there speechless.
Marvin and his siblings belonged to a single mom who had gone to work and left her boyfriend in charge. I am guessing the boyfriend wasn't good with kids. When we left the apartment complex mom and beau were both in handcuffs.
Moments of understanding
By all accounts Marvin hadn't had a good day. He had lost a brother, his sister had been tortured and seriously burned and his mother was in handcuffs.
But through it all Marvin still believed. He still believed in the fat man in the red suit. His belief in the concept of a sleigh and eight flying reindeer endured through it all.
For the first time in my life I understood how important Santa Claus is. No matter if it is a retired person in a department store, a friend, neighbor or one of us wearing that itchy beard. Santa means the world to these kids.
I don't know whatever happened to Marvin and his sister. I never follow up on these things. I did hear that mom and the boyfriend won an all-expense, all-inclusive trip to a Texas Department of Corrections facility for a number of years. Good for them.
To this day I think about Marvin every Christmas morning. I hope he had something under the tree on the big morning.
And with that we conclude another year. Remember those who have been lost doing what we do this year. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
This article was originally published in 2012.


text:
Health News
This Treatment Could Keep Breast Cancer Away
The treatment of one type of breast cancer may be getting a makeover — and it might keep cancer from coming back.
Standard Medication for HER-2 Breast Cancer Remained Top Rx
The approval of a new medication represents new options for patients. But the new option isn't always the best option. When it comes to treating HER-2 positive breast cancer, the standard medication still appears to beat the newer option.
New Breast Cancer Vaccine Tested
Efforts to fight cancer include both treatment and prevention. And researchers recently tested a vaccine to prevent breast cancer recurrence.
Benefits of Breast Cancer Rx May Outweigh Heart Risks
In women with advanced breast cancer, treatment with trastuzumab may lead to heart problems. But for many of these women, the risk may be worth it.
Genomic Testing: A Powerful Weapon Against Breast Cancer
Abnormal genes can cause breast cells to grow out of control and become cancerous. By identifying specific gene mutations in tumors, doctors can provide improved targeted treatment for these breast cancers.
A Knockout Punch for Early HER2 Breast Cancer
About one in five women diagnosed with breast cancer have too much of a protein called HER2, which makes the cancer more likely to grow faster and return. New research has some good news for women with this cancer.
Powerwashing HER2+ Breast Cancer
HER2-positive breast cancer is an aggressive disease that thankfully can be treated with targeted therapies. A new combination regimen was successful in keeping patients in a recent trial disease free.
New HER2+ Breast Cancer Treatment Recommendation
More than a quarter of women diagnosed with breast cancer have high levels of HER2, a protein that makes the cancer grow faster and more likely to return. New research has discovered one treatment method that's been used may no longer be necessary.
Breast Cancer Rx Linked to Heart Failure
Roughly one in four breast cancers has too much of a protein called HER2, which makes the cancer grow faster. The medication Herceptin (trastuzumab) targets the HER2 protein to help breast cancer patients live longer. But this medication may be linked to heart problems.
FDA Expands Use of Breast Cancer Rx
For the first time in its history, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved a medication for the pre-surgical (neoadjuvant) treatment of early-stage (I, II) breast cancer.
- medications
- (-) Remove Herceptin filter Herceptin
- Perjeta (4) Apply Perjeta filter
- Tykerb (4) Apply Tykerb filter
- Taxotere (2) Apply Taxotere filter
- Arimidex (1) Apply Arimidex filter
- Aromasin (1) Apply Aromasin filter
- Avastin (1) Apply Avastin filter
- Ellence (1) Apply Ellence filter
- Evista (1) Apply Evista filter
- Fareston (1) Apply Fareston filter
- Femara (1) Apply Femara filter
- Gleevec (1) Apply Gleevec filter
- Paclitaxel (1) Apply Paclitaxel filter
- Tamoxifen (1) Apply Tamoxifen filter
- conditions


text:
Advanced Search
Microsoft can't stop talking about its checkerboard-like Start Screen design in Windows 8.
The Start Screen is part of the Metro user interface in Windows 8 that was showcased at Microsoft's Build conference last month. It's a radical change for Windows desktop OS users, meaning that people will either love it or hate it when Windows 8 is released.
It appears that Microsoft put a lot of thought into the Metro UI before rolling it into Windows 8, which is now available for testing as a developer preview release. Those thoughts are laid out in three "building Windows 8" blog posts issued this month. Microsoft utilized a great swath of data voluntarily contributed by users, which largely guided the company's design decisions with Windows 8.
First off, the Start Button had to go. In a post by Chaitanya Sareen, program manager lead on the Microsoft core experience evolved team, Microsoft explained that people were using the Start Button in Windows less and less, based on statistical data. Instead, people preferred to launch apps that were pinned to the taskbar.
"The message is clear that the majority of people want most of their apps on the taskbar rather than having to dig into Start," Sareen explained.
Microsoft went a step further than that with the Windows 8 design and laid all of the programs out in a single view on the Start Screen, dropping the taskbar altogether from the Metro UI. That layout, in Microsoft's view, represents "the evolution of the Start menu." In this case, "evolution" means a collection of square and rectangular colored tiles, representing programs, all sitting right on the desktop screen.
Next, Alice Steinglass, group program manager for the core experience evolved team, took up the cause of explaining the Start Screen's design in Windows 8. Her main point is that the Windows 8 Start Screen functions as a sort of "dashboard that helps you stay up to date and connected in a high quality experience substantially improved over the notification tray." The notification tray on the taskbar was simply dropped in the Metro UI because it just added clutter to the desktop. Similarly, Microsoft dropped the folder approach in the start menu because "folders are a way of burying things, not organizing them."
Metro has "live tiles" that update in near real time using the Windows Notification Service for Metro-style apps. The effect, according to Steinglass, is to provide a "heads-up display" of activity for users. That arrangement can save time for consumer users, who may not even have to launch an app to see an update, as in a stock-ticker app. It can benefit office workers too.
"We expect corporate applications to be developed that display Live tiles for important internal systems and processes too," Steinglass explained.
Metro looks a lot like the consumer UI seen in Windows Phone 7, but Microsoft is serious about it for office desktop workers. It works with keyboard, mouse and stylus in addition to touch. Users can move the tiles around to customize the Start Screen, but Microsoft hasn't neglected IT pros who manage corporate desktops. Windows 8 will enable "the managed lockdown of customization of the Start screen so that it is consistent across the corporation," explained a post by Marina Dukhon, a senior program manager lead on the Microsoft core experience team. She noted that IT pros will be able to remove items from the Start Screen, such as the Games app tile, in Windows 8.
Microsoft is also working to optimize Windows 8 for those who work with larger screens or multiple screens. The larger the screen real estate, the more app tiles can be displayed, although Microsoft currently has configured the Windows 8 Start Screen to display 20 apps on the screen before users have to scroll. The screen scrolls from right to left if there are more program tiles to see. Dukhon said that Microsoft will be "increasing the number of rows of tiles that you can see on large monitors" to fit more apps on the Start Screen.
Dukhon addressed a number of critical comments from Windows 8 reviewers in the blog post. In response to one comment, she announced that Microsoft's latest Windows 8 design restores the "all programs" folder structure that was used in previous Windows versions. The all-programs structure arranges lists of applications under their suite names (such as "Microsoft Office"). Users who got the developer preview of Windows 8 were somewhat shocked to see apps listed in plain alphabetical order, and the team appears to be responding to that feedback.
Microsoft has largely gone quiet on Windows 8 since the conclusion of its Build event in September. The exception appears to be the Metro UI. While the classic Desktop approach will coexist with the Metro UI in Windows 8, Microsoft apparently sees the squared-off Metro approach as "your new home base" in years to come.
The future of the Windows user interface is square and rectangular, according to Microsoft. It's app-based rather than file-based. If Microsoft keeps to expectations, that Windows 8 future may begin arriving as soon as April 2012 or sometime in 2013, when the OS is released as a final product.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.
Microsoft has improved the remediation process when users authenticating via on-premises methods are deemed to be at risk by the Microsoft Entra ID Protection service, per a Thursday announcement.
As Microsoft's new AI assistant gets into more hands this week, let's break down some of my impressions.
Microsoft on Wednesday gave notice that its Exchange Online e-mail tamper protections are planned for completion in 2024, which may entail some backend changes by IT departments.
Azure Automation provide IT with the ways to make their jobs more interesting. Got a task you're sick of doing? Automate it away!
The new update, rolling out for some, includes a preview of Microsoft's AI-powered Windows Copilot.
Subscribe on YouTube
More Summits
More Webcasts
More Tech Library


text:
The Christian Science Monitor, January 17, 2008
By Sally Helgesen
Chatham, N.Y. – Until a few months ago, Zoe Cruz and Sallie Krawcheck were the most powerful women on Wall Street. It was speculated that both would become CEOs of their Wall St. powerhouses – Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Instead, in recent months, Ms. Cruz was ousted and Ms. Krawcheck demoted, leading to hand-wringing about how women seem be losing ground as leaders.
Perhaps because I've been studying female leadership for the last two decades, this narrative had a familiar ring for me – some variation of the "women are floundering" theme crops up every few years.
But while the progress women have made as leaders may not have been as rapid or smooth as some of us had hoped or expected, the impact women have had on what we perceive to be desirable in our leaders continues to grow.
The real story, it seems, is about influence rather than numbers. Women have brought to the workplace a comfort with direct communication, relationship-building, diversity, and more – and these are the skills best suited for leaders in today's workplace.
Women: Talk football, play golf
When I published "The Female Advantage: Women's Ways of Leadership" in 1990, it was the first book to focus on what women had to contribute to organizations rather than how they needed to change or adapt.
At the time, women were being urged by a phalanx of experts to conform to a mainstream leadership style that was considered a fundamental requirement for anyone who hoped to exert authority in public life. Gurus of every variety advised women to start using football metaphors in meetings, take up golf even if they disliked it, and pull rank on subordinates in order to show their skill at keeping people in line.
"Play the game" was the message aimed at women seeking success in the male worlds of business, government, law, academia, and the military. Betty Harragan, author of the bestselling "Games Your Mother Never Taught You," summed up the conventional wisdom of the day in her amusing and often helpful guide for women: She advised women to leave their values at home. You're in the army now, was her message. So get with the program, and if it moves, salute it!
This conventional wisdom was based on three assumptions. First, organizations were not going to change simply because women had begun to enter them in substantial numbers.
Second, changes wrought by the networked technologies that were then evolving would not fundamentally change organizational structures or reshape people's expectations of their leader
And third, women's handicaps as leaders, the result of their age-old exclusion from the public world, would always outweigh whatever advantages they might confer.
What female leadership looks like
Having spent a lot of time working in a variety of companies, I was convinced that these assumptions were not necessarily true. On the contrary, it seemed obvious that organizations were beginning to undergo rapid and unpredictable changes as demographics, technology, and the economics of work shifted. It seemed that women might squander a historic opportunity to influence the public world if they were discouraged from honoring and developing their distinctive skills.
I decided to test this notion by spending time with some of America's most talented and confident women leaders. My goals were: (1) to identify what women at their best could bring to a range of enterprises and (2) to bring to public awareness an appreciation of those qualities. My study included a highly diverse mix of women – entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and nonprofit leaders. Yet I found that they had certain characteristics in common.
These women placed a high value on relationships and judged the success of their organizations based on the quality of relationships within them.
They preferred direct communication to communication up and down a chain of command.
They were comfortable with diversity, having been outsiders themselves and knowing in their bones what kind of value fresh eyes could bring.
They were unwilling (as well as unable) to compartmentalize their lives and so could draw upon personal experience to bring private-sphere information and insights to their jobs.
They were skeptical of hierarchies and surprisingly disdainful of the kinds of perks and privileges that distinguish hierarchical leaders and establish their place in the pecking order.
They preferred leading from the center rather than the top and structured their organizations to reflect this.
Finally, they were willing to ask big-picture questions about the work they were doing and its value for the world.
New skills for a changing workplace
My book struck a chord, eliciting a response from women around the world and remaining in print for nearly two decades and counting. But what has been extraordinary for me is to watch how the skills exhibited by the women leaders I studied have become more appropriate – and desirable – in today's workplace.
Networked technologies, the evolution of a knowledge economy, and the demographics of globalization all support precisely the skills, talents, and presumptions that women bring to organizations.
When "The Female Advantage" was published, relationship-building was considered a soft skill that a leader, who had to be tough, could not afford. Yet in recent years, as organizations have sought to connect more directly with customers and stakeholders and motivate valuable employees, an ability to nurture strong relationships has become essential.
Technology today not only facilitates but demands direct communication, an advantage for those who are comfortable doing so. Networked technologies also undermine hierarchies, a plus for those who enjoy leading from the center rather than the top.
In a global economy, comfort with diversity has become essential. As work and home become harder to separate in our 24/7 workplace, compartmentalizing becomes a liability.
No more Mr. Tough Guy
Twenty years ago, anyone attending a business conference was likely to hear a speaker observe – without irony – that "unless you're the lead horse, the view never changes." Today, no one would say this.
Twenty years ago, Fortune magazine featured "America's Toughest Boss" in a recurring cover story. It lauded the leader who was tough enough to crack heads, which, of course, was presumed necessary to get things done. This kind of feature has long since been dropped.
The tough-guy approach to leadership is in disrepute these days, with successive tyrants and bullies having come in for censure. Even the most ruthless organizations today feel compelled to put out statements about how they value relationships and support diversity.
Companies compete to take a greener, more holistic approach. They recognize that the "get while the getting's good" mentality that distinguished the industrial era is unsustainable in today's more interconnected world. Leaders emphasize sustainability and contribution and they acknowledge the need to nurture the human spirit. Inclusive has become a buzzword, weblike a simple description of how things work.
And so female-leadership characteristics that just 18 years ago seemed far outside the mainstream are now seen as desirable.
In retrospect, it seems ridiculous that we could have imagined that one half of the human race, excluded from positions of leadership for most of human history, could enter the public sphere and begin to reach positions of real authority and influence without having a significant impact on how organizations were led.
As individuals, women may experience ups and downs over the course of their careers. But the influence they have had on which leadership qualities are valued has been nothing short of extraordinary.
Sally Helgesen is the author of five books, including "The Female Advantage" and "The Web of Inclusion." A contributing editor to Strategy + Business magazine, she speaks at companies around the world on leadership and is a strategic communications adviser to senior executives and entrepreneurs.


text: We all want to be at the top of our game. We want to successfully journey to our goal. This song from BrownHouseMedia captures a successful, forward motion to achieve just that. It engages the listener in a positive manner to keep striving forward. It is motivational, light and energizing. Use this under score for your product, commercial or film to empower your audience.


text: Updated WWWsite: The Antibody Resource Page The Antibody Resource Page has been recently updated. The page will be invaluable to researchers and educators alike. Here is just some of what can be found on the page: 1. How to Find an Antibody - a variety of ways on and off the web to find the antibody you are looking for. 2. Online Companies - links to over 110 companies that sell antibodies or antibody related products. Is your company listed on this page? 3. Antibody Image Gallery - some animated gifs have recently been added 4. Bulletin Board - Have a question or have an answer? Then stop by and post a message. 5. Educational Resources - a variety of new links have been added. There are links to pages on immunochemistry, antibody production, autoimmunity, vaccines, immunology and much more. This page is divided up into sections on research, educational, and health resources. ...and there is much more. Check it out at: http://www.antibodyresource.com/ Ps. Dont forget to visit our sponsors, Research Diagnostics, Inc. (http://www.researchd.com/absort1.htm) and Lab Vision Corporation (http://www.labvision.com/)!


text: AL N. 0 Posted September 17, 2013 For Sale: Underwater housing for CANON 20 D + equipment. Camera not included. Includes: (1) Ikelike underwater housing (2) Ikelite Ds125 strobes with batteries (all cords and 2 chargers) (3) multiple ports for the following lenses (50 or 60mm, 10-22mm, 18-55mm). (1) Pelican case. Ports have neoprene covers and zoom sleeves. Housing has been meticulously kept and has never been flooded. It is practically brand new. Housing was regularly serviced by Ikelite and as recent as last summer. It has not been in the water since servicing. Total dives with the housing is under 6. Total dives with strobes is 1. Please note this housing will only fit the Canon 20d. Pictured is approx $4000 worth of equipment new. Asking $1600 plus shipping. This is a steal for someone who has a 20d looking to be put to good use. I take extremely good care of everything I own. For all intents and purposes, this equipment is brand new. Reason for selling: I thought I would take more underwater photos, and the fact is I never get around to going out anymore. Thank You Alan Nelson Key West, Fl. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites