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Mourning the world we've lost
"How do we grieve? How do we grieve for all that disappears into the maw of human appetite? How do we grieve for something as beautiful and terrifying as the polar bear?"
The white-haired woman's voice broke as she stood to ask her difficult question, the other audience members turning somber faces toward her -- lines of attention spun inward like the spokes of a wheel, like mourners reaching hands to their most bereaved.
We panelists, the poet Kim Stafford, author Luis Alberto Urrea and myself, paused to exchange glances. We were supposed to be discussing the future of writing in the West, closing a conference celebrating 25 years of Fishtrap, a nonprofit in Enterprise, Ore., dedicated to Western writing. It was an unwieldy topic, but it seemed suddenly manageable in comparison. How do we grasp the obliteration of so much we have known and loved?
Biologists once collected specimens of life from all corners of the world just to understand the variety it contained. These days, we catalog and collect to forestall complete loss and to understand our role in that loss, not just of distinct species, but of our collective memories of them, of what the world has been. National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore has his Photo Ark. Trish Carney has her meditation on roadkill. Even architect and artist Maya Lin, perhaps best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is working on a memorial to the nature-that-was, perhaps the most ambitious project of them all.
Lin's "What is missing?" seeks to raise awareness that we are in the midst of -- and are ourselves mostly responsible for -- Earth's sixth mass extinction. It includes permanent and traveling installations and sculptures displayed around the world -- larger-than-life gramophone-inspired listening cones that play film clips and sounds of threatened and endangered species, an "empty room" where viewers enter a darkened space and see species only by catching flickering projections on a hand-held screen, electronic billboards in Times Square, and over 75 films. Its center, though, is a spare website that opens with a black screen and a constellation of bright dots that rearrange themselves into mammal, bird and amphibian shapes before resolving into a map of the world's losses -- a global "Map of Memory" -- including the West's once mindboggling abundance of salmon and bison, its California grizzly bear, its undisturbed rivers and topsoil.
Viewers can add to this catalog: the meadowlarks they no longer see at the ends of their driveways, the horned toads that used to haunt their gardens.
But here is where the traditional concept of elegy breaks down. For Lin's is a pre-emptive memorial, insisting that the cascade of loss-yet-to-come can be prevented. It lists ways to shrink your environmental footprint. And if you turn the clock on the map to the present, descriptions of current conservation efforts appear across the globe. The clock turned forward will eventually present "A Greenprint for the Future," satellite images of Earth by night, with the lights rearranged to reflect how it would look if human needs were balanced with, well, those of everything else.
"'What is missing?' will allow people to see an entire river system as a place, or the African Plains migratory corridors as a place -- habitats that must be seen outside of man-made boundary zones," Lin writes in her artist's statement. More than that, though, it asks viewers to see the Earth itself as a whole place, characterized not just by its collective losses, but by the upswell of efforts to stem them and to re-imagine our lives.
Perhaps here is an answer to that woman's question at Fishtrap. Looking forward, grieving for what has been, we must remember that loss is not new to the world, and that loss is also possibility.
In basic ecology, you learn that destruction is itself a creative force. Mass extinctions are followed by the frenzied development of new life. And habitats prone to strong forces of change -- volcanoes, blowdowns, wildfire, extremes of weather and disease -- are often the richest and most diverse. These landscapes provide a greater variety of niches for creatures to occupy, and force innovation through evolution. The end (and never-ending) result is a living menagerie that is continually reborn with improbably spectacular results.
You can think also of the creative world this way. As the writer David James Duncan pointed out at that same Fishtrap conference, artists often produce their best work from places of great pain, the personal and societal disasters that shape their vision.
Perhaps this world of deepening wounds is already multiplying our creative opportunities -- and our capacity to reflect, reinterpret, innovate and ultimately, hopefully, act.
Sarah Gilman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News(hcn.org) in Paonia, Colorado. She is the magazine's associate editor.


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10 best outdoor games we used to play that our kids have never heard of
Kids of the 70s, 80s and 90s will remember them well with a nostalgic tear in their eye but here are 10 great outdoor games we used to play that our children have probably never heard of.
With the advancement in technology over the years the current generation is more interested in PlayStations and iPads these days than playing outdoors.
Times have changed and with it we have lost some of the great games that saw us while away hours of our youth while also keeping active.
While our children may not have heard of some of these old classics, you can bet they will enjoy them just as much as we did all those years ago.
There will be slightly different regional names for the games depending on where you grew up so we've gone with the most commonly used.
With some of them there is an element of safety that needs to be taken into account so common sense is needed.

subset: commoncrawl


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Kong Fu?
by Roman aka jar
back from Berlin. What a great week! Really special thanks to mati, his queen and his prince. Keep doing the good you do, you are great. I am really looking forward to hear, read, see you again :) - this week was my pleasure even the big cities are not the best place for the big shy kong.
I guess in here it will get a little slower. On Thursday i am away again, 10 days in Colougne by doing 2 Painting classes. I have no idea on how much time i am able to spent on MAssIVeVooDoO, sometimes jungle is massive, you know.
I'd really like to post some more tutorials and WIPs but time is slipping... fading away. Check the Show some balls competition information, if you didn't yet and go form a ball with some putty to help some apes.
So far from my side of town - always remember Happy Painting!


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Skin is the body's armor, protecting us from disease agents, injury, excessive water loss, and cold and heat. Yet mutations in a single gene, the gene for the protein p63, cause numerous diseases and malformations of the uppermost layer of skin -- the epidermis -- and other tissues. In the epidermis, these range from skin cancers to dysplasias that cause cracking, bleeding, infection, and discoloration.
A research team from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and spearheaded by colleagues from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, including members from Boston University, has learned that p63 acts by directly regulating another protein, Satb1, which is a "genome organizer" -- it controls gene expression in progenitor cells by temporarily remodeling chromatin, the structure that makes up the chromosomes and contains tightly wound DNA.
The p63 protein is the "master regulator" of epidermal development as a mammalian embryo grows, working with other proteins to closely coordinate the expression and timing of groups of genes that control cell growth and differentiation. Just how p63 performs its complex role has been a mystery, however.
A significant part of the answer lies with Satb1. Discovered a decade ago by a team led by Terumi Kohwi-Shigematsu of Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division, Satb1 acts as a molecular machine to regulate gene expression by binding to chromosomal DNA at specific sites, rearranging it to bring essential genes into proximity, and recruiting the additional proteins needed to transcribe those genes. Satb1 has been shown to be crucial in the development of the immune system's T-cells, in T-cell function, and in breast cancer metastasis. Yet the mechanisms that control the expression of the Satb1 gene in different cell types have been as much a mystery as how p63 regulates skin development. (Gene names, as distinct from protein names, are italicized.)
Vladimir Botchkarev, Professor of Cutaneous Biology and Associate Director of the Centre for Skin Sciences at the University of Bradford, suspected that the key to p63's role lay with chromatin remodeling factors such as Satb1. The skin of mice bred with no p63 gene is slow to develop and markedly thinner than that of normal mice. From these "knockout" mice, Botchkarev was able to learn which other genes were under-expressed and which were over-expressed when p63 was lacking.
Finding that Satb1 was at the head of the list of missing chromatin-remodeling genes, Botchkarev contacted Kohwi-Shigematsu to bring their labs together with colleagues from Boston University to jointly study the potential connection of p63 and Satb1 in skin development.
Says Kohwi-Shigematsu, "The expertise of our teams in skin and Satb1 biology led to two important firsts: we established Satb1's key role in the development of skin and also, for the first time, we identified a protein, p63, that regulates Satb1 itself."
The teams have published their results in the Journal of Cell Biology.
Getting under the skin
The epidermis is the barrier than separates the body from the outer world. The deepest of its five sublayers consists of progenitor cells that form keratinocytes, the most common type of skin cells. These gradually migrate upward, differentiating into cells with distinct properties in the upper layers of the epidermis, and eventually flake off -- a continuous process that in humans take two weeks or more.
At each new level the keratinocytes accumulate more and more tough, connective keratin proteins. The keratins and other proteins form filaments that begin to interlink. The cells stiffen, lose their nuclei and other internal structures, and finally program themselves to die. The top layers of skin form a tough barrier, made of dead cells that fit together like tiles. At every stage of the process, the appropriate genes must be turned on and off to regulate cell signaling, cell adhesion, metabolism, and gene transcription.
In mice, many of these genes are clustered together in chromosomal regions specific to the expression of keratin and related proteins, and in a site called the "epidermal differentiation complex." The proteins coded for by the genes in the clusters are necessary to the process of toughening, or cornifying (the word means "making horn"), the cell envelopes essential to the skin barrier. These gene assemblies are just the sort that Satb1 controls in other systems by chromatin remodeling.
Satb1 doesn't always bind to DNA close to where a gene's transcription starts, however. It typically bends and folds the chromatin to bring the right groups of genes together. Thus, when Satb1 binds to a specific site, genes as far as 200,000 base pairs away may be activated.
Two kinds of knockout mice, lacking either the p63 or the Satb1 gene, exhibited similar impacts on expression of their skin-related genes, and they had decreased amounts of the same proteins involved in cell cornifying. Both kinds of knockout mice had the thinner skins.
The effects of missing p63 on expression of many genes were so close to those of missing Satb1 as to suggest to the researchers that Satb1 plays an important function in skin development as a gene "downstream" of the p63 protein -- a primary target of its activity. Indeed, a series of tests showed that p63 directly regulates the Satb1 gene.
A final test was the most suggestive of them all. If the lack of p63 causes a thin epidermis, a lack of cell growth, and a decrease in such critical proteins as loricrin (necessary to form the tough envelope of the outermost skin cells), can Satb1 reverse this degenerative process?
The researchers used a virus to transport the Satb1 gene into samples of skin from p63 knockout mice. The result was a significant increase in epidermal thickness, cell proliferation, and loricrin levels. The research team concluded that Satb1 is capable of partially restoring the normal epidermis in p63-deficient mice.
Says Kohwi-Shigematsu, "Our collaboration on skin development with Botchkarev's lab, which made the major contribution to this study, and our other colleagues was exciting because we learned both a new key player and a novel strategy that cells use to make skin: the master regulator p63 uses Satb1's skills to do much of its work."
Knowledge of how these essential genes and proteins work together holds promise for better understanding and eventual progress in addressing a wide range of skin disorders.
This work was supported by the Medical Research Council in the UK and the National Institutes of Health in the USA.
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10 best Android music players
Alternative ways to organise and play your mobile music on Android
It's hard to describe the standard Android music playing experience, as thanks to the amazing variety of skins and interfaces out there, there isn't really one unified way that every Android user uses to play and manages their tunes.
Yes, Google supplies a barebones music player as part of the standard Android software, but phones with custom user interfaces laid over the top of Google's code from the likes of Motorola, Sony, HTC and most of the other makers, ignore this in favour of offering their own customised players, completely changing the player's look and feel in the process.
Some, like the music player that comes pre-loaded in HTC's recent models like the One X and One S, integrate lyric-finding services, internet streaming radio and more, while Sony's been adding YouTube artist searches and social sharing of track data to its Android models for years. So many phones, all with wildly different MP3 playback options.
The best way to unify your Android music player experience is therefore to use one of the many standalone apps out there, all of which offer their own take on how to best make your MP3 collection sing out of your phone.
Here are 10 of the best ways to get your mobile managing your tunes today.
1. N7Player
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A really innovative option for those with a powerful phone, N7Player gives you a multi-touch, zoomable music interface, coupled with modular player screen that's beautifully designed whether you're using it in portrait or landscape mode. Home widgets and lock screen controls, a tag editor, lyric look-up and much more make this an excellent showcase for Android audiophiles.
2. Poweramp Music Player
One of the most popular indie Android music players, thanks to combining a stylish design with stacks of graphic equaliser tools, crossfading, lyric display, Last.fm scrobbling, MP3 tag editing from the phone itself and much more. The trial version's free, but Poweramp is one you won't begrudge paying a couple of quid for.
3. Winamp
Yes, the old PC desktop player lives on in Android form, with an incredibly feature-packed app for users of Google's mobile OS. Winamp supports iTunes importing, Shoutcast internet radio, plenty of new music discovery tools that include access to free new stuff, plus lock screen player controls, Last.fm scrobbling and more.
4. Cubed
If you want something very different and a little bit odd, try this. The app, which we think is called Cubed, presents your music collection on, yes, the surface of a cube. Swiping left to right runs through your collection alphabetically, while paging up and down goes through all your albums. It downloads album art, scrobbles to Last.fm and is generally fun to fiddle with.
5. Last.fm
If you have an account with the famed internet radio site Last.fm, there's a decent, if rather basic looking, Android music player app to go alongside it. You don't get much in terms of fancy audio playback options, but it gives users access to their previously "scrobbled" music tracks, meaning you instantly have access to your tunes via your mobile's data link.
6. Amazon MP3
To call Amazon MP3 a music player is quite the understatement. As well as playing your legacy MP3 collection, this integrates with Amazon's cloud storage service, letting you sync your offline collection to the "cloud" for streaming through the app. You have to pay to upload lots of your own tracks, though, with the idea really being to encourage you to buy MP3s through Amazon -- which are free to store and stream through the app.
7. MixZing
A rather mixed option this. MixZing's minimalist and modern front end takes you through to a pretty bland player, but the killer feature here is a customisable graphic equaliser with the option to apply its audio filters to all your tunes, one particular album or even one individual track. Things don't get much more customisable than that.
8. DoubleTwist Player
DoubleTwist's one of the most comprehensive music apps available for Android, fitting in pretty much everything you might ever need. It syncs with PC, Mac and even iTunes playlists, manages podcast subscriptions, looks up missing album artwork and more. Some of it's free while other modules are unlocked via in-app purchases, but at least that means you get to give it a shot for free.
9. Holo Music Player
The idea behind this one is to bring the "Holo" Android 4.0 visual style to all Android models, also offering loads of swipe-activated control features. In terms of music playing innovations there aren't many here, but you do get some smart Home screen widgets and lock screen controls. Plus it could convince someone you've got Android 4.0 on your old T-Mobile Pulse.
10. PlayerPro
A properly hardcore option here. PlayerPro incorporates a very sexy graphic equaliser, lets you browse your tunes using a classic folder view, is completely skinnable if you don't like the default look of it and even lets you edit the tags of your audio files, should you like to while away long journeys obsessively naming MP3s files using the same structure. It also supports automatic album art downloads, to help jazz things up a little.
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Construction was completed in 1998. A 25,000-square-foot addition to the fitness center was completed in summer 2010.
McComas Hall895 Washington St. SW
McComas Hall houses the Thomas E. Cook Counseling Center, Charles W. Schiffert Health Center, and the Department of Recreational Sports. Its facilities include three gymnasium/volleyball courts, a cardio/weight training area, a swimming pool, aerobic studios, a suspended track, locker rooms, and a vending/lounge area. The facility receives more than 300,000 visits per year.
James Douglas McComas
The student health and fitness facility is named for James Douglas McComas, university president from 1988 to 1994. The late president emphasized undergraduate education, kept an open door for students, recruited National Merit Scholars, and personally advised several undergraduates. He established the Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the Academic Advising Center, encouraged diversity, and promoted public service. His legacy also includes the transformation of the Hotel Roanoke into a major conference center.
Building History
- Originally Built:
- 1998
- Map Grid:
- Abbreviation / Number:
- Coordinates:
- 37.22069, -80.4223


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Europe's woes deepen and China slows
The euro zone's economic woes increased last month and China's slowdown looked likely to extend to a seventh quarter, surveys showed on Wednesday, but there was better-than-expected news on U.S. jobs.
Purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) suggested the aggressive actions taken by the world's central banks over the last two months have yet to convince consumers to start spending again.
The chances of the euro zone in particularly seeing growth again before next year has dwindled.
Falling new orders and more layoffs marked a worsening decline for euro zone companies, the PMIs showed, while growth of China's normally robust services weakened to an almost two-year low last month.
Jobs data from the United States were cheerier in tone, however. A private sector employment report showed companies added far more staff than expected last month, although it revised down the number hired in August.
"Is the global economy heading into another recession? This is now becoming a genuine possibility, given events in recent months," said Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered in London, in a research note.
"The inability of European politicians to address their problems suggests that uncertainty about the euro area will persist, with the periphery remaining in recession."
A good gauge of economic growth, Markit's Eurozone Composite PMI, fell to 46.1 in September from 46.3 in August.
While revised up slightly from a preliminary reading two weeks ago, the index has been stuck below the 50 mark that divides growth and contraction for all but one of the last 13 months.
The data sent world share markets and oil prices lower on Wednesday, while the euro held steady against the dollar as traders await Spain's next move to solve its mounting debt problem.
Although the German downturn eased last month, hopes for an imminent recovery in the 17-nation currency bloc were dealt a blow by steeper declines for firms in France, Italy and Spain - the euro zone's three largest economies after Germany.
"There therefore seems little scope for a return to growth in the fourth quarter," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, which compiles the PMIs.
Outside the euro zone, Britain's services sector growth slowed last month and companies shed jobs for the first time in 10 months.
The data lend weight to a consensus that both the European Central Bank and Bank of England will ease monetary policy further before the end of the year, although few economists believe they will announce anything at their meetings on Thursday.
The dollar edged higher against the yen and U.S. stock futures gained after the ADP National Employment showed private sector companies added 162,000 jobs in September against the 143,000 expected.
Still, the August figure was revised down from 201,000 to 189,000.
Economists often refer to the ADP report to fine-tune their expectations for the highly anticipated official payrolls numbers, due on Friday, though it is not always accurate in predicting the outcome.
Data due at 1400 GMT are also expected to show slowing growth in the enormous U.S. services sector, although a comparable report for manufacturing on Monday surprised economists with its strength
While the United States economy has managed to deflect some of the huge uncertainty emanating from Europe, Asian countries that rely heavily on exports to rich Western peers have not fared so well.
China's official services PMI fell to its lowest point since November 2010, as slow growth in manufacturing finally began to feed through to the rest of the economy.
Weak construction services and transport, as well as lackluster new orders overall, pushed the PMI to 53.7 in September from 56.3 in August, signaling economic growth will slow for a seventh quarter.
A Reuters poll last month forecast China's annual economic growth could ease to 7.4 percent in the third quarter, before picking up to 7.6 percent in the final three months. That would likely leave growth for 2012 below 8 percent, its lowest in more than a decade.
News Australia's trade deficit blew out to its widest in 3-1/2 years in August provided a further reminder of the knock-on effect the uncertainty emanating from Europe, via China.
Falling prices for iron ore and coal ate into export earnings, just the latest sign of how China's slowdown is hurting resource-rich Australia.
Wednesday's data showed the deficit on goods and services yawned out to A$2.03 billion ($2.1 billion) in August, from a revised A$1.5 billion in July. That was far beyond forecasts of a A$700 million shortfall and the largest deficit since March 2008.
"It means the current account deficit will blow out in the quarter and the trend is clearly for further deterioration," said Su-Lin Ong, a senior economist at RBC Capital Markets.
(Additional reporting by Lucy Hornby in Beijing and Wayne Cole in Sydney. Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)


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Vision Care & Products
Elite Eye Care, P.C. offers a number of cutting-edge vision care services and products at our optometrist office in Portland.
To learn more about the specific products we offer and conditions we treat, please select one of the subcategories below and request an appointment with your eye care provider.


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As an experienced speaker, Heidi has been featured at many national and global conferences, including the Fortune Magazine Most Powerful Women in Business Summit, ESPN Women's Leadership Summit, and the Million Dollar Round Table. Heidi is CEO and founder of SYNERGY, an integrative neuroscience partnership that provides brain-based training for individuals and organizations. She is also a frequent lecturer Canyon Ranch Resort and Spa in Tucson, Arizona. Heidi's publications include the NY Times best selling book The Sharp Solution, Stressaholic, Recharge and Relax Your Fat Off.
Heidi is a fellow with the American Institute of Stress and currently serves as editor of their publication, Contentment. She is on the national board of Blessings in a Backpack, and provides volunteer services to The Alzheimer's Association, Challenged Athletes Foundation and other non-profit organizations.
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As officially synopsized at the film's Belgian website: "Pim lives in a run-down house in a dead-end street somewhere at the Belgian coast, together with his mother Yvette Bulteel (better known as Yvette Mimosa, local accordion starlet). Life here smells of cold French fries, cheap cigarettes, vermouth and stale beer. Mother Yvette uses her fat Etienne with his lousy grey Fiat as a driver for the nights she has to 'perform'.
"As a kid Pim dreams of a better life, imagining princesses and beauty queens. But when Pim turns 16 he dreams of Gino, the boy next door, instead. Ever since they were children there has been this tension between them. Now Gino is Pim's motorcycling hero. Cold mockery, little humiliations and tiny bits of hope make up Pim's life. No wonder he sometimes flees to his dream world.
"Then one day Yvette leaves with young, hunky Zoltan, the boy from the fair. When Yvette leaves her son alone in the empty house, Pim seizes the opportunity and his dreams become half-truths. Pim moves to the neighbors' house to live with Marcella, his 'second mum'. And with Sabrina, Gino's sister, who circles longingly around Pim. He even sleeps in Gino's bed! But Gino's off romancing and living with a girl from across the border. Dreams never come true. Or do they? On a rainy day Gino returns."
North Sea, Texas premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival where it picked up the FIPRESCI prize for best first feature and the Silver Zenith for Defurne. As reviewed by Variety's Alissa Simon, "The pic benefits from an artful combination of naturalistic performances and attractively stylized visuals, aided by judicious use of an evocative score. The isolated seaside location (unspecified in the film but shot in Ostende) practically becomes a character itself, with gorgeous shots of crashing waves, blowing reeds and empty sand dunes employed lyrically throughout."
Michael Hawley reviewed the film when it screened at the 36th edition of San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival: "North Sea, Texas has gorgeous widescreen cinematography, eye-catching 1970s art direction, nicely observed moments and fine performances, but the storytelling and tone lean toward overly languid." Hawley is not alone in his critique. At The Guardian, Henry Barnes deems Defurne's debut "engaging, if placid" and writes, "Defurne makes a point of shunning social realism and presents lonely, horny Pim's story through a fog of polished-to-a-glow stylishness. North Sea, Texas looks beautiful, is acted brilliantly, but it's hard to get a hold on when Pim's drifting by in a dream world."
I'm less distracted by the film's dream-like "languidity" and more focused on what seems to be a deliberately cadenced affirmation—dare I say fantasy?—of a love between two boys gently formed from its own organic sense, its own integrity, arising from the chance proximity of being friends living next door to each other, evolving through puberty into recognition and self-awareness, towards a sensual potential for commitment. And all of this without the overworn coming-out narrative tropes that emphasize anguish, guilt, shame and self-laceration. North Sea, Texas admirably skirts such negativities to provide its affirmative coming-of-age fable. Truer to the gradual process by which Pim and Gino become themselves and discover who they might be to each other, languidity strikes me as an appropriate and sensual choice that aptly captures the desires and frustrations of their teenage years. Theirs is not a love story that accidentally happens—it's meant to happen—and Bavo Defurne takes his time and exercises a light touch in capturing the integral rhythm of that meaning; that fantasy of tween love as destiny.
My thanks to Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing—who picked up the film's U.S. distribution—for offering the opportunity to speak with Bavo Defurne during his Frameline appearance. North Sea, Texas opens November 2, 2012, in New York City at Clearview's Chelsea and in Los Angeles at Sundance Sunset (venues subject to change). It opens December 7 in San Francisco and Berkeley at Landmark Theatres.
[This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary!!]
* * *
Michael Guillén: Bavo, I first became aware of North Sea, Texas at its U.S. premiere in the World Cinema program of the Palm Springs Film Festival, earlier this year. Straight off, I'd like to winnow out the geographical pun within the film's title?
Bavo Defurne: The film is placed in Belgium where it faces the North Sea; the sea between Belgium and England. "Texas" comes from the name of the bar where Pim and his mother go. This combination reflects how this is a world of its own.
Defurne: Totally. In Belgium, just after the Second World War, people were proud of America for helping liberate Europe. Texas, cowboys, and anything American became hip. It was hip to call your bar Texas. There was even a Texas Bar in my village. So there was a Texas Bar in the book, yes.
Guillén: You started your career as a maker of short films, which achieved international recognition. Can you speak to the value for you of starting off with short films? And when you knew you were ready for a full-length feature? What was involved for you in that transition from short to feature-length?
Campfire). I've shown these short films to a lot of audiences. It's nice to make these little pieces of art to share with audiences. The industry, however, doesn't really consider you as a "real" filmmaker, I would say. The value of making a feature-length film is that it has opened a lot of doors that were not open when I was a shorts filmmaker. The problem with short films is also that you can't really go as deep to develop complex characters; you're always limited to a sketch. What I really enjoyed about making a feature-length film was that I could add characters and that the film was much more than just a boy in love with his neighbor. Of course, that's what the film is about, but it also tells a tale about single mothers struggling to give the most to their kids, and about a sister who discovers that the boy that she loves is in love with her brother. So a full-length feature provides the opportunity to tell a more complex story and that's what I really like.
Guillén: I've pushed Campfire to the top of my Netflix queue and, in the interim, have watched the teasers on your Vimeo channel. Immediately apparent from watching the Vimeo teasers is why many critics have compared your work to such wide-ranging influences as Pierre et Gilles and Sergei Eisenstein. But who do you feel has had the most influence on your filmmaking vision?
Defurne: There's no one in particular. I'm a bit like a sponge. I absorb a lot and it comes out mixed. When I make a film, I put ideas, images and feelings together that have never been put together in this particular configuration, y'know? I love films by Terrence Malick or Carl Theodor Dreyer, but I also love Pedro Almodóvar. These films are all around me and I am in the middle of them. I absorb them and I give something back that is a mix of these influences.
Guillén: Absolutely, I agree. And that's very much why I enjoyed your film. I'm pushing 60 myself but I can still look back and remember what it was like for me at 14 or 15 growing up in Idaho and I recognized similar elements to my own upbringing in North Sea, Texas, namely an atmosphere to how I learned about myself.
Defurne: Oh wow, thank you!
Guillén: Mythologist Joseph Campbell frequently asserted that people are constantly looking for the meaning of life, when actually what they want is an authentic experience of life. You have insinuated that authentic experience as an interiorized one, which the character Pim reflects. In terms of what is authentic, why is the interior life more authentic to you than, let's say, a socially realistic document that is authentic by way of exterior detail?
Guillén: It's less a "coming out" narrative than a story about how a young person becomes himself.
Jelle Florizoone play Pim in the various stages of his development from a kid to a young adult, I had a "code" with Jelle. I told him that Pim would go from princess to prince to king. Any time Jelle would struggle with a scene, with who he was within a scene and how he should play it, I would say, "Remember, Jelle, you're a princess now. Remember, Jelle, you're becoming a king." Jelle was only 14 when we made the film but in the film he had to show the growth from 14 to 17. He had to know what this transformation was all about, which is what the film is all about, a princess becoming a prince becoming a king. At the beginning Pim is weak and fragile, he's experimenting, but by film's end he's stronger than his mom, stronger than the boy he adored, very strong and self-assured indeed, and that's what I liked about this character.
Guillén: That's a lovely way to code this character. Within that context, one of my favorite moments in the film, one which had a visceral effect on me as an audience member, was precisely the moment when Pim transforms from the "princess" at the window with his arms outstretched to the slightly-older prince. This shift from the younger actor Ben Van den Heuvel to Jelle Florizoone who then carries the rest of the film was beautifully accomplished.
Defurne: But there are other subtle changes as well. For example, the character of Pim early in the movie would never fight with and hit Gino (Mathias Vergels) and, thereby, become stronger. Pim in the beginning would never drink a beer, which he does at the end of the film. All of his mementos from being a princess, he eventually burns. It's a story similar to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. A caterpillar has to go through a lot to become a butterfly.
Guillén: I admired how the film showed how the young Pim fetishized desire by collecting mementos of key sensual experiences that he kept hidden in a shoebox. These experiences seemed more borrowed, even stolen, than freely chosen. For me, this is what marked Pim's transition from a young man who is longing to live life to the young man who takes the necessary steps to actually begin living life.
Defurne: That's completely correct. As you mentioned, he burns all the mementos in his shoe box and seeks to forget them. He doesn't want to live like that anymore. This was something I had to explain to my younger actors. First, I had to explain what "fetishism" meant in a way that a 14-year-old would understand. "Well," I told Jelle, "Pim loved someone and—because he can't reach that someone—he takes things that relate to that someone and ends up loving the things in place of the person." That's what Pim's fetishism is about. It's always interesting to work with young people because sometimes when you explain something like that, it suddenly makes sense for adults.
Guillén: I have to admit that I did the same thing as a young man. When I couldn't reach someone I love, I would secure something of theirs and obsess over it.
Defurne: A lot of young men do! I did too. So did the writer who wrote the book. A lot of people come up to me after a screening to tell me stories about what they collected. It's different in each case but always interesting. I could write a book now about what young people in Europe or South Africa collect from the people they adored when they experienced their first love.
Guillén: Fascinating. As I mentioned, I'm pushing 60 myself and—having lived a full, rich, sensual life—I now look back at my early innocence to when I started. I'm finding myself not so much nostalgic, not so much wanting to do it again, as I am proud of how fully I've lived my life starting from that innocent place. I've tried to be honest and authentic. I did what I had to do to enter life. Then, as I entered life and matured, my concerns became adult concerns and I put away childish things. But now that I'm older, now that the fire is less blaze and more ember, I find myself looking back to my youth with considerable fondness for where it all began.
Defurne: Me too! I'm now 41 and I have to admit that I couldn't have imagined this story myself. The relationship toward the parent is cynical but mild at the same time. It's critical, but still there's a love for every age and every character in this movie. Even the mother. You could say she's a bad mother because she's always drinking in the bar. Everyone in this film has their positive and their negative sides. Even Pim can be bitchy, unfriendly and a pain the ass. That's a present I can say I got from the novelist. I don't know if this is a story I could have made up now at this time in my life. Maybe in 20 more years I could make up such a story? As you say, these are insights that come from age.
North Sea, Texas is situated at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. So it's more about that generation, maybe? But I hope it transcends that. I hope it opens up to young people today and that 16-year-olds like the film too, so that it's not specifically for either 16-year-olds or 60-year-olds, and that everyone in the audience can get the main themes out of it. That fascinates me.
Guillén: Mythically, North Sea, Texas circumambulates around the authentic moment of first love, the original time, or what the ancients used to term illo tempore; in our cultural tradition, the Garden of Eden. First love is really the Garden of Eden and every time you fall in love after that is an attempted return to the Garden of Eden.
Defurne: You never forget first love. It's the most pure expression. When you get older, yes, you fall in love again but you also have a job, and you also have a household, and you also have a social life. But when you're so young, you live in a small world that's seen through a kind of tunnel vision. This tunnel vision is at the same time claustrophobic but also very beautiful and so pure. That's why the film is what it is. It's a film that inflects a hermetic world, a world that's on its own, and a world that you experience by going within and not, as I said, by looking out the window.
Guillén: One of the ways by which you captured that hermetic feel is through the film's impeccable art direction and production design.
Defurne: Kurt Rigolle was my main production designer. He, with all the rest of the crew, helped me and my producer Yves Verbraeken—with whom I work a lot—to create this particular world. I'm very glad that Anton Mertens, my director of photography, and everyone who didn't want to make their film, wanted instead to make this film with its specific aesthetics and the specific rules of this world that motion pictures inhabit: rules about color, about form, about rhythm. I'm really happy that the crew went with that and respected that also.
Guillén: It's my understanding that a lot of the precedent for the film's style came from the novel, which visually provided the cues you needed?
Guillén: Well, some might argue that it takes a lot of creativity to be true to the intent of a novel through the medium of film. Your film has brought the novel to life and has served to intrigue me to hunt out the novel itself. What more could a novelist ask from a filmmaker adapting his work?
Thomas Coumans had a lithe electricity as the traveling carny Zoltan. How did you find these actors?
Defurne: It wasn't easy. We worked with many casting directors. For the roles of the young boys Pim and Gino, we auditioned a total of 220 boys. It was a long and quite hard casting. I must say we did find Gino very early in the process, after only about 10 boys we already had him and never found anyone better, but then we needed to find his match, which in some ways made it even more difficult. Also making it more difficult was that a lot of boys didn't dare play the roles, or weren't allowed by their parents. That was painful and openly sad because I had crying young actors calling to say their parents wouldn't allow them to act in this movie. I felt a lot of the dreams of these young boys who wanted to be actors had been broken by the parents.
But by the end of the casting process, just a few weeks before shooting actually, Jelle auditioned and we knew in a second—the producer, me and the casting director—that Jelle was Pim. The key to that was not only that he was specifically like Pim—though in real life he's a bit different—but, in his real life, Jelle had a big, important background as a professional dancer. It gave him and Matthias Vergels, who was also a professional actor, the freedom to be their characters on set playing their roles, while at the same time I gave them their freedom to be themselves the moment I said, "Cut!" I didn't probe into their private lives. I didn't ask, "Who do you love?" or "What are your sexual experiences?" I avoided that. I avoided talking about my personal experiences, about my personal life, and we used all our time in preparation talking about and living the lives of Pim and Gino and living the love between these fictional characters. Their professionalism really helped.
Guillén: I took note and was touched by your dedication in North Sea, Texas to "all the kids whose parents wouldn't let them take part in this film." That was a lovely acknowledgment on your part.
Defurne: I won't go into detail about private cases, but there were cases that really touched me so much. When I was that age, I didn't know if I would become an actor or a fashion designer. At 14, I didn't even know being a filmmaker could be a profession. But these dreams are so beautiful and as a human being, not a filmmaker, I was deeply touched by seeing boys of that age cry because their dream has been cut short. I couldn't really help in any way because it was a casting after all, not only of the kids but of their parents as well. While I was auditioning the kids, the casting director was auditioning the parents and checking whether or not they were supportive of the project, believed in it and shared the dream of their children to act in it. If some of the boys weren't fortunate enough to have supportive parents like that, I hope they will still see the movie and see the dedication and realize there is still hope for them and that maybe in three to five years they'll be able to live their lives. Fourteen is not the end of the world. You can still pursue a career at 20. I have a friend who's 40 and changed his career to begin acting. It's not a trauma. Life will get better. And that's what I wanted to tell them actually.
Eva van der Gucht) competes with him, whereas Gino's mother Marcella (Katelijne Damen) has a deeper sense of what will fulfill both Pim and Gino. Can you speak to the importance of profiling the mothers, their characterizations, and how you cast these two actresses?
Defurne: Well, in French you would say la maman et la putain, the mother and the whore, which is perhaps a bit exaggerated in this instance; but, Pim's mother is never home, she's always in a bar, she's always drinking, she doesn't care after her kids, and she never cooks for them. But what's interesting is that Gino's mother is the opposite: she's always home, she cooks, etc. I tried not to judge them. I tried to understand both of them.
Guillén: Marcella's death bed sequence was notably poignant. In a world where gay youth are often rejected by their parents and families—which is such a sorrowful situation—North Sea, Texas exhibits so much hope in that sequence where Marcella clasps the hands of the two boys together, which confirms their love for one another. I want to thank you for that affirmative ending.
Defurne: It's already in the book but I like that too. That scene shows that a lot of parents can't express their love. They can't say, "I accept that you're gay." Maybe they don't really want to talk about it? Maybe they don't have the vocabulary? Maybe their upbringing and education made it taboo to talk about it? But silently they discover there is nothing wrong with their gay children. Silently they accept that their love for their children is universal, whether they're gay or straight, they're still their kids. But they can't really say it with words. That death bed sequence is a scene without words so you can almost make anything of it, but personally I think that she knew it all the way but didn't want to say it, didn't want to make a scene or a drama out of it. Her last words are worthless almost by doing that, by showing the two boys that it's okay that they love each other. That scene moves me a lot. It moved the sound man during shooting. The actors had microphones on their bodies and after shooting he told me we wouldn't be able to use the sound because everyone on set was so emotional and the hearts of the actors were pounding so loudly. But isn't that the magic of cinema? That the emotion is so human that it affects the whole cast and crew? It goes straight to the heart, physically.


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Chris Garland was drawn to the hustle and bustle of the real estate business in his early teens.
"I remember going into my cousin's office one day, and he was sitting in there on the phone with his feet up on his desk, looking through all of these papers and negotiating a deal," Garland said. "I was like, 'I want to do that.'"
He would go on to run errands for that cousin, Gary Garland, at Crye-Leike Commercial Investment Division, before getting his real estate license in 1987 at age 20. That background led him to obtain a degree in urban development from the University of Memphis – a combination of real estate, finance and city planning.
Chris Garland joined Gary's newly formed company, Garland Co. Real Estate, in 1993 to sell commercial real estate and has been there ever since. In 1997, the firm moved its offices Downtown from Sanderlin Avenue and Garland started selling residential too.
It's a broader focus that Garland's industry peers don't dabble into quite as much.
"Commercial real estate agents will ask me, 'Why do you sell residential and commercial?'" Garland said. "I say, 'Well, one day I figured out that I could sell three $300,000 houses twice as fast as I could sell one $300,000 commercial building.' But I still liked doing commercial buildings too, so I decided to do both. And be good at both."
Garland began to specialize in the Downtown market, selling homes at Harbor Town, South Bluffs and condos. He also brokered commercial transactions, including retail and office leasing, sales of buildings for redevelopment, as well as land for redevelopment.
All the while, Garland kept bumping into Tracie Gaia, who was handling residential property for Downtown investors and developers like Phil Woodard. In 2004, Gaia joined Garland Co. Real Estate, and the duo teamed up to take on the marketing of newly constructed town homes and condos.
"We started selling these vacant buildings for the revitalization of Downtown," Garland said. "We were the sales team for the developer/builder who had no sales team. We helped them design up for what was best for the market, meet with the architects, get the floor plans and finishes right to where we knew we could sell them."
Since then, Gaia and Garland have tallied more than $80 million in residential sales. To this day, they've sold several of those units two or three times over.
– Chris Garland
"People, when they're getting ready to sell it, they call us again," Garland said.
Projects Garland has been involved with in recent years include Kerr Tigrett's The Ivy at South End subdivision, CityHouse Memphis Condominiums at 6 W. G.E. Patterson Ave., Finard Properties Inc.'s The Welcome Wagon Building at 30 N. Second St., and numerous buildings along South Main, including where UrbanArch Associates PC now resides.
"I love to see the buildings go from being vacant to useful and thriving," Garland said. "I like seeing things change."
Garland has also represented such retailers as City Market grocery in its ground floor lease at Radio Center Flats, 66 S. Main St., and Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken in its build-to-suit space at 730 S. Mendenhall Road.
"In a previous real estate market, I could afford to specialize in one area: Downtown," Garland said. "I still specialize in Downtown, but I'll handle commercial or residential real estate transactions anywhere in the city. And I'm very capable of it because I'm 45 years old and I've lived in Memphis all my life."
Sales have "picked up a lot" in the last year, Garland said, and he looks forward to when the market bounces back.
"It's going to be different than it was before, hopefully we won't have these drastic changes," he said. "What you'll see if when the market gets really good again, apartments will be converted into condominiums."
When he's not making real estate deals, Garland enjoys traveling, fly fishing and scuba diving. He's also a Tigers and Grizzlies season ticket holder.
It's a testament to his love for Downtown, where it's not uncommon to see Garland out and about showing property, cell phone in hand – but never in a suit.
"I walk to the beat of my own drum as far as the whole real estate business goes," he said.
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by The Daily News Publishing Co. Inc. - All Rights Reserved


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February 1, 2010 at 6pm to April 13, 2010 at 1pm – Belgium, England & France. We conduct a no frills trip to shop the best dealer sources in Europe. We go to Belgium, Paris & the massive antiques fairs at Newark, Lincolnshire, UK. this is not a tourist trip. We DO NOT tour… Organized by Felicia D. | Type: antiquing, trip, to, europe.
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Ang Cui has a lot of power. With enough time he can take control of pretty much any networked device. He could watch you through your iSight or track the Netflix on your smart TV. But he has bigger fish to fry, so your Catfish marathons are safe for now. From him, at least.
A Columbia PhD student in computer science, Cui has been working for the last five years on developing offensive attacks and defensive solutions for vulnerabilities in embedded devices. This Thursday his company, Red Balloon Security—cofounded by Cui's advisor Sal Stolfo—will present proof that its security software, the "symbiote," can protect a standard IP office phone from malicious attacks. And this IP phone demo is just the beginning.
Eventually, the symbiote could protect virtually any connected device you can think of.
"Really [IP phones] are just computers too, and they're running these super secret proprietary operating systems that very few people have actually seen, and very few people have actually tested the security of," Cui told us in a recent interview. "And you know, the work that we've been doing in the lab is to show that those things are just as insecure as the general purpose computers you have, and once you exploit those things there are definitely advantages to that over just getting root access to a server somewhere, which is what everybody in security largely has been focused on for the last forever."
The symbiote is a tiny piece of code, about 200 bytes, that is injected into an IP phone's kernel (the thing that bridges applications and hardware-level data processing) without impacting computing speed or device functionality. And the symbiote is operating-system agnostic, meaning it can run on and monitor any device without being tailored to a specific OS. When it is injected, the symbiote uses Cui's firmware evaluation tool, Firmware Reverse Analysis Konsole (FRAK) to unpack the device's firmware, replace its signing key (a basic security feature) and repack. Then it runs in the background, and randomly samples executed code at regular intervals to ensure that nothing unusual is going on.
Without knowing detailed specifics about an OS, the symbiote can still establish a baseline for normal behavior in a device using functions that are shared among different types of firmware and can reasonably be expected to be present. In Cui's demonstration, two IP phones sit side by side. One is running the symbiote and the other isn't. When Cui launches an attack, the unguarded phone is easily exploited, but the symbiote on the other phone detects the intrusion and alerts Cui by calling his cellphone. When he answers, an automated message says, "Hello neighbor. My IP phone has been pon3d."
The goal of Red Balloon Security is to offer the symbiote as a security solution for all embedded devices. If an IP phone can be hacked, so can any other internet-enabled device, but because the symbiote is OS agnostic it can easily translate to any device—even a rice cooker—and be incorporated seamlessly. Multiple symbiotes running on the same network could even monitor each other as an additional way of checking for unusual activity on any one device.
Cui and Stolfo have increasingly gained widespread recognition for their research, a body of work that consists of intensely creepy but nonetheless badass hacks. In 2011 they demonstrated a flaw in HP printer firmware that was the perfect entryway for an attack. If a hacker could get someone to print a malware-tainted document, like a resume, from any targeted HP printer, she could take over the whole thing and instruct the printer to send her copies of whatever it was printing, or provide her with access to the network server.
Shortly after Cui exposed the vulnerability, HP released a patch. "We found 201 HP laser jet printers in the DOD's network that were vulnerable to my attack like five months after the patch was out. We found two in HP [headquarters]" just through publicly available IP addresses.
For his next hack in 2012, Cui found the IP phone vulnerability in Cisco office phones that the symbiote now secures. He demonstrates the attack on a standard-issue Columbia University phone sitting on his desk, though he emphasizes that Cisco is not the only company producing vulnerable devices. "On the phone, there's just no indication that anything strange is going on. And it just continuously forwards all the data to my computer where I can record the sound or do whatever. It's just a computer put into a plastic shell that looks like a telephone."
After Cui presented the IP phone hack at a conference in December, Cisco went the way of HP and released a patch for their internet phones on January 17. After their patch caused phones to crash, they released a revision on February 14 to "disable the local console port" or cut the phones off from the Internet, which is like fixing a hangnail by amputating your hand..
Cui hopes that after he and Stolfo present the symbiote, though, companies will begin to adopt it as an alternative to what Stolfo calls "the patch and pray method." "The smarter manufacturers will get it that having this technology inside their machines reduces their problems dramatically," Stolfo says.
"The traditional strategy for security is you understand everything the system is supposed to do and you basically apply a template of what it should do, and what it shouldn't," Cui says. "But this idea that you can secure a system without understanding how it works, that's something that's a departure from standard operating procedure and the way of thinking about security… With the symbiote the customer can do it, the vendor can do it and neither has to wait for the other."
The weaknesses Cui has identified so far have offered clear examples of security risks. When he assessed publicly available data about which government organizations used at-risk Cisco phones, Cui found areas of immediate concern. "We found videoconference units in district attorney's offices in various states. Definitely sensitive offices. And when you have an embedded device like a videoconference unit you have eyes and ears. This isn't just an IP address."
During his five years at Columbia, Cui has come to understand that his research could have major implications for the espionage and intelligence communities. "How do you make sure you win cyber war?" he asks casually. "Some guy out there doesn't just say, 'Okay boys, hack 'em, and give 'em hell,' and then you start hacking. What you do is you recon. You preposition your pieces, and when the switch is flipped you either win it or lose it before the battle even starts... If the defender gets there first it's great and you win forever, but if the attacker gets there first you lose forever."
Sometimes, for a moment, Cui's consistent assuredness will give way to contemplation about the magnitude of the topics he researches and the field he has entered. "This is one of the things that I always felt strange about, because a lot of times I would see something like this, and it's four o'clock in the morning, and it's dark in my apartment, and I look around and it's either I'm insane or I'm wrong or like the world is really strange somehow because I can't possibly be the first person to have done this," he says.
Concerns about embedded device security have percolated quietly for years, but the issue is finally spreading in a more meaningful way. The next step for Red Balloon Security is finding a large-scale network environment in which to run a pilot of the symbiote. "This literally is the world's most secure IP phone," Cui says. "We can take this and put it into production in a large environment. I would volunteer to use this phone, but nobody calls me at work." He turns and points to the exploited office phone. "Dude, you know that thing has been recording this whole time, right?"
Image by Shutterstock


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Release Date: November 8, 2011
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Pages: 296
Received: Review copy from publisher
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
From Goodreads:
Olivia has just about had it with the popular kids at school. She and her friends have done nothing to deserve evil pranks and awful name-calling, but that doesn't stop queen bee Brynne from humiliating them on a daily basis. If only Olivia's classmates were more like the adorable dogs she helps her grandmother train--poorly behaved, but improvable. Wait...what if her tormentors' behavior actually could be modified using the same type of training that works on dogs? Olivia and her friends are desperate enough to give it a try. But is it really possible that the underdogs of Hubert C. Frost Middle School could make it to head of the pack?
I know I don't usually read contemporary books, but I have a not-so-secret weakness for funny contemporary books, especially when they deal with Lite Issues like zits and dating and stuff. As soon as I saw the blurb, I knew I had to read Fetching. Plus, there's behaviorism (!), and for those who don't know, I'm a big fan of behaviorism.
(In the case of Fetching, behaviorism is never mentioned by name but is used through the dog training methods Olivia employs on her peers.)
Narrator Olivia is a pretty cool girl and definitely someone I'd sit with at lunch. She's very "generic teen" in that her personality isn't all that different from your average teen in a book like this, but that's ok. She freezes up when popular people talk to her, she tries to guess the color of the M&M in her mouth, and she wishes her hair was glossy and not frizzy. I get her. It's Olivia's "generic-ness" that made me like her so much because it was super easy to imagine myself in her shoes.
And, ugh, what horrible shoes she's filling. The book opens with Olivia suffering the embarrassment of wearing one-size-fits-all school pants. You know, the kind of pants no one in their right mind would ever wear but schools keep on hand as some sort of salt in the wound extra for kids whose pants are for whatever reason rendered unsuitable for wear.
(I had to wear a pair of school provided purple corduroy pants one time because Amy Grover spilled apple juice all over my own pants. Thankfully I was in pre-K and so most of my peers were more concerned with nap time and paint tasting, but I have still never forgiven Amy. The shame of wearing school provided pants is just not something you overlook).
And why is Olivia subjected to the torment of school provided pants? Because mean girl Brynne secretly put a ketchup stain on the seat of Olivia's pants and the whole school pointed and laughed at Olivia's "feminine accident." Ouch.
At that point I knew I had to read the rest of the book. I needed to see Olivia get revenge on Brynne. And thankfully, she does. Big time.
I know, I know, the mean girl story is totally played out. And even though I'm like that little kid with a blankie refusing to throw it out even though it's worn and old and totally disgusting and, really, at this point no longer looks even remotely blanket-shaped and is pretty much a tiny knotted ball of string (which is to say, I don't like letting things go), even *I'm* kind of tired of the mean girl plot.
But Fetching breathes new life into the story by arming Olivia and her friends with dog training techniques of revenge. Not only is it funny, but it was fascinating seeing how Olivia took the lessons she learned from her dog trainer grandmother and applied them to her peers. The best part is, those techniques totally work and Kiera Stewart described the results of Olivia's efforts exactly as they would happen if this were a real life experiment.
(And, yeah, there's a Don't Try This At Home, Kids! warning toward the end, but seriously, you should totally try this at home. Ok, I don't mean you should train your peers to shun someone, but if you're having trouble getting your kids to focus on their homework or you want your boyfriend to take out the trash, then you should definitely try applying some dog training techniques. It works.)
The side characters were a mixed bag for me. I had a hard time distinguishing Olivia's friends and they never really rose to Full Character Status for me. Every time one of them spoke I had to remind myself "Oh yeah, she's the one with the marker lips" or "She's the one with the acne" or "She's the other one." The most distinctive of Olivia's friends was her guy friend Johnny, but that's because he's incredibly annoying and I hated him (also, he's a guy, so that's a fairly notable trait).
There's a little romantic potential, but it never fully develops. Both potential guys are crush worthy (though one, I thought, MUCH more than the other), but neither play a big part. The shadow of Olivia's mother (currently residing in a mental institution) is cast over everything Olivia does, but even with my strong dislike of the Mentally Ill Mother ploy, I actually wasn't bothered at all. Olivia's handling of the situation was just one more thing that made me like her. Olivia's grandmother was sweet, but she's also pretty "generic grandma."
The plot moves along pretty well as Olivia introduces new steps in her Behavior Modification Plan for Middle School Domination. Breaking up that narrative are little aside scenes here and there where Olivia trains actual dogs (cute and very funny!) and talks with her therapist Moncherie (yes, that's actually her name, and I love her).
About three quarters of the way through, Olivia has the inevitable falling out with her friends and emotional look at the softer side of the mean girl. It's all very been-there-done-that predictable, but my positive feelings toward Olivia kept my interest and I even grudgingly started to...well, "like" isn't exactly the right word, but I started to sympathize with Brynne.
Even with the dip in action, Fetching gets points from me because when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it and trying to rationalize pushing off necessary things like chores and tv shows in favor of reading (though Fetching did not manage to distract me from eating).
I kind of wish a kid would come into my library complaining about bullies and mean girls because I really want to provide a "Life Changing Moment" by handing them this book. But Fetching has already been making its rounds among my library kids (I'm late to the party on this one), so it looks like my thunder has been stolen. But that's ok.
Other things to note: This is a MG book, but I think YA readers should enjoy it, too. It's written on the upper end of MG and while it takes place in middle school, it easily could take place in high school. Fetching is a standalone.
This is Kiera Stewart's debut, and I am definitely keeping my eye out for whatever she writes next. I'm also maybe secretly hoping the Disney decides to turn this into a Disney Channel Original Movie (or, um, based on a book movie).
Explanation of rating system: Star Rating Key
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Courtesy UM
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Miami Hurricanes junior center Shane McDermott is one of 44 players named to the 2013 Rimington Trophy Watch List, released Tuesday by the trophy's selection committee. The award is presented annually to the nation's top collegiate center in NCAA Division I FBS.
McDermott is one of five ACC centers on the list, joined by Russell Bodine (North Carolina), Jay Finch (Georgia Tech), Macky MacPherson (Syracuse) and Bryan Stork (Florida State).
An All-ACC honorable mention selection in 2012 by the league coaches, McDermott started all 12 games at center for the Hurricanes. He anchored the offensive line that paved the way for the ACC's third-best passing offense (295.4) and fifth-best total offense (440.2). As a redshirt freshman in 2011, he saw action in 10 games, allowing no sacks and registering zero penalties on the season.
The Lake Worth, Fla., native was awarded the Walter Kichefski Endowed Football Scholarship at the 2013 UM Sports Hall of Fame Induction Banquet and he will graduate this summer with his bachelor's degree.
Miami's Brett Romberg won the Rimington Trophy in 2002 after contributing the Miami's 34-game winning streak from 2000-2002. He never allowed a sack at center and led an offensive line that helped produce three 1,000-yard rushers – James Jackson, Clinton Portis and Willis McGahee.
The winner of the Rimington Trophy will be selected by determining the consensus All-America center pick from four existing All-America teams: American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), Walter Camp Foundation, Sporting News and Football Writers Association of America (FWAA). The Rimington Trophy presentation will be held Jan. 11, 2014, at Rococo Theater in Lincoln, Neb.
The trophy is presented annually by the Boomer Esiason Foundation. Past recipients include Nebraska's Dominic Raiola, Ohio State's LeCharles Bentley, Virginia Tech's Jake Grove, co-winners Michigan's David Baas and LSU's Ben Wilkerson, Minnesota's Greg Eslinger, West Virginia's Dan Mozes, Arkansas' Jonathan Luigs, Penn State's A.Q. Shipley, Florida's Maurkice Pouncey and TCU's Jake Kirkpatrick.
Season tickets for the 2013 football season are on sale now for as low as $98. To purchase season tickets, call the UM Athletic Ticket Office at 305-284-2263 or buy online at www.CanesTix.com.


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Free 11 mins
Celebrate spring by discovering the most well-known expression of spring in classical music. Watch (and listen) to a performance of Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons performed by the Moscow City Symphony.
Got an idea for A Thing To Do This Saturday? Submit your suggestion at email@example.com.
ATTDT is your unique local guide to things to do, see, visit and explore in Callington. From date ideas to tourist attractions, we've got Saturday in Callington covered.
Make it a perfect weekend: see what to do on Sunday too.
Note: While events and activities are featured here because they should be available online this Saturday, changes can happen - you can use the headline link on the thing to do above to find out up-to-date information.
"What's on this weekend?" "What can I do on Saturday in Callington?" "What's the best way to start the weekend?"
Need help with what to do on Saturday? Then you need ATTDT.
Look no further: ATTDT is designed to give you the best things to do this weekend. Whether you want a peaceful Saturday morning or an eventful Saturday night, we've got suggestions of what to do on Saturday in Callington. Discover your own amazing weekend.
You can use this site for finding you interesting and often offbeat things to do specifically on and open this Saturday, which are ready to see and do: things to do in Callington for anyone feeling curious, creative or cultural. Look at the idea above for something to do this Saturday, reload the page to get other great things to do, or change the day to have an amazing time in Callington all week. Find out more...
Sunrise: 05:22
Sunset: 17:45
Moon Phase: full moon
Weather: broken clouds, 25°C max, 9°C min
"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom"


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By Chelsey P. – Product Specialist
Replacing your factory radio with a new aftermarket receiver may seem like a daunting task, but if you have the right accessories, it will be a cinch. Before installing your new CD player, make sure you have the right accessories including the correct wiring harness. You may wonder about the multiple wiring harnesses some companies carry and which one is right for your vehicle and application. Well, we can explain some information that may help you in determining which car stereo wiring harness to purchase. If your vehicle has an advanced sound system, there are special accessories that required in order for you to maintain certain functions in your vehicle. For vehicles that do not include these special systems, a basic wiring harness will fit your needs perfectly.
Basic Wiring Harness:
Basic Wiring Harness – Scosche CR02B
The basic wiring harness is the most popular and used in vehicles when installing an aftermarket CD receiver. They offer a quick and clean installation without cutting your OE Radio plug. These basic harnesses can be used in almost every vehicle that does not have any specialty functions. After connecting the harness, all you have to do is color-match the wires and connect the aftermarket receiver. It is as easy as that.
Price wise these harness are extremely cheap. They will allow you to install an aftermarket head unit but will not retain any advanced sound features. If you purchase a receiver from our company, these wiring harnesses will usually come with it for free.
Specialty Wiring Harnesses:
Specialty Harness – Scosche GM09SR
These particular wiring harnesses are used in vehicles that either have advanced sound systems, OnStar, CAN Bus or when you want to integrate a factory amplifier into your new head unit. Advanced sound systems include those with Bose, MACH and JBL and have become more prominent on newer vehicles. In order to retain the factory sound system, a wiring harness that has been made specifically for that vehicle is necessary. If you decide to use a basic harness like the one described above, it will not work. An example of a harness that is required for Bose or Non-Bose vehicles with factory OnStar is the Scosche GM09SR. This harness is needed in order to retain the OnStar while keeping the GM Safety and warning chimes functioning throughout the vehicle. All of these great features would be lost if you decided to use a basic harness. As for CAN Bus vehicles, Scosche introduced the CR06SR which is made for Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles. This harness will provide a +12V accessory power wire for the aftermarket unit. It will also auto detect the factory amplified system and even turns it on digitally. Installing these harnesses is similar to the basic wiring harnesses. Wiring involves color-matching the wires and then installing the head unit.
Price wise these harnesses are more expensive than the basic but they do so much more. They keep your vehicle functioning properly and will allow your vehicles computer to receive the correct information.


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1.) oh throw is lp+Lk
2.) What's Makoto's command grab
1.) oh throw is lp+Lk
2.) What's Makoto's command grab
Robert Khoo wrote: »Real strong, facetious.
Theodore Floosevelt wrote: »oh I just fought a Juri for the first time
she waved her foot around the entire match and sometimes fireballs came out
Watching Sako play Evil Ryu at Mix Up Night #08. It's so rad. These combos, maaan
If anyone else wants to scour the archive it's here http://www.twitch.tv/mixupnight/b/360872816 I am too lazy to find and time stamp the matches at the moment but one particularly good one starts at 6 hours 15 mins
Theodore Floosevelt wrote: »I did it you guys! I did a win!
it was against a pretty clueless Dudley, but I'll take it


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Limo Rental in Needles
While we don't need an excuse to hire a luxury vehicle, when it comes to services such as Limo Rentals and Limo Services, they are usually reserved for celebratory events and occasions.
Limos for hire in Needles
Though covering everything that Limo Rental entails, we are an incredibly popular choice for limousine hire in Needles. With a fleet that can cater to all tastes and presences, our limo collection comprises of wedding limos, pink prom limos and even black limos perfect for corporate transport.
A stunning collection of Rolls Royces
Rolls Royces are renowned for their luxurious nature, with the Phantom, Ghost and Silver Cloud offering unforgettable transport experiences. From their in-cabin drinks cabinets to undeniably high-end interior, the Rolls Royce is simply the pinnacle of luxury transportation,
Party buses to hire in Needles
Looking for a vehicle to get the party started in Needles? If so, then we at Cars for Stars would highly recommend a party bus; a vehicle that doubles up as a nightclub on wheels.
Request a few quote for Limo Rentals, Limo Services or any other transport service
If you have seen a vehicle you like the look of on carsforstars.net or need some inspiration finding the right car to hire, we at Cars for Stars would love to help.


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Cloud-Based CAD, Part 113 Jul, 2010 By: Robert Green
What is cloud computing, and does it make sense for CAD users?
Until now, I've been avoiding the whole "CAD on the cloud" discussion; frankly, I think the topic has been a little overdone. However, I've been getting a lot of questions on the topic recently, and I've seen a great deal of misinformation and confusion concerning cloud computing. So since many of us have to chart a course for our companies' CAD/IT strategies, and the cloud may well be a part of that future, discussing the cloud may be of use.
We'll get the topic started in this issue by defining what the cloud is and how it could work for CAD managers — and perhaps, against us. Here goes.
What Is the Cloud?
I've heard and read a lot of debate about how to define "the cloud." The surest, simplest answer is: The cloud is a big network of computers.
Like all networks, the cloud is composed of servers (which can be located anywhere) and client machines (such as your computer), connected to each other via the public domain Internet and/or private networks (like the network in your office). So "the cloud" is simply a nickname for a global network of computers that can talk to each other via the Internet. (It doesn't sound nearly as mysterious when you state it that way, does it?)
SaaS or Cloud-Based CAD
One of the new cloud buzzwords is the acronym SaaS (software as a service). The idea is that you'll no longer actually purchase and install software, but will instead subscribe to a software service, paying a company that maintains the CAD software on the cloud. Of course the SaaS/cloud concept raises all sorts of questions about who owns what data, how updates to the software will be handled, and what would happen to its clients if a software service provider goes out of business.
My opinion is that these types of business and legal concerns will shape the evolution of cloud computing as much as the technical issues will. But before we worry about those problems, let's examine some other factors that might affect running your CAD software on the cloud.
Speed and Bandwidth
Most companies I work with have fast, well-funded networks tying their local computers together. These companies have to decide where their CAD software will be installed: on a server or on local computers. The latter option offers the benefit of greater speed than server-based software. On the other hand, running software from a server only requires maintaining one copy of the CAD software, instead of running many copies of that same software on local computers — and that means lower software maintenance costs.
Doesn't this sound a lot like the cloud argument already? The only difference is that in this case, we're talking about a local area network (LAN) with a theoretical data transfer rate of 100mbit/sec between the local computer and the server; in contrast, the cloud is dependent on the public domain Internet, with data transfer rates of 3 to 8mbit/sec (roughly 5% the speed of a LAN). It's easy to see that cloud speed is going to be a lot lower than your own computer or a LAN.
My observation has been that most companies with the fastest LANs still opt to run CAD software on many local machines, even though it would be cheaper to only support one copy of the software on the server. Why? Speed and bandwidth concerns! Simply put, software loads a lot faster on your local computer than it does across a network, and keeping CAD software traffic off the network results in faster performance for everyone else using the network. The bottom line is: Speed wins.
Cloud Speed Tradeoffs
If you've ever struggled to download a file from a remote server at a glacial pace or experienced problems with Internet providers at your company, you've already experienced a possible downside of cloud-based computing. But what if all your models or drawings were stored on the cloud, as well as the CAD software; would that be faster? Quite possibly, because you wouldn't have to wait for files to move over the Internet.
However, how many CAD managers out there are going to tell their senior management teams that the company's CAD software and models/drawings are stored somewhere else — at the complete mercy of an Internet connection — just to achieve speed similar to what we already have with local machines? It seems to me there's no way the cloud will ever be faster than local computers, and it could very well be slower and riskier.
Shared Processing
Lest I come across as totally anti-cloud, I acknowledge that there are a few scenarios where cloud-based CAD could make a lot of sense. For example, let's say you need to run very high-power simulation analyses, renderings, or animations on an occasional basis. In these infrequent-use scenarios, the high-end workstations, graphics cards, software, and integration services required to make it all work would cost a lot, but wouldn't be used often enough to make that investment worthwhile. Wouldn't it be great if you could simply offload these types of tasks to a remote rendering/analysis farm so those machines could do the heavy lifting for you?
I'm sure at least one reader is now asking, "Why is this any different than outsourcing?" The difference would be that you'd still run the software yourself, and would use your own internal standards and processes to do the work.
Somebody else is now asking, "Why is this case any different than running any other CAD tool on the cloud?" The answer is that a cloud-based CAD tool only used periodically would be less likely to cause major work disruption, even if your Internet connection did fail.
Cost Questions
The manager in me has come to believe that the bottom line will drive cloud computing more than anything else. If you can manage to run CAD on the cloud, remain just as productive as you are already, and have it cost less than your current approach, then the cloud will make sense for your company.
This focus on finances begs the following questions:
- Does anyone really believe that the major CAD software vendors in the market want your software to cost less?
- How can businesses quantify the costs and benefits of cloud computing to achieve a return on investment (ROI) justification?
- How can a company gauge the risk of doing business with a software firm that doesn't sell a product, but rather a service?
These are the questions we'll need to examine in detail before a strategy for cloud computing can emerge. And believe me when I say that your senior management teams are very concerned about these sorts of questions.
Summing Up
In the next installment of the CAD Manager's Newsletter, we'll delve into some of the cost questions posed in this installment.
So what do you think about the future of the CAD cloud? Please e-mail your thoughts to firstname.lastname@example.com so I can include your feedback. Until next time.
About the Author: Robert Green
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As I watched the tragedy unfold in the news on Friday, I couldn't help but think of my two daughters. The news was horrifying: a man had walked into a kindergarten class at a Connecticut elementary school, and opened fire. This monster had taken the lives of twenty children and several adults.
Disgustingly, the political reaction was almost immediate, with talking heads, pundits, politicians, and bloggers getting into the gun control debate almost immediately – even before they had finished counting the dead, the NRA, Fox News, and the Republican Party were being blamed for an unspeakable tragedy – just like when a crazed, mentally-unstable wacko shot up Gabrielle Giffords' town hall meeting, the Left dug up some obscure page on Sarah Palin's website and used it to blame her – despite a complete lack of evidence.
It was just a few days before the tragedy at Sandy Hook school that I wrote an article titled "Why Gun Bans are Dumb." Despite the knee-jerk reaction of liberals across America, I still believe that to be true. Even if the US government were to ban guns altogether, that would not fix anything. This is proven by the example set by our cousins across the pond. England has had a gun ban in place for some time. After they banned guns, England saw a rise in violent crimes, as criminals became more brazen. Now, they are considering banning large kitchen knives, even as they are seeing a rise in gun crimes. The typical leftist counter-argument anytime someone points out the fact that areas within the United States with the most restrictive gun laws happen to be the areas with the worst gun violence is that criminals are able to bring guns from areas with less restrictive gun laws. This would not be true in the British Isles, yet they gun crimes are on the rise in that nation regardless.
The moral of the story is, banning things does not work…and in the case of firearms, banning guns creates more danger for the populace, not less. Just look at the areas where the worst mass shootings have occurred: schools, universities, a movie theater – all areas where carrying a gun was prohibited. Even the Fort Hood shooting, which took place on a military base, was perpetrated in an area where soldiers were not allowed to carry weapons. The "gun free zone," designed with the intention of keeping people safe, just makes it that much easier for those intent on committing mass murder to do so. Creating a zone where people are guaranteed to be defenseless does little more than to turn people into victims.
Focusing on guns after these kinds of tragedies is easy. Blaming the weapon is a simple, straightforward approach that is taken again and again when tragedy strikes. But if gun bans were effective, then they would be…well, they would be effective. But they aren't.
There are two common threads to the debate on guns: either we should ban guns, or we should arm everyone. The truth is that neither of these extremes holds the answer, but the evidence shows that banning guns will do harm to the law-abiding populace, forcing law abiding citizens to either become defenseless, or to become victims. The old adage still holds true: "when seconds count, the police are just minutes away." Besides being unconstitutional, disarming the citizenry is the wrong way to go.
But there are two aspects of this that are worth looking into: mental health and gun-free zones. Most of the recent mass shootings have had two things in common: they were committed by people with mental health problems, and they were committed in so-called "gun-free" zones.
Identifying people with serious mental health issues and ensuring that those people get the care that they need is an ongoing challenge, and it is extremely important that states and communities across our nation take a serious look at addressing mental health issues. America does not have a gun problem — millions of Americans own guns, and every year, millions of Americans do not commit crimes with their legally owned guns. But we do seem to have an epidemic of mentally unstable individuals who, having not received proper treatment (or even diagnosis, in some cases), end up acting out violently in these kinds of mass shootings. We should be taking a close look at our mental health programs, and come up with ways that these programs can be modified to more effectively identify, diagnose, and treat people who need help.
We also need to take a close look at the practice of "gun-free" zones. A look at most of the mass-shootings from Columbine to today, most have occurred at schools and universities. Even the recent movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado occurred at a theater where guns were not allowed. What's more, the theater where the shooting occurred was not the closest theater to the killer's home…but of the theaters in Aurora that were showing the Batman film, that was the theater that expressly prohibited people from carrying concealed guns. There have been many cases over the years of people who either stopped mass shootings, or were able to prevent shooters from killing more people, because they had a gun nearby. One detail of the recent shooting at the mall in Clackamas, OR was that there was an armed citizen at the mall who was legally carrying a concealed handgun when the shooting started. This man did exactly the right thing — he prepared to take a shot, but decided against it because if he missed he may have hit an innocent person beyond the shooter. Not long after the shooter realized he wasn't the only person in the area with a gun, he chose to take his own life. Without even firing a shot, this properly trained armed citizen may have saved dozens of lives, just by having his gun with him that day. The man is a hero, yet much of the nation has heard nothing of this aspect of the story.
Perhaps it is time to re-think the concept of gun-free zones. After all, advertising someplace as gun-free is like an invitation to someone intent on committing a mass-shooting. Rather than broadcasting that a place is safe, gun-free zones have turned out to be tantamount to shooting galleries for those evil and/or deranged people seeking to maximize casualties. Banning guns across America will only amplify this effect, leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless
The Second Amendment begins with these words: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…" I have heard some argue that the words "well regulated" here justify restrictive gun laws. But those words could just as well mean "properly trained." The man who happened to be carrying in the mall at Clackamas was thrust into a high-stress situation, yet he had the proper training, and that training saved lives.
Earlier, I mentioned the adage "when seconds count, police are only minutes away." Unbeknownst to many Americans, police do not have a constitutional duty to protect. American law enforcement is inherently reactionary: their job is to react once a crime has been committed, but their mandate does not extend to preventing crimes from happening. Given these facts, encouraging law-abiding citizens to get proper training and carry concealed weapons could do immense amounts of good in our society. Just one armed and trained individual could have made a world of difference at Sandy Hook.
The idea that more gun laws would have prevented the Sandy Hook tragedy just does not hold up. Even if the "assault weapons ban" had been in effect, it would not have changed anything. We need to start thinking outside of the political box if we want to implement real solutions that will make a difference and stop mass shootings like what happened in Connecticut last week.


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Leave Your Boots Here for the Holidays (a mud room)
Merry Christmas !
How very wonderful. I love the truck !!
Have a marvelous Christmas. Greetings from The Netherlands !!
It is all so beautiful. So much inspiration for next year. Have a Merry Christmas, Patty
Your home is beautiful...I pinned several of your pictures to my Pinterest collection...I like your board across the tub idea...so got to copy this one...cheap and easy to do...thank you...oh, and I really love the child's truck with grandma's vintage lights...so cute!!! Thank you again....I enjoy your posts so much...Merry Christmas....hop over and check out Mel's Designs...'n Harmony when you get the chance....Mel
Thanks for the holiday tour! Just GORGEOUS!
Merry Christmas!
I love your decor. I mean love it!!! It gives me many ideas for my own place. Merry Christmas.
Love the vintage truck haulin' the vintage lightbulbs! The board/tray across the tub is a great inspiration! It looks terrific and I'm sure is more practical, not to mention sturdier than the little tray/wire things you can buy for the tub. And I speak from experience.
Merry Christmas!
Your home is warm and inviting ~ love all of your details. Have a very Merry Christmas.
Bedankt lieverd voor je gezelligheid steun en liefde van het afgelopen jaar......liefs van mij.....xxx...Ria
Thanks my darling for your fun loving and support over the past year....love from me.....xxx...Ria
Fijne Kerstdagen,
Merry Christmas,
Glaedelig Jul,
Merry Christmas,
Joyeux Noel,
God Jul,
Beautiful!Merry Christmas my friend.I hope your holiday is as sweet as you are xo
What beautiful photos..I love the truck with the vintage bulbs in it..
MeRrY ChRiStMaS..
Christi, I'll be waiting to see me. Such fun to see your charming home. Love the Christmas touches! ~ Sarah
Thanks for sharing. Loved your photos, so beautiful. Especially loved the truck with the bulbs...the beautiful pictures outdoors and I Love the ships poem on the picture frame.
Christie I love all of your ideas. I can tell that we are related because we have the same likes.