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Seahawks fans set crowd noise record, then break it
Lost in the various reasons the 49ers lost on Sunday night is the reality that they likely felt lost at times in a sea of raw loudness.
Seahawks fans (led by former defensive lineman Joe Tafoya) set out to set a record for crowd noise, and they apparently did. Twice.
Via the team's official website, the record came in the first half, with a decibel level of 131.9. Then, in the third quarter, the 12th Man saw the 131.9 -- and raised it to 136.6.
It supposedly qualifies for the Guinness Book of World Records, a title that is missing words like "Obscure" and/or "Contrived."
Regardless, those are some high readings. If they're legitimate.
I added that last part because the temperate on the field at Mile High Stadium for the first game of the season was supposedly 122 degrees. I was on the field. It wasn't 122 degrees.
Regardless of the decibel generated last night, it clearly was loud in Seattle. And the Seahawks will be difficult if not impossible to beat there when the fans make that kind of noise.


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A year after it debuted, the amnesty clause has finally made its mark on the NBA. As a part of the collective bargaining agreement reached to end the lockout, the league would allow teams to waive one player already under contract as of December 2011, and not only remove his salary from the luxury tax rolls, but also remove his salary off the salary cap ledger. That means that if you were exactly at the $58 million cap and used the amnesty clause on a player making $20 million, you'd clear that off of the cap sheet and be at $38 million with plenty of room to maneuver. This was a one-time deal with a set waiver window each free agent period. This was teams' big shot to clear onerous contracts off of the books.
But few teams used it. The Cleveland Cavaliers used it in the most traditional way, exiling Baron Davis, who had two nasty years left on a nasty contract. The Portland Trail Blazers pulled some fairly typical Portland Trail Blazers nonsense with it, laying it on Brandon Roy after deciding it would be more useful than the otherwise planned medical retirement. (Less than a year later, Roy is already back in the league. So really, the Blazers were just too cowardly to use the amnesty on Roy straight up. They had to break out the puppet theater to avoid embarrassment.)
But the New York Knicks used it in a way that would preface what we're seeing this year. The Knicks used it as a strategic precursor to a larger move. Instead of opening up options, the Knicks held it until it was needed to facilitate a deal made independently. That move was Tyson Chandler, who New York landed in a sign-and-trade deal. To make the numbers work, the Knicks waived Chauncey Billups. The veteran point guard didn't have a particularly bad contract (one year, $14 million), but New York needed the proper amount of space to take in the younger Chandler. Billups offered that. All told, the Knicks likely would have wanted to find another way to handle it and keep Billups. But there was no other way. The Knicks had to use the strategic amnesty.
That's exactly how it has gone this year, too. And the heretofore unmentioned additional wrinkle of amnesty -- the waiver claim process that increases the usefulness of salary cap space -- has turned this into a long series of dominoes falling.
The Philadelphia 76ers needed to make a strategic amnesty of Elton Brand not because the final year of his deal was an anchor on the team's plans, but because the team wanted to sign unrestricted free agent Nick Young above the mid-level exception. So they amnestied Brand. The Dallas Mavericks struck out on a series of major moves, and had some cap space to use on Chris Kaman. But when Brand came available, Dallas decided to make a bid to add him, too. To make more space under the salary cap in order to place a competitive waiver bid, the Mavericks used the amnesty clause on Brendan Haywood.
The Minnesota Timberwolves wanted to take restricted free agent Nicolas Batum from the Blazers, so just before making the offer to the Frenchman, the team used the amnesty waiver clause on Darko Milicic. The clause was used strategically to facilitate another move, not a transaction made just to generally improve the team's cap health.
The Houston Rockets used a strategic amnesty clause waiver on Luis Scola to offer restricted free agent Jeremy Lin a fat contract, one that could convince the Knicks to back off. Scola's contract isn't bad, and he's a fine player who produces consistently. But the Rockets need a point guard, and like their chances with Lin. So out goes Scola. But Scola intrigues a number of teans, including the Phoenix Suns, who have a hole at power forward. But Phoenix didn't have the cap space to bid on Scola outright, so the Suns used their amnesty clause waiver on Josh Childress. Chances are someone will consider putting in the minimum bid for Childress, possibly using their own amnesty clause waiver to make the numbers work.
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We should have known that instead of using the amnesty clause as a sort of "get out of jail free" card, teams would leverage it to maximize the amount of money they could offer free agents in one-time deals. That's the whole problem with pretty much all of the cost-saving measures that the league pushed for during the lockout: they aren't cost-saving measures at all, because no team -- well, except for the Sacramento Kings -- can help itself when offered the opportunity to spend more money to get better. When you think about it (and as was written when the amnesty clause was first publicized during labor negotiations), all the rule does is allow teams to spend more money on free agents. That's all it was ever meant to do.
Mission accomplished. You can thank the amnesty clause for the massive offers to Chandler last season and Batum and Lin this year, and possibly a few others over the next couple of days. And next summer, it'll be the same thing once again. Forgive me for not being stunned that NBA owners somehow found a way to spend more money on salaries when given the option just months after screaming about the need to control costs.
The Hook is a daily NBA column by Tom Ziller. See the archives.

subset: commoncrawl


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1. Types of disorders and disturbances
2. Symptoms and behaviors
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5. Psychology and therapies
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7. Non-clinical terms, slang & acronyms
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9. Diagnostic tools


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In this 1916 photo taken just before World War I, American radio pioneer Harry Cheetham stands in civilian clothes to the right of a radio, surrounded by fellow members of the Signal Troops of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. When he was a boy, Cheetham remembered using wire from a neighbor's hay bales to form his first radio antenna. He was president of the Somerville High School Wireless Society from 1906-1909.
Harry Cheetham was one of the pioneers of early radio in the United States. His 1911 radio operator's license was issued shortly before Titanic sank, and the Boston Globe newspaper hired him to listen for and intercept radio communications messages from Carpathia while it steamed back to New York with the Titanic survivors aboard. Although Carpathia's captain had imposed a general radio blackout, it did communicate the names of survivors for the benefit of the families ashore who were anxiously awaiting news of their relatives' fates. Cheetham intercepted one of the survivor messages and sold the information to the Globe for $175.00.


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Brent Bozell is the founder and long-time president of the Media Research Center.
When Chick-fil-A is under attack or Brian Ross of ABC News smears the tea party in the immediate aftermath of the Aurora shooting, Bozell's organization springs into action to defend the conservative point of view.
The Daily Caller's Ginni Thomas recently spoke with Bozell in his Alexandria offices about media bias, what he thinks are the most under-reported stories and the danger to Republicans who are not committed to reducing the size and scope of government.
Click the links below to fast-forward to each question:
How would you size up the establishment Republicans?
How big are the stakes for America right now?
What are the most under-reported stories that come to mind?
What changes in tactics do you see from the media and the hard left?
Explain how the left has been eroding what makes America great
What is a common refrain the left drives into their messages to Americans?
Explain the disconnect between Washington power brokers and ordinary Americans, and what would you say to conservative donors?
How do conservatives prevail today?
What are your strategic objective with your organizations?
For more information:
Media Research Center
For America
Mrs. Thomas does not necessarily support or endorse the products, services or positions promoted in any advertisement contained herein, and does not have control over or receive compensation from any advertiser.


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Zoltan Kodaly (December 16, 1882-March 6, 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, educator, linguist and philosopher. Though born in Kecskemet, Kodaly spent most of his childhood in Galanta and Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia).
His father was a keen amateur musician, and Kodaly learned to play the violin as a child. He also sang in a cathedral choir and wrote music, despite having little formal musical education.
In 1900, Kodaly entered Budapest University to study modern languages , and began to study music at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, where Hans Koessler taught him composition.
One of the first people to undertake the serious study of folk song, Kodaly became one of the most significant early figures in the field of ethnomusicology. From 1905 he visited remote villages to collect songs and in 1906 wrote his thesis on Hungarian folk song ("Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong"). Around this time he met fellow composer Bela Bartok, to whom he introduced Hungarian folk song. The two went on to publish several collections of folk music together, and they both show the influence of folk music in their own compositions.
After gaining his PhD in philosophy and linguistics, Kodaly went to Paris where he studied with Charles Widor. There he discovered, and absorbed influenced from, the music of Claude Debussy. In 1907 he moved back to Budapest, and gained a professorship at the Academy of Music there. He continued his folk music-collecting expeditions through World War I without interruption.
Kodaly had composed throughout this time, producing two string quartets, his sonatas for cello and piano and for solo cello, and his duo for violin and cello, but had no major success until 1923 when his Psalmus Hungaricus premiered at a concert to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest (Bartok's Dance Suite premiered on the same occasion.) Following this success, Kodaly travelled throughout Europe to conduct his music.
Kodaly subsequently became very interested in the problems of music education, and wrote a good deal of educational music for schools, as well as books on the subject. His work in this field had a profound effect on musical education both inside and outside his home country. Some commentators refer to his ideas as the "Kodaly Method", although this seems something of a misnomer, as he did not actually work out a comprehensive method, rather laying down a set of principles to follow in music education.
He continued to compose for professional ensembles also, with the Dances of Marosszek (1930, in versions for solo piano and for full orchestra), the Dances of Galanta (1933, for orchestra), the Peacock Variations (1939, commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary) and the Missa Brevis (1944, for soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ) among his better known works. The suite from his opera Hary Janos (1926) also became well known, though few productions of the opera itself take place.
Kodaly remained in Budapest through World War II, retiring from teaching in 1942. In 1945 he became the president of the Hungarian Arts Council, and in 1962 received the Order of the Hungarian People's Republic. His other posts included a presidency of the International Folk Music Council, and honorary presidency of the International Society for Music Education. He died in Budapest in 1967, one of the most respected and well known figures in the Hungarian arts.
In 1966, the year before Kodaly's death, the Kodaly Quartet , a string quartet named in Kodaly's honour, formed.


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Mermaids, Pirates, Privateers and You
You don't forget a visit to Historic London Town and Gardens.
The archeological dig site and people dressed like colonials are memories children hold onto.
"I thought it was the coolest thing I've ever seen," says 19-year-old Robert Lee, of Edgewater, of his visit a decade ago to "this place hidden all the way down Londontown Road."
Adults are just as susceptible. A wedding in the garden on a June evening, with roses blooming and the sun coloring the South River is held as a lifelong love story. That's how Michele Allman of Bowie remembers her best friend's London Town garden wedding.
Bringing history into real life is what the 23-acre, interpretive-history park is all about.
During the school year, that mission means leading grade-schoolers back in time to the thriving 17th and 18th century ferry town where George Washington dined and ordinary people like us made their living, cooked and washed their clothes. On June 8, it means staging Revolutionary Day, so you can enlist to aid the Continental Army. On August 8, it means inviting moderns to get dirty in archaeology digs.
|Historic London Town is known for its gardens, its archeology and its colonial reenactments. But it is also a great place for parties.
Just as often, it means parties, weddings and galas overlooking the South River and spilling into the gardens.
Usually, parties at London Town are by invitation of the bride or graduate. But on June 7, we're all invited.
That evening, London Town supporters — they call themselves the Mermaid Society — taking their name from the park logo — throw a grand Privateer Party to bring in lots of loot for their cause.
To get you there and give you a good time, the Mermaid Society is playing every card in its thick deck.
The time is right. June's days are the longest of the year. The air is perfumed, and London Town's ornamental garden — one of four — will be abloom with roses and hydrangeas. Darkness will have just fallen after 14 hours and 51 minutes of light when the party ends at 9pm.
The company is extraordinary. Mermaids, seafarers, privateers, the spare pirate — and you — are on the guest list.
London Town thrived by the water, so nautical characters were regulars. Even mermaids, whose images on plates excavated from the cellar of the historic tavern suggest it went by the name Sign of the Mermaid.
Among the mermaids certain to make the party are a school of 18, created for auction by local artists in the image of the Sign of the Mermaid.
Annapolis plein air painter Lee Boynton will work in oil from two models — a woman and a fish — to bring his mermaid form to imaginative life. Boynton's daughter and artist Margaret is considering mosaic tiles.
Mother and daughter artists Nendy and Kendyl Lawson chose other media. Nendy, who works in fabric and "found stuff," so liked dressing her first mermaid as a purple nymph that she created a second, "a hussy, who's definitely looking." Kendyl, on the other hand, sheathed hers in copper for the tail, gave her beer caps for a brassiere and set her on a wave of oyster shells.
Those costumes will be hard to beat, but you're invited to try. Among guests in business casual attire, pirates and mermaids will roam.
The food will be extravagant. Thirteen caterers — not coincidentally, all are approved caterers for events at London Town — contribute "fabulous food," says Jean Clare Shea, who's in charge of the feasting.
That means salmon and beef canapés from Whole Foods … terrines and pates from Ken's Creative Kitchen … gazpacho shooters with shrimp from Creative Cuisine … prime rib sliders from Roundz … shrimp and mango skewers from The Palate Pleasers … crab salad in filo tartlettes from Saucy Salamander … mini beef Wellingtons from Julie St. Marie.
Sweetening the menu are elegant desserts from The Main Ingredient, Whole Foods and Fiona's Cakes, who'll be serving cakes usually reserved for weddings.
"We are the event that has the premier caterers with the premier food," says Shea.
Three liquor stores — Bay Ridge, Eastport and Edgewater — are donating cases of wine. "Whatever we ask for," Shea says. And Heavy Seas Beer out of Clipper City Brewery in Baltimore is donating four cases of pirate-themed beer, including Mutiny.
The auctions are appealing. To persuade you to spend more money, Mermaid Society members and London town supporters have donated goods from — and trips to — the far ends of the world.
The cause is worthy. Your good time supports London Town's mission of preserving colonial history through education programs, archaeology, horticulture and William Brown House tours.
What more do you need to know, except how to get your ticket:
You don't have to loot and pillage to raise funds for Historic London Town. Instead, dress in swashbuckling style, ransom your way into the fifth annual Mermaid Society benefit and feast on food from the region's top caterers, bid at live and silent auctions. Friday, June 7, 6-9pm at Historic London Town and Gardens, Edgewater. $110: 410-222-1919 x200; http://historiclondontown.org.


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Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora. By Larry La Fountain-Stokes. Minneapolis. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009; 242 pp.; $19.23 paper.
As the travel of Puerto Ricans and other immigrants around the globe becomes more fluid, the bonds and borders of place and culture also widen. Changing geographies, life experiences, socio-economic and generational factors, among other things, take part in the more or less visible performance of migrating cultural identities. According to Larry La Fountain-Stokes, queer migration has usually been viewed as a minor, if not marginal issue in the general scope of migratory flows. In Queer Ricans La Fountain-Stokes takes up queerness as one of the principal instigators of Puerto Rican migration, intricately analyzing how this cultural marker is (de)articulated by LGBT writers and artists of different diasporic generations and locations within the U.S.
Culturally engrained issues of homophobia must be unpacked not only in Puerto Rican and other Latin American cultures presumed to be exceptionally homophobic, but also anywhere LGBT individuals' sexualities are viewed as "incorrect." However, as demonstrated by a very recent hate crime committed in Puerto Rico, the classic discourse of machismo characterizing many pan-American cultures fuels generalized exclusions of homosexuality as a "Latin" thing. This is evidenced in the ways Puerto Rican identity has been constructed within a hetero-normative discourse. As La Fountain-Stokes argues, "Openly gay, militant homosexuals and other LGBT individuals are seen as emulating foreign attitudes, posing a menace from the outside, and not necessarily behaving as Puerto Ricans are expected to" (xviii). These views extend to academia within the U.S. where queer studies strives to become a more visible field, and studies on Latino culture seem to divide at times at the point of taboo sexualities. La Fountain-Stokes makes his bold, authoritative voice heard on the topic of queer studies as he converses with and adds to the large discourse on Puerto Rican migration and identity.
In the first three chapters, La Fountain-Stokes chooses to focus on three gay writers of the 60's, 70's, and 80's: Luis Rafael Sanchez, Manuel Ramos Otero, and Luz María Umpierre. Throughout his analysis, La Fountain-Stokes uses "outness" not only in its most conventional form to describe openly gay sexualities, but also in terms of homosexual individuals' separation from society. In his analysis of Sanchez's story "¡Jum!" La Fountain-Stokes delves into the complexities of language that queers, racializes, and pushes the main character's body "out" of society.
When looking at the writings of Manuel Ramos Otero, La Fountain-Stokes points to "autobiographical fiction" as a literary convention that illuminates the author's personal experience. The analysis creatively engages with Ramón Otero's geographic usage and cultural metaphors of islandness as a state of solitude. Most notable in the analysis is the framing of queer Puerto Rican migration as "exile" or "sexile" rather than migration. La Fountain-Stokes examines different "stages" (in the spatial and developmental senses) of the author's work. Each "stage" shows Ramos Otero's transitions as a queer Puerto Rican migrant in New York—his relationships in/with the city and the relationships between the queer Diaspora, the island, and other ethnic groups as they are narrated in Ramos Otero's writings.
In La Fountain-Stokes' treatment of lesbian subjectivities, Luz María Umpierre is featured as a poignant protagonist in the Latina lesbian movement through her explicit representations of the Latina lesbian body in literature and the assertion of Lesbian literature as part of the larger Latina body-of-literature. In La Fountain-Stokes' own words, Umpierre's use of poetry "painfully" and productively "threads [diasporic women's fragmented bodies] as individuals and as a social group" (90).
In chapter four the author more broadly compares Frances Negrón-Muntaner's film Brincando el Charco; Rose Troche's film Go Fish; and performance artist, novelist, and cartoonist Erica López's Lap Dancing for Mommy and Flaming Iguanas. In this chapter La Fountain-Stokes shows the constant flux of Puerto Rican identity, especially as it constitutes a more or less important marker of a person's being and relation with sexuality.
The end of the book proposes a new, hyphenated way to perform Ricanness as suggested by dance artist Arthur Aviléz—that is, a more distanced form of acknowledgment of such a strongly national imagining. Through his analysis of Avilés and Elizabeth Marrero's rendition of a queered-Ricanized Wizard of Oz, La Fountain-Stokes offers a "utopic" ending to the staging of queer Puerto Rican migration by considering its many variances.
La Fountain-Stokes' attention to detail when analyzing the works, particularly the literary ones, is remarkable. The chronological progression of the pieces he looks at, as well as the framing he provides for them, gives the impression of a more graspable Puerto Rican identity in the 60's and 70's that begins to dilute thereafter. Queer Ricans adds a much-needed perspective on the performance of Puerto Rican (and Latino) identities in and outside of the U.S. and exposes the cracks of inclusion and exclusion implicit in the construction of these identities.
Isel Rodríguez é acadêmica e artista de teatro e performance. Sob tutela de Dr. Tamar Underiner, do programa de doutorado em Teatro e Performance das Américas, Arizona State University, atualmente está escrevendo uma tese sobre o corpo como nação através da performance individual no contexto de Porto Rico. Isel tem M.A. em Teatro e Educação pela New York University e B.A. da Universidade de Porto Rico.
Staging Citizenship: Performance, Politics, and Cultural Rights
Jesús Martín Barbero
the public sphere and cultural rights: culture as action
Gisela Cánepa-Koch
Urbanismo crítico, intervención bioregional y especies emergentes
Alejandro Meitin
Nelly Richard
subversive identities: indigenous cultural politics and canadian legal frameWorks, or, indigenous orphans of the state
Peter Kulchyski
Natural Rights, Cultural Rights and the politics of memory
Andreas Huyssen
precaución: realidad del otro lado- La universidad nacional de colombia como frontera
Adriana Mejía and Alejandro Jaramillo
Somos Estudiantes No Somos Terroristas
Rocío Silva Santisteban
Cuerpo, DisciplinA,y territorio. sobre el performance de "oficios del cuerpo"
David Lozano
Internal Conflict and the Security Campus: The University at War and Peace
Sarah Wolf
Llega la minga indígena a la universidad nacional
Dioscórides Pérez
Brasil e américa latina, universidade experimental
Lucio Agra
the master plan
Patrick Anderson
Dorian Lugo Bertrán
Nicholas Mirzoeff
Pedro Lasch
El museo travesti
Giuseppe Campuzano
Regina José Galindo
José Alejandro Restrepo
Culture and Rights in Bolivia: Three Ethnographic Contributions
Tobias Reu
Debates Críticos en América Latina by Nelly Richard
Michael J. Lazzara
Liberalism at its Limits by Ileana Rodriguez
Caridad Svich
Trabajadores, villanos y amantes: encuentros entre indígenas y españoles en la ciudad letrada by Marta Zambrano
Joanne Rappaport
other cities, other worlds: urban imaginaries in a globalizing age by Andreas Huyssen
Loren Kruger
El Revés de la Nación: Territorios Salvajes, Fronteras, y Tierras de Nadie by Margarita Serje
Diego Fabián Arévalo Viveros
Misplaced Objects Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas by Silvia Spitta
Eric Ames
territory and citizenship in the contemporary state by bettina ng'weno
Michael Birenbaum Quintero
Counting the Dead by Winnifred Tate
Felipe Cala Buendía
Babylon Girls by Jayna Brown
Melissa Blanco Borelli
Early American Women Critics: Performance, Religion, Race by Gay Gibson Cima
Gwendolyn Alker
El Futuro ya Fue. Socioantropología de l@s jóvenes en la Modernidad by José Manuel Valenzuela Arce
Anabelle Contreras Castro
Against War: views from the underside of modernity By Nelson Maldonado Torres
Felipe Martínez-Pinzón
La Historia política del Nunca Más by Emilio Crenzel
Claudia Bacci
Fordlandia: The rise and fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle by Greg Grandin
Lindsey Freeman
Human Rights in the Mayan Region by Pedro Pitarch
Heather A. Vrana
Ciudadanias en escena. Performance y derechos culturales en Colombia by Paolo Vignolo
Susana Wappenstein
Insurgent Citizenship by James Holston
Sean T. Mitchell
The cultural politics of slam poetry by susan b. somers
Karen Jaime
Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora by Larry La Fountain-Stokes
Isel Rodriguez
Diferentes, desiguales y desconectados by Néstor García Canclini
Juan Carlos Narváez Gutiérrez
crónica de acciones urbanas, encuentro 2009
Dioscórides Pérez
El último Ensayo by grupo cultural yuyachkani
Paola Hernández
Caja fuerte by Yury Forero
Alberto Borja
Hula as resistance by Vicky Holt Takamine
Li Cornfeld
Deambulancias by teatro la mascara
Paola Marín
azul by Danza Contemporánea Integrada concuerpos
Brenda Werth
Diana Raznovich


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(Files in red–history)
9. Magnetic trapping
9H. Poincaré, 1896
10. Trapped Motion
10H. Einstein, 1910
10a. Particle Drift
11. Explorers 1/3
11a. Geiger Counter
12. Rad. Belts
12H. Argus 1958
12a. Inner Belt
12b. Outer Belt
13. Fast Particles
14. Synch. Orbit
15. Energy
The spacecraft, named Explorer 1, was launched 31 January 1958 and was designed and built by a group of scientists from the University of Iowa, led by James Van Allen. That group had been previously credited with the first observation of auroral electrons from a rocket; incidentally, the idea of the IGY itself started in 1950 at a dinner party at Van Allen's home (at the time, near Washington).
Discovery of the Radiation Belt
Explorer 2 failed to orbit, but Explorer 3, launched March 26, was successful, and it did carry a tape recorder. Its trace of the number of counts was normal at low altitudes, then it rose rapidly to fill the transmittable limit of 128, but at the highest level it fell to zero. Laboratory experiments with similar counters confirmed that this was characteristic of extremely high counting rates, when the counter discharged so frequently that it could not properly recover between counts, yielding pulses too small to trigger the counting circuit.
Exploring Further
A web site with a picture of the Explorer-1 rocket and with links.
For more on the story of Explorer 1 and Sputnik, click here.
Click here for a web page devoted to James Van Allen, and here for his autobiography.
A commemorative article "Discovering Earth's Radiation Belts: Remembering Explorer 1 and 3" by Frank McDonald and John Naugle appeared in "Eos" 89, 23 September 2008, p. 361-3.
Next Stop: #12. The Radiation Belts
Author and Curator: Dr. David P. Stern
Mail to Dr.Stern: education("at" symbol)phy6.org
Co-author: Dr. Mauricio Peredo
Spanish translation by J. Méndez


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A place for older sibilings of younger children participating in storytime to enjoy art and other fun activites.
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Question friends, what do you think of all the wood lookalike tile that's available to homeowners now? As much as I adore and I mean adore true hardwood, I'm drawn to the idea of a lookalike tile products that are now available from several sources.
Lookalike wood tile caught my eye last year in a restaurant in Canada and I thought it was so cool I got down on my knees to caress that floor, no joke. I've seen it installed in restaurants in the Bay Area too which makes sense since it looks like reclaimed or hand scraped wood but has the benefit of repelling moisture while maintaining a great look, even with tons of traffic.
Like wood, you can install it in side by side plank formation or get creative with a herringbone pattern.
And have you seen some of the barnwood and shapely options for floors and walls?
If you've ever wanted the warmth of wood in a bathroom but the practicality of tile, this product seems to be just the thing to get the best of both worlds.
Tile is cold and hard underfoot which is fine by me in summer but in winter not so much, so radiant heat is definitely a consideration (and additional expense). I love the fact that up close it looks pretty amazing, and when grout lines are tight or close to non-existent, the tile looks so much like the real thing.
The idea of a surface that will take the wear and tear of foot traffic, pets, and kids has a lot of appeal. But there's always that lingering question of how it will affect resale value and whether the product will stand the test of time.
I'm curious what you think. Is wood lookalike tile fakey faux or modern and fab? Have you installed a wood lookalike porcelain tile in your home? I'd love to hear your thoughts!


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My Anritsu
United Kingdom
In partnership with Broadcom, Anritsu has developed control packages that provide a fully automated test solution for the devices listed below. Each control package uses a DLL containing commands that enable CombiTest to configure the chipsets from within a test plan. These commands are sent to the device via a host processor interface. When the test plan is executed, both the MT8860B/C and device are simultaneously controlled, allowing the test plan to proceed to completion in a fully automated manner.
Note: Broadcom Control Software not supplied by Anritsu
To obtain any of the control packages listed, or to enquire about control package support for other Broadcom devices, please send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com


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What have GE, Citigroup, FedEx, Bank of America, Intuit, Gap, Kaiser Permanente, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase learned from using the public cloud?
A group of representatives from each of these companies has worked for the past six months with the Open Networking User Group (ONUG) to develop a whitepaper exploring challenges of using hybrid cloud. ONUG's Hybrid Cloud Working Group (HCWG) includes not only valuable tips from their experiences using the cloud, but also a wish-list of how these enterprises would like vendors to evolve their platforms.
+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What you need to know about microservices +
Here are 10 tips:
1. Categorize apps into low, medium and high risk tiers
Which apps should move to the cloud? Before answering that question you need to classify your apps to know what you have. The HCWG recommends the following categorization of low, medium, medium+ and high security tier apps.
Applications with the highest security risk should have the more stringent security protocols. Low risk data includes public or non-sensitive information such as customer-facing data. Medium risk data – such as ERP systems and business management applications, but not ones that include intellectual property or patent data - can go to the public cloud with extra security precautions. Medium+ apps are categorized as data with government controlled unclassified data or data subject to strict regulatory compliance issues. High-risk apps are not recommended to use in the public cloud; this includes information such as patents, critical business process and sensitive financial information.
2. Use a cloud broker
Once an organization has determined which apps are appropriate for the public cloud, the next challenge is getting them there. An organization can access public cloud resources from any internet connection. ONUG member companies recommend using a cloud broker or "man-in-the-middle," though, for two reasons: security (what the HCWG calls exploit mitigation) and improved performance. A cloud broker is typically a collocation provider that provides access points to multiple public cloud providers. Example vendors include Equinix, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.
The cloud broker can be thought of as the new "far edge" of a corporate data center, providing a secure place to inspect network traffic going into and out of the cloud before it reaches the enterprise campus or remote data center. "Packet inspection/scanning or censoring of traffic occurs in the cloud broker to mitigate exploits before entering corporate data centers from cloud providers or exploits trying to do damage to cloud hosted services from private clouds," the whitepaper explains.
From a performance standpoint, the broker can provide direct fiber connections to multiple IaaS cloud vendors. The broker can serve other purposes too, from application delivery control functions such as load balancing and domain name system/dynamic host configuration protocol (DNS/DHCP) to hosting an active directory to authenticate users. By being a buffer between the cloud and the enterprise network, it's an ideal spot to host Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)/Firewall security, as well as other network monitoring and analytics tools. Because it's a collocation facility, the footprint is controlled completely by the customer and can be as large or small as the customer wants.
3. Listed prices are not actual prices
Large enterprises negotiate directly with public cloud vendors and enter into enterprise agreements with discounted pricing. Listed online pricing is usually just a guide. The HCWG warns that contract negotiations can be a long and arduous process, however.
4. Use professional negotiators
When negotiating an enterprise agreement with vendors, use a professional arbiter. Some HCWG member companies took as much as 18 months to negotiate a contract and spent up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Experienced negotiators can be either in-house legal staff or external experts.
5. Licensing in the cloud is different
HCWG members warn of being careful of licensing when using the public cloud. Make sure any software licensed for use on premises is legally allowed to be used in the cloud before doing so. Even if there's no legal restriction against hosting an on-premises app in the public cloud, some licenses are just not designed with public cloud in mind. "Licensing may be based upon the number of CPUs that the software is accessed by, which may increase significantly once the application is placed in the cloud where more employees can now access [it]," ONUG explains. Search for public-cloud native software licenses where possible.
6. Compliance officer training
Auditors who have been operating in an on-premise world their entire careers may have challenges working in a public cloud arena. "The language of cloud computing and location of assets is foreign to many auditors," ONUG's whitepaper states. Be prepared for a potentially frustrating process with auditors if they're not familiar with the public cloud. ONUG encourages public cloud vendors to provide training programs and tools for auditors.
7. Liability is a hassle
Some ONUG members found considerable frustration when negotiating liability with their IaaS cloud provider. In a more traditional managed services or other outsourcing arrangement, liability typically covers loss, damages and liability up to the value of the outsourced asset. Cloud providers sometimes offer a different type of liability.
"Cloud providers seek liability to cover the dollar amount spent," the whitepaper explains. "That is, if a company spends $50,000 per year with a cloud provider to host an application and experiences damages of $10,000,000, the cloud provider seeks its liability to cover $50,000. This level of liability will limit the type of applications that will migrate to cloud providers to the low- to medium-risk levels."
8. Beware of lock-in
Lock-in from a public IaaS cloud provider in some cases is unavoidable, and not necessarily a bad thing, the HCWG explains. The group recommends that end users recognize and acknowledge it. The whitepaper notes the relatively high cost of moving data between different cloud vendors, reinforcing the adage that it's easy to get data into the cloud, but more expensive and difficult to get it out.
Certain applications are more prone to lock-in too, including workload creation tools, non-standard orchestration tools, non-standard provisioning tools, and vendor-specific scheduling or automation tools. The more an organization's developers or cloud administrators use and rely on these tools specifically geared for one vendor, the more difficult it could be to run those workloads in another environment.
9. Encrypt everything, and manage the keys
It's becoming a common enterprise practice to encrypt all data going to and stored in the cloud. ONUG reminds end users to make sure they manage the keys, too. Another security tip that is becoming common practice is to use role-based access controls – meaning that, for example, not everyone in an organization has access to administrative controls in a cloud environment. Those should be protected with at least two-factor authentication.
10. Understand the limits of the public cloud
Along with the detailed list of tips based on their experience using the public cloud, HCWG members have a series of requests for cloud vendors of how their platforms can be improved to make the cloud easier to use. By exploring these wish-list items, it's clear to see where the public cloud falls short. For example, HCWG members would like easier portability across public clouds, common encryption protocols among various cloud vendors and a common northbound API. The cloud has many advantages, but it's not a panacea.


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Return to Faculty List
Professor of Math/Physics
B.A., Brown UniversityM.A., Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
Professor Steve Liebling earned a BA in Physics from Brown University in 1993 and a PhD in Physics from The University of Texas at Austin in 1998. As an assistant professor at LIU Southampton, he helped form The Technology Center with Prof. Borde, an advanced, interdisciplinary Unix computer lab. In 2004, he transferred to LIU Post where he constructed his first computational cluster using NSF funds.
He has worked with a number of undergraduates and a couple postdocs in his astrophysical research. An active researcher, he has published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Physical Review Letters. He has received a number of grants through the NSF and currently has NASA funding. He has spent time as a Guest Scientist at BNL, ITP Scholar at UCSB, and Visiting Professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada.
He has served on the Nominating Committee for the Topical Group in Gravitational (a group under the American Physical Society), and on review panels for the NSF.
In 2013 he was elected to APS Fellowship.
Black Holes, Numerical and Computational Modeling, Relativity
A complete list of publications can be found here.
Winner of the Buchalter Cosmology Prize 2014 for co-authoring, "Simulating the Universe(s): from Cosmic Bubble Collisions to Cosmological Observables with Numerical Relativity" (arXiv:1312.1357), published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Winner of the Abraham Krasnoff Memorial Award for a single, scholarly work 2014
Named an APS Fellow in 2013
Named an "Outstanding Referee" for Physical Review 2010
ITP Scholar (awarded by what is now the KITP at UCSB) 2002
Numerical relativity; black hole critical behavior, high performance computing
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Anti-whaling activists clash with Japanese whalers• The Raw Story
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is chasing the fleet in the hopes of interrupting Japan's annual whale hunt, which kills up to 1,000 whales a year. The two sides have clashed violently in the past, including last year, when a Sea Shepherd boat was sunk after its bow was sheared off in a collision with a whaling ship.
On Saturday, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson was talking to The Associated Press by telephone from his ship when he said the whalers suddenly began blasting one of his group's inflatable boats with a water cannon.
"They just turned their cannons on our Zodiac," Watson told The AP. "Right at this moment."
Every year, Japan and Sea Shepherd make claims of aggression against each other, but the accounts are generally impossible to verify. Their skirmishes take place in an extremely remote part of the ocean off Antarctica.
The Japanese are allowed to harvest a quota of whales under a ruling by the International Whaling Commission, as long as the mammals are caught for research and not commercial purposes. Whale meat not used for study is sold for consumption in Japan, which critics say is the real reason for the hunts. Each hunting season runs from about December through February.
Japan's whaling fleet set out for Antarctic waters in December. Sea Shepherd has been searching for them since, and spotted the first whaling vessel on Friday, Watson said. By Saturday, the group had tracked down three of the fleet's ships in an area about 1,700 nautical miles (3,200 kilometers) southeast of New Zealand, he said.
"We got them before they started whaling and now that we're on them, we're hoping to make sure they don't kill any whales for this season," Watson said.


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Monty's Cycle Shop, Inc.
HARLEY-DAVIDSON of West Bridgewater
751 North Main Street, Route 28, West Bridgewater, MA 02379
Phone: 1-508-583-1172
Tumbleweeds to Harley Owner's Group...
Mount up - 1947: We opened in 1947 to deal with "Flat Heads" and "Knuckle Heads"; today we have "FAT BOYS" and "ULTRAS". Newer models, but still Harley-Davidsons!
Change: After Monty passed away in 1959, I continued to run our shop as he had planned, expanding as the times required. With a new showroom in 1957, a new store front in 1964, and a new warehouse in 1977, we felt it was the best we could get. Little did we know what the 1990's would bring...
Renovation - 1989: With a total renovation in the fall of 1989 we were now ready for the 1990's. Our new accessory department and clothing boutique are the best in the business. Service to our customer always a main concern, facilitated by our Service Department, and with the courtesy of my fine family, all your needs can be taken care of.
The First Club: In the early days, we had a club called the "Tumbleweeds", started in 1939 while Monty was still in a backyard shop in Whitman. It took lots of time and was very successful, even running dirt track racing.
H.O.G. Arrives - 1988: As time went by and motorcycling grew, Harley realized it could sponsor, with the dealers' assistance, one large organization called Harley Owners Group. Now in it's 29th year and a great success, we are happy to sponsor our own group, the South Shore HOG Chapter #2126. With all their great activities, it sure adds to the pleasures of owning a Harley. We would like to welcome you to the South Shore Hog Chapter and hope you will stop into Monty's for any of your motorcycle needs.
- Katherine E. Moneghan


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Women's Soft Cotton Rugby, Stripe
This item is not available online at this time.
Our rugby stripe pullover celebrates the iconic style of an L.L.Bean classic – in soft-washed french terry for supreme comfort.
We took inspiration from our iconic rugby styles to create this strikingly feminine pullover. Unbelievably comfortable in extra-soft terry and distinctively our own with an L.L.Bean Katahdin icon logo.


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Journalism is a business – that is how it is going to sustain itself; that is a key precept of the New Business Models for News Project. But is it still an industry dominated by companies and employment?
In the first part of his analysis of the news business, BusinessWeek chief economist Michael Mandel equates bad news about news with the number of journalists employed. He charts newspaper jobs falling from more than 450,000 in 1990 to fewer than 300,000 today and calls that depressing – which it is, if one of those lost jobs is yours. But it could also signal new efficiency and productivity, no? Looking at these numbers with the cold eye of an economist whose magazine and job aren't on the block, perhaps it is nothing more than the path of an industry in restructuring. Perhaps it's actually a signal of opportunity. Indeed, Mandel then laid that chart atop one for the loss of jobs in manufacturing and found them sinking in parallel, with newspapers just a bit ahead on the downward slope today. "Not good news, by any means," he decreed.
But there is the nub of a much bigger trend: the fall news as an industry paralleling the end of the industrial economy. That's not just about shedding the means of production and distribution now that they are cost burdens rather than barriers to entry. It's about the decentralization of journalism as an industrial complex, about news no longer being based solely on employment.
A few months ago, I quibbled with Mandel's BW cover story arguing that America has experienced an "innovation shortfall." There, as here, I think he's measuring the wrong economy: the old, centralized, big economy. In both cases, he misses new value elsewhere in the small economy of entrepreneurs and the noneconomy of volunteers.
I return again to the NewBizNews Project, where we modeled a sustainable economy of news at between 10-15% of a metro paper's revenue – about as much as any of them bring online – with an equivalent amount of editorial staffing but those people are no longer all sitting under one roof; they work in – and oftentimes own – more than 100 separate enterprises. I return, too, to the Wikimedia Foundation calculating the value of time spent on edits alone with it adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
In both cases, tremendous value is created at tremendous efficiency outside of the company and in great measure outside of employment.
So is employment the measure of news? No. Is it the proper measure for every industry? Not necessarily. Is it the measure of the economy? Not as much as it used to be. Media is becoming the first major post-industry. Others will follow. You just have to know where to look.
It's one matter when new value is created outside old companies in industries such as retail – in WWGD?, I cited $59.4 billion in sales from 547,000 merchants on eBay in 2007 vs. $26.3 billion in 853 Macy's stores – but another matter when the employment is replaced in industries built around priesthoods: journalism, education, even government and medicine. Then not just economics but behaviors change.
Thus we see fretting about a "post-journalistic age" when new people perform some of the tasks journalism employees used to perform, whether that is advocates digging dirt or universities reporting their own scientific advances or sports teams funding their own reporting or volunteers organizing to report collaboratively. These are just a few of the latest examples from my pre-surgery tabs about voids being filled in new ways by new parties with new efficiencies. This is another reason it's dangerous to calculate journalism's size according to journalism's jobs.
: LATER: Here's Roy Greenslade still basing his analysis on staffing. Perhaps the better analysis is investment.


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Everyone punches the wrong passcode into their iPhone or iPad at some point, either on accident or because they forgot it. It might make you anxious for a second, but you only need to reenter the correct code and, voila, you're back in.
Unfortunately, your Apple phone or tablet isn't as forgiving when you enter the wrong password multiple times. Do it enough, and the device will be locked out for days or even years.
This isn't just hypothetical --- in fact, it happens more often than you'd think. In one instance, Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker, tweeted in April 2019 that his 3-year-old locked him out of his iPad for 25,536,442 minutes, or around 48 years, as reported by CNN. This is possible because of an Apple security feature that lengthens the lock-out time the more you input an incorrect password.
If you find yourself on the wrong end of this scenario, don't worry: Here are steps you should take when your iPhone or iPad becomes disabled into the 22nd century.
How to Unlock a Disabled iPhone or iPad
- You'll first need to download iTunes onto your laptop. Once that's finished, connect your bricked device to your laptop and open iTunes.
- You will now need to force a restart. If you own an iPhone 8 or later or an iPad Pro 12.9 or iPad Pro 11, then press and release the volume up button, press and release the volume down button, then tap and hold the side (or top) button until you see the recovery mode screen.
- If you own an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, complete step 1 then hold the side and volume buttons down at the same time until recovery mode appears on your phone. On an iPhone 6s or earlier or an iPad with a home button, press and hold the Home button and top (or side) buttons at the same time.
- Once you've completed this step, an iTunes pop-up should appear on your laptop that asks whether you want to restore or update your device. Choose "Restore."
- iTunes will then download software onto your device (this will take several minutes) so you can set your phone up as new.
- In a best-case scenario, you have an iCloud or iTunes backup you can use to restore your iPhone or iPad. If so, select "Restore from iCloud Backup" or "Restore from iTunes Backup" and follow the prompts (you'll be asked to sign in to your accounts).
- If you're worried about getting locked out of your device and haven't backed it up, then check out this guide on how to do so.


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ABC has released five Promotional Photos of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "After, Before" (7.08) that will be aired on Wednesday, July 15 at 10:00-11:00 PM.
Get a first look at the episode with the image gallery below, courtesy of ABC. Click on the photo to enlarge.
In Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Clark Gregg reprises his role of Agent Phil Coulson from Marvel's feature films, as he assembles a small, highly select group of Agents from the worldwide law-enforcement organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Together they investigate the new, the strange, and the unknown across the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary.
Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is produced by ABC Studios and Marvel Television.


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Lots of people with desk jobs dream of chucking it all for a gig that involves travel and adventure. Barton Seaver has done the sequence in reverse.
Last month, the chef, cookbook author, and sustainable-seafood advocate, who has traveled the globe as a National Geographic fellow, was settling in to his newest job: heading up the Healthy and Sustainable Food Program at the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Health and the Global Environment. Seaver is also a sustainability fellow at the New England Aquarium. Between the aquarium post and the Harvard job, it made sense for him to relocate from his longtime home base of Washington, D.C., to Boston. He and his wife made the move just days ahead of the storm known as Nemo. By the following Wednesday, Seaver was at his Landmark Center office, enjoying his first day at his first-ever desk job.
"I was so excited to pack a lunch and come to work," says Seaver, settling onto a couch by a large window overlooking Park Drive. (His lunchbox held spaghetti and King Oscar sardines.) It remains to be seen how much time the restless and energetic Seaver will actually spend sitting at a desk. He has big plans for making an impact in the new position, and few of them involve simple paper-pushing.
Seaver, 33, wears many hats, but one he wasn't particularly sorry to give up was his chef's toque. Although the Culinary Institute of America grad worked in several acclaimed restaurants and was named Esquire magazine's 2009 Chef of the Year, he left the restaurant world a year later — to become a National Geographic fellow — with no regrets. "I'm happy not to be in the kitchen, because my interests have evolved to the point where there's a limit to what I can accomplish there. The kitchen demands 100 percent of your passion. If I were there, I'd be doing the restaurant and myself a disservice," says Seaver. (He hasn't totally abandoned the culinary side, however. His next cookbook, "Where There's Smoke," will be out in April and focuses on grilling sustainable foods.)
Instead, he will be launching various initiatives and working with a range of constituencies to address issues of food sustainability. Many of the tasks aren't as yet fully defined. He hopes to work with industry, food service, chefs, and consumers, educating and engaging them about making sustainable food choices. "I'm excited about that," he says, pointing out the window toward the nearby Longwood Medical Area. He'll be working with three area hospitals to create a "template" for sustainability at large institutional food service operations.
Seaver's willingness to reach across the aisle is part of the reason the New England Aquarium sought him out. "Bart is able to communicate about why all these different roles help drive improvements in our oceans," says Heather Tausig, the aquarium's associate vice president of conservation. "In sustainable seafood, we spent many years going for low-hanging fruit." Now, she says, it's no longer sufficient to label fish and fisheries with a simple red-light, green-light system. Issues are nuanced, and the solutions may involve concessions and compromises. "We've come a long way as a community; it's not as antagonistic as it used to be. There's more of an effort to work together so we can move forward." And Seaver, with his big-tent approach, is just the person to aid that effort, Tausig believes.
Seaver arrived in Boston shortly after officials announced deep cuts in cod catch limits, throwing local fishermen into a tailspin. The issue pits various competing interests against one another, but Seaver places some of the blame squarely on consumers. He says we need to develop an appetite for lesser-known species like hake, cusk, and dogfish, and to take fish away from the center of the plate. "We cannot have sustainable seafood," he says, "if most of the plate isn't vegetables."
Seaver doesn't necessarily parrot the sustainability party line. He's too pragmatic. "I'm a teacher, not an advocate," he says. And in that sense, he doesn't think he should lecture consumers on why they should care about sustainable food.
"But I'll start a conversation about dinner, and repeat back to you why you already have an interest in sustainability," he says. He's interested in meeting people where they are — wherever that might be — and in encouraging small, incremental steps that add up to big change.
"If a company is 100 percent bad," Seaver says, "my moral obligation is to make it 5 percent better. It's a lot easier to work within the system than to blow it up."
Jane Dornbusch can be reached at email@example.com.


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The internal 2011 documents, obtained by USA TODAY, list 162 groups by name, with comments by Internal Revenue Service lawyers in Washington raising issues about their political, lobbying and advocacy activities. In 21 cases, those activities were characterized as "propaganda."
The list provides the most specific public accounting to date of which groups were targeted for extra scrutiny and why. The IRS has not publicly identified the groups, repeatedly citing a provision of the tax code prohibiting it from releasing tax return information.
More than 80% of the organizations on the 2011 "political advocacy case" list were conservative, but the effort to police political activity also ensnared at least 11 liberal groups as of November 2011, including Progressives United, Progress Texas and Delawareans for Social and Economic Justice.
The IRS controversy first exploded in May, when Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had targeted Tea Party groups for additional scrutiny beginning in early 2010. The IRS placed a hold on those applications for more than 20 months, an inspector general's investigation found.
On Nov. 16, 2011, IRS lawyers in Washington sent a list of cases to front-line agents in Cincinnati, along with comments and guidance on how to handle political organizations.
Tax law experts say those comments appear to show IRS employees trying to apply the murky rules governing political activities by social welfare groups.
But the American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit legal institute that represents 23 of the groups appearing on the IRS list, said it appears to be "the most powerful evidence yet of a coordinated effort" by the IRS to target Tea Party groups.
"The political motivations of this are so patently obvious, but then to have a document that spells it out like this is very damaging to the IRS," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the ACLJ. "I hope the FBI has seen these documents."
The IRS categorized the groups as engaging in several advocacy-related activities that could have barred them from tax-exempt status, such as lobbying and "propaganda."
But the word "propaganda" doesn't appear in section 501(c)(4), which governs the social welfare status that most Tea Party groups were applying for, said John Colombo, a law professor at the University of Illinois. Instead, it appears in section 501(c)(3), which governs public charities.
"There would be no reason I would think to flag them if it's for a 501(c)(4) status," Colombo said. "That's very odd to me."
In three cases, IRS lawyers noted that groups appeared to be connected to Republican politicians: Stand Up for Our Nation Inc., linked to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin; Reform Jersey Now Inc., linked to Gov. Chris Christie; and American Solutions for Winning the Future, founded by former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich's group was approved last year.
Five groups were flagged as having "anti-Obama" materials in their applications or on their websites.
For instance, the IRS said the website of the Patriots of Charleston contains "negative Obama commentary." Though the IRS didn't cite examples, a November 2011 article on the group's site says: "Obama's and the Democrats' track record of disaster is based upon a combination of their ignorance and their fundamental desire to convert America into a ruling class of wealthy all-powerful elitists and a single class of serfs."
"The web site, as we explained to them on multiple occasions, is really a blog" that members can submit commentary to, said Joanne Jones, the group's vice chairwoman. "I'm not going to tell you we weren't political. We were to an extent, but we were within the limits of the law. For example, there's one clear-cut issue: We did not endorse candidates."
"To focus in on somebody saying something anti-Obama," she said, "it's almost like the speech police there. It's disturbing. It's the kind of overreach that leads into Obamacare."
The group received its tax exemption in September 2012.
It wasn't just anti-Obama rhetoric the IRS was looking out for. Progress Texas was identified by the IRS as engaging in lobbying, propaganda and political activities. IRS lawyers in Washington noted "anti-Rick Perry" rhetoric, referring to the Republican Texas governor, then a presidential candidate.
Progress Texas received a tax exemption as a social welfare group in June, 2012.
Campaign-finance watchdogs say the IRS scrutiny came out of a justified effort to police "dark money" in politics. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that corporations and unions — and even non-profit groups — could engage in independent political advertising, social welfare groups became a vehicle for funneling undisclosed cash into the election system.
That's the position of Progressives United, a group founded by former senator Russ Feingold, D-Wis., that itself appeared on the 2011 IRS target list.
"The fact that our group received some scrutiny does not change at all our opinion that scrutiny like this from the IRS, it's their job. The law applies to us as it would any conservative group," said Progressives United's Josh Orton. "I feel like there's this group of campaign finance nihilists who want to expand this into an argument that there should be no scrutiny at all. They want a wild west of election law, because they want to continue using secret corporate money to influence elections."
Crossroads GPS, a group affiliated with GOP strategist Karl Rove, spent $70 million on the 2012 election. Its 2010 application for a tax exemption, obtained by the non-profit news organization Pro Publica last year, said it would spend 50% of its resources on "public education." In the 2011 list, the IRS noted "significant anti-Obama rhetoric." Crossroads has not received a tax exemption.
The Tea Party of North Idaho filed its tax-exempt application in February, 2010 — the same month IRS screeners in Cincinnati first brought Tea Party applications to the attention of officials in Washington, according to IRS employee testimony before a congressional committee.
A lawyer in the IRS Exempt Organizations Technical Unit in Washington wrote the Idaho group had "No significant amount of clear campaign intervention; however little issue advocacy or educational; significant inflammatory language, highly emotional language, little to no educational information on issues."
The IRS lawyers recommended that screeners in Cincinnati look for other materials — including "press releases, commentary, articles, and research reports," according to the IRS list.
That's when Leslie Damiano, who co-founded the North Idaho group, started getting what she considered to be intrusive questions from the IRS. She said the tax agency wanted to know who her donors were, and what companies they own. They wanted to know the educational background of the group's board members. And they wanted to know whether candidates were invited to the group's meetings, and whether it made endorsements.
"We're a conservative organization. We invited some independents," she said. "We never had any rallies that were off the charts by any stretch of the imagination."
Frustrated with the process, the Tea Party of North Idaho withdrew its application in 2012.
"We had an accountant, we had a bookkeeper. We were totally above board with everything we did," Damiano said.
Some groups caught in the IRS' net had no connection to national politics on either side. The Citizens for the Preservation of Rural Murrysville says it's "dedicated to the preservation of the open and natural, rural character of Murrysville, Pa.," although the IRS said it endorsed some local candidates. The Sarasota Bay Tiger Club is one of several similar Florida clubs that provide "a non-partisan forum on current political issues." The club says it has "never endorsed political candidates nor advocated a particular ideology," but the IRS said in its spreadsheet that it was "unclear" if that was the case.
The list also includes the Association to Reduce the National Debt, which was seeking to be recognized as a charity so it could solicit tax-deductible contributions — and give those contributions to the U.S. Treasury to put toward the national debt.
Founder Seth Eisenberg said the group was not political — and he told the IRS that.
IRS tax specialists noted "no political campaign activities." But two years after applying, the association still hasn't gotten his ruling letter. And without that letter, contributions are not tax-deductible and no one will give, he said.
All for a group that said it wanted to give the government money.
"I thought this would be a fast-tracked application. A no-brainer. But it got caught up in this whole political controversy," Eisenberg said. "It's the greatest irony that ever was."
Follow @gregorykorte on Twitter.


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Thankfully we have a slight respite from the oppressive summer weather, but it's sure to be back. And the intense heat and humidity do no favors to our skin. Temperatures rise , the pores open up and oil and sweat are drawn right to the surface, smearing makeup and causing breakouts. A good morning shower is no match for a sultry subway station. While it's still cool outside, we've compiled a few natural tips to combat the perils of the Urban Summer.
Baking Soda: Many makeup artists swear by baking soda as it helps minimize pores. Use baking soda sprinkled with your facial cleanser 2 to 3 times a week to slough off dead skin cells (be careful–don't overdo do it and irritate your skin). Also 2 or 3 scoops of baking soda in the bath soothes heat rash and prickly heat.
Ice Cubes: After you wash in the morning, glide ice gently along your face for a few seconds to cool skin and tighten pores.
Aloe Vera: A coworker swears by her aloe vera plant and raves about its prevention of oily skin. Apply it both morning and night after washing and drying your face, letting it absorb into the skin for a couple of minutes. (Ladies it also acts as a great primer under foundation). If you are skittish about using the actual plant, use 100% pure, clear gel– not the artificially colored green ones.
Plain Yogurt: Yogurt soothes sunburnt skin by working as an anti-inflammatory and heat remover. It also makes an excellent cooling mask for face, adding enzymes and moisture while reducing pore size.
Cornstarch: For years now, researchers have been suggesting a link between talcum powder and lung and ovarian cancers. Talc lodges in pores until it's abraded out. Also most "pure cornstarch" powders contain "fragrance" which can contain xeno-estrogens. Use food-grade cornstarch instead–it's cheap, natural, fragrance free and effective.


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Thursday, May 31, 2012
"DRAGON": A Mass of Confusion, part last.
Here we go on this last confused flight. Any attempt to learn about truly complex subjects never ends. I'm going to simply quit looking for more shards of evidence and ideas and leave the rest to you. I was in the middle of the last blog entry when a friend sent me another dragon claim --- you can never achieve "completion" so don't try. I have friends who never publish anything because they are always waiting to "wrap it all up". Not a chance.
One of the things that I like most on that list is number 5, the dragon of Burley Beacon and Bisterne. This tale is about a very respectfully built dragon, legs and wings and reptilian and large, which has very inconvenient behaviors for the local populace. If one could take anything at all about this story at face value, the encounter took place in the 1400s, which in theory would be plenty "modern" enough for us to have good "history" and therefore credibility. In the tale, a historical character, Sir Maurice de Berkeley, confronts and slays the inconvenient monster, both he and his hunting dogs perishing due to the battle. Since that conquest, the Berkeley family became lords of that area's manor, and the dragon took its place on the family crest. The legend was consistently maintained for centuries thereafter.
If the culture of the times was like current US culture [even without our communications technology], the Berkeleys couldn't have gotten away with just making up such an "unusual" claim, and so we'd have good reason to believe that we had a good dragon story on our hands. But what if that is just what you did to create a family-establishing legend in those times and places? I don't know that culture. I cannot say. Some expert could.
Another prize of the era is of course this: the 1619 claim by Athanasius Kircher that a winged dragon AND a winged serpent flew from Mount Pilate to Lake Lucerne [Switzerland] and that's just that. Love it, but WHO said it, and why are we to believe it??
Here's the rest of these things [I told you that my files weren't too hot on this critter]. I have about five more cases which intrigue me more than most, and at least a couple of handfuls of maybes. Compared to Little People encounters, Sea Serpents, UFOs this topic is starving for evidence. Number forty is a full-fledged dragon rising from the ocean. If I had a dozen more I'd be in business.
That's the trouble with the narrowly-defined true dragon, rather than the great big reptile. There ARE a few dragons which ascend beyond being just big reptilians, but they are few.
Japan contributed a smallish Dragon recently [2003] when this Lake "lizard" crawled out of the water and flew away. Was it well-observed? Multiple-witnessed? If so, it would be a mini-dragon. And we'd all be happy.
This next business is colossally frustrating. Listen to this: 1946; 50 people out watching a meteor shower. A huge thing flies overhead. "Gigantic wingspread. Larger than any plane I've ever seen". Wings seemed luminous along front edge. Body grey color. Head like a serpent with scaly neck. Head and neck very long and held hanging downward as it flew, as though searching below. Eyes were a dull cherry red. Wings flapped and creature changed directions slightly. Then accelerated a flew rapidly out of sight.
Well... with the exception of no blast of fire-breath what else could I ask for? Nothing except a better witness report. Because..... the witness here is Mark Probert, a very famous at-the-time trance-control medium who "worked" for Meade Layne at the Borderland Sciences Research Association. Could this have actually happened? Probert claimed that Layne took greater than 50 phone calls the next day from people claiming to have seen something. Is this the case of the best case with the worst witness credibility? This sort of thing makes me cherish the fine, if rare, UFO field researchers that we've had scattered across the years. Will anyone really do good field detective work again? On ANY of these subjects?
By the way, Ulrich Magin, in his fairly recent book Investigating the Impossible has as his second chapter as pretty good candidate for an ocean-going Dragon [winged and all] from 1922 near Istanbul. I just read this so it's not in my files, but it's as good as any.
Alright. Since this subject refuses to cooperate, it's time to go Out Proctor, where you can run but you cannot hide. In the further hollows there seem to be several odd things relating to dragons.... let us cautiously see.
I've been informed that it's all down to the Djinn. Hmmmm..... Djinn are sort of the Faerie class of entities, so maybe I'm not entirely opposed to this.
Back in 1937, famous parapsychology investigator, Nandor Fodor, wrote to the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research about the experiences of Professor E.G. Browne. Browne had said that during his travels in Persia, he had attempted to learn the secrets of the esoteric rites of the practitioners of that area, particularly as regards the Djinn. He was instructed in a method of "calling" the Djinn and under conditions wherein which they would be responsive to him. Browne's description of this ritual reminds one somewhat of a Vision Quest. In that, Browne was to take himself to an isolated spot, and gradually increase his fasting over a forty day period. He was also to repeatedly chant certain arabic incantations, all while seated in a circle drawn on the ground. At certain periods into his fasting and chanting, entities would come to him.
The first entity was to be a lion, which would enter his circle. Browne was not to panic but persist in his chanting until it left. This was at the 21st day. On the 22nd day, a tiger came. And on the 23rd day, "a most hideous and frightful dragon appeared". Browne, who had held up under the pressure of the lion and tiger, now cracked, and ran in panic, giving up his attempt at mastery of the Djinn. Browne decided later that all of this must have been hallucination, as it very well could have been. Nevertheless, it is of some interest that a dragon figured in the imagery experienced.
Possibly related to that tale is the reported experience of a modern scientist, while attending a workshop in 1984. This meeting was a naval presentation [he was in at the time] and the subject matter was not very exciting. It was about 11am and well into the orientation lecture when the officer began to see the floor beneath himself and the other officers in the room becoming transparent. He was not asleep in any way, as he remembered every word of the lecture "loud and clear", but his experience of the "floor environment" was radically changing despite the above-the-floor scene remaining exactly the same.
What he was now looking at below the floor was a set of apparent "connections" between every individual in the room with the back of a great animal --- yep, a dragon. Each man was attached to that great dragon through which seemed to flow an animating energy of life. He felt powerfully alive. The dragon, which seemed to extend forever, had a tiled/fitted scaly back composed of subtle jewel-like colors. It was "impossibly beautiful". Staring at the beauty, he then saw the beast writhe a bit, lift up its head, and momentarily stare back at him. The view of the dragon lasted several minutes until the floor again began "solidifying" and the vision was gone. "Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, Momma", as John Lennon said.
F.W. Holiday in his Dragon and the Disk seems to have a totally different idea. After searching the Scottish Lochs and the Welsh countryside for years, Holiday sees that the dragons and the Balls-of-Light phenomena are somehow one. Although I like Holiday's originality of thought process as he pursued these mysteries, and have an instinctive itch telling me that somewhere in all of that mish-mash some truth lies, I still can't make any hard connection. Paul Devereux seems to be able to, as he has his Earth line energy concepts, and even called his work the Dragon Project. But I'm still not quite getting it. Strangely enough, in a recent book, Solomon Islands Mysteries, it seems that people in that part of the world have the exact same idea. And, as I have difficulty with any hypothetical cultural transferences between the Solomons and Wales or Loch Ness, that is even more intriguing.
But what does it actually mean? Are Earth energies [the physical textbook kind] generating brain-boggling electromagnetic fields [Michael Persinger and John Derr's hypothesis], and scrambling consciousness, burping up dragons? And the BOLS are just secondary physical side-effects? Or are the BOLS faerie, and the "dragons" or whatever else from "there"? Remember that Teodorani believes that the only sustainable hypothesis to cover the behavior of the BOLS he studies is that they somehow contain consciousness. Cue John Lennon again.
Let's go into a different Out Proctor Hollow. The above is a very early painted rendition of what Pierre Marquette saw of the Piasa Bird on that expeditition. Hmmmm.... just look at that thing for a moment....
" As we coasted along the rocks, frightful for their height and length, we saw two monsters painted on these rocks, which startled us at first, and on which the boldest Indian dare not gaze long. They are as large as a calf, with horns on the head like a deer, a frightful look, red eyes, bearded like a tiger, the face somewhat like a man's, the body covered with scales, and a tail so long that it twice makes a turn of the body, passing over the head and down between the legs, and ending at last in a fish's tail. Green, red, and a kind of black are the colors employed."
Not exactly a European dragon but certainly in the ballpark. My intuition is that the things were pictorially somewhere between the two renditions above.
The Sioux have a legendary creature, sometimes painted on rockfaces, called the Unktehi. It seems properly cryptozoological if not trending towards prehistoric or dragonish.
Could the pre-European Native Americans known of a dragon-like creature? If so, what does that do to our ideas as to whether anyone ever had true "external reality" encounters? As I said, folks: I'm trying as hard as I can on this one.
And with that: what then is this alleged Native American pictoglyph from Wupaki Park all about? Is it legit? A modern fake? Half legit with modern additions? Too bad that I at least don't know, as it is a fine, albeit crude, rendition of a dragon in my eyes.
So even here Out Proctor, I'm still haunted by Beowulf's Bane. Where did it come from? It doesn't seem like a reverie of the Lifeforce of the World, but more like an awesome cousin of the equally awesome Piasa Bird.
Desperate for inspiration, I'm turning to my least favorite Catholic saint, Augustine. Despite being a theological misfire of calamitous proportions on several major topics, he was a highly curious man with many contacts. And in an unfinished treatise on the creation of the world, Augustine stated flatly that dragons existed and that the pagans have known this for a long time.
When Augustine uses the word "pagans" he is usually referring to certain Greco-Roman area cults, one of which he himself belonged to as a youth. But Augustine also knew well the "paganism" of the British, as his main theological opponent, the one who tested his thinking most severely, was a British monk named Pelagius. In fact there was a lot more "commerce" between Britain and Rome back then than one imagines [we are speaking of the c.400AD era here --- the Dark Dark Ages]. What sort of dragons was Augustine hearing about, that convinced him of their reality? By the way, he speaks of these things as natural beasts from the creation, not icons of Satan.
I'm getting an itch that he's talking about this. You're allowed to get itches Out Proctor.
Here's another cylinder seal of that era. The fight now takes on a decidedly dragonish flavor, as the opponent is properly winged, and yet continues the flavor of the serpent/reptilian Tiamat in the back of one's mind. And... the griffin, which seems very close to our ancient dragon at this point, is a guarder of treasures as well.
Here we have an illuminated manuscript representing the biblical story of Daniel "defeating" the dragon, which is clearly a direct Old Testament steal from the old Bel and the Dragon Mesopotamian story. Our dragon here, happily in its cavern has a more dragony than eagle-like head, and one sees many legends running together on details.
Dragons and Griffins --- not really so different in appearance. Throw a Wyvern into the middle and you have rather smoothly translating physical set. How does this play into our story, though? I can't claim to have strong opinions about that. The legends, powerful legends possibly resting upon real sea serpent and monster encounters were there. They were so ubiquitous that they were in the minds of Bible writers and people like Augustine. Right with that were the Griffins. Based on encounters? All this was a stew existing in the scandinavian and british minds. The Beowulf poet lived in that legendary environment. He plucked it out. Was it a plucking of an idea based upon encounters? Or was this only a very emotive image of awesome force?
Lots of griffin, wyvern, dragon image exists. Shreds of claims and testimonies exist. The Piasa Bird stands there mocking. Dragons.... did any entity from faerie ever decide to manifest in that form? Where are the encounter stories?
I'm out of here. Dragons DO exist Out Proctor.... but I still don't know about anywhere else.
Till next time, and next topic: may your lives be full of wonders and only beneficent dragons.
Monday, May 28, 2012
"DRAGON": A Mass of Confusion, part four.
So, here in table form is my "problem". I know that almost everyone else wants to include almost any old large reptilian as a "dragon" but to me that has just muddied all the discussion of whether certain kinds of anomalous creatures have any actual evidence going for them. This table is in its way "logical". It's trying to lay out in the abstract the possible array of creatures which contend for the dragon label. The "Water" category are things which would be seen in the water [ocean, lake, river] but not flying about in the air. When I looked into the old stories, there are large numbers of tales of great sea serpents, of lake and river monsters, but the historical/cultural base for such beasts does not put wings on them, and in only one case [Leviathan] is there a fire-breather. Even though I therefore see no dragons there [in my way of defining them], I find quite a lot of evidence supporting the idea that the water monster and sea serpent are realities, even if not textbook biologically-evolved ones.
As we've looked at the old tales, the land-based things are a little different. There are great snakes, often crouching in caves in mountains, or other such land-living dangerous reptilians, and these usually get the name dragons, but not here. If there is a fine dinosaur lumbering about the Congo, it's a dinosaur. If there's a Tatzelwurm skulking in the Alps, it's a Tatzelwurm. If there's a monstrous snake, it's a great big snake. If you add some wings to these critters, then I'll give you "dragon". If it doesn't breathe fire, well ... a "minor" form of dragon. If it does: Dragon it is. Our trouble is, then, of course, that we only found one of these: Beowulf's Bane.
In the air, we have more confusion. The elongated serpents with the wings [The Chinese-type dragons] I'd still rather call something else: and their own word "Long" or "Lung" seems fine to me. If the big reptilian has wings, then it's a dragon unless we recognize it as something else. That is to say, Pterodactyls et al are pterodactyls et al, not dragons. It is in this cluster of possibilities that the "best" dragon resides: big, reptilian, legged, winged, and fire-breathing as it flies about. Our problem then is: there might not be any.
We are constantly getting comments [above in map form] that dragon myths occur all over the world. Well, no, they don't. Myths of big anomalous reptilians occur all over the world, but things close to dragons do not. This does not mean that there are no dragons anymore than it would mean that there are no leprechauns. It just means that leprechauns and dragons have to make their case without some form of universal encounters sort of argument.
Babylonian sirrush is very interesting --- no dragon.
Gosforth Cross monster is impressive --- no dragon.
Some sea serpent tales are great --- but they aren't about dragons.
I NEED A DRAGON!! Well, if Olaus Magnus can't find me one, nobody can. His Carta Marina is full of the most wonderful things, all of which he put out there as if he believed that they were true.
And there's more. At Maeshowe in the Orkneys the vikings carved a dragon-protector on the tomb when they invaded and broke into the ancient monument in the twelfth century. Those locals and those vikings thought that something like dragons were "around" in some way. Maybe I'm on the scent.
This Moche culture pot from Peru has a dragon on it , as far as I can see. There seems even a feathered wing sticking out. I have no idea how old this particular pottery vessel is, and it would help to know. Still, it's hopeful.
The illuminated prayer book of Charles the Bold [15th century, I think] is littered with proper dragons. Now we are in synch with that explosion of interest and iconography about such beasts. But why??
Carved into old churches --- true proper dragons. What's inspiring it??
And the dragonhunter's best friend, Beowulf's-Bane glorious in illumination of the text. Now in the late Middle Ages, Europe has gone Dragon-Bonkers. Before the high Middle Ages, shreds of hints; afterwards, an explosion of "belief"??
As a sideissue, since we're on iconography: some have used the Ica stones [the "Cabrera Rocks"] or the Acambaro figurines as evidences of dragons. The Ica stones are irrelevant regardless what they portray. I visited Dr. Cabrera and the surrounding vicinity myself and saw that they are faked [unfortunately]. I bought two examples from the guy who was making them to sell to Cabrera and they were worth the sols. The Acambaro figurines may be another matter. I have not yet read a good dismissal of the radiocarbon dates that were done/published, and so think that their genuineness stays an open question. But even then, they look to show large reptiles but not dragons.
So, although there's some smell of dragon all over these icons, like the beast itself, it's hard to tie down. The next, I think last, post in this series will look into my measly files on potential dragon encounter cases [a little over 50 of them] and try to see if any of them are any good at all. After that Fool's Errand, I'll walk Out Proctor for a while --- always something to see out there.
Here's looking at you, kid.
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What policies, processes, and procedures do companies need to have in place in order to protect the fundamental human rights of freedom of expression and privacy?
This question was central to the first independent assessments of corporate implementation of the Global Network Initiative ("GNI") Principles, conducted this past year and announced on April 18 with the release of GNI's second annual report.
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At the time of the GNI report's release, Arvind Ganesan, GNI Board Member and Director of Business and Human Rights at Human Rights Watch, observed,
Balancing rights to free expression and privacy with government requests is no easy task for ICT companies. These assessments are an important milestone demonstrating the value of a collaborative, but rigorous approach.
The independent assessments focused on each company's policies, processes, and procedures to protect freedom of expression and privacy rights, with specific focus on the following issues:
Responsible Company Decision-Making
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Through our own involvement in the assessment process, it was clear that each of the three companies involved faced different challenges and that addressing these challenges effectively required approaches that were both specific to each company's internal management systems and guided by commitments to internationally-recognized human rights.


text:
The Perfect Server - CentOS 6.3 x86_64 (nginx, Courier, ISPConfig 3) - Page 2
Choose your time zone:
Give root a password:
Next we do the partitioning. Select Replace Existing Linux System(s). This will give you a small /boot partition and a large / partition which is fine for our purposes:
Select Write changes to disk:
The hard drive is being formatted:
Now we select the software we want to install. Select Basic Server, then check CentOS in the additional repositories field, choose Customize later and click on Next:
The installation begins. This will take a few minutes:
Finally, the installation is complete, and you can remove your DVD from the computer and reboot it:
After the reboot, log in as root.
I want to install ISPConfig at the end of this tutorial which comes with its own firewall. That's why I disable the default CentOS firewall now. Of course, you are free to leave it on and configure it to your needs (but then you shouldn't use any other firewall later on as it will most probably interfere with the CentOS firewall).
... and disable the firewall. Hit OK afterwards:
Confirm your choice by selecting Yes:
If you did not configure your network card during the installation, you can do that now. Run...
... and go to Device configuration:
Select your network interface:
Then fill in your network details - disable DHCP and fill in a static IP address, a netmask, your gateway, and one or two nameservers, then hit Ok:
Next select Save:
You can also specify additional nameservers. Select DNS configuration:
Now you can fill in additional nameservers and hit Ok:
Hit Save&Quit afterwards:
You should run
now to check if the installer got your IP address right:
[root@server1 ~]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:00:85:AC
inet addr:192.168.0.100 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe00:85ac/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:278 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:86 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:28503 (27.8 KiB) TX bytes:16360 (15.9 KiB)
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
[root@server1 ~]#
Check your /etc/resolv.conf if it lists all nameservers that you've previously configured:
cat /etc/resolv.conf
If nameservers are missing, run
and add the missing nameservers again.
Now, on to the configuration...


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What's New
I was born 1976 in Krems, Austria. At early age, I was introduced by daddy's "Letraset Handbuch Grafik Design" to the wonderful world of type. I would be lying if I said I always wanted to become a designer, but after graduating at a Secondary College of Engineering, I knew Graphic Design was the only way for me to go. After 10 years of working as Graphic Designer and Art Director in Vienna I rediscovered what fascinated me as a kid drawing glyphs out of the Letraset book and started phospho, a microfoundry with special interest in Vienna's very own city typography. I now find type the only thing that can be as beautiful as music can be.