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The Foreign Desk
Italy's Crossroads
00:00 / 00:00
15 February 2014
Episode 6
30 minutes
Italy's Crossroads: Foreign editor Steve Bloomfield chairs a discussion on the political flux in Italy. Dr Paola Subacchi of Chatham House and renowned Italian journalist Gianni Riotta discuss the roots of the crisis, confront the elephant in the room – Silvio Berlusconi – and assess whether political stability is a pipe dream.
15 February 2014
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So I'm getting confused how to set up the page properly.
If I'm going to use a div tag there or just a table there or something else or whatever.
Is there any guide tutorial that has helped you to show what u should use in each situation?
So I'm getting confused how to set up the page properly.
If I'm going to use a div tag there or just a table there or something else or whatever.
Is there any guide tutorial that has helped you to show what u should use in each situation?
I'll give you a brief rundown. Someone could talk for pages and pages and pages about this subject.
Use <div>'s majority of the time. Divs are for division, aka a division of the page. Header, sidebar, footer, etc.
The only times you should be using tables, is when you have tabular data you need to display. Even then, it's not for layout. It was only done in the old days because it was easy to do, and CSS was a pain to work with, due to limited browser support.
Basically just have an idea of what you want your final product to look like, content included. Think about logically how to slice it up.
Take my website (link in sig and I don't want to post it to make it seem like I'm advertising). It has some parts to it. The title at the top, that can be a header. Navigation bar on the left, that's a sidebar. Contenet area to the right of that. Footer.
You could mark it up something like
My website doesn't do that, but right there is a good example of konwing how to mark it up. I'd float sidebar/content to make it side by side. Clear:both; on the footer, in this example, so it doens't snag on the floats above it. Are you starting to get the picture? Just logically think about how to mark up a page, and go from there.
Even if you don't know how you will position it, just assume we will know how to do it, and mark it up :). We will be here to correct anything. But that example I just gave is generically OKAY.
I Love you. Well, since you're writing such a long text i feel stupid replying back such a small text, since I don't really have much move to say cause you pretty much explained what I wanted to know.
EDIT: I Like your site, clean and simple.
Glad I could be of help :).
Thanks for the compliment on my website.
How long have you been doing webdesign? I'm 17 btw.
I've been dabbling in web design since I was 13, turning 14.
17? Not bad. Keep at it
Wow thats long, and you know very much, I hope I can be as good as you someday :D.
Lord, don't feed his ego. Ryan, how's it feel to be morphing into one of the "old hands?" I'll send you some coupons for Geritol.
I've still got a few years on me before I even consider myself Prime Rib ;).
Sometimes I don't understand what you're saying but you guys seems to be funny anyway… lol I only know all the basic english words. Well, it's actually my teachers fault everything.
EDIT: I didnt understand "morphing into one of the "old hands?" I'll send you some coupons for Geritol. " and the thing with prime rib.
[ot]I think by old hand, he meant "experienced", or maybe just getting flat out older :P.
By Prime Rib, I was just basically saying I think I still have a few years left (I'm 20) before I consider myself old (or at the peak of my knowledge level).[/ot]
Im gonna b 26, started at 13-14…lost pretty much all the knowledge i had and am back at square one. It really sucks starting from the bottom again. Id probably have my degree and a bad a$$ job but not the case.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC
That sucks.
Am 18 here, will be turning 19 by July. Started learning seriously late last year, its not been that hard cos i kinda gat the basic earlier on.

subset: commoncrawl


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The War Party's Atrocity Pornby William Norman Grigg
Feb. 28, 2011
'Anti-Racist' Tech CEO 'Beaten to Death by Black Male Career Criminal Who Was Released Early From Prison by Soros-Funded D.A. on Good-Time Credits'
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"This is a massacre," the frantic Libyan woman, speaking by telephone while cowering in her apartment in Tripoli, told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"I hope you know that people around the world are watching and praying and wanting to do something," Anderson told her, as if he were a stage prompter hinting at a performer's next line. Whether or not she had been given a copy of the script, the caller performed as expected: "[T]he first step [is to] make Libya a no-fly zone. If you make Libya a no-fly zone, no more mercenaries can come in.... There needs to be action. How much more waiting, how much more watching, how much more people dying?"
It's entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that the subject of Cooper's interview was simply a terrified but resolute woman who risked her life to describe the violence devouring her country amid the death throes of Khadafi's police state.
It's likewise possible that her call for international action to impose a no-fly zone was a desperate plea from a victim, rather than an act of media ventriloquism in which an anonymous figure endorsed the first plank of a military campaign proposed by the same neo-conservative kriegsbund that manipulated us into Iraq.
Surely it was a coincidence that the "Cry in the Night" from Libya was echoed on the same network a few nights later by Iraq war architect, former World Bank president, and accused war criminal Paul Wolfowitz, who several days prior to Cooper's dramatic broadcast called for a NATO-enforced "no fly zone" over Libya.
In fact, the day following that interview, an ad hoc group calling itself the Foreign Policy Initiative, which coalesced from the remnants of the Project for a New American Century, published an "open letter" to Mr. Obama demanding military intervention -- beginning with a no-fly zone -- in Libya. The neo-con framework for managing the Libyan crisis would create a regional protectorate administered by NATO on behalf of the "international community." This would nullify any effort on the part of Libyans, Egyptians, Tunisians, and others to achieve true independence.
On previous experience with media campaigns on behalf of humanitarian conquest, my incurable cynicism leads me to hear in Cooper's "Cry in the Night" a faint but unmistakable echo of the tearful, palpably earnest testimony of "Nariyah" -- the wide-eyed Kuwaiti girl who, using an assumed name to "protect her family," described what had befallen her country in the wake of the Iraqi invasion.
Bravely composing herself as she recounted horrors no human eyes should behold, the precociously self-possessed 15-year-old volunteer nurse related to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus how Iraqi soldiers stormed into the al-Addan Hospital, tore newborn infants from incubators, and hurled them to the floor. A short time later this testimony was "confirmed" by others who offered similarly anguished testimony before the UN Security Council.
During the three-month build-up to the January 1991 attack on Baghdad, the image of Kuwaiti "incubator babies" was endlessly recycled as a talking point in media interviews, presidential speeches, and debates in Congress and the UN. A post-war opinion survey found that the story of the "incubator babies" was the single most potent weapon deployed by the Bush administration in its campaign to build public support for the attack on Iraq.
This atrocity account was particularly effective in overcoming the skepticism of people espousing a progressive point of view.
"A pacifist by nature, my brother was not in a peaceful mood that day," recalled Christian Science Monitor columnist Tom Regan, describing his sibling's reaction to "Nariyah's" testimony. "We've got to go and get Saddam Hussein -- now," Regan's brother insisted.
"I completely understood his feelings," Regan pointed out. After all, "who could countenance such brutality? The news of the slaughter had come at a key moment in the deliberations about whether the U.S. would invade Iraq. Those who watched the non-stop debates on TV saw that many of those who had previously wavered on the issue had been turned into warriors by this shocking incident. Too bad it never happened."
"Nariyah" was not a traumatized ingenue who had witnessed an act of barbarism worthy of the Einsatzgruppen; she was actually the daughter of Saud Nasi al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States (and a member of the emirate's royal family). Her script had been written by the Washington-based PR firm Hill & Knowlton, which -- under the supervision of former Bush administration Chief of Staff Craig Fuller -- had put together a campaign to build public support for the impending war.
It wasn't difficult to convince the public that Saddam was a hideous thug. Selling the idea of a major war in the Middle East was a more daunting proposition. In late 1990, Hal Steward, a retired Army propaganda officer, defined the problem for the administration: "If and when the shooting starts, reporters will being to wonder why American soldiers are dying for oil-rich sheiks. The U.S. military had better get cracking to come up with a public relations plan that will supply the answers the public can accept."
The image of newborn Kuwaiti infants being ripped from incubators was an updated riff on a classic war propaganda theme performed by British intelligence -- and its American fellow travelers -- in their efforts to provoke U.S. intervention in World War I.
That era's equivalent of the Kuwaiti "incubator babies" were the Belgian infants who were supposedly spitted on bayonets by hairy-knuckled Huns in pickelhaube helmets. German soldiers did this to amuse themselves once they could no longer sate their prurient interests by raping Belgian women and then amputating their breasts. So the American public was told, in all seriousness, by people working on behalf of a secretive British propaganda committee headed by Charles Masterman.
In 1915, a official Commission headed by Viscount James Bryce, a notable British historian, "verified" those atrocity stories without naming a specific witness or victim. This didn't satisfy Clarence Darrow, who offered a reward of $1,000 who could produce a Belgian or French victim who had been mutilated by German troops. That bounty went unclaimed.
"After the war," recounts Thomas Fleming in his book Illusion of Victory, "historians who sought to examine the documentation for Bryce's stories were told that the files had mysteriously disappeared. This blatant evasion prompted most historians to dismiss 99 percent of Bryce's atrocities as fabrications."
War emancipates every base and repulsive impulse to which fallen man is susceptible. So it's certain that some German troops (like their French, Belgian, British, and American counterparts) exploited opportunities to commit individual acts of depraved cruelty. But the purpose of the war propaganda peddled by the Anglo-American elite, as Fleming observes, was to create a widespread public image of Germans as "monsters capable of appalling sadism" -- thereby coating an appeal to murderous collective hatred with a lacquer of sanctimony.
I've described agitprop of this variety as "atrocity porn." It is designed to appeal to prurient interests and manipulate a dangerous appetite -- in this case, what Augustine calls the libido domimandi, or the lust to rule over others.
The trick is to leave the target audience at once shivering in horror at a spectacle of sub-human depravity, panting with a visceral desire for vengeance, and rapturously self-righteous about the purity of its humane motives. People who succumb to it are easily subsumed into a hive mind of officially sanctioned hatred, and prepared to perpetrate crimes even more hideous than those that they believe typify the enemy.
Rhetoric of that kind abounded during the French Revolution, particularly the Jacobin regime's war to annihilate the rebellious Vendee. It also figured prominently in the Lincoln regime's war to conquer the newly independent southern states. However, it's difficult to find a better expression of that mindset than the one offered in an editorial published in 1920 by Krasni Mech (The Red Sword), a publication of the Soviet Cheka secret police:
"Our morality has no precedent, and our humanity is absolute, because it rests on a new ideal. Our aim is to destroy all forms of oppression and violence. To us, everything is permitted, for we are the first to raise the sword not to oppress races and reduce them to slavery, but to liberate humanity from its shackles .... Blood? Let blood flow like water . .. for only through the death of the old world can we liberate ourselves forever." (Emphasis added.)
In pursuing his Grand Crusade for Democracy, Wilson was squarely in that tradition, extolling the supposed virtue of "Force without stint or limit ... the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion in the dust." To fortify the American "war will" through a steady diet of atrocity porn, the Wilson administration created a Department of Public Information that liaised with its British equivalent, as well as quasi-private British propaganda fronts such as the Navy League. That organization, Fleming points out, included "dozens of major bankers and corporate executives, from J.P. Morgan Jr. to Cornelius Vanderbilt."
Through absolutely no fault of his own, Anderson Cooper is a great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Of considerably greater interest is the fact that as a student at Yale, Cooper spent two summers as an intern at Langley in a program designed to cultivate future intelligence operatives.
When asked about Cooper's background with the CIA, a CNN spokeswoman insisted that he chose not to pursue a job with the Agency after graduating from Yale. The same can be said, however, of many of the CIA's most valuable media assets.
As Carl Bernstein documented decades ago, the CIA "ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were `taught how to make noises like reporters,' explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. `These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told, `You're going to be a journalist,' the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400-some [media] relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency."
By way of an initiative called "Operation Mockingbird," the CIA's built a large seraglio of paid media courtesans. This was carried out through the Office of Policy Coordination, which was created by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner -- the latter being the official who went on to organize coups (and the attendant propaganda campaigns) against governments in Iran and Guatemala. (Wisner's son and namesake, incidentally, was a vice chairman at AIG -- the CIA's favorite global insurance conglomerate -- until 2009; more recently he was tapped by the Obama administration to serve as a back-channel contact with Hosni Mubarak and Omar Suleiman.)
The tendrils of "Operation Mockingbird" extended through every significant national media organ, from the Washington Post and Newsweek to the Time-Life conglomerate, from the New York Times to CBS. As a result, according to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, the Fourth Estate "has been captured by government and corporations, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus." It is, in everything but name, an appendage of the Regime. This is clearly seen every time the Regime decides the time has come to mount another campaign of humanitarian bloodshed abroad.
Having "learned nothing from the horrors that they cheer-led like excitable teenage girls over the past 15 years, these bohemian bombers, these latte-sipping lieutenants, these iPad imperialists are back," sighs a wearily disgusted Brendan O'Neill in the London Telegraph. "This time they're demanding the invasion of Libya."
On O'Neill's side of the Atlantic, the Fleet Street Samurai are peddling "rumors of systematic male rape" in Libya . Others insist that the prospective war in Libya would in no way resemble "the foolishness of the Iraq invasion" -- just as similar self-appointed sages promised that the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, each of which has lasted at least as long as the Vietnam War, would not be "another Vietnam."
For some reason, this brings to mind the image of Bullwinkle repeatedly trying to pull a rabbit from his hat, blithely batting aside Rocky's complaint that the trick "never works" by exclaiming, "This time for sure!" This time, we're supposed to believe -- or at least, pretend to believe -- that the atrocity accounts are true, that military action sanctified by the "international community" is a moral obligation, that warlust and hatred are virtuous, and that the impending bloodshed will be a cleansing stream.
As is the case, one supposes, with any other variety, war pornography is nothing if not predictable. However, unlike Bullwinkle's inept attempts at thaumaturgy, war porn is a trick that seems to work every time.
William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.
Copyright � 2011 William Norman Grigg


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Tripping the McArdleverse
by MR. AWESOME
Megan McArdle is a libertarian blogger for The Atlantic, a prominent DC-area think-speak magazine. Like all DC-area magazines, the quality of its contributors varies by an enormous margin likely explained through the dense, varicose veins of patronage and glad-handing that runs through that town. Sometimes, you can find incisive, solid commentary under the banner of The Atlantic. Sometimes, you will find contrarian white noise, and sometimes you will find grossly dishonest crap. Megan McArdle produces the last two, with gusto.
She belongs to an exceptionally stupid set of youngish libertarian Economist-esque pseudo-thinkers. Her "columns" mix the very best shallow diarist introspection of yuppie navel-gazing with the arrogant dead thought theatrics of a fake intellectual who operates with no standards of proofreading or fact-finding. She is a small fish in the great pond of bullshit punditry, but she's like a clownfish, really bright and attention-grabbing — because she's just so damn terrible. She lives in a dense tangle of white privilege anemone, which will cause a nasty rash if you touch it. There is perhaps a moray eel of intellectual accountability staring at that shiny overgrowth all bug-eyed like, "What the fuck is that?"
Here she explains why public health care is bad:
Basically, for me, it all boils down to public choice theory. Once we've got a comprehensive national health care plan, what are the government's incentives? I think they're bad, for the same reason the TSA is bad. I'm afraid that instead of Security Theater, we'll get Health Care Theater, where the government goes to elaborate lengths to convince us that we're getting the best possible health care, without actually providing it.
That's not just verbal theatrics. Agencies like Britain's NICE are a case in point. As long as people don't know that there are cancer treatments they're not getting, they're happy. Once they find out, satisfaction plunges. But the reason that people in Britain know about things like herceptin for early stage breast cancer is a robust private market in the US that experiments with this sort of thing.
Enjoy this link to the wikipedia page on public choice theory. I have now provided more citation than Megan McArdle chooses to in her entire column. Here, McArdle name drops a theory founded on the real or imagined essential ignorance of the voter in order to buttress a bog standard "The government = DMV = BAD!" argument. Never mind that the TSA in particular has been totally farmed out to the private market. That's incredibly ironic and destroys what little substance existed in that first paragraph, but, well, okay. At least there were words there.
Then we get some stuff about herceptin. Fun fact about herceptin, it was developed in a private-public partnership between the company Genetech and researchers at UCLA — like most long-term medications with no immediate profit (excluding purely elective treatments like Viagra.) Herceptin is one of many drugs originally developed in the United States through public-private partnership. In fact, this is how the plurality, if not the majority of new medical advances are produced. Moving along:
So in the absence of a robust private US market, my assumption is that the government will focus on the apparent at the expense of the hard-to-measure. Innovation benefits future constituents who aren't voting now.
Wait, what?
McArdle found the time to implicitly prove that a public option will totally destroy the pharmaceutical industry. That's rhetorical economy. Seriously, this is the next paragraph. I'm not cutting things out of context. She goes from herceptin to this. The private pharmaceutical industry has been destroyed somewhere between these two paragraphs, like in one of those side by side picture puzzles where something subtle is different between the two. In the last paragraph, it was the year 2009. Now it is 2015, and Skynet has sent the Wilford Brimbots for your diabetes testing supplies.
Of course, the usual public option threat is that it will destroy our current HMO system. But, in the McArdleverse, your conventional understandings of the relationships between related things do not apply. Cheap government health care will destroy the pharmaceutical industry beyond repair or reconstruction for some reason lurking between those two paragraphs. Deal with it.
Now that the private pharmaceutical industry is destroyed, there is only the government to fund research. And the government will only fund research with tangible short-term benefits. Because that's what they do at the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation. They fund things that make a short-term tangible profit, because no one else will.
This is an unusual perspective. Typically, the government funds research which will not make a profit, because if you can secure venture capital, you won't have to go through an entire grants application process. I honestly have never seen the argument that government research is too short-sighted or too results-driven. It's usually the exact opposite. This is like seeing someone criticize NASA for being all about the money. I really have no idea.
She continues:
In fact, innovation is more often a matter of small steps towards perfection. Wal-Mart's revolution in supply chain management has been one of the most powerful factors influencing American productivity in recent decades. Yes, it was enabled by the computer revolution—but computers, by themselves, did not give Wal-Mart the idea of treating trucks like mobile warehouses, much less the expertise to do it.
Yes, Wal-Mart, the model of innovation we should apply to medicine. You see, they treated trucks like mobile warehouses by storing things in trucks as they drove around the country. No one else ever had this idea. Short-term train depot storage, shipping warehouses and staged military field logistics all took the lesson from Wal-Mart, the amazing small step toward perfection that is realizing that objects in transit still exist. People in mobile homes do not merely shop at Wal-Mart — they were created by Wal-Mart.
Oh, sure, computers made it possible to realize that objects in motion are objects, what with the floating points and all that, and, sure, computers were created by the government. But did the government ever think to use these computers to sell swimming trunks for $5? Did the government ever even consider that they could sell product at a loss to drive regional competition out of business, then resume normal pricing? No.
The government was aware of the possibilities behind this innovation, and attempted to prevent that last practice through anti-trust and anti-monopoly regulation, sure. But it was Wal-Mart who realized the innovative potential of having those laws thrashed through Supreme Court reinterpretation until they became meaningless.
Health care works the same way:
In the case of pharma, what an NIH or academic researcher does is very, very different from what a pharma researcher does. They are no more interchangeable than theoretical physicists and civil engineers. An academic identifies targets. A pharma researcher finds out whether those targets can be activated with a molecule.
You see, the academic researcher (government bureaucracy, TSA, DMV, EWW) is like a sidekick to the production research of the private market. You may ask, "How does this jibe with the stuff above about the government being short-sighted and unable to wait on advanced research?" Well, it doesn't, at all.
In the McArdleverse, research is conducted in phases. The original researchers "identify targets," like livers and brains and such. Then they pass on that info to the private market, like "Yo, check out the liver, dawg. You should activate that shit moleculewise." The researchers who invented herceptin would be surprised to know their research was conducted in the form of protracted two-stage alleyoop between entirely different sets of researchers incapable by structure from performing one another's research tasks.
Sure, you could try to get a public university professor to conduct animal testing trials. You could ask a guy at UCLA or wherever to test different formulations of actives for varying effectiveness. But you would only confuse and enrage the academic. Academic researchers have, as a rule, never participated in for-profit research, which is just a completely different skillset. The academic is a Shaquille O'Neal who spends all day lumbering around the paint, rebounding and, confused as to its nature and purpose, constantly dishing the rock to able power forwards who've discovered advanced basket making.
The government does not develop market-ready medicines. Penicillin is a lie. And even in the McArdleverse, the private pharmaceutical industry is dead. Fulfilling this ostensibly necessary portion of medical development would just die out because of the public option. All mechanisms related to its hypothetical function shall be lost beyond repair. There is no market purpose nor competitive niche which could possibly sustain an industry before the all-consuming destruction of public health care. Like all true free market believers, McArdle understands that the free market is the best way of doing things until you cause it to cease to exist by being mean to it or looking at it the wrong way.
It's an infinitely self-diversifying and adapting system, until you do anything that slightly inconveniences it in a way that doesn't translate to an immediate example of why it's the best system ever. It's like a Holodeck that can create any world you can dream of, but if Captain Picard even so much as outlaws simulating the Underage Babyfucking Planet of Murder III, then the whole damn thing is completely broken and unusable.
McArdle realizes there are victims, such as herself, McArdle:
At this juncture in the conversation, someone almost always breaks in and says, "Why don't you tell that to an uninsured person?" I have. Specifically, I told it to me. I was uninsured for more than two years after grad school, with an autoimmune disease and asthma.
I'm alive, writing stupid shit for a magazine on the internet! So, you go tell this on the mountain, because if my stupid-ass decision is good enough for a callow twentysomething woman, it's sure as hell good enough for everybody, including their children. The stagnant tide straightens all boats!
If you can't go for only two years out of college — you know, like everyone who didn't learn vector calculus — without insurance during the period of life in which you're least likely to die of anything, fuck you. It's like driving to the store without a seat belt. Why do you need the government to make you have seat belts? It's only up to the store.
McArdle doesn't like unnecessary risk to herself anymore than McArdle does. But McArdle soul-searched long and deep, broadening her personal experience by asking McArdle about how McArdle felt about health issues related to McArdle. This is the rare moment in punditry when the author plays the, "I know poor people and they hate welfare!" card by referencing herself. Yes, it truly is all about her.
To McArdle's question, McArdle poses a question:
Why don't you tell some person who has a terminal condition that sorry, we can't afford to find a cure for their disease? There are no particularly happy choices here.
Oh, shit, she's got hostages! Drop the health care — slowly! — or everyone dies of multiple sclerosis!
A question she answers with fat people, and elitism:
The other major reason that I am against national health care is the increasing license it gives elites to wrap their claws around every aspect of everyone's life. Look at the uptick in stories on obesity in the context of health care reform.
This canard was adapted from the trans fat bans and then just pasted unaltered onto the health care debate. You see, trans fats are horrible shit that makes you die and serves no other purpose except being marginally cheaper than other preservatives. So, when the government wanted to ban them, a lot of people became extraordinarily angry, as though the government were one step from mandating seat belts at the dinner table. The funny thing about just repurposing this shtick for health care is that fat people are NOT the primary drain on resources — it's really old people. And really old people, as a rule, are not hugely fat, or they would never have become really old. The really old, in the last years of life, are where you will find a plausible crunch in life-saving funding. It's also just as viable an avenue for a scare tactic.
But McArdle can't be bothered to know this much about things. She has an opinion to get out there and she snags whatever castoff words, phrases and ideas are available, like a lazy television writer trying to invoke current events. You could ask her, "Should we increase funding for roads by taxing rich people?" and she'd say something like, "No, that's a terrible idea. Researchers in Scandinavia found out years ago that taxing rich people makes roads explode because coffee prevents heart disease and eggs are good for you." This is the natural endpoint of education without understanding.
Play her off, fat people:
These aren't just a way to save on health care; they're a way to extend and expand the cultural hegemony of wealthy white elites. No, seriously. Living a fit, active life is correlated with being healthier. But then, as an economist recently pointed out to me, so is being religious, being married, and living in a small town; how come we don't have any programs to promote these "healthy lifestyles"?
Yes, fat people. What right has the government to try to help them not die of being fat? This is an even worse example of big city elitist mockery than the time the Surgeon General put those messages on cigarette cartons as a cruel reminder to smokers of their inevitable death. Every time I sit in a car, the government is in my face to remind me that my sideview mirror is an inaccurate measure of the distance of things, shattering again and again my happy faith in the accuracy of mirrored surfaces. The government has always been the archetypal jackass who spoils the end of the movie or reveals the wires in poorly staged shots.
It is weird to see libertarians go to the fat well so often. Fat people are a stark reminder that private consumers can make terrible choices with their money, purchasing cheap, fattening foods which slowly kill them while robbing them of their quality of life. Rational actor theory doesn't really account for fat people.
Yeah, and what's to stop the government from promoting religion, marriage, and living in a small town? Like it does already, with tax subsidies for marriage, tax exemption for religious organizations, and a state-federal tax system which puts more money into rural areas than it takes out? No, seriously.
Finally, she remembers the elderly, sort of:
Of course, the obese aren't the only troublesome bunch. The elderly are also wasting a lot of our hard earned money with their stupid "last six months" end-of-life care.
And here, an old classic. She's almost done with this, thank goodness.
Once the government gets into the business of providing our health care, the government gets into the business of deciding whose life matters, and how much.
Indeed, why should anyone ever say who gets to live and who gets to die? These are difficult decisions, and like all hard choices, they're best left unmade.
It's over. It's fucking OVER:
The real issue is the effect on future lives, and future freedom. And in my opinion, they way (sic) in overwhelmingly on the side of stopping further government encroachments into health care provision.
This argument about health care is a scrapbook of other arguments — pharmaceutical regulation, research funding systems, and so on, then propped up by a flimsy assertion. She tags "This is about health care" up top, then just rambles crap she misremembers, thinks she knows, and misunderstands. Maybe she is honest, to a point. Maybe she is a sincere believer that this mishmash of broken, scrambled factoids is an actual train of thought, and that this train actually does connect at the health care station. Maybe she's not, and she's trying to trick people, giggling that anyone in the world would buy this, literally or figuratively. This is the classic case of giving a doofus the undeserved credit of being a mastermind: The Mr. Bean fallacy.
The uninsured are unreal for the McArdles of the world. The McArdles do not listen to these people, believing their own sheltered lives are a viable facsimile for anyone's troubles or experience. They are so smart that they don't have to conduct research before reaching conclusions; they are so wise that they require no experience to understand other people's lives. They are so damn great and important that the petty problems and limited movement of their tiny orbits around unaccountable safety are the total motion of the world. Theirs is a nation of 300 some million, the vast majority of whom are extras and objects in their boring, whitebread existence.
In the McArdleverse, a rich white girl speaks with the voice of poor fat people who can't afford health insurance to deliver a dire warning about elitism and freedom of choice. Meandering, self-aggrandizing sermons about choice echo from the dotted-line mouths of people who can't afford choices. Fat people are why you shouldn't have health care. The government destroys products just cause. Pharmaceutical research is inextricably tied into the dysfunctional cash grab of corporate health care oligopoly in the McArdleverse. The silken strands of the fragile Free Market tie together all manner of unrelated things into a spiderweb of inevitability and helpless shrugging. As in our world, the poor will sicken and die needlessly in the McArdleverse, but in her world they are the empowered victims of helpless fate, and not the sacrifice offered up for the profits of a few and cowardice of many.
This "essay" is not an attempt to describe our world. It is an attempt to pull our real world into the McArdleverse, where our failure as a society is excusable, or even noble. Megan McArdle makes a living writing this crap. Think about that the next time you produce some item or service of actual quality.


text:
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What would fit your child? Take a look here >>
What matches? Who belongs to....?
Colors from yellow to purple and from light to dark.
Make a game with pepples to assign numbers and quantities. With more oblong stones you can make a number domino
Every child enjoys matching games - the difficulty level can be varied.
Match fruits made from felt with the corresponding photographs
What grows from these little seeds - and what do carrot seeds look like?
With free printable


text:
S&P says more than one-third chance of Japan downgrade, cites risks to Abenomics
Rating agency Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday it saw more than a one-third chance that it would downgrade Japan's sovereign ratings because of uncertainty about whether the government's push to revive growth and end deflation will succeed.
"The continuing prospect of a downgrade arises from risks associated with recent government initiatives and uncertainty of their success," S&P said in a report.
"Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to lift Japan out of deflation and spur economic expansion--known as "Abenomics"--has three pillars: bold monetary easing, fiscal efforts to spur growth, and a strategy to induce private sector investment," it said.
"Of the three engines that Mr. Abe foresees reinvigorating the nation's economy, so far only one, monetary easing, has kicked into full gear. The others remain idle."
S&P has an AA- long-term rating on Japan's sovereign debt.
(Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Kim Coghill)


text:
- Subscribers - people who predictably pay money
- Preferred Status - people who have paid money in the past, and therefore might do so again in the future
- Free To Play - people who have never paid money and/or gold seller/scammer/suspicious accounts
Thursday, October 25, 2012
SWTOR F2P Model Thoughts
4 comments:
Well, maybe it's me being negative, but it smells like the crap it is: F2P glued over a game which was NOT designed for F2P. Well-designed F2P games don't have to rely on this kind restrictions to defend from hackers/scammers: they design the game from the start so that bringing an account to the point of being exploitable is a massive investment.ReplyDelete
If the Invis Chest and gear like it was offered in WoW for transmog I think it would be a huge seller. They might be onto something,ReplyDelete
- Hyperian10:34 PM, October 25, 2012
I loved the Bounty Hunter Arc, by far my favorite. I'm hoping they expand on the Mandalore aspect, felt like a true badass when hunting down the badass's of the galaxy while screaming "FOR MANDALORE" causing my wife to laugh hysterically while posting it on youtubeReplyDelete
I'd say you hit on a big point in TOR's F2P attempt: people aren't considering the security risks that F2P engenders to the environment.ReplyDelete
If you look at it from the "how can a black hat expose something for gain?" angle, then that's a start. There's always openings, but they have to be balanced against risks. Sure, maybe it would have been smarter to limit slicing to non-safe items, but it is much easier to defend agains slicing abuse in a purely subscription-based model. (And to be honest, slicing without being able to hack a safe would seem, well, weird and gamey.)
If there weren't enough people around to run exploits, then a lot of these restrictions wouldn't exist. But people being people, there's always somebody who finds an exploit to use. Hell, just look at the Paragon controversy back in Cata, and that was a guild that should have known better.


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UNITED STATES, Petitioner, v. CHARLES R. EVANS and Harry J. O'Donnell.
29 S.Ct. 507
53 L.Ed. 803
UNITED STATES, Petitioner,
CHARLES R. EVANS and Harry J. O'Donnell.
No. 394.
Submitted December 18, 1908.
Decided April 19, 1909.
Solicitor General Hoyt for petitioner.
[Argument of Counsel from Pages 297-298 intentionally omitted]
No appearance for respondents.
Mr. Chief Justice Fuller delivered the opinion of the court:
Appellees were tried under an indictment for murder in the supreme court of the District of Columbia on February 1, 1907, and found not guilty. The United States appealed to the court of appeals of the District, and assigned error on exceptions taken during the trial to the exclusion of certain evidence. This right to appeal was claimed under § 935 of the Code [31 Stat. at L. 1341, chap. 854], which reads as follows:
'In all criminal prosecutions the United States or the District of Columbia, as the case may be, shall have the same right of appeal that is given to the defendant, including the right to a bill of exceptions; provided, that if, on such appeal, it shall be found that there was error in the rulings of the court during the trial, a verdict in favor of the defendant shall not be set aside.'
The appeal was dismissed for want of jurisdiction, and the case brought here on certiorari.
The case of United States v. Sanges, 144 U. S. 310, 36 L. ed. 445, 12 Sup. Ct. Rep. 609, reiterated the then well-settled rule that the right of review in criminal cases was limited to review at the instance of the defendant after a decision in favor of the government. United States v. Dickinson, 213 U. S. 92, 53 L. ed. —, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 485.
In United States v. Evans, 28 App. D. C. 264, under §935 of the Code, the right was exercised without question in a case where an indictment had been set aside on demurrer, and Chief Justice Shepard, in delivering the opinion of the court in this case (30 App. D. C. 58), said:
'It may be assumed also that such a writ of error would lie to review a judgment arresting a judgment of conviction for the insufficiency of the indictment, or one sustaining a special plea in bar, when the defendant has not been put in jeopardy.'
But the Chief Justice further said that it was contended by appellants that a writ of error lies also 'upon a judgment where there has been a verdict of not guilty; not, however, to obtain a reversal of that judgment, but to obtain an opinion upon exceptions taken at the trial that may serve as a rule of observance in cases that may hereafter arise.'
But this contention was rejected by the court, in view of the objectionable consequences that would result from such an exercise of jurisdiction. 'The appellee in such a case, having been freed from further prosecution by the verdict in his favor, has no interest in the question that may be determined in the proceedings on appeal, and may not even appear. Nor can his appearance be enforced. Without opposing argument, which is so important to the attainment of a correct conclusion, the court is called upon to lay down rules that may be of vital interest to persons who may hereafter be brought to trial. All such persons are entitled to be heard on all questions affecting their rights, and it is a harsh rule that would bind them by decisions made in what are practically 'moot' cases, where opposing views have not been presented.'
It was in the light of these considerations that the act of Congress of March 2, 1907 (34 Stat. at L. 1246, chap. 2564, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1907, p. 209), was subjected to the limitations therein contained. United States v. Keitel, 211 U. S. 370, 398, 53 L. ed. —, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 123; United States v. Mason, 213 U. S. 115, 53 L. ed. —, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 480.
By the Constitutions of several of the states, the justices of the highest judicial tribunals are obliged to give their opinions on important questions of law upon solemn occasions, when required by either branch of the legislature, or the governor, or governor and council, and there are many interesting discussions in the state reports, as well as in articles by the law writers, in respect of such a provision.
But no such requirement obtains in Federal jurisprudence.
Such a provision was suggested in the Federal Constitutional Convention, but disappeared in the committee on detail.
Thayer, Advisory Opinions, Legal Essays, 43; Dubuque, the Duty of Judges as Constitutional Advisers, 24 Am. L. Rev. 369; Emery, C. J., 2 Maine L. Rev. 1; Cases collected in 6 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, 2d ed. p. 1065. And see 103 Me. 506, and especially opinion of Savage, J.
In 1793, President Washington sought to take the opinion of the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States as to various questions arising under out treaties with France, but they declined to respond. Marshall thus speaks of the matter in his Life of Washington:
'About this time it is probable that the difficulties felt by the judges of the Supreme Court in expressing their sentiments on the points referred to them were communicated to the Executive. Considering themselves as merely constituting a legal tribunal for the decision of controversies brought before them in legal form, these gentlemen deemed it improper to enter the field of politics by declaring their opinion on questions not growing out of the case before them.' Story, Constitution, § 1571.
It was long ago held by this court that the discharge of such a function was not an exercise of judicial power. United States v. Ferreira, 13 How. 40, note on page 52, 14 L. ed. 42, note on page 47; Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409; see note, pp. 410-414, 1 L. ed. 436, see note pp. 436-438. And that ruling sustains the conclusion of the court of appeals in the matter of the construction of this act, to which the opinion is confined.
Writ of certiorari quashed.
The following state regulations pages link to this page.


text:
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Apricot muffins with chopped dried apricots.
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup shortening
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup milk
Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt; cut in shortening and stir in dried apricots. Combine beaten egg and milk; add to flour mixture. Stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fill greased muffin pans about 2/3 full.
Bake at 400° for 20 to 25 minutes.
Dried Apricot Almond Biscotti
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup California dried apricot halves, chopped
1 cup natural chopped almonds
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1. Preheat oven to 350*F (175*C). Lightly butter large baking sheet.
2. In food processor, combine first five ingredients. Pulse to blend. Add butter and vanilla; pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add eggs and pulse 3 times to blend. Add apricots and almonds; pulse until mixture is evenly moistened. Transfer mixture to large bowl; use hands to form into dough.
3. Divide dough in half. On lightly greased baking sheet, shape dough into two 12-inch logs. With hands, flatten each log to a width of 2 inches. Sprinkle each with remaining sugar.
4. Bake 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove logs to cooling rack for 10 minutes.
5. With serrated knife, carefully cut logs on the diagonal into 1-inch slices. Place on baking sheet cut side up; return to oven and bake 7 minutes, or until very lightly browned. Transfer to rack; cool completely.
Rosemary-Scented Pork Loin Stuffed With Roasted Garlic, Dried Apricots and Cranberries
3 tablespoons olive oil
16 whole peeled garlic cloves
2 tablespoons minced garlic cloves
1 (8 pound) whole boneless pork loin, patted dry, at room temperature
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary (snip with scissors), divided
16 dried apricots (or similar amount of your favorite dried fruit)
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup apple jelly
1/4 cup port
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons apple jelly
2 teaspoons cornstarch
Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position & heat oven to 250 degrees; Heat oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add whole garlic cloves and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden, about 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon; reserve oil.
Turn pork loin fat-side down. Slit lengthwise, almost but not quite all the way through, to form a long pocket, leaving a 1/2-inch border of un-slit meat at each end.
Brush cavity with some of the reserved garlic cooking oil, and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper and 1 Tb. of the rosemary. Line cavity with sautéed garlic and apricots; sprinkle in cranberries. Tie loin together with kitchen twine or heavy-duty string at 1 1/2-inch intervals.
Brush with remaining oil, and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Set roast, fat-side up, diagonally or curved (so it fits) on a large, lipped cookie sheet or jellyroll pan. Warm 1/4 cup apple jelly along with the minced garlic and remaining rosemary; brush mixture onto meat.
Roast until a meat thermometer stuck into the center registers 125-130 degrees.(Start checking at about 1 1/2 hours.) Remove from oven; raise oven temperature to 400 degrees. Brush loin with pan drippings, return to oven, and continue to roast until the loin is golden brown and a meat thermometer stuck into the center registers 155 to 160 degrees, about 20 minutes longer. For even more attractive coloring, broil until spotty brown, 3 to 5 minutes.
Let roast rest 15-20 minutes; transfer to a carving board. Stir juices around pan to loosen brown bits. Pour through a strainer into a small pan, and stir in port, chicken broth and remaining 2 Tbs. of jelly; bring to a simmer. Mix cornstarch with a couple of tablespoons of cold water; whisk into sauce. Simmer until lightly thickened. Slice pork and serve with a little sauce.
Apricot-Orange Bread
6 ounces dried apricots, coarsely chopped
2 cups water
2 tablespoons margarine or butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon finely grated orange peel
3 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly grease two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans.
Cook apricots in water in a covered saucepan for 10-15 minutes, until apricots are mushy. Drain and reserve 3/4 cup liquid; set fruit aside to cool. In a mixing bowl with electric mixer, cream margarine, and sugar; beat in egg and orange peel just until blended. Into a separate bowl, sift flour, dry milk, baking powder, soda, and salt. Stir sifted mixture into to creamed mixture alternately with reserved apricot liquid and orange juice.
Stir chopped soaked apricots and pecans into the batter. Turn batter into prepared loaf pans. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until bread springs back when lightly touched in center. Cool 5 minutes in pan. Remove from pan to rack to cool completely before slicing and serving.
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text:
Biden ends GOP infrastructure talks, but new group emerges
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ended talks with a group of Republican senators on a big infrastructure package on Tuesday and started reaching out to senators from both parties in a new effort toward bipartisan compromise, setting a summer deadline for Congress to pass his top legislative priority.
The president is walking away from talks with lead Republican negotiator Sen. Shelley Moore Capito after the two spoke Tuesday, but would welcome her in the new bipartisan group, according to an administrative official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private negotiations.
Shortly after the Biden-Capito talks collapsed, 10 senators huddled late Thursday over pizza — five Republicans, five Democrats — emerging after three hours with some optimism their new effort could create a viable path forward, said a person familiar with the closed-door talks and granted anonymity to discuss them.
At the same time, with anxiety running high as time slips by, Democrats are laying the groundwork to pass some or all of the ambitious package on their own. Biden conferred Tuesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer about launching the budget resolution process for Senate votes in July, the White House said.
"The President is committed to moving his economic legislation through Congress this summer, and is pursuing multiple paths to get this done," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
The breakdown in the White House's efforts with GOP senators comes after weeks of prolonged infrastructure talks between the president and Capito as the two sides failed to broker the divide over the scope of Biden's sweeping infrastructure investment and how to pay for it.
The Republican senators offered a $928 billion proposal, which included about $330 billion in new spending — but not as much as Biden's $1.7 trillion investment proposal for rebuilding the nation's roads, bridges, highways and other infrastructure, including Veterans Affairs hospitals and care centers.
Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, a nonstarter for Republicans, and rejected the GOP senators' suggestion of tapping unspent COVID-19 aid money to fund the new infrastructure spending.
In a statement, Capito said she was disappointed Biden ended the talks, but also expressed interest in ongoing bipartisan work.
"While I appreciate President Biden's willingness to devote so much time and effort to these negotiations, he ultimately chose not to accept the very robust and targeted infrastructure package, and instead, end our discussions," she said. "However, this does not mean bipartisanship isn't feasible."
As Biden aims for a compromise deal, he has begun reaching out to other senators, including Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and two key centrist Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, whose votes will be crucial in the evenly split Senate.
Those senators receiving phone calls from Biden were among the group of 10 assembled with Sinema and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, late Tuesday in Portman's office for what was described as a productive meeting, the person familiar with the session said.
Portman and Sinema have been engaged for months with Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, on a sizable infrastructure proposal that is expected to include proposed ways to pay for it.
The senators' group has expanded in recent weeks to include the others from both parties. Romney has described it a "back burner" group, in case the administration's talks with the GOP senators faltered.
Psaki said the president urged the senators in his conversations to continue their work "to develop a bipartisan proposal that he hopes will be more responsive to the country's pressing infrastructure needs." Biden tapped Cabinet and White House aides to meet with the senators in person.
Ahead of Biden's announcement, the White House had also spoken to other lawmakers, including from the House.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., the co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, spoke late Monday with Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, about bipartisan efforts to reach an infrastructure deal, according to an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations.
The Problem Solvers group has agreed to $761.8 billion in new spending over eight years as part of $1.2 trillion plan, according to a draft obtained late Tuesday by The Associated Press. The one-page draft does not include any proposed ways to pay for the package.
Gottheimer is also working with Cassidy and Sinema from the senators' group, the aide said.
With the narrowly split House and the 50-50 Senate, the White House faces political challenges pushing its priorities through Congress with Democratic votes alone. Biden's party holds a slight majority in the Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris can break a tie.
The special budget rules could provide Biden with an alternative path, particularly in the Senate, because they allow legislation to be approved with a 51-vote threshold, rather than the 60 votes typically needed to advance a bill past a filibuster — in this case, led by Republicans against the Biden package.
Democrats are watching warily as time passes and anxiety builds toward an agreement, with many lawmakers worried they are not fulfilling their campaign promises to voters who put the party in control of Congress and the White House.
During a private discussion of Democratic senators at lunch Tuesday, there were differing views over whether they should keep talking with Republicans or pursue an approach that would allow them to pass a bill on their own, through the budget reconciliation process.
Schumer told reporters afterward that Democrats are pursuing "a two-path approach."
The bipartisan talks led by Sinema with the other senators are underway, Schumer said, while the budget committee is preparing the legislation that would allow passage through the reconciliation process.
"It may well be that part of the bill that is passed will be bipartisan, and part of it will be in reconciliation," he said. "But we're not going to sacrifice bigness and boldness."
The president is expected to engage with lawmakers while he sets out this week on his first foreign trip for an economic summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations in Europe.


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Creamy dreamy horseradish asparagus burger with sweet and tangy red onion marmalade
1 ¼ lbs Angus ground chuck
1 ¼ lbs Angus ground brisket
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
Sweet and Tangy Red Onion Marmalade
2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 cups thinly sliced red onions
½ cup sundried tomatoes in oil, chopped
½ cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
12 slices thick cut apple smoked bacon
Creamy Dreamy Asparagus Spread
2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
10 Asparagus spears
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
8 ounces boursin garlic and herb cheese
2ounces whipped cream cheese
2 scallions thinly chopped
2 tablespoon prepared horseradish
Vegetable oil for seasoning the grill
6 fresh Kaiser rolls, sliced in half
3 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 cups baby arugula
6 (1/4-inch-thick) large tomato slices
Preheat a gas grill to a medium-high setting.
To prepare the patties, add the ground chuck, ground brisket, salt, pepper, mustard, onion, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and horseradish to a large mixing bowl. Combine the ingredients, while handling the meat as little as possible to avoid compacting. Form the mixture into six patties, slightly larger than the size of the buns. Loosely wrap the patties in plastic wrap and set aside to keep cool until ready to grill.
To prepare the compote, slice the onions into thin slices and set aside. Warm the olive oil in a 12-inch fireproof skillet on the grill. Add the onions and sauté, stirring frequently, until caramelized, 20 to 25 minutes; avoid burning the onions by adjusting the skillet location away from the direct heat. Low heat and longer cooking time allow the natural sugars to come out and not burn the onions. Add the sundried tomatoes and sauté for an additional 10 minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar and horseradish and continue cooking until the balsamic vinegar has been absorbed into the onion mixture. Transfer the compote to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and then aluminum foil to keep warm.
To prepare the bacon, preheat a skillet on the grill. Add bacon to the skillet and cook until golden brown on each side. Remove bacon and seal in aluminum foil.
To prepare the asparagus spread, first trim the back end hard part of the asparagus spear. Place the asparagus on a plate and drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper. Place the asparagus on the grill and cook for 5-8 minutes, constantly turning a quarter turn to avoid burning. When asparagus has nice grill marks, remove and place on a cutting board. Dice the asparagus tips and reserve in a bowl. Rough chop the remainder of the asparagus and place in a food processor with the boursin cheese, cream cheese, chopped scallions, and horseradish. Lightly process the mixture to combine all ingredients. Remove the mixture and lightly fold in the reserved asparagus tips. Cover mixture and reserve for later use.
When the grill is ready, brush the grill rack with vegetable oil and place the patties on the grill. Cook the patties, turning only once, until done to preference, 5 to 6 minutes on each side for medium. When the patties are ready, remove and place on a tray and loosely cover with foil to keep warm.
While the patties are cooking, prepare the buns by slicing in half and brushing olive oil on the cut side of each bun. Once the patties are removed from the grill, lightly toast the buns on the grill for approximately 20 seconds.
To assemble the burger, spread a small portion of asparagus spread on the bottom bun. Add equal portions of the arugula and top with a slice of tomato and then the burger patty. Add a small portion of the asparagus spread on top of the patty and top with two slices of bacon broken into 4 pieces (2 each way). Add the top half of the bun. The heat from the burger and buns will slightly melt that spread giving a creamy dreamy texture.


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
Intel confirms 64-bit P4 5xx desktop launch
All P4s to sport EM64T
Intel has confirmed that it is updating its Pentium 4 5xx family this quarter, adding support for 64-bit addressing and processing. The new chips will not ship until 10 June.
The Pentium 4 5x1 series replaces today's 5x0 P4s, Intel reveals in a document sent to its customers and seen by The Register. It's all quite straightforward: the 570, for example, will become the 571, the extra unit in the chip's model number representing the result of the addition of EM64T. The clock speed - 3.8GHz - remains the same, as do the frontside bus speed (800MHz) and the L2 cache size (1MB).
Each chip in the family will retain its original CPU ID code, too. However, motherboards will require a BIOS update to add support for 64-bit operation, if they don't have it already.
Interestingly, Intel said in a separate document that is also renaming the P4 505 as the 506, again because of the addition of EM64T support. However, there's no 505 on the company's price list. It's a 2.66GHz part that unlike other 5x1 P4s only runs a 533MHz FSB, and so far as we can tell is only available as a boxed product.
The 5x1 P4s appeared in Intel roadmaps earlier this year. Comments from Intel sources had led us to believe the chips might also include support for the company's Virtualisation Technology (VT), but there's no indication of this in the chip maker's note to customers. ®
Related stories
Intel kills 64-bit Pentium 4s
Intel sees virtualization as key to child-proof PCs
P4 to get Virtualisation Tech before dual-cores do
Intel drops 'Vanderpool' handle
Intel to bring 64-bit to P4, Celerons in Q2


text:
Bears' coaching search adds 13th candidate
OK, so now it looks like Phil Emery is just showing off.
Emery has expanded the list of known candidates to coach the Bears to a lucky (or, depending on the final decision, unlucky) 13.
The latest, according to Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune, is Bears special-teams coordinator Dave Toub.
Toub joins Vikings linebackers coach (and Hall of Fame Bears linebacker) Mike Singletary as the latest candidates to replace Lovie Smith.
Other candidates include Broncos offensive coordinator Mike McCoy, Montreal Alouettes coach Marc Trestman, Texans offensive coordinator Rick Dennison, Colts offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, Falcons special-teams coordinator Keith Armstrong, Buccaneers offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan, Saints offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, Cowboys special-teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis, Packers offensive coordinator Tom Clements, Seahawks offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, and Vikings special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer.
Some within the league have been grumbling about the breadth of Emery's search, suspecting that he's simply trying to pick brains, Al Davis-style.


text: All requests should be addressed to listserv at yuma.acns.colostate.edu. WELCOME The Phycological Society of America has established a subscription list on the Internet using ListServ at Colorado State University to facilitate conducting society related business and other functions among its members. Only PSA members were included in the initial subscription list, and this initial subscription list contains all PSA members for whom correct E-mail addresses are known. The Executive Committee decided at this year's meeting that memberhsip on this list will not be restricted to PSA members and non-members are welcome to join. The PSA list is intended to facilitate communication among members in conducting society business more efficiently and to promote interactions among members by sending announcements, requests for abstracts, job opportunities, new book descriptions, news of colleagues, informational questions, registration information and forms for meetings, and possibly abstracts of the annual meeting. Currently there are more than 590 members on our list. Approximately 280 PSA members also subscribe to Algae-L, so there is some redundancy. However, membership is not obligatory, and any member can subscribe or unsubscribe at any time by following the simple instructions provided in the information section of this message. Instructions on sending messages are also provided. Please save these instructions for future reference. The list is not moderated (censored), therefore some self restraint should be exercised in your comments and replies. ListServ is a computer program which provides a mechanism for distributing mail messages to a group of people sharing a common interest. Furthermore, ListServ distribution lists are an effective way to manage dynamic mailing lists of a large number of recipients. Once a list is established anyone on the list can send a message and thus this service becomes interactive. List subscribers have a convenient way to make announcements, to poll members about a certain topic, to ask questions, to promote events, books or new products, or to participate in any discussions regarding a topic proposed by any member. If you know of any PSA members or non-members who have e-mail but may not be subscribers to this list, we would appreciate your cooperation by informing these individuals about our list and how they can subscribe. INSTRUCTIONS 1. Subscribing. Send an E-mail message to: ListServ at ColoState.EDU Your e-mail message does not need a subject, it must be in the body of the message and contain only one line as follows. subscribe PSA firstname lastname For example: subscribe PSA Jane Doe 2. Unsubscribing. Send an E-mail message to: ListServ at ColoState.EDU Your e-mail message does not need a subject, it must be in the body of the message and contain only one line as follows: unsubscribe PSA 3. Sending messages. If you want to send a message to all subscribers of the list, send a message to : PSA at ColoState.EDU If you need to know whether your message was sent, and you wish to receive a copy of the message, you can add yourself as a cc: recipient to messages you send. 4. Responses to messages When you respond to a message, respond only to the person who sent the message, not ListServ or PSA. If you merely specify Reply, then everyone on the list will receive your message. So please be considerate and do not burden the entire listing with a response meant only for one person. 5. Problems. If you have any problems or questions, you may contact Paul Kugrens, who is the manager of this list. His e-mail address will always be listed in the heading. 6. If your E-mail address has changed or is different from the one that is on the Listserv, contact Paul Kugrens and he will make the change for you.


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All 1 entries tagged Austrian Film Commission
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February 02, 2008
European Film Institutions
European Film Institutions
Please link here to other hub reference pages on Kinoeye
Under Development
This page is under development however the available links may well prove useful to visitors so the page will made open. Links will be added on an ongoing basis.
The purpose of this entry is to provide links to the wide range of organisations working within a European context rather than just a national context which help to promote the making, distribution and exhibition of films in or about Europe. It will also include links to a range of organisations which classify and develop knowledge about the history and development of cinema in Europe. This will act as a basis for raising ideas about the issues of audience development for European films as films about Europe which transcend national boundaries. Without strong core audiences it will always be a problem for European cinema to create a clear identity beyond the bounds of the national. Please note that non-EU countries are also listed.
Austrian Film Commission
Communauté française de Belgique
Cinergie Belgium
Flanders Image
Kinoeye Belgian Cinema Page
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Czech Republic
Danish Film Institute
Guide to Shooting Film in Estonia
European Cinema Institutions
Cineuropa - Four Language Site for European Cinema
Compendium: European Cultural Policies & Trends site
Europa Charter for Media Literacy
European Association of Animation Film
European Film Children's Association
European Film Festivals
The fifth edition of the CROSSING EUROPE Film Festival Linz takes place from 22 to 27 April 2008.
Based in the European Capital of Culture 2009, the festival has been dedicated since 2004 to a young, headstrong and contemporary European auteur cinema. Over the course of six days CROSSING EUROPE offers its international guests and the local cinema audience around 150 hand-picked documentary and feature films from all over Europe.
Vilnius and Linz are cities that will become twin cultural capitals of Europe in 2009. Scanorama in partnership with the festival "Crossing Europe" started preparing a new continuous programme "Crossing Europe", which is showcasing the most interesting films of Eastern and Central European directors that won prizes at the Linz film festival. Both Scanorama and "Crossing Europe" are young, ambitious festivals, members of the Alliance of Central and East European Film Festivals, who pursued bold cooperation among themselves well in advance of 2009. The first swallow in "Crossing Europe" section was Sergej Stanojkovski's feature "Contact" (2005) that won the audience prize in Linz and was also screened at film festivals in Manheim-Heidelberg, San Paulo, Thessalonica, Belgrade, Sophia, Brooklyn, Bruxelles and other international locations.
Created in 1992, thanks to the financing from the MEDIA Programme of the European Union and of the Centre National de la Cinématographie, Europa Cinemas has become the first cinemas network with a mainly European programming.
The network provides a financial support to cinemas that commit themselves to the programming of a significant number of non-domestic European films and to the organisation of promotional activities concerning European films for young audiences.
Thanks to the support of Eurimages and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the activity of Europa Cinemas has extended to eastern European countries.
Thanks to the support of Euromed Audiovisuel of the European Union, the network has been set up in 12 Mediterranean countries, offering support to the promotion, distribution sector as well as to the exhibition of European and Mediterranean films.
Contacts - Board of Directors - Board of Management- Experts Committee - Objectives
• To increase the programming of European and Mediterranean films in cinema theatres,with non-national films taking priority.
• To encourage exhibitors' initiatives aimed at young audiences.
• To develop a network of cinema theatres to enable joint activities at an international level.
MEDIA is the EU support programme for the European audiovisual industry.
MEDIA co-finances training initiatives for audiovisual industry professionals, the development of production projects (feature films, television drama, documentaries, animation and new media), as well as the and promotion of European audiovisual works... more
The MEDIA 2007 Programme comprises a series of support measures for the European audiovisual industry focusing on:
The MEDIA programme is jointly run by the Information Society & Media Directorate General
- training professionals
- developing production projects
- distributing films and audiovisual programmes
- promoting films and audiovisual programmes
- supporting film festivals
Founded in 1989, the European Film Academy (EFA) currently unites 1,800 European film professionals with the common aim of promoting European film culture. Throughout the year, the EFA initiates and participates in a series of activities dealing with film politics as well as economic, artistic, and training aspects. The programme includes conferences, seminars and workshops, and a common goal is to build a bridge between creativity and the industry. These activities culminate in the annual presentation of the European Film Awards
The mandate the European Film Promotions or EFP has set itself includes the following:
- to increase the competitive opportunities for
European films in the international marketplace;
- to improve access for European film professionals
to the international marketplace;
- to contribute, where possible, to the opening of
new markets for European film;
- to enhance the distribution possibilities for European film;- to further share the accumulated knowledge and experience of the Association via its european wide network.
Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia
Created by the law of 25 October 1946, the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC) is a public administrative organization, set up as a separate and financially independent entity.
The centre comes under the authority of the ministry of culture and communication and Véronique Cayla is its director general.
The principal missions of the CNC are :
- regulatory
- support for the film, broadcast, video, multimedia and technical industries,
- promotion of film and television for distribution to all audiences
- preservation and development of the film heritage
Greek Film Centre
|The Greek Film Center is a corporation that belongs to the broader public sector, is supervised by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and subsidized by the state.
The GFC's basic goals are:
- the protection, support and development of the art of film in Greece
- the presentation, dissemination and promotion of Greek film productions both domestically and internationally
Kinoeye Theo Angelopoulos links page
The premiere of Land and Sons in January 1980 heralded the start of regular film production in Iceland. However, the history of Icelandic cinema is much older. Films were shown in Iceland for the first time in 1903 and shot in Iceland as early as in 1904.
Nacionālais kino centrs
This link is an English one
| Home page » Contact us » About the project » Sitemap » Lietuviškai »
Lithuanian Filmmakers Union
Institute of Documentary Film.
This is a Baltic Institution rather than a Lithuanian one. It is going under Lithuania as it relates to a Vilnius based conference.
Welcome to the Norwegian Film Institute
The tasks of the former Norwegian Film Fund, Norwegian Film Institute and Norwegian Film Development are now being transferred to the new Norwegian Film Institute. The organization began operation on 1 April 2008.
The new organization will be the state's administrative body for film policy and adviser on matters of film policy.
The Norwegian Film Institute has some 100 employees. It has an operating budget of NOK 100 million, and receives over NOK 300 million in public funding.
The Institute's Director is Nina Refseth.
For now, you can find information about the new organization's former areas of activity at the same sites as in the past. Click on the buttons below. You'll find information about the MEDIA Program here.
Media Education and Media Literacy in Russia: English Versions of Information
Cine y Audiovisuales
Swiss Films
United Kingdom
Logo of the British Film Institute
What we do
The BFI (British Film Institute) promotes understanding and appreciation of Britain's rich film and television heritage and culture. Established in 1933, the BFI runs a range of activities and services:


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IT MIGHT SEEM LIKE diabetes and oral health have little to do with each other, but this is not the case. When someone has gum disease and diabetes, each disease can make the other harder to manage. This is why we want to make sure all of our patients have the information they need to know about the relationship between diabetes and oral health problems.
The Basics Of Diabetes
Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects how the body makes and uses insulin, a crucial hormone that regulates blood glucose levels. When the pancreas can't produce insulin (type 1 diabetes) or the body can't use it properly (type 2 and gestational diabetes), this leads to hyperglycemia. What does this mean for the teeth and gums? Well, high blood sugar both weakens the immune system and feeds bad oral bacteria, leaving diabetics vulnerable to oral inflammation and tooth decay.
How Diabetes Affects Oral Health
By this point, it shouldn't come as a surprise that 22 percent of diabetics suffer from gum disease, ranging from gingivitis (inflammation) to periodontal disease (advanced gum disease), which threatens the health of the teeth, gums, and even the underlying bone. Bacteria from gum disease can also endanger overall health if it reaches the bloodstream, making blood sugar even harder to regulate.
Some of the symptoms to watch out for include red, swollen, or bleeding gums, gum recession, bad breath, and loosened teeth. Another diabetic symptom that increases the risk of developing gum disease is dry mouth, because saliva is crucial for regulating the mouth's pH and washing away bacteria and food particles.
While we're focusing on gum disease, uncontrolled diabetes can also lead to a variety of other oral health problems, including dry mouth, impaired or slower healing, burning mouth syndrome, salivary gland enlargement, more frequent and severe infections, and fungal infections.
Fighting Back Against Diabetes
The good news for our patients who struggle with diabetes is that good oral health is still within your grasp, and keeping your mouth healthy will also make your diabetes easier to control! By brushing twice a day for two minutes with a soft-bristled brush and fluoride toothpaste, flossing daily, avoiding smoking, and being careful with your sugar intake, you can keep your teeth and gums healthy.
The Role Of The Dentist
Just as crucial as your brushing and flossing routine is making regular trips to the dentist, and that might mean more than the standard two appointments a year. To play it safe, we recommend three or four yearly visits for diabetic patients. It is also essential that your doctor and your dental health care provider have the right information to be able to work as a team to keep you, your teeth, and your gums healthy.
We're here to help you in your fight for good oral health!
The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.