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Amazon US | Amazon UK | iBooks
Jude and I managed to salvage something beautiful from the war torn rubble of our lives, a blissful happiness that we paid for in blood. We fought our way here, leaving pieces of ourselves along the way. I thought this was the happily ever after in our twisted fairy tale, but I was wrong.
I may be free by definition. That freedom came at a heavy cost and my family is about to pay the price. At any moment, this façade will come crashing down. Hard. The life I've lived—that kind of world—it stains you, and no matter how hard you try, you can never escape its wrath. Not even in death.
Love. Fear. Loss.
We're walking a wire and all that's beneath us is destruction.
99c for a limited time Only!
Amazon US | Amazon UK
**Warning, this book is intended for mature audiences, as it contains sexual content and scenes of violence.***
"Yes it was wrong but it was SO fabulously right in every way that counts. We bloody LOVED Wrong." – TotallyBooked. 5 stars.
"HOLY HELL! This is one of the BEST romantic suspense novels I have read this year! WOW!" – I Love Storytime. 5 stars.
"This book blew my mind, sooooo fucking good!!" – Kitty Kats Crazy About Books. 5 stars.
My life was mapped out and planned to perfection. I knew exactly what I wanted and where I was going, until I was thrust into his world and ripped from mine. In the blink of an eye everything shattered, proving to be nothing more than a cheap illusion. Now I'm living in this twisted form of hell, where enemies and friends are one and the same. I thought I wanted perfection. Now I don't know what I want – perhaps not even my own freedom.
I'm the definition of wrong. I'm violent, I'm greedy, and I stop at nothing to win. I'm a notorious bookie and in my game paying with your life is not just a figure of speech. You lose, I collect. I take whatever you have. She's collateral for a debt, and if that debt's not paid someone will die. This should be just business, so
why can't I kill her? Everything is not always as it seems.
Lust. Blood. Lies.
Nothing this wrong should feel so right.
Jude Pearson could just as well kill me as kiss me most days. He was my captor, my living hell, and yet, he became my saviour, my heart. Stupid. He's heartless, conditioned to feel nothing, and so I ran…straight into the clutches of his enemy. Joe Campbell wants Jude to suffer, and I just became a pawn in a very dangerous game.
Joe has broken me in every way, everything that I once was stripped away, and in its place is festering hatred and a rage so cold I feel nothing else. I have one purpose. Revenge.
Love makes you weak; it makes you irrational. She was collateral, completely innocent when she was unwillingly dragged into my corrupt world. With the damage I'd
already caused her, I couldn't let her love me, so I let her go, and now…he has her.
No matter where she is, she will always be mine. This man has taken every-fucking-thing from me, and he has the last thing that matters to me. I will kill him. Slowly. Joe Campbell better run because the devil is fucking coming for him.
Sometimes two wrongs can make a right.
Our Wrath binds us, but it may also break us.
LP Lovell
Lauren Lovell is an indie author from England.
She suffers from a total lack of brain to mouth filter and is the friend you have to explain before you introduce her to anyone, and apologise for afterwards.
Lauren is a self-confessed shameless pervert, who may be suffering from slight peen envy.
LP loves to hear from readers so please get in touch.
Stevie J. Cole
Stevie J. Cole lives deep in the woods of Alabama with her husband and two precious daughters. She studied Epidemiology concentrating on cancer research but has always had a passion for writing. Some of her stories will strip you bare, some will give you nightmares, but the one thing she can promise is that she will always give you stories that make you feel.
Raw. Gritty. Love.Because sometimes characters need to be flawed.
P.S. Stevie's greatest fear is the impending zombie apocalypse. Think about it:
swarming armies of decaying, oozing corpses stumbling around with clicking
teeth, trying to eat your face. Nothing about that is good. NOTHING!


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Punked Checker Purple Drop Down Downhill Longboard
Regular price $ 98.94 USD
Estimated delivery date between: Saturday, October 7 and Thursday, October 12.
Product Description
The complete checker drop down Longboard is designed to provide with the rider with a lower center of gravity since the foot platform sits lower than the trucks.
The Drop Down deck is capable of achieving high speed and is perfect for Downhill riding due to its no flex board. This great checker pattern deck can be found in multiple color variations including blue, red, green, purple, white, pink, yellow, orange, and silver checkers. This is the checker purple longboard complete and ready to ride.
- Graphic: Checker Purple
- Deck Size: 41.25" Long x 10" Wide
- Wheel Base: 33"
- Construction: 9-Ply Maple
- Concave: High
- Flex: None
- Wheels: Speed Cruiser 70x52mm Solid Wheels, 78A Hardness
- Trucks: 9.675" HD7 Heavy Duty Trucks, 180mm Hanger, Aluminum Alloy
- Bearings: Abec 7 Chrome Bearings
- Hardware: 1.5"
- Risers: 8mm Risers
- Griptape: Black Widow Premium Grade 80A Black Griptape
- Comes fully assembled and ready to ride right out of the box!
- Recommend to adjust the wheels/trucks first before each riding.
- Note: Colors and graphics may vary slightly from image
Product code: YO-GCDD004
Free Shipping on orders over $99.99* - only for a limited time.
Usually ships in 2-5 Business days. Add 2-7 days for US delivery. We ship to all lower 48 USA states.
Usually ships in 2-5 Business days. Add 2-7 days for US delivery. We ship to all lower 48 USA states.
Disclaimers. Due to the many variations in phones, monitors, and browsers, the colors in pictures might be slightly different than on the final product. The pictures reflect the product as best as we can. However, sometimes components or color combinations are not available. Manufacturers reserve the right to substitute components on the longboard completes without notice which may alter the descriptions above. The substitution will always happen with equal or better-quality components. Sometimes a complete longboard is shown, whereas the offer is for a board only or vice versa, which is highlighted in the description.

subset: commoncrawl


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Negotiate the Deal You Want and Make Your Sales Manager Happy
One-hour, Live Online Presentation
Once the prospect wants to buy your proposal as much as you want to sell it, a negotiation situation may develop. The client wants the lowest price and most favorable terms. You want the best price and best terms for the station. There are proven strategies and tactics for coming to an agreement… and doing it with low stress. Join RAB's Brandeis Hall to learn negotiation techniques and get tools to help you improve your negotiations:
Date: Tuesday December 10, 2013


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The Department of Veterans Affairs has failed to provide key information to Congress and the public that shows the agency's ability to quickly provide service-related benefits has virtually collapsed under President Barack Obama.
Internal VA documents, obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting and authenticated by the agency, reveal that delays newly returning veterans face before receiving disability compensation and other benefits are far longer than the agency has publicly acknowledged. The documents also offer insight into some of the reasons for those delays.
The agency tracks and widely reports the average wait time: 273 days. But the internal data indicates that veterans filing their first claim, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, wait nearly two months longer, between 316 and 327 days. Those filing for the first time in America's major population centers wait up to twice as long – 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles and 542 days in Chicago.
The ranks of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009, the first year of Obama's presidency, to 245,000 in December – an increase of more than 2,000 percent.
As a candidate, Obama had promised to revamp a "broken VA bureaucracy," but the documents reveal that many of the administration's attempts – including efforts to boost staffing and computerize claims processing – have fallen apart in the implementation. Calls to the White House press office were not returned.
Despite agency promises to eliminate the claims backlog by 2015, the internal documents show the VA expects the number of veterans waiting – currently about 900,000 – to continue to increase throughout 2013 and top a million by the end of this month.
"I'm not surprised at the number of us that kill ourselves," said Lincoln Capstick, an unemployed Iraq War veteran in Indiana, where the average wait on new claims is 612 days.
Capstick said his electricity was cut off three times while he waited for the VA to grant a disability claim for traumatic brain injury, headaches and a variety of leg and knee injuries sustained when a military contractor's SUV ran him over in the desert near the Iraq-Kuwait border.
"There were periods where I thought of killing myself," Capstick said. "You just get so hopeless." According to the VA, 22 veterans commit suicide every day.
In Washington, U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, said he was not surprised that the VA's internal documents painted a much gloomier picture than the agency's public pronouncements.
"One of the biggest oversight challenges we've encountered is just getting VA to engage in an honest conversation," Miller said.
The agency's biggest problem, he said, is a "culture of complacency."
The VA downplayed the importance of the internal documents.
The agency still intends to meet its goal of resolving nearly all claims within four months by 2015, VA spokesman Joshua Taylor said. He blamed the skyrocketing delays on a 50 percent increase in the number of claims filed, a combination of an uptick in returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and Vietnam veterans requesting compensation for illnesses newly connected to Agent Orange. The VA also has made it easier for veterans to file claims for PTSD and Gulf War illness, Taylor said.
In a separate emailed statement, the agency also argued that it "consistently provides our numbers during Congressional hearings and briefings. What is not available online or in these reports is generally available on request."
The VA typically takes months to respond to the Center for Investigative Reporting's Freedom of Information Act requests, often stating that information requested must be manually tabulated. Yet the internal documents show the agency tracks its performance at an extremely granular level of detail. The agency also failed to provide this information to attorneys in Veterans for Common Sense v. Shinseki, a federal class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The lawsuit died when the Supreme Court refused to review the appeal in January.
"They have a lot more detailed information than we were led to believe," said Ryan Hassanein, a partner at Morrison & Foerster, the law firm that represented the veterans.
Lawmakers who have been working on the issue said they hadn't seen the documents before.
Rep. Mike Thompson, a California Democrat and Vietnam veteran, joined other members of the Northern California delegation to meet with senior VA officials Feb. 27 to discuss the issue. He said VA officials have told him they are making slow but steady progress.
"I'm not going to be an apologist for the president or for the VA," Thompson said, "but this was a long festering mess when they came in. I think they have made improvements."
The VA's internal documents tell a different story. They show that the average wait time for veterans filing disability claims fell by more than a third under President George W. Bush, even as more than 320,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans filed disability claims.
The documents show delays escalated only after Obama took office and have more than doubled since, as 455,000 more returning veterans filed their claims.
Hearings on the backlog are planned in the House and Senate veterans' affairs committees, with the Senate hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
"VA is at a day of reckoning," said Paul Sullivan, a Gulf War veteran and former senior VA project manager who now works for the Washington, D.C.-area law firm Bergmann & Moore. The agency, he said, "needs to publicly come forward and disclose the severity of the claims delay and error crisis, because Congress can't fix it until VA is forthcoming about all their symptoms."
The documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting shed light on why the agency is failing to make headway despite public and political pressure and its own promises.
They show that while the agency has spent four years and $537 million on a new computer system, 97 percent of all veterans' claims remain on paper. Since those numbers were tallied by the agency in January, the VA's two top technology officers have announced their resignations, saying they had accomplished their goals.
On Feb. 27, the agency's principal deputy undersecretary for benefits also announced he was quitting.
In interviews, workers at five VA offices said they were exhausted by the ever-growing piles of paperwork, with files becoming so thick that employees frequently have asked veterans to resend medical records or military service documents simply because the claims workers could not locate them.
Cindy Indof, who handles appeals at the VA office in Columbia, S.C., said it is not uncommon for her to see the same medical information in a veteran's claim repeated two or even three times. The growth in paperwork, she said, is compounded by a points system that gives performance bonuses to workers for sending letters to veterans but not for spending extra time reading a claims file.
Taylor, the VA spokesman, said the computer system would be launched at all regional offices by the end of the year. "The transition is under way. We're at the midpoint. We're not at the endpoint yet," he said.
The agency's public pronouncements about hiring 3,300 additional claim processors since 2010 to cope with the influx of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans also were misleading, the documents show.
Because of turnover and the loss of more than 2,000 workers temporarily paid through stimulus funds, staffing at the VA's 58 regional offices actually has increased by fewer than 300 people since September 2010 – even as the volume of new claims increased dramatically.
At a majority of the regional offices – including those in New York; Chicago; Los Angeles; Waco, Texas; and Oakland, Calif. – the VA employs fewer people than it did two years ago, according to the VA's internal documents.
"You have a workforce that is completely burnt out, and there is no help in sight," said Darren Foster, a Gulf War veteran who worked for the VA for 15 years before leaving in October. He now processes workers' compensation claims for the Labor Department, in an office that he says is more efficient and better managed.
"It was a hard decision to leave," Foster said. "I love helping veterans. But I just couldn't do it anymore."
This story was edited by Amy Pyle and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee.


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Get the best of the Seychelles on this fantastic 10-day, island-hopping adventure; you'll visit no fewer than three of its dazzling islands - Praslin, La Digue and Mahe. Begin your island-hopping with a flight to spectacular Praslin, the Seychelles' second largest island. Enjoy its pristine beaches, grab a treatment at the Spa Centre and relax by the largest swimming pool in the archipelago.
Next, transfer by ferry to one of the Seychelles' smallest islands - La Digue. Enjoy walks along its sandy beaches, rejuvenate at the Eden Rock Wellness Centre and, for something a bit different, explore the island by ox taxi! Then fly back to the island of Mahe for your final few nights in this stunning paradise. Make use of the impressive amenities of the Four Seasons Resort as you relax in your villa's plunge pool or on your private deck. Take a complimentary yoga class, go for a run round the lagoon, or grab some snorkelling gear and enjoy the clear, turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean.


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With no one else on the ballot, state media reported Monday that supreme leader Kim Jong-un was not only elected to the highest legislative body in North Korea, he won with the unanimous approval of his district, which had 100 per cent turnout.
North Koreans went to the polls on Sunday to approve the new roster of deputies for the Supreme People's Assembly, the country's legislature. The vote, more a political ritual than an election by Western standards, is generally held once every five years.
Though results for the other seats in the assembly had not yet been announced, North Korea's media quickly reported Kim had won in his district — located on the symbolic Mount Paekdu — without a single dissenting ballot.
In the previous elections, 687 deputies were chosen. This is first time the election had been held since Kim inherited power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011.
"This is an expression of all the service personnel and people's absolute support and profound trust in supreme leader Kim Jong-un as they single-mindedly remain loyal to him," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
Voters in the election have no choice who to vote for — there is only one candidate's name on the ballot for each district. Instead, they have the choice of voting yes or no, and according to official accounts virtually all choose yes. North Korea also typically puts turnout nationwide at over 99 per cent.
Analysts will be closely watching to see if the deputies this time around reflect a generational change as Kim looks to solidify his power and replace older cadres with younger, more loyal ones.
The Supreme People's Assembly usually meets only rarely, often only once a year. In practice it has little power and when it is not in session, its work is done by a smaller and more powerful body called the Presidium.
The new parliament was expected to meet next month. No date has been officially announced.
To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.


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- Home
- Government
- Board Calendars, Deadlines and Submission Req
Board Calendars, Deadlines & Submission Requirements
The meeting calendar has been reviewed and approved by the Board of Selectmen, Planning Board, Zoning Board and Staff Review Committee. The calendar for each year is established in November or December of the previous year.
The Deadline Calendars should be referred to when planning a subdivision or site plan submission for consideration before the Planning Board or Staff Review Committee or an appeal before the Zoning Board of Appeals.
Site and Subdivision Application Deadlines
Complete Site and Subdivision applications must be submitted to the Planning & Development Office no later than 3 p.m. on the application due date (earlier submissions are encouraged). This is necessary so the Planning Office can process the initial application and send required notice to abutters. Please call the Planning Office with questions or special circumstances as we may be able to accommodate your situation if provided notice.
Site and Subdivision Required Documentation Upon Submission
Complete Site and Subdivision applications mean the following information must be provided to the Planning Office:
- Application Form - all pages complete and signed
- 12 copies of all materials required for Planning Board submissions
- 7 copies of all materials required for Staff Review Committee submissions
- A check made payable to the Town of Wells for the application fee and initial escrow deposit (The Planning Office can help calculate your fee by contacting the office prior to submission if needed)
- Copies of Right, Title and Interest in the property or properties involved in the application (i.e. Deed, Purchase & Sale Agreement & any letters of authorization from the owner granting permission to an applicant to pursue the application)
- Copies of the site plan or subdivision plan for Planning Board applications to be provided in 1 of the following ways:
3 plans measuring 24 inches by 36 inches plus 9 plans measuring 11 inches by 17 inches; or 12 plans measuring 24 inches by 36 inches. Please have plans pre-folded.
- Copies of the site plan for Staff Review Committee applications in 1 of the following ways:
3 plans measuring 24 inches by 26 inches plus 5 plans measuring 11 inches by 17 inches; or 8 plans measuring 24 inches by 36 inches. Please have plans pre-folded.
- An email or CD of the subdivision plan or site plan and all supporting information in PDF form
Submissions received in time for a scheduled meeting are not guaranteed placement on an upcoming agenda. The Planning Office makes a best effort to process all applications as quickly as possible.
Zoning Board of Appeals Application Deadlines
You may apply for an appeal/permit at Town Hall, Code Enforcement Office, Monday through Friday between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. If you choose to file on the deadline date, please note that applications are accepted only until noon on that day.
You will be sent a letter confirming the time and date of the scheduled meeting along with an Agenda.
Zoning Board of Appeals Required Documentation Upon Submission
- Copy of Appeal application.
- Cover letter addressed to the Zoning Board of Appeals stating what you want to do.
- Plot plan showing the site and location of all structures, existing and proposed, in relation to the lot lines and, if applicable. Indicate parking. Lot size and setback dimensions must be shown.
- Floor plan, if applicable, showing dimensions of existing and proposed rooms and /or structures.
- Copy of the tax map (obtained in the Assessors Office) with the property highlighted.
- Photos of property.
- Deed, sales agreement, lease or intent to lease.
- Owner, lessee, prospective purchase or legal representation must sign the application.
- A letter from the property owner giving permission to the application to represent the property if applicable.
- A list of all direct abutters located within 100 feet of the property, along with their mailing addresses.
- All plans must also be folded neatly with each packet and banded.
If additional information is needed to complete the packet for the Zoning Board of Appeals you will be notified. Please make sure you include a contact phone number on your cover letter. If we cannot contact you, the item may be tabled until the next regular meeting.


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I am a recent graduate of Drexel University's MSLIS program building on four years of coordinator experience at West Deptford Free Public Library and a BA in Business from Rutgers University.
I currently serve as the Adult Services, Technology Librarian of this medium-sized, friendly municipal library serving a communityof approximately 25,000 people. I consider it my personal mission to keep the library from being viewed as merely a depository of books, but rather a vital component of the community serving diverse user groups. I could continue my advertisement for the innovative public library, but will defer in consideration of the members reading this post. I invite you all to check out the variety of programming efforts at WDFPL. I like to try new and different types of programming that push the envelope in partnership formation. The video clips at the bottom of the Adult Services page can also be found on YouTube. Programming has expanded thanks in part to grants secured over the past few years.
Technological advances in library and information service continue to provide opportunities for creative collaboration as Technology Librarian. In early 2006, the library migrated Internet service and web hosting to align itself with the newly revised New Jersey Library hub grant project. I also redesigned and currently maintain the library website www.westdeptford.lib.nj.uswith departmental input. This arrangement releases me from solo development through departmental delegation, while retaining artistic control.
I look forward to working with some very talented and creative people over the next few months and am very thankful to ALA for providing the opportunity to do so.
AIM: cwnovelideas


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Official description: "The Zalman CNPS FX100-Cube is fanless and noiseless CPU cooler, which does not draw dust or generate vibration due to its passive operation." Unofficial description: LOOK AT THIS FREAKING MONSTER HEATSINK!
Vizio's Latest TVs Go All Quantum
Made of copper and aluminum, this 1.94-pound (880 gram) cooling thingamajig works with 77W TDP (Thermal Design Power) processors, "including Intel's i7-3770K." I admire those who still build their own PCs. Respect. [Fanlesstech]


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Editor's Note – It is interesting to ponder why the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MeK) is still listed on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations while the Taliban are not. In 2009, the European Union de-listed the MeK, yet they remain on the list.
One wonders why a pro-western group, wrongly added to the list by the Clinton Administration in 1997; a legitimate resistance group fighting to overthrow Iran, a group who has been very instrumental in aiding the west against Iran, is not rewarded for its great work. It is asserted by many that the Clinton Administration did so to appease and aid talks with Iran back then, but it certainly did not work.
Now it is difficult to understand why the Hillary Clinton led State Department will not act positively on behalf of the MeK. Why? Maybe because they want the law to stand so they can go after certain people. When we weigh the decisions of the Holder DoJ on who gets investigated versus those allowed to walk off Scott-free it defies credulity. But why Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs who was appointed by Clinton in 1997, why Louis Freeh, also appointed by Clinton in 1993 to head the FBI?
Well, it appears that anyone defending an arch-enemy of Iran is fair game. How does that add up in our current war of words on Iran? Perhaps its a ploy to show that they are acting this way to off set the public furor over other non-investigations, or partisan investigations the Holder DoJ is conducting. There seems to be no rhyme or reason.
Ex-US officials investigated over speeches to Iranian dissident group on terror list
By Michael Isikoff, National investigative correspondent
Speaking firms representing ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton have received federal subpoenas as part of an expanding investigation into the source of payments to former top government officials who have publicly advocated removing an Iranian dissident group from the State Department list of terrorist groups, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
The investigation, being conducted by the Treasury Department, is focused on whether the former officials may have received funding, directly or indirectly, from the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, thereby violating longstanding federal law barring financial dealings with terrorist groups. The sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said that speaking fees given to the former officials total hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"This is about finding out where the money is coming from," an Obama administration official familiar with the probe said. "This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism."
Freeh and Shelton are among 40 former senior U.S. government officials who have participated in a public lobbying campaign – including appearing at overseas conferences and speaking at public rallies – aimed at persuading the U.S. government to remove the MEK from the terror list.
First-class flights
Many of the speakers have received fees of about $30,000 or more per talk and first-class flights to European capitals, according to two sources familiar with the arrangements.
Edward Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and ex-Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, whose speaking firm also received a subpoena, has received $160,000 over the past year for appearing at about seven conferences and rallies, including some in Paris, Brussels and Geneva, according to his office. (Rendell is a contributor to MSNBC TV.)
The former officials have said they were told the fees came from wealthy American and foreign supporters of the MEK, not the group itself — and they resent any suggestion they are abetting a terrorist group.
"We're all pretty miffed," Shelton told NBC News. "None of us involved in this would say a good word about anyone suspected of being a terrorist." But Shelton said that he's "pretty passionate" that the MEK represents a legitimate resistance group fighting to overthrow "America's number one enemy" — the Iranian government.
Shelton said that he was informed by Keppler Speakers, the agency that handles his speaking engagements, that it had been subpoenaed for records of talks he has given over the past year at conferences and rallies sponsored by the MEK. He said Freeh told him that Greater Talent Network, the firm that handles the former FBI director's speaking engagements, also received a subpoena.
See the slideshow on Iranian everyday life here.
Freeh did not respond to requests for comment. (A Keppler executive also did not respond. Reached by phone, Tom Marcosson, an executive vice president of Greater Talent, declined to comment.)
But Rendell told NBC News that he received an email this week from Freeh's office alerting him and more than three dozen other former senior officials that subpoenas were being issued by the Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control. The email asked that the former senior officials contact Freeh and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Freeh and Mukasey, who have been among the leaders in the campaign to "delist" the MEK, are hiring a lawyer to represent all former senior officials caught up in the investigation, the email from Freeh's office said, according to Rendell.
Why Iran wants to beef up Zimbabwe's military
John Sullivan, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the department does not comment on "potential" investigations. But he added in an email: "The MEK is a designated terrorist group, therefore U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with or providing services to this group. The Treasury Department takes sanctions enforcement seriously and routinely investigates potential violations of sanctions law."
It is unclear how far Treasury Department officials intend to push the probe — or why they chose to launch it now, more than a year after the lobbying campaign began. But NBC News has obtained one possible clue: A small Pennsylvania-based speakers firm called Speakers Access wrote an email in September inviting a Washington based national security expert to speak at a conference in Geneva, Switzerland "on behalf of our client, National Council of Resistance of Iran, Foreign Affairs Committee." The National Council of Resistance is considered by the Treasury Department to be one of the "aliases" of the MEK and is itself designated as a terror group.
The email was later turned over to the FBI and other U.S. officials. The Speakers Access executive who wrote the email, who asked not to be identified, said the email was a "mistake" and that the client was actually another organization — "the Committee for Human Rights in Iran," which is not on the terror list but which has the same contact in Paris as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
The executive said Speakers Access has since ceased any dealings with either group and turned over all its records on the matter after receiving a Treasury Department subpoena months ago.
The investigation comes at a time of intense internal debate about the MEK, in part spurred by assertions it could prove a useful ally in pressuring the Iranian government to suspend its nuclear program. NBC News reported recently that MEK operatives, trained by the Israeli Mossad, are believed by some U.S. intelligence officials to have been involved in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists — a report that the group has denied as "absolutely false."
Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials say
U.S. officials say that the MEK has a long history of terrorist acts, including bombings and assassinations, against Iranian leaders during the 1980s and that at least six Americans died in such attacks. The group — which was once allied with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — is also viewed warily because of the slavish devotion of its followers to its Paris based leader, Maryan Rajavi.
Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describes what Iranian leaders believe is a close relationship between Israel's secret service, the Mossad, and the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
"The MEK has a crazy edge to it," said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center and an NBC News consultant. "It always struck me as a cult as much as a terrorist group." (A spokesman for the MEK did not respond to an email request for comment.)
But the group's supporters say it has long since publicly renounced violence and that Rajavi has proclaimed the group's adherence to democratic principles. "They want the mullahs out of Iran and they want to replace them with a constitution based on the Declaration of Independence," said Shelton.
The group has also generated sympathy over the plight of its followers at Camp Ashraf, a paramilitary camp on the Iran-Iraq border, where they have been detained – and until recently protected – by the U.S military since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. U.S. officials have been seeking the group's cooperation to resettle the estimated 2,500 remaining MEK members at Camp Ashraf to a new facility near the Baghdad airport, where they can be processed by the United Nations as refugees and resettled elsewhere.
But the process has stalled – in part over disputes about the conditions of transfer – and MEK advocates say they fear the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, at Iran's urging, may move in to slaughter the group's members. "This could be a humanitarian disaster," said Rendell.
Rendell said that there have been weekly conference calls among a "core group" of former U.S. senior officials participating in the lobbying campaign, organized by Freeh, to talk about ways to prod the State Department to remove the MEK from the terror list and protect its followers at Camp Ashraf. He identified this group as including former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean and Mukasey — all of whom have publicly spoken out on behalf of the MEK and spoken at its rallies.
Officials act as middle men
These weekly conference calls have also turned into back channel negotiations over the Camp Ashraf issue. In recent weeks, Rendell said, State Department Ambassador Daniel Fried, the special envoy for detainee issues, has joined the phone calls, urging the pro-MEK "core" members to pass along messages to MEK leaders in Paris, Rendell said.
"The core group talks to Freeh every week," he said. "It's Ridge, myself, Dean, Freeh, Mukasey. Shelton has joined us on occasion. … We were the ones that Fried asked to communicate with the MEK, telling them, 'This is the best deal you're going to get.' He will say, 'Listen, you guys have to persuade the MEK to do this. Tell them, OK, tell Paris, they have to persuade the people to get on the buses (at Camp Ashraf.) We then communicate [with the MEK]."
Fried declined comment. But a senior State Department official confirmed his participation in the calls as a means of communicating with MEK leaders in Paris — something U.S. officials are barred from doing — in order to work out a "peaceful" resolution over the conflict over Camp Ashraf.
Rendell said that he and other members of the core group have met with Rajavi in Paris and sent emails to her chief deputy, Farzin Hashemi, passing along Fried's messages. "The bottom line is, we all believe we are protecting people," he said.
But the bottom line for some U.S. officials is that the former government officials participating in the pro-MEK campaign are being paid handsomely for promoting a dubious cause sponsored by an officially designated terrorist group. Despite the public lobbying campaign, there is still deep suspicion about the MEK and its motives — and concerns that once its members leave Camp Ashraf, many of its followers will return to terrorism, said one senior official speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It's extraordinary that so many distinguished public servants would shill for a group that has American blood on its hands," the official said.


text:
Lebanon, written and directed by Samuel Maoz, is not just the year's most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of any kind I've seen in 2010. Actually, Lebanon — which won the Golden Lion at Venice, after being rejected by Berlin and Cannes — hardly seems like a debut, perhaps because it's based on a scenario Maoz had been replaying in his head for nearly 30 years.
It's evident that the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Israel's fifth and least defensible war, has had a remarkable re-emergence in the nation's film industry. Like Ari Folman's groundbreaking animation Waltz With Bashir before it, Lebanon is a film by a traumatized veteran. But where Waltz With Bashir is mainly concerned with the recollection of that trauma, Lebanon is predicated on restaging the traumatic event. Set, over the course of a 24-hour period, entirely inside an Israeli tank heading north on the war's first day, Maoz's cine memoir is at once political allegory and existential combat movie — Sartre's No Exit as directed by Sam Fuller.
Blunt, clamorous, and harrowing, Lebanon is also a formalist tour de force. As the Israeli soldiers never leave their tank, code-named Rhino, the movie is necessarily shot mainly in close-up and, except for the very end, all exteriors are scanned through the crosshairs of the tank's bombsight. The outside world is heard through the tank's steel plating or via crackling radio transmissions from distant headquarters. Individuals — a Syrian captive, a dying Israeli soldier, and, most often, the battle-hardened platoon leader Jamil — are intermittently lowered into, or lower themselves into, this moving dungeon. But for the four men inside, there is no escape.
Lebanon is pure cinema, although with its dramatic entrances and exits and constant ensemble chatter, it could have been staged as a play. The concept is unrelenting, but Maoz does take a few liberties in the service of his overall aesthetic strategy. Civilians occasionally stare directly into the bombsight; mayhem and casualties appear in fragmenting close-up. Still, this pragmatic stylization is invariably trumped by the emphasis on physical discomfort, constant stress, and unthinking panic.
Like the 1982 West German submarine drama Das Boot or Anthony Mann's Men in War — but even more so — Lebanon is a movie about a particular condition, less a suspenseful narrative than an immersive experience. There is no space for anything but the present moment inside the tank. The men's lack of training — or, more likely, its irrelevance — is made evident early, when the tank's increasingly befuddled commander argues with his high-strung childhood buddy about whose job is more crucial and whose turn it is to stand watch. (That the commander is the stupidest member of the squad comes with the territory.) The tank's driver responds negatively to pressure while the newly assigned gunner, Shmulik (Yoav Donat), named for the filmmaker, proves unable to fire at a living target.
Shmulik's paralysis results in at least one Israeli casualty (and this unnamed corpse becomes, for a time, the fifth inhabitant of the tank). Of course when Shmulik does, after much shaking, manage to squeeze the trigger next time, the results are appalling — although we will soon see worse, always through his eyes. (As the gunner, Shmulik has the only constant access to the bombsight.) The Israelis inflict brutal collateral damage on Lebanese civilians that is all the more appalling as a factor of their own fear.
As Rhino's mission appears increasingly irrational, Lebanon's visceral naturalism verges on the surreal. The tank stalls in the middle of a bombed-out Syrian-controlled town, resting in front of a travel agency — glimpsed posters of the Eiffel Tower and World Trade Center accentuating the stasis. Rhino's destination is named for a Riviera resort; reaching St.-Tropez, Jamil assures them, will be a simple "walk in the park." The war is rendered additionally fantastic by the evocative euphemisms — helicopters are "angels," a casualty is a "flower." Mixed emotions are illustrated in another way when, in the movie's lengthiest reference to life before the day-old war, Shmulik recounts a tale of adolescent sexual arousal developing out of a teacher's attempt to comfort him in the wake of his father's death.
Always on the verge of panic, the nervous soldiers frequently relieve themselves in a pan. Meanwhile, Rhino suffers its own stress; the tank drips oil and fills with detritus. Toward the end of the movie, the bombsight is cracked — as if in acknowledgment of a world beyond comprehension. Because none of the soldiers speak Arabic, they are oblivious to the dramatic confrontation between the ostensibly helpful Falangist, who is to guide them, and their Syrian prisoner. Harsh blasts of radio commands function as the voice of God — and well before the movie ends, God has abandoned them. Cramped, noisy, airless, and hot enough to boil piss, the tank is surrounded by invisible Syrians who set about terrorizing the Israelis by playing an eerie death tango. "I want to go home," one wails. "I want my mom!"
For some, this outburst is the movie's most disturbing aspect. What makes "the image of an Israeli soldier, agonizing and crying, so appealing to festival curators and audiences of the western world?" one Israeli critic wondered. For all its international accolades, Lebanon's domestic reception has apparently been mixed. (Unlike Waltz With Bashir and Joseph Cedar's Beaufort, also about the 1982 war, it did not win Israel's equivalent of the Oscar.) Conservative commentators saw the movie as bad for morale; on the left, Lebanon has been criticized for identifying with Israeli soldiers and objectifying their Arab victims. But what does this mean? The Lebanese civilians are subject to far more gruesome suffering than the soldiers while, in his justified hysteria, the Syrian POW inspires at least as much empathy as his Israeli captors. What Lebanon does not do is pretend to share any perspective other than that of Shmulik and his comrades.
Less "agonized and crying" than confined, confused, and utterly self-absorbed, the soldiers in Rhino are unwilling conscripts yearning for normality, ignorant of their enemy, misled by their superiors, and totally fixated on personal survival. Lebanon may be the movie's title, but, blindly plowing through everything in its path, the beleaguered tank is Israel.


text:
Work the Shell - Deal or No Deal!
I admit it, my kids and I often find ourselves at the local arcade playing video games. There seems to be two basic types of arcades nowadays: those where you play to earn free games and get the high score, and those that are ticket-based where doing well on a game produces tickets that you cash in for cheesy tchotchkes or incredibly cheap stuffed animals.
We tend to go to the latter, and one of the games that's caught my attention is a video version of the popular TV show Deal or No Deal. It got me thinking about odds and probability and how these games actually work.
The game is incredibly simple: you're told that there is a range of prizes hidden in briefcases, and you choose which to eliminate and win what's left in the last briefcase. It's not too exciting, except as you go along, you're offered the opportunity to take a specific cash prize instead of continuing the game.
On the TV show, there are 26 cases, and the prizes range from $0.01 to $1,000,000.00 in uneven jumps. Attractive models hold each case, and the game typically proceeds where the player guesses a bunch of cases to eliminate, in clusters. If the eliminated cases have low-value prizes, that's good—there is, therefore, a better chance of winning big bucks. If they have high-value prizes inside, well, that's not good.
After each set of cases is eliminated, the house offers the player a "deal" to stop playing the game—a payoff that's worth more than the lowest unidentified prize but obviously lower than the highest unidentified prize.
The prizes are 0.01, 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 and 750, and then the big values: 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 75,000, 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, 400,000, 500,000, 750,000 and 1,000,000.
Calculating the average payout, assuming you have an equal chance of picking each of the cases at the beginning of the game, is easy: add them up and divide by 26. The result is 131,477.54. If they offered me $130k instead of playing the game? Even though it's a bit lower than the average expected payout, I'd take it. Deal!
Let's say we're most of the way through the game though, and 20 of the possible prizes are knocked out. What's left are 0.01, 50, 300, 1,000 and 250,000. Your chance of picking the 250,000 prize case? One in five.
The expected payout is $50,270, and if that's what you're offered, it's significantly better than four of the five possible outcomes you face. My advice? Deal!
It turns out that there's some sort of random factor that's thrown in to the "deal", so in the game itself, they vary up or down a percentile value.
To experiment with this as a shell script (yeah, it only took me half the column to get to my first line of code), we need to work with arrays—something that's frankly a bit confusing. Here's how we could define the 26 briefcases:
declare -a cases=(0.01 1 5 10 25 50 75 100 200 300 400 500 750 1000 5000 10000 25000 50000 75000 100000 200000 300000 400000 500000 750000 1000000)
This might be the first time you've seen the declare statement in the shell. In this case, the -a flag declares the variable as being an array. Its usage, however, is not mandatory—arrays can be implicitly declared simply by using the array assignment syntax (a list of values inside parentheses).
You reference individual array elements with $var[index], but there's a twist because of how the shell parses content. What you need to do is actually wrap it with curly braces: ${var[index]}. Add a #, and you get the number of elements in the array, like this:
echo Total number of array elements is ${#cases[*]}
The value that'll be printed is 26, just what we want for Deal or No Deal. To see value #11, you could use ${cases[11]}, but that's wrong. Why? Because shell arrays are indexed starting at zero, so case #11 is actually ${cases[10]}, which, yeah, is pretty confusing.
Let's start by writing the snippet that can calculate expected payout before you have picked a single briefcase out of the collection:
for (( val=0 ; $val < ${#cases[*]} ; val+=1 )) ; do sum=$(( $sum+${cases[$val]} )) done echo sum = $sum, payout = $(( $sum / ${#cases[*]} ))
The bad news? It turns out that the 0.01 value really messes things up, as we can't do integer math with a non-integer value. So, because the 0.01 value actually proves not to influence things much, I'm going to replace it with the value 0. Here's the output:
sum = 3418416, payout = 131477
That's reasonably accurate. Our earlier calculation was 131,477.54. Close enough for gaming work!
Now, let's randomly pick out 22 of the cases, calculate the expected payout and offer a "deal" versus the values still remaining.
First, pick out some cases:
for (( picked=1 ; $picked <= 22 ; )) ; do pick=$(( RANDOM % 26 )) if [ ${cases[$pick]} -ne -1 ] ; then cases[$pick]=-1 picked=$(( $picked + 1 )) fi done
That gets all but four cases out of the game by setting their value to -1 (remembering that we're using 0 to represent $0.01). To see what's left in the game and calculate the expected payout of only the remaining values, do this:
for (( val=0 ; $val < ${#cases[*]} ; val+=1 )) ; do if [ ${cases[$val]} -ne -1 ] ; then echo \(Still in the game: a prize \ worth \$${cases[$val]}\) sum=$(( $sum+${cases[$val]} )) cnt=$(( $cnt+1 )) fi done echo Win \$$(( $sum / $cnt )) if you stop. \ Deal, or no deal\? exit 0
Run the code, and here's a sample output:
(Still in the game: a prize worth $50) (Still in the game: a prize worth $1000) (Still in the game: a prize worth $5000) (Still in the game: a prize worth $400000) Win $101512 if you stop. Deal, or no deal?
Would you take the deal, or try for the $400,000 case?
Dave Taylor has been involved with UNIX since he first logged in to the ARPAnet in 1980. That means that, yes, he's coming up to the 30-year mark now. You can find him just about everywhere on-line, but start here: www.DaveTaylorOnline.com.


text:
Storms, strong winds expected Thursday
High winds, cold expected
MADISON, Wis. — A winter storm for parts of northwest Wisconsin will mean storms and strong winds for southern Wisconsin on Thursday.
A low pressure system will move across Wisconsin Thursday afternoon and evening, strengthening as it moves through. Southern Wisconsin will be on the warm side of the storm, which will lead to rain showers and occasional thunderstorms, some of which could briefly become severe.
To the west of the storm, from Iowa into southern and eastern Minnesota and western and northern Wisconsin, precipitation will primarily be in the form of snow, some of which could be heavy at times. Snowfall amounts will range from less than 2 inches across southern Wisconsin to as much as 12 to 18 inches into southeastern Minnesota, north-central Iowa and northwestern Wisconsin.
Madison streets superintendent Chris Kelley said crews have been salting main streets, Madison Metro bus routes and streets near area hospitals because of the precipitation.
Crews started sanding operations on residential streets, and sanding the hills, curves and intersections to provide more traction.
As the cold front associated with this system swings through southern Wisconsin this evening, the system will be heading toward its peak intensity, and winds will increase to 20 to 35 mph, while gusting up to 50 mph or more overnight. Snow will develop from west to east during this evening and into the night, leading to 1-3 inches of fresh snow across the area by morning.
This could result in near blizzard conditions with near-zero visibility. Travel in the area will be very dangerous to nearly impossible in some areas.
A high wind watch was issued for much of southern Wisconsin as a result of these conditions.
Following the passage of the storm, unseasonably cold weather will return from the weekend into much of next week.
Near-record cold weather is expected by Wednesday with low temperatures approaching 10 below zero, daytime high temperatures staying below 10 above zero, and early morning wind chills dropping to as cold as 30 below zero.


text:
One call for cupcakes and what do you end up with? Well over what I could come up with in a year. Over 60 recipes, each different… lots of chocolate cupcakes, many fruity cupcakes, some spicy ones, and a few more that fit no category. Garrett and I were delighted (if slightly overwhelmed) with the response.
Enjoy browsing. I know I have. I will be hard pressed to pick just one recipe to recreate for a future post.
Note that cupcakes are organized into four categories (chocolate, fruit, spice, other) and that there are a handful of gluten-free recipes dispersed among them.
Black and Tan
By Mike of
A Tasty Pedia's Blog
Dr Pepper Cupcakes
by Kristen of
Dine and Dish
Cappuccino Chip Cupcakes with Mocha Frosting
By Rachel of
Rachel's Bite
Orange Chocolate Cupcake with Nutella Ganache Filling and Hazelnut Buttercream Frosting
By Sandra and Ernae of
The Sour and the Sweet
Chocolate Cheesecake Muffins
By Lexi of
Chocolate Espresso Cupcakes
By Mary of
Party Cupcakes
By Shini of
Chipotle Cinnamon Chocolate Cupcakes
By Garrett of
Vanilla Garlic
Triple Chocolate and Raspberry Cupcakes
By Janell the Great of
Janell the Great
Tiramisu Cupcakes
By Becky Brown of
Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes
By Margaret Meaney of
Chez M, en Retard
Mocha Cupcakes
By Haalo of
Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once
Grasshopper Cupcakes
By Freya of
Writing at the Kitchen Table
Turtle Cupcakes
By Raspil of
The Noisy Kitchen
Chestnut Cupcake with Chocolate Swirl Frosting
By Helen of
Orange Poppy Seed Cupcakes with Chocolate Whipped Cream
By Garrett of
Vanilla Garlic
Oh My Darling Clementine Cupcakes
By Christina of
Wishing on Clovers
Devil's Food Cupcake's
By Ellie of
Kitchen Wench
Chocolate Cupcakes with Berry Ganache & Cinnamon Buttercream
By Sarah of
Slighcarp and Grimshaw
Deep, Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Tangerine Honey Frosting
By Lis of
La Mia Cucina
Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes
By Anita & Cameron of
Married with Dinner
Chocolate Cupcakes w/ Quick Orange Frosting & Chocolate Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Buttercream
By Maggie of
The Maggpie
Cuba Libre Cupcakes
By Rachel of
Coconut and Lime
Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes
by Brendon of
Something in Season
Pumpkin and Mexican Chocolate with Toasted Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
by Posy of
Posy Party Cakes
Basic Vanilla Cupcakes with Two Kinds of Chocolate Buttercream
by Sheryl C. of
Crispy Waffle
S'mores Cupcakes
by Aoife of
Lemoncello Ricotta Cupcakes
By Cynth of
A Tasty Pedia's Blog
Almond Cupcakes with Guava Cream Cheese Filling
By Jenny of
Sew Darn Cute
Lemon Sunshine Cupcakes
By Jennifer of
Weekly Dish
Fruit-filled Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut-Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting
By MRBUNSROCKS of
Definetly Not Martha
Hunk of Burning Love (The Elvis Cupcake)
By Sher of
What Did You Eat?
Chempedak Cupcakes with Mango Drizzle
By Noraishah Hamid of
My Gastronomic Adventure
Passionfruit-Coconut Cupcakes
By Ann Martin Rolke of
Figgy Cupcakes with Mascarpone Icing
By Kelsey of
Lime-Vanilla Cupcakes with Cucumber Buttercream
By Andrew of
Real Butter and Clean Milk
Coconut Cloud Cupcakes
By puddingpop of
Wait and See Pudding
Avocado Cupcakes with Palm Sugar Buttercream
By Ratna of
Simply Cake
Lammas Cupcakes with Lemon Curd and Whiskey Cream
By Pancha of
Almond Brown-Butter Cakes with Sour Orange Meringue
By Lara of
Cook and Eat
Double Seville Orange Cupcakes
By Gemma of
Dressing for Dinner
Almond-Ricotta Cupcakes with Lemon Royal Icing
By Sean of
Carrot Cupcakes and Banana Cupcakes
by Brilynn of
Jumbo Empanadas
Banana Tropical Pomegranate Surprise Cupcakes
by Sandra of
Yes, I Am a Bitch, Get Over It
Vanilla-Cardamom Cupcakes with Grand mariner Buttercream and Candied Orange Zest
By Julie O'Hara of
A Mingling of Tastes
Saffron Vanilla Cupcake
By Kerry Alice of
a Tasty Pedia's blog
Ginger-Cardamom-Jaggery Cupcake
By Mandira Banerjee of
Spice Cupcakes with Maple Marshmallow Frosting
By Gluten Free Momma of
Gluten Free Organics
Key to My Heart (Pear & Walnut Cupcake with Cardamom Buttercream)
By Glenna of
A Fridge Full of Food
Curried Cupcakes
By Emilie of
Gingerbread Cupcakes
By Laura of
Laura Rebecca's Kitchen
Very Gingery Cupcakes
By Cathy, aka "The Dear Wife" of
Something in Season
Candied Lemon Peel, Walnut, & Dulce de Leche Cupcakes
By Letincelle of
Citrus-Basil Cupcakes
By Michelle of
Another Yarn
Green Tea Bubble Cream Filled Cupcakes with Green Tea Cream Cheese Frosting
By Chockylit of
Cupcake Bakeshop
Demarara Sugar Rimmed Pound Cake Cupcakes
By The Parson's Wife of
The Parson's Wife
Green Mung Bean Cupcakes with Palm Sugar Buttercream Frosting
By Ratna of
Simply Cake
Baklava Cupcakes
By Lara of
Aral Traven
Black Sesame Peanut Butter Cupcakes
By Joann of
Baking + Graduate School = Joann's Life
Cappuccino Cupcakes
By Margaret of
Kitchen Delights
Derby Cakes
by Posy of
Posy Party Cakes


text:
Story highlights
British foreign office acknowledges Julian Assange's asylum request
He has been under house arrest in Britain since 2010
The WikiLeaks founder is fighting extradition to Sweden
Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden on sexual assault allegations
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and has requested political asylum, officials and WikiLeaks said Tuesday.
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino read a statement to reporters at a news conference in Quito. He took no questions.
Assange has been fighting for a year and a half against being sent to Sweden for questioning about accusations of sexual abuse. Two women accused him in August 2010 of sexually assaulting them during a visit to Sweden in connection with a WikiLeaks release of internal U.S. military documents.
"Julian Assange has requested political asylum and is under the protection of the Ecuadorian embassy in London," WikiLeaks wrote on its Twitter page.
The embassy also released a statement on its website saying Assange, an Australian, arrived there in the afternoon and will remain at the embassy while his application is assessed.
"The decision to consider Mr. Assange's application for protective asylum should in no way be interpreted as the government of Ecuador interfering in the judicial processes of either the United Kingdom or Sweden," the statement said.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom last week dismissed an application filed by an attorney for Assange seeking to reopen his appeal against extradition.
The application was Assange's last option in the British courts. Britain's Crown Prosecution Service has previously said if the court dismissed Assange's appeal, his only further remedy would be to apply immediately to the European Court of Human Rights, and Assange's attorneys have vowed to do so.
Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office acknowledged Assange's request for political asylum in a statement, and said it would work with Ecuadorian authorities to "resolve this situation as soon as possible."
Assange has not been charged with a crime, but Swedish prosecutors want to question him about allegations of "unlawful coercion and sexual misconduct including rape," according to a Supreme Court document.
He has been under house arrest in Britain since December 2010. Assange has maintained his innocence and claims the allegations against him are politically motivated. He fears that if he is extradited to Sweden, authorities there could hand him over to the United States, where he then could be prosecuted for his role in the leaking of classified documents.
WikiLeaks, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, has published some 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, causing embarrassment to the government and others. It also has published hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents relating to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Recently, the organization has come under financial pressure, leading Assange to announce that WikiLeaks was temporarily stopping publication to "aggressively fund raise" in order to stay afloat.
An announcement at the top of WikiLeaks' home page reads: "We are forced to put all our efforts into raising funds to ensure our economic survival."
During his wait for the Supreme Court to rule on his extradition, Assange has hosted a talk show on Russian TV. "The World Tomorrow" appears on the Kremlin-funded, pro-Russian network Russia Today. He hosted it from the Suffolk, England, mansion where he is under house arrest with an electronic bracelet monitoring his movements.
He has interviewed controversial figures at odds with the U.S. government, including Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist organization, and Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, who railed against the United States in his interview with Assange.
In 2010, a statement from Ecuador's foreign ministry appeared to offer the controversial Assange an invitation to discuss a trove of leaked documents. The ministry also offered to process a request for residency, if Assange chose.
But a later statement from the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United States said that was not the case.
"While there was some confusion in the media flowing out of Quito yesterday, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has clarified that his country has not invited WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange to Ecuador," the statement read.
In Ecuador, Correa said at the time that his country had not made a formal invitation to Assange and that the ministry declaration, made by Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas, was "spontaneous" and personal in nature.
WikiLeaks founder Assange to make debut as talk show host
CNN en Español's Bertha Ramos-Rodriguez contributed to this report.


text:
Yeah, they might sound great, but they sure are ugly.
Looks like it came out of the 1930's.
Just sayin'.....
Looks like something granny would put in her ear.
"What's that you say sonny? Licorice whips and penny whistles?"
A horn acts as an acoustic transformer, converting the high acoustic impedance of a direct-radiating diaphragm to a much lower impedance better suited to excite the air loadwhich is why, more than a half-century ago, in the heyday of low-powered tube amps, horns were ubiquitous. But there are practical limitations to the increase in efficiency offered by a horn: at low frequencies, its output will depend on the diameter of the horn at its widest and at high frequencies, reflections of the sound from the opening will lead to coloration. For the best sound quality, therefore, a horn needs to be used over a relatively narrow passband, which in most circumstances is impractical. In the past, horns have been used over too wide a bandwidth, hence their reputation for "honky," colored sound.
In recent years, developments in the physical design of horns, especially in the cases of the biradial horns from JBL and Klipsch, along with careful implementation and use, have all but banished the coloration bugbear. Two German companies, Avantgarde and Acapella, have also worked hard in the past 20 years to make use of the potential for sound quality offered by horns. Avantgarde was first to market in the US, and Stereophile has reviewed and recommended several of that company's models. But I have been impressed by the sound produced by the Acapella designs at recent audio shows, and approached the brand's US distributor about a review. We settled on the High Violoncello II ($80,000/pair) as being most suitable for my room.
The Acapella High Violoncello II
This beautifully finished speaker is a large, three-way floorstander. Its rectangular enclosure, 50" tall and substantially constructed, houses three 11" treated paper-cone woofers, one of which internally loads the other two in isobaric fashion. Each of these has a substantial half-roll rubber surround and a stationary phase plug on the front of the pole-piece. Though the fact that the woofer enclosure is raised from the ground by the plinth with its four corner pillars, the enclosure is sealed rather than reflex-loaded by a downward-firing port, as its appearance might suggest. A V-shaped notch in the top of the enclosure embraces the midrange enclosure, which is secured with large Allen-head bolts fore and aft. (The front bolt also secures the woofer grille.) A 2" soft-dome midrange drive-unit is loaded with a large, circular horn that has what appears to be an exponential flare. Its bell is 18.5" (470mm) in diameter. The drive-unit's backwave is absorbed by the filling of the midrange enclosure, which is both massive and acoustically inert.
Below the midrange horn, the top 12" of the woofer enclosure is open to the rear, above the sealed compartment for the drive-units. The separate Ion TW1S tweeter module, housed in a perforated metal box and powered with its own AC cable, sits within this section. Viewed head-on, the metal box is hidden by the continuation of the front baffle; all that is visible is the distinctive 6"-diameter brass horn that loads and amplifies the tweeter's output.
The tweeter module is a completely self-contained unit, accepting a line-level input from an RCA jack and amplifying the signal with a class-A amplifier. What is unusual about this tweeter is that it has no mechanical diaphragm. Instead, an intense radio-frequency electrical field ionizes the air between two electrodes to produce a distinctive, violet-tinged yellow flame in the quartz combustion chamber at the base of the horn. The RF field is modulated by the audio signal, causing the almost massless flame to expand and contract in what should be a perfectly spherical pistonic manner, producing sound that is then coupled to the outside world with the 9"-long brass horn. The upper limit of the ionic tweeter is indeterminate but is arranged by Acapella to be at least 40kHz. As well as the AC inlet and the RCA jack, the rear of the module carries three fuses and a rotary tweeter-level control. Internal adjustments are provided for the crossover frequency, control of the flame conditions, and the automatic turn-on voltage (set at the factory for 30mV at 1kHz). Full details of the TW1S, which is also available separately, can be found here.
Yeah, they might sound great, but they sure are ugly.
Looks like it came out of the 1930's.
Just sayin'.....
Looks like something granny would put in her ear.
"What's that you say sonny? Licorice whips and penny whistles?"
I listened to the Acapellas in Atlanta at AXPONA. I think the initial review was more accurate as I couldn't stay in the room for more than a few minutes with the set-up in what should have been a great room.
"That ionic tweeter offers a high-frequency clarity that is rarely equaled by conventional drive-units, but even at the factory setting, its sensitivity is a little too high for a completely neutral on-axis response."
For all their qualities, I cannot keep from thinking why not audition these speakers with Tact's excellent Room Correction preamplifier, the RCS 2.2x or xp. Granted speakers at this price level ought to perform without it, but if they don't the RCS is made so that tweaking can be made without exchanging amplifiers, cables and such and then really get to evaluate what the speaker could be capable of.


text:
Registered Nurse II ACS General Surgery/Ortho/Urology Clinic LBJ Hospital
Job Description
Harris Health is a nationally recognized health system comprising three teaching hospitals and an extensive network of ambulatory care centers serving the people of Harris County, Texas, since 1966. Staffed by the faculty, fellows and residents from two nationally ranked medical schools, Baylor College of Medicine and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), Harris Health is the first healthcare system in Houston to receive the prestigious National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) designation for its network of patient-centered medical homes.
Each year, Harris Health provides more than 1.8 million total outpatient visits through its more than 40 ambulatory care facilities. Additionally, Harris Health sees more than 177,000 emergency visits at its Level 1 and Level 3 trauma centers and 35,000 hospital admissions through its three hospitals: Ben Taub, LBJ and Quentin Mease.
Established by voter referendum to enhance the level of charity care available in the community, Harris Health System has often received national recognition for serving those in need and for its achievements in operational excellence, such as being named to the 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 Most Wired Hospitals lists by the American Hospital Association's Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.
Additionally, Harris Health System is pleased that each of its three hospitals — Ben Taub, Lyndon B. Johnson and Quentin Mease — achieved Pathway to Excellence™ designation by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
Skills / Requirements
The Nurse Clinician II (Registered Nurse) has knowledge and skills necessary to meet standards for professional practice specified in Texas Nursing Practice Act and by HCHD Nursing Service. The practice patterns of competent generalists are characterized by the application of standards, principles, and algorithms to clinical situations. The RN independently and safely manages patients with problems common to patients in his/her assigned clinical area; recognizes when he/she needs assistance and seeks appropriate resources.
Minimum Qualifications:
Graduate from an accredited school of Nursing; BSN preferred.
Licensed to practice nursing in the State of Texas.
One (1) year full time experience - Nursing.
Must be adequate to meet the following communication requirements:
Accurately interprets and transmits clinical information in English, both verbally and in written form; and Sends and receives messages patients/families/SOs can comprehend.
Special Requirements:
Communication Skills: Above Average Verbal (Heavy Public Contact), Writing/Composing, Bilingual Preferred (Any Language)
PC, Medical Terms and Mathematics
Application Instructions
Please click on the link below to apply for this position. A new window will open and direct you to apply at our corporate careers page. We look forward to hearing from you!Apply Online
Posted: 9/3/2023
Job Status: Full Time
Job Reference #: 168092


text:
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Turkey Wants International Conference on Syria
February 08, 2012
Dorian Jones | Istanbul
Turkey is calling for renewed international efforts to end bloodshed in neighboring Syria, where a government assault on the city of Homs, a center of dissent, is intensifying.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Wednesday called for an urgent meeting of regional and world players to end the ongoing violence.
Explaining that Turkey is determined to establish a broad-based forum to promote international understanding with all countries concerned, the foreign minister said his country is ready to host such a meeting and that it should be as broadly encompassing as possible. He said the conference could take place in Istanbul or another regional center.
As a Syrian neighbor and NATO member that has worked closely with Washington on the Syrian crisis, Ankara, observers say, is well-placed to organize such a gathering.
The Turkish government has close ties with many North African and Middle Eastern countries, and Davutoglu, who said he already laid the groundwork for a broad meeting, speaking in recent days with his Italian, Qatari and Iranian counterparts, is flying to Washington Wednesday to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials.
His announcement follows Saturday's veto by Russia and China of a U.N. Security Council motion against the Syrian crackdown, which Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday condemned as a fiasco.
The diplomatic move is seen by some as an attempt to circumvent the U.N. impasse and build an international alliance similar to the Libya Contact Group, which helped Libyan opposition oust Moammar Gadhafi's regime.
Ankara has been backing Syrian opposition, harboring many of its leaders and providing sanctuary along the Turkey-Syria border to members of the Free Syrian Army, a militia of military defectors fighting Syrian security forces.
Turkish diplomats say they are aware that, with Syria's crackdown on the opposition intensifying, time is against them.
"We will not let tyranny continue in Syria and we [won't] let the region enter a phase of instability," said Davutoglu, who made it clear that Turkey will not stand back from Syria's deepening crisis.
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text:
Navajos pay for industry's mistakes
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue's feature stories, "Navajo Windfall."
Dr. Bruce Baird Struminger spends his workdays screening Navajo uranium workers who believe their jobs have made them sick. After four years, he can predict how most will react to getting a clean bill of health: "When we find out someone's lungs are in great shape, some are happy," he says. "But most are not (because) they're not going to get any compensation."
Struminger is the medical director of the federal Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program on the Navajo Reservation. He's talking about the federal program that provides compensation to people with radiation-caused lung cancer or pulmonary fibrosis.
In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) and established screening programs in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. RECA compensates those who can prove they are sick because of their work in the uranium mines and mills between 1947 and 1971, when the U.S. government was the sole purchaser of uranium for nuclear bombs and reactors. It also compensates sick "downwinders" who lived in certain parts of Utah, Arizona or Nevada during nuclear bomb tests in the Nevada desert in the 1950s and '60s.
So far, the U.S. Department of Justice has paid 16,022 RECA claims, each worth $150,000 plus related medical expenses. Just over 1,000 of them have gone to Navajo uranium workers or their widows; about 4,000 Navajos worked in the uranium industry prior to 1971. Another law provides an additional $250,000 in workmen's compensation to sick workers.
Together, these two compensation programs have created something of a rush on the reservation. "It's an awkward and awful situation," says Struminger, who this summer announced his resignation from his Shiprock-based post. The doctor has screened more than 1,750 patients — most of them two or three times each. His patients are almost always men, many of them now elderly. "The whole system is set up so that people are hoping to find something (in their lungs) that's not good."
Though he finds the RECA program flawed, Struminger does believe it is an honest attempt to rectify past mistakes. But for people like George Brown or William Lopez, the program has come up short. Both men worked in the Tuba City uranium mill and today suffer from health problems. Their illnesses, however, don't qualify for compensation. Still, they — along with many others who worked in or lived near the mines and mills — wonder if those health problems are related to the uranium industry.
"It's a huge burden, that people worry about their health," Struminger says. Miners and millers, and their families, become convinced that they suffer from lingering illnesses that Struminger can't discover. "There is this perception that it did affect them," he says. "We help them understand which of their ailments are related to uranium."
Brown, for his part, is frustrated. "We're just like a time bomb, I guess," he says. Like many other former workers, he has given up on the RECA screening — "too much red tape." He believes uranium workers should be compensated based on how many years they worked, period: "I wish that they would say, 'You worked so many years, you were exposed, and we don't know what the future holds for you.' "


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The Weird Week in Review
Surprise Parking Violation
Hila Ben-Baruch parked her car on the street outside her home in Tel Aviv, Israel. Later the same day, she was shocked to find that her car had been towed away, and the parking spot was now designated as a handicapped parking space! Apparently, the lines had been painted while her car was still parked in the spot. When she called the municipal call center about it, they accused her of lying and said she would have to pay 350 shekels ($95) to get her car back, plus the fine for parking in a handicap space.
Ben-Baruch's Facebook post about the incident went viral. Refusing to give up, Ben-Baruch went to an office building overlooking the parking spot and obtained security camera footage.
In the footage, a pair of Tel Aviv municipal workers are seen painting the spot with Ben-Baruch's car still there. Shortly thereafter, a tow truck comes to take Ben-Baruch's car away.
Confronted with the evidence, city officials rescinded the fine and towing fee, and apologized.
Mistrial Declared When Victim's Eyeball Falls Out
A punch during a bar brawl in 2011 caused John Huttick to lose his left eye. Huttick sued Matthew Brunelli in Philadelphia over the incident. Huttick was on the witness stand Wednesday telling his side of the story when he lost his eye again -the glass prosthetic popped out in the courtroom. At least two jurors gasped and acted as if they wanted to leave. The judge immediately declared a mistrial due to the incident. The judge said it was an "unfortunate, unforeseen incident," and set a new trial date for March 4th.
Shoplifting 24 Quarts of Oil
Jorge Sanchez was spotted leaving a Costco store in Burbank, California, without paying for 24 quarts of motor oil. He had broken open cases of oil and stuffed the bottles into his clothing and strapped some to his body with bungee cords. Employees chased Sanchez for eight blocks, while quarts of oil fell along the way. Witnesses report that Sanchez was "running funny," which is no surprise. Sanchez finally stopped and complained that he couldn't breathe. When police searched Sanchez's car, they found an additional 50 quarts of oil, and are investigating where they may have originated.
Thieves Left with Right Shoes …But Not Left
A shoe shop in Exeter, England had a rack of lady's shoes and children's snow boots displayed on the sidewalk outside the store. Some time Monday night or Tuesday morning, someone stole the entire rack! They won't be able to use or sell the shoes, however, because only one shoe -the right one- of each pair was on the rack. Since the shoes will be useless to the thieves, police have appealed to the perpetrators to return the goods. Anyone with information is asked to contact the local Crimestoppers unit.
The Funniest Traffic Jam Outside of Hollywood
The car was small, but the road was tiny. A motorist in Naples, Italy, tried to turn around and avoid parked cars on both sides, but became stuck sideways in the street. Cars wanted to pass both ways. Then a motorcycle gang showed up. Then a church procession. Then the police. Then everyone in the neighborhood, all laughing and loudly offering their opinions. A good time was had by all -except for the driver stuck sideways.
Super Bowl Trip Winner Denied U.S. Entry
Myles Wilkinson of Victoria, British Columbia, entered a fantasy football league contest and won an all-expense-paid trip to the Super Bowl! The excited football fan flew to Toronto Thursday, but when he changed planes to enter the US, he was denied entry -because of his criminal record. He was convicted of marijuana possession in 1981.
"I had two grams of cannabis. I paid a $50 fine," Wilkinson told CBC news.
Wilkinson said he was 19 when he was busted.
"I can't believe that this is happening, for something that happened 32 years ago."
Wilkinson returned to British Columbia, where he ended up watching the Super Bowl on TV, albeit in style -at the Super Bowl party at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom, courtesy of Bud Light Canada.


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|1 Year
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|Video Conferencing Equipment
|Media Servers and Conference Platforms
|Integrator Products
|High Definition
|Media Servers and Conference Platforms, Video Conferencing Systems
|Integrator Package C90
The Tandberg Codec C90 integrator package consists of C90 codec, PrecisionHD 1080p 12x camera, Natural Presenter Package (NPP), and 2 HDMI cables and 2 table microphones. The Codec C90 provides HD video conferencing while the PrecisionHD camera delivers 1080p 12x quality video.
The Tandberg Codec C90 is the most powerful codec with the most inputs and outputs; having 12 HD inputs and 8 microphones inputs. The Tandberg Codec C90 supports UXGA resolution, and delivers an amazing 1080p solution with duplex audio. The Tandberg Codec C90 utilizes advanced APIs for exceptional integration flexibility; it can be integrated with telepresence, collaboration studios, classroom or auditoriums, educational environments, and telemedicine rooms. The Tandberg Codec C90 is compatible with standard video without losing any features.
The Tandberg Codec C90 is able to deliver video conferencing without buffering using the Cisco Total Solution Management. The Tandberg Codec C90 effectively utilizes transcoded HD MultiSite, Mulitway and firewall traversal, recording and streaming, and ClearPath pocket loss protection technology to deliver the ultimate video conferencing experience.
TANDBERG provides video conferencing telepresence equipment. It's the market share leader and is now a part of Cisco Systems. TANDBERG products are known for their quality and innovation while delivering the most inclusive and reliable total solution of video products in the industry.
TANDBERG's product line includes video systems, personal video conferencing, telepresence, management, network infrastructure, recording, streaming & archiving, peripherals & accessories and multipoint control units. TANDBERG MXP series of video conferencing systems are its best selling products and Vision 600 is the perfect solution for executive office and small meeting room applications.
TANDBERG's videoconferencing systems are easy-to-install, maintain and service. The company believes that the success of any videoconferencing solution depends upon high quality, reliable and easy-to-use products that deliver excellent value. It's dedicated to improve communication between businesses in worldwide and ensure savings in traveling with a more realistic and cost-effective solution.
Video Conferencing equipment is used to facilitate a conference. It is a hi-tech equipment that is used for video conferences. Conference equipment is used from office desktop conferencing to large professional conferencing venues like training centers, courtrooms, auditoriums and boardrooms.
Some of the popular manufacturers are LifeSize, KEDACOM, MediaPOINTE, POLYCOM, and SONY. Popular products are LifeSize's Video Center, Room 200, Team 200 and TeamMP, Kedacom's TS6610/6610E, TS6210/6210E, TS5210/5610 and TS3210/3610, MediaPOINTE's TAC-80 videoconference system, DMR HD digital recorder + live streamer and VIDi 10 encoder, and Polycom's VSX 7000s videoconferencing system.
Conferencing equipment is used to facilitate a conference. It is a hi-tech equipment that is used for video or only audio conferences. Conference equipment is used from office desktop conferencing to large professional conferencing venues like training centers, courtrooms, auditoriums and boardrooms.
Some of the popular manufacturers are ClearOne, LifeSize, KEDACOM, MediaPOINTE, POLYCOM, SONY and TANDBERG. They have a good reputation among customers for their popular products. ClearOne creates environmental friendly products for efficient and effective personal/group communication.
Popular products are ClearOne's CHAT 50 Personal Conferencing, CHAT 150 USB Personal Conferencing and CHAT 170 Personal Conferencing Speakerphone, LifeSize's Video Center and LGExecutive, Kedacom's TS6610/6610E, TS6210/6210E, TS5210/5610 and TS3210/3610, MediaPOINTE's TAC-80 videoconference system, DMR HD digital recorder + live streamer and VIDi 10 encoder, and Polycom's VSX 7000s videoconferencing system.
|Tandberg Codec C90 Integrator Package
|Unit delivered complete With
|Videoconferencing codec, wireless remote control, rack-mounting rails, LAN cable, and power cable
|H.323/SIP up to 6 Mbps point-to-point
Up to 10 Mbps total MultiSite bandwidth
|Firewall Traversal
|Cisco TelePresence Expressway technology
H.460.18 and H.460.19 Firewall Traversal
|Video Standards
|Video Features
|Native 16:9 Widescreen
Advanced Screen Layouts
Intelligent Video Management
Local Auto Layout
9 embedded individual video compositors - 1 for every output and 1 for every encoder
|Video Inputs (13 Inputs)
|4 X HDMI Inputs, Supported Formats:
1920 x 1080@60, 59.94 Hz (1080p60)
1920 x 1080@50 Hz (1080p50)
1920 x 1080@30, 29.97 Hz (1080p30)
1920 x 1080@25 Hz (1080p25)
1920 x 1080@24, 23.97 Hz (1080p24)
1280 x 720@60, 59.94 Hz (720p60)
1280 x 720@50 Hz (720p50)
720 x 480@60, 59.94 Hz (480p60)
640 x 480@60 Hz (480p60)
1600 x 1200@50, 60 Hz (UXGA)
1280 x 1024@60, 75 Hz (SXGA)
1024 x 768@60, 70, 75, 85 Hz (XGA)
800 x 600@56, 60, 72, 75, 85 Hz (SVGA)
1920 x 1200@50, 60 Hz (WUXGA)
1680 x 1050@60 Hz (WSXGA+)
1440 X 900@60 Hz (WXGA+)
1280 x 768@60 Hz (WXGA)
4 X HD-SDI Inputs, Supported Formats:
1920 x 1080@30 Hz (1080p30)
1920 x 1080@25 Hz (1080p25)
1280 x 720@60 Hz (720p60)
1280 x 720@50 Hz (720p50)
1280 x 720@30 Hz (720p30)
1280 x 720@25 Hz (720p25)
2 X DVI-I Inputs, Supported Formats:
Analog (VGA):
1920 x 1080@60 Hz (1080p)
1280 x 720@60 Hz (720p)
1600 x 1200@60 Hz (UXGA)
1280 x 1024@60, 75 Hz (SXGA)
1280 x 960@60 Hz
1024 x 768@60, 70, 75, 85 Hz (XGA)
1920 x 1200@50 Hz (WUXGA)
1680 x 1050@60 Hz (WSXGA+)
1440 x 900@60 Hz (WXGA+)
1280 x 800@60 Hz (WXGA)
1280 x 768@60 Hz (WXGA)
Analog (YPbPr):
1920 x 1080@60 Hz (1080p60)
1920 x 1080@50 Hz (1080p50)
1920 x 1080@30 Hz (1080p30)
1920 x 1080@25 Hz (1080p25)
1280 x 720@60 Hz (720p60)
1280 x 720@50 Hz (720p50)
1280 x 720@30 Hz (720p30)
720 x 576@50 Hz (576p50)
720 x 480@60 Hz (w480p60)
Digital (DVI-D):
Same as HDMI, reference above
2 X YPBPR Inputs (BNC Connectors), Supported Formats:
Same as DVI-I, Analog (YPbPr), ref. above
1 X S-VIDEO/Composite Input (BNC Connectors):
Extended Display Identification Data (EDID)
|Video Outputs (5 Outputs)
|2 X HDMI Outputs, 2 X DVI-I Outputs, Supported Formats:
1920 x 1080@60 Hz (1080p60)
1280 x 720@60 Hz (720p60)
1600 x 1200@60 Hz (UXGA)
1280 x 1024@60 Hz (SXGA)
1024 x 768@60 Hz (XGA)
800 x 600@60 Hz (SVGA)
640 x 480@60 Hz (VGA)
1920 x 1200@60Hz (WUXGA)
1360 x 768@60 Hz
1366 x 768@60 Hz
1280 x 768@60 Hz (WXGA)
VESA Monitor Power Management
Extended Display Identification Data (EDID)
1 X Composite Output (BNC Connector), Supported Formats:
VESA Monitor Power Management
|Live Video Resolutions (Encode/Decode)
|176 x 144@30 fps (QCIF)
352 x 288@30 fps (CIF)
512 x 288@30 fps (w288p)
576 x 448@30 fps (448p)
768 x 448@30 fps (w448p)
704 x 576@30 fps (4CIF)
1024 x 576@30 fps (w576p)
1280 x 720@30 fps (720p30)
1920 x 1080@30 fps (1080p30)
640 x 480@30 fps (VGA)
800 x 600@30 fps (SVGA)
1024 x 768@30 fps (XGA)
1280 x 1024@30 fps (SXGA)
1280 x 768@30 fps (WXGA)
1440 x 900@30 fps (WXGA+)
1680 x 1050@30 fps (WSXGA+)
1600 x 1200@30 fps (UXGA)
1920 x 1200@25 fps (WUXGA)
512 x 288@60 fps (w288p60)
768 x 448@60 fps (w448p60)
1024 x 576@60 fps (w576p60)
1280 x 720@60 fps (720p60)
720p30 from 768kbps
720p60 from 1152kbps
1080p30 from 1472kpbs
|Audio Standards
|G.711, G.722, G.722.1, 64 kbps & 128 kbps MPEG4 AAC-LD, AAC-LD Stereo
|Audio Features
|CD-Quality 20KHz Mono and Stereo
Eight separate acoustic echo cancellers
8-port Audio mixer
Automatic Gain Control (AGC)
Automatic Noise Reduction
Active lip synchronization
|Audio Inputs (14 Inputs)
|8 x microphone, 48V phantom powered, XLR connector each with separate echo cancellers and noise reduction, all microphones can be set for balanced line level
2 x RCA/Phono, Line Level: Stereo PC input
2 x RCA/Phono, Line Level: Stereo auxiliary/DVD input
2 x HDMI, digital: Stereo PC/DVD inputs
|Audio Outputs (8 Outputs)
|2 x XLR, balanced line level, stereo main audio
2 x RCA/Phono, line level, stereo main audio, configurable to S/PDIF
2 x RCA/Phono, line level, stereo to recording device
1 x HDMI, digital, stereo main audio
1 x HDMI, digital, stereo to recording device
|Dual Stream
|H.239 (H.323) dual stream
BFCP (SIP) dual stream
Available in MultiSite from any site
Support for resolutions up to 1080p30/WUXGA, independent of main stream resolution
|MultiSite Features (embedded MultiPoint)
|4-way 1080p30 High Definition SIP/H.323 MultiSite
Full individual audio and video transcoding
Individual layouts in MultiSite CP (takes out self view)
H.323/SIP/VoIP in the same conference
Support for Presentation (H.239/BFCP) from any participant at resolutions up to 1080p30/WUXGA
Best Impression (Automatic CP Layouts)
H.264, Encryption, Dual Stream from any site
IP Downspeeding
Dial in/Dial out
Additional telephone call (no license required)
Conference rates up to 10 Mbps
|Embedded Encryption
|H.323/SIP point-to-point and multipoint calls
Standards-based: H.235 v2 & v3 and AES
Automatic key generation and exchange
Supported in Dual Stream & and MultiSite
|IP Network Features
|DNS lookup for service configuration
Differentiated Services (QoS)
IP adaptive bandwidth management (including flow control)
Auto gatekeeper discovery
Dynamic playout and lip-sync buffering
H.245 DTMF tones in H.323
Date and Time support via NTP
Packet Loss based Downspeeding
URI Dialing
802.1x Network authentication
|IPv6 Network Support
|Single call stack support for both H323 and SIP
Dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 for DHCP, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, DiffServ
Support for both Static and Autoconfig (stateless address auto config)
|Security Features
|Management via HTTPS and SSH
IP Administration Password
Menu Administration Password
Disable IP services
Network Settings protection
|Network Interfaces
|2*** x separate LAN/Ethernet (RJ-45) 10/100/1000 Mbit
|Other Interfaces
|USB host for future usage
USB device for future usage
|Cisco TelePresence Precision HD Camera (1080p)
12 x zoom
+15°/-25° tilt, +/- 90° pan
43.5° vertical field of view
72° horizontal field of view
Focus distance 0.3m-infinity
1920 x 1080 pixels progressive @ 60fps
Other formats supported (configurable through Dip-switch):
1920x1080@60fps (HDMI only)
1920x1080@50fps (HDMI only)
Automatic or manual focus/brightness/whitebalance
Far-end camera control
Daisy-chain support (Visca protocol camera)
Dual HDMI and HD-SDI output
Upside-down mounting with automatic flipping of picture
|System Management
|Support for the Cisco TelePresence Management Suite
Total management via embedded SNMP, Telnet, SSH, XML, SOAP
Remote software upload: via web server, SCP, HTTP, HTTPS
1 x RS-232 for local control and diagnostics
Remote control and on-screen menu system
|Directory Services
|Support for Local directories (My Contacts)
Corporate Directory
Unlimited entries using Server directory supporting
LDAP and H.350
Unlimited number for Corporate directory (through Cisco TelePresence Management Suite)
200 number local directory
Received Calls
Placed Calls
Missed Calls with Date and Time
|Auto-sensing power supply
100-240 VAC, 50/60 Hz
175 watts max. for codec and main camera
|Operating Temperature and Humidity
|32° F to 95° F ambient temperature
10% to 90% Relative Humidity (RH)
|Storage and Transport Temperature
|-4° F to 140° F at RH 10-90% (non-condensing)
|3.67"H x 17.36"W x 11.8"D
|11.22 lbs
"We have been a regular customer of Clary Business Machines when it comes to purchasing the office equipments. Few weeks ago, we had to make arrangements for a grand conference in which remote participants were to take part as well. Like always, we didn't have to hover through the list of video-conferencing equipment. I gave them a call & Sean guided me well to make the right purchase"
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The most surprising thing about the cover-up and riots over the Penn State child rape scandal is how surprised we are. If you've been paying attention, you might notice that our society has a habit of not taking sexual violence seriously.
The country is still reeling—and I expect will be reeling for a long time—not only at the news of a cover-up of child sexual assault at Penn State that had gone on for years, but the growing awareness of how many men knew about the assault and did not call the police and the outrageous riots at the school by students who support Joe Paterno despite the role he played in the cover-up. It seems incredibly hard to believe that so many people could display such indifference to the presence of a child predator in their midst, and that so many more could find the problem not significant enough to take seriously by firing those engaged in the cover-up.
Now is the time to point out that feminists have been describing this problem for decades, and while it's always going to be a shock on some level to see how much social support rapists and those who cover up for them get, it's entirely predictable if you've been paying attention. In fact, excuse-making for sexual harassment, intimidation, and assault is so common that feminists created a phrase to describe it: rape culture. For once when it comes to feminist terminology, Wikipedia is accurate, so I'll refer to its definition.
Rape culture is a term which originated in women's studies and feminist theory, and describes a culture in which rape and sexual violence against women are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media all condone, normalize, excuse, or tolerate sexual violence against women. Examples of behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification and rape apologism.
The only part which I would correct is to suggest that it's not just rape and sexual violence against women that is excused in a rape culture. As the Penn State situation demonstrates—and as did the Catholic Church scandal before it and as does the ongoing inability of our society to take prison rape seriously—rape of men and children is also papered over, blamed on victims, or even condoned in our society. The form rape culture takes is tweaked slightly depending on the victim, of course. You don't see young boys being told they brought this on themselves by dressing sexy, as female victims of various ages generally hear, but the general idea is still there. When it comes to rape, much of society thinks that the problem isn't that rapists rape. They believe the problem is those who try to stop rape. When a rapist is outed, far too many people in our society think the person to blame for the chaos that ensues is not the person who started it all by raping, but those who blew the whistle. Even and especially when it's the victims who blow the whistle.
For all the attention that SlutWalk has been getting, it's surprising how few people in the mainstream media have made the connection between the situation at Penn State and the long history of rape apologism that the SlutWalkers have been protesting. The past decade has been a series high profile rape or sex abuse cases, with more than enough taking place in the world of athletics, so really the pattern is undeniable. From Kobe Bryant to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, from the NYPD cops who managed to scratch out an astonishing "not guilty" verdict to the University of Colorado rape and sex abuse scandal, we as a country have seen more than our fair share of evidence to support the thesis that we live in a rape culture where justice is difficult to achieve and predators tend to work for years without much resistance. Penn State is just another in a long, tiring series of examples. Are we that easily distracted by the gender differences in the victims? We shouldn't be. All this shows is that one reason rape culture flourishes is that most rapists are capable of taking advantage of their relative privilege over their victims and a culture that looks askance at those who rock the boat by complaining about abuse.
We can expect this scandal to drag on for a long time, not just because trying Sandusky will take awhile, but also because the already-extensive list of people who knew and didn't call the police demonstrates that there's a lot of cover-up to uncover. With revelations and developments sure to continue into the future, now is the time to start asking hard questions, not just of how child rapists can work while people look the other way, but why predators in general do so.
Athletic programs, from school level to pro level, need to be examined especially closely, because the macho culture plus the tribal mentality is a breeding ground for protectiveness of predators and those who cover up for them, as the riots at Penn State have shown. But at the end of the day, this isn't about sports, not really. Sports is just an extreme manifestation of a widespread problem. As it stands, our culture is genuinely two-faced about sexual violence. Collectively, we claim to take it very seriously, so much so that we put it close to the top of the list of terrible crimes a person can commit. But when the rubber hits the road and we're expected to act like we take it seriously? Not so much. In fact, many of us riot at the very idea that sexual violence should be treated like the serious crime it is.
Until we're willing to admit that there's a problem—that we have a rape culture—we can't even begin to fix it.


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Internet Access in 80522 (Fort Collins, CO)
Internet Connectivity in 80522
^ An estimated 0 of residents in 80522 are connected to the Internet either at home, work, elsewhere or at multiple locations [1].
Internet Availability in 80522
^ Collectively (all cities), 82.8% of all Colorado residents live in a household where Internet is available, which ranks 7th in the nation [2].
Connected in 80522
^ There are an estimated 0 residents in 80522 who are not connected to the Internet at all - whether at home, work, or elsewhere [1].