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Upcoming Events in Michigan (and one big event in New Jersey)
By Adil James, MMNS
ACCESS 39th Annual Dinner
Tickets for the ACCESS Gala dinner are now on sale. Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail and Lynx Investment CEO Peter Tanous will be there to receive the Arab American of the Year Award.
Tickets are $75. The event is May 1, at the Marriott Hotel at the Detroit Renaissance Center. Contact Rose Assi at firstname.lastname@example.com or visit
ww.accesscommunity.org to purchase tickets.
IRS Deadline
The IRS has $40 million in unclaimed tax refund money from the 2006 Tax Year.
If you have not filed your 2006 return, you must file it by this April 15th in order to claim your 2006 refund. Nationwide the IRS has approximately $1.3 billion in unclaimed tax refunds from the 2006 year.
CAIR 10th Anniversary Gala
CAIR will hold its 10th Annual Gala March 28, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency, 600 Town Center, Dearborn Michigan.
The keynote speaker is the founder of the Rainbow/Push Coalition and famous speaker and activist Rev. Jesse Jackson. Also speaking will be CAIR national director and co-founder Nihad Awad.
Tickets will be $50 for general admission and $30 for students.
This gala will be an afternoon program which will begin at 1pm and end at 4:30pm insha`Allah.
For sponsorship and ticket information please contact Suehaila Amen at 313-615-1515.
Islamic Games
For those interested in competing, the Islamic Games Northeast Regional Event will be May 25-30 in South Brunswick, New Jersey.
The games will have competitions in many interesting events, from track and field events to basketball, soccer, volleyball, softball, cricket, flag football, tennis and table tennis, to wrestling, archery and martial arts.
The events will be separated by age categories, including events for children in age groups as young as 8 and masters categories for people in their 40s and up. The registration is only $15 per athlete for participation in unlimited events until May 10, and $20 per athlete from May 11 to the date of the event. Spectators can attend for free.
For more information please visit www.Islamic-Games.com, or call 800-670-7901, or email firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Valve has announced that effective immediately, ATI Radeon owners can download a free copy of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch through Steam. The software will automatically confirm the presence of ATI Radeon hardware and offer access to the two games.
In related news, Steam will be included with the ATI Catalyst driver and software suit until early 2008 and ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT owners will, upon release, receive Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two through Valve's content delivery application.
View: ATi Offer at Steam
News source: Shacknews

subset: commoncrawl


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A round-up of stories on Washington wine from November 1st to 7th. Read previous round-ups here.
From around the world…
Harper's UK talks with Ted Baseler about the importance of a back story in wine.
From around the country…
The Austin Chronicle writes about four wines of the week for holiday parties.
Adweek writes about the Washington Wine Commission's Recommendeur campaign.
The Pensacola News Journal writes that Riesling is a wine that should not be underestimated.
The Washington Times gives a Merlot roundup.
From around the blogosphere…
Great Northwest Wine writes that Washington wine's Clore Center gears up for celebrations in 2014. They also write about Anelare, results of the Great Northwest Invitational Wine Competition, and Seattle's Wine World.
Paul Gregutt wish happy anniversary Cold Creek Vineyard.
Wild 4 Washington Wine writes about the Knight Hill 2009 Syrah-Sirah. William also writes about Purple Star's 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon.
Northwest Wine Anthem writes about the 2012 Three Rivers Red.
The Wine Bar Blog writes about the ingenuity of Woodinville's tasting rooms.
Zinfandel Chronicles reviews the 2011 Lauren Ashton Cellars Syrah.
Wine Peeps reviews current releases from Andrew Will Winery.
Write for Wine writes about DeLille Cellars and Woodward Canyon.
From the locals…
The Monroe Monitor writes about local wines go well with holidays.
The Seattle Times writes about how wine put Woodinville on the map.
The Walla Walla Union Bulletin writes about A Broken Chair Cellars.
KVEW writes about Fall Release weekend in Walla Walla.
The Tri-City Herald writes about Walla Walla port making a $2.7M upgrade.
Wenatchee World writes about crush.
The Yakima Herald writes that growers predict a record harvest. They also write about Northwest wine for Thanksgiving.
That's all folks!


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No matter how hard Subaru has tried to keep the 2015 WRX under wraps, they just can't. First a front end shot leaked, then its CVT transmission. Now, we know how powerful it is, how quick it gets to 60, and what it looks like from behind.
A scan of Car and Driver's upcoming feature on the WRX leaked on WRXforums.com (head over there to see the whole CandD feature and pics), and it shows everything else we've been missing about Subaru's new rally monster.
The 2.0 liter engine is similar to what we see in the BRZ, but is turbocharged and has direct injection (the BRZ has port and direct injection). It puts out 268 horsepower, which is just three more than the last 2.5 liter WRX had, but the power arrives earlier in the band.
That equals a 5.4 second sprint to 60 in the six speed manual and 5.9 in the CVT. Yep, CVT wasn't a lie, it's true. There is a "sport sharp" setting for the CVT, which makes the CVT act like it has eight gears. Don't buy the CVT. Just don't. Thanks.
As we thought, there will be no hatchback offered, just the sedan. There is electric steering with a quicker rack, and the car has been stiffened precipitously.
We'll see the car next week at the LA Show, probably.
Hat Tip to Nick!


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All posts tagged "emergency vet toronto"
The Animal Clinic Is Run by Renowned Veterinary Doctor
Did you know over half of the North American population have at least one pet in their household? Our furry friends are just like rest of our family members. Being a pet owner myself, I've always want...
- Posted June 18, 2014


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Davis & Juul Insurance Agency
Feb 05, 2016
Freezing temperatures, gusts of wind, patches of ice – winter can be a horrible time to be on the road, especially if you're on vacation and aren't used to driving in winter conditions. And, it's an even worse time to get into a car accident.
But, with reduced visibility, slick roads and maybe even a reckless driver or two, accidents are bound to happen. So, what should you do if you experience one? Follow these five guidelines to help you stay safe while you wait for help to arrive after a car accident in winter:
What if you come across an accident involving others? As long as they aren't in immediate danger, your best bet is likely to call 911 and let the appropriate local authorities respond. Pulling over to help could cause additional problems, such as distracting other drivers and causing an accident yourself.
Remember, winter driving can be as unpredictable as the weather. So, keep your phone charged and your gas tank full, and slow down so you have extra time to respond – you need it when the roads are slick!
Reposted with permission from the original author, Safeco Insurance.
Conveniently access customer service and claim info directly from your cell phone. Read more.
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The first of the 388 workers arrested in the immigration raid on the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, were deported in mid-October, having spent five months in federal prison. Their crime? Giving a bad Social Security number to the company to get hired. Among them will be a young man who had his eyes covered with duct tape by a supervisor on the line, who then beat him with a meathook. The supervisor is still on the job.
The Postville raid was one of the many recent immigration operations leading to criminal charges and deportations for thousands of people. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calls this "closing the back door. " Meanwhile, his department seeks to "open the front door" by establishing new guest-worker programs, called "close to slavery" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Something is clearly wrong with the priorities of immigration enforcement. Hungry and desperate workers go to jail and get deported. The government protects employers and seeks to turn a family-based immigration system into a managed labor supply for business. Yet national political campaigns say less and less about it. Immigrant Latino and Asian communities feel increasingly afraid and frustrated. Politicians want their votes, but avoid talking about the rising wave of arrests, imprisonment, and deportations.
This month national demonstrations across the nation are protesting the silence, asking candidates to speak out. Immigrant communities expect a new deal from a new administration, especially from Democrats. They want a new U.S. president to take swift and decisive action to give human rights a priority over fear, and recognize immigrants as people, not just a source of cheap labor.
Agenda for the Next President
In its first 100 days, a new administration could take these simple steps to benefit immigrants and working families:
- Stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from seeking serious Federal criminal charges, with incarceration in privately run prisons, for lacking papers or for bad Social Security numbers.
- Stop raiding workplaces, especially where workers are trying to organize unions or enforce wage and hour laws. This would help all workers, not just immigrants, to raise low wages.
- Double the paltry 742 federal inspectors responsible for all U.S. wage and hour violations and focus on industries where immigrants are concentrated. The National Labor Relations Board could target employers who use immigration threats to violate union rights.
- Halt community sweeps, where agents use warrants for one or two people to detain and deport dozens of others. End the government's campaign to repeal local sanctuary ordinances and drag local law enforcement into immigration raids.
- Allow all workers to apply for a Social Security number and pay legally into the system that benefits everyone. Social Security numbers should be used for their true purpose — paying retirement and disability benefits — not to fire immigrants from their jobs and send them to prison.
- Reestablish worker protections ended under Bush on existing guest worker programs, force employers to hire domestically first, and decertify any contractor guilty of labor violations.
- Restore human rights in border communities, stop construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and disband the Operation Streamline federal court, where scores of young border crossers are sent to prison in chains every day.
After the first 100 days, Democrats will have to decide what reforms to bring before Congress, and when. Some would delay action for a year or more. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens of trade groups won't sit on their hands. They've been pushing for years for big guest-worker programs, more raids and enforcement, and a weak legalization program. But many immigrant and labor rights activists advocate three steps toward an alternative, more progressive reform:
1. A moratorium on raids, while protecting human and labor rights, in the first 100 days.
2. A law to give green-card visas to the undocumented and clear up the backlog of people already waiting for them. If visas are more easily available abroad, people won't have to cross the border without them. That law could also create jobs in unemployed communities, repeal employer sanctions laws that make work a crime for immigrants, and encourage labor law reform to protect workers' rights. Guest-worker programs with a record of abuse should be ended, as they were in 1964.
3. A new approach to trade policy and renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so they stop causing poverty and uprooting communities, making migration peoples' only alternative for survival. Reject new trade agreements with countries like Colombia, which will cause job loss in the U.S. and spread low wages, labor violations, and displacement abroad. U.S. tax dollars, instead of being spent on the Iraq War, could expand rural credit, education and health care in Mexico and other countries, easing the pressure behind migration.
There's common ground here among immigrants, communities of color, unions, churches, civil rights organizations, and working families. Legalization and immigrant rights, tied to guaranteeing jobs for all working families, can bring people together. All workers, including immigrants, need the right to organize and enforce labor standards, the same goal sought by unions in the Employee Free Choice Act. Changing trade policy will benefit working-class communities in the U.S. while helping families of immigrants back home from Oaxaca to El Salvador.
The diverse communities who need these reforms can and will find ways to seek them together. In fact, if Barack Obama wins the presidency and a larger Democratic majority takes hold in Congress, they will owe their victory to this coalition.
After the election, this same coalition will need jobs and rights. But immigrant workers are going to jail now. The wave of raids continues to divide families, even as candidates hold rallies and ask for votes. In Los Angeles' Placita Olvera, activists have begun a hunger strike to stop the deportations. Marches and demonstrations are making the same point from coast to coast.
Promises of change aren't enough. For candidates who want working-class votes, the first step is to speak out.


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[This was originally published on the OSVDB blog.]
I've written about the various problems with generating vulnerability statistics in the past. There are countless factors that contribute to, or skew vulnerability stats. This is an ongoing problem for many reasons. First, important numbers are thrown around in the media and taken as gospel, creating varying degrees of bias in administrators and owners. Second, these stats are rarely explained to show how they were derived. In short, no one shows their work, shows potential bias, caveats, or other issues that should be included as a responsible security professional. A recent article has highlighted this problem again. To better show why vulnerability stats are messy, but important, I will show you how it is trivial to skew numbers simply by using different criteria, along with several pitfalls that must be factored into any set of stats you generate. The fun part is that the word used to describe the differences can be equally nebulous and they are all valid, if properly disclaimed!
I noticed a Tweet from SC Magazine about an article titled "The ghosts of Microsoft: Patch, present and future". The article is by Alex Horan, security strategist, CORE Security and discusses Microsoft's vulnerabilities this year. Reading down, the first line of the second paragraph immediately struck me as being incorrect.
Based on my count, there were 83 vulnerabilities announced by Microsoft over the past year. This averages out to a little more than six per month, a reasonable number of patches (and reboots) to apply to your systems over the course of a year.
It is difficult to tell if Horan means "vulnerabilities" or "patches", as he appears to use the same word to mean both, when they are quite different. The use of '83' makes it very clear, Horan is referencing Microsoft advisories, not vulnerabilities. This is an important distinction as a single advisory can contain multiple vulnerabilities.
A cursory look at the data in OSVDB showed there were closer to 170 vulnerabilities verified by Microsoft in 2012. Doing a search to include references for "MS12" (used in their advisory designation), 160 results. This is how it was easy to determine the number Horan used was inaccurate, or his wording was. If you generate statistics based on advisories versus independent vulnerabilities, results will vary greatly. To add a third perspective, we must also consider the total number of disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. This means ones that did not correspond to a Microsoft advisory (e.g. perhaps a KB only), did not receive a CVE designation, or were missed completely by the company. On Twitter, Space Rogue (@spacerog) asked about severity breakdowns over the last few years. Since that would take considerable time to generate, I am going to stay focused on 2012 as it demonstrates the issues. Hopefully this will give him a few numbers though!
If we look at the 2012 Microsoft advisories versus 2012 Microsoft CVE versus 2012 Microsoft total vulnerabilities, and do a percentage breakdown by severity, you can see heavy bias. We will use the following breakdown of CVSS scores to determine severity: 9 – 10 = critical, 7 – 8.9 = important, 4 – 6.9 = moderate, 0 – 3.9 = low.
|Base Source
|2012 Advisories (83)
|35 (42.2%)
|46 (55.4%)
|2 (2.4%)
|100 (62.5%)
|18 (11.3%)
|39 (24.4%)
|3 (1.8%)
|2012 Total (176)
|101 (57.4%)
|19 (10.8%)
|41 (23.3%)
|15 (8.5%)
It isn't easy to see the big shifts in totals in a chart, but it is important to establish the numbers involved when displaying any type of chart or visual representation. If we look at those three breakdowns using simple pie charts, the shifts become much more apparent:
The visual jump in critical vulnerabilities from the first to the second two charts is distinct. In addition, notice the jump from the first two charts to the third in regards to the low severity vulnerabilities and that they didn't even make an appearance on the first chart. This is a simple example of how the "same" vulnerabilities can be represented, based on terminology and the source of data. If you want to get pedantic, there are additional considerations that must be factored into these vulnerabilities.
In no particular order, these are other points that should not only be considered, but disclaimed in any presentation of the data above. While it may seem minor, at least one of these points could further skew vulnerability counts and severity distribution.
- MS12-080 Only contains 1 CVE if you look at immediate identifiers, but also contains 2 more CVE in the fine print related to Oracle Outside In, which is used by the products listed in the advisory.
- MS12-058 actually has no immediate CVEs! If you read the fine print, it actually covers 13 vulnerabilities. Again, these are vulnerabilities in Oracle Outside In, which is used in some Microsoft products.
- Of the 176 Microsoft vulnerabilities in 2012, as tracked by OSVDB, 10 do not have CVE identifiers assigned.
- OSVDB 83750 may or may not be a vulnerability, as it is based on a Microsoft KB with uncertain wording. Vague vulnerability disclosures can skew statistics.
- Most of these CVSS scores are taken from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). NVD outsources CVSS score generation to junior analysts from a large consulting firm. Just as we occasionally have mistakes in our CVSS scores, so does NVD. Overall, the number of scores that have serious errors are low, but they can still introduce a level of error into statistics.
- One of the vulnerabilities (OSVDB 88774 / CVE-2012-4792) has no formal Microsoft advisory, because it is a 0-day that was just discovered two days ago. There will almost certainly be a formal Microsoft advisory in January 2013 that covers it. This highlights a big problem with using vendor advisories for any statistic generation. Vendors generally release advisories when their investigation of the issue has completed, and a formal solution is made available. Generating statistics or graphics off the same vulnerabilities, but using disclosure versus solution date will give two different results.
These are just a few ways that statistics can be manipulated, often by accident, and why presenting as much data and explanation is beneficial to everyone. I certainly hope that SCMagazine and/or CORE will issue a small correction or explanation as to the what the "83" number really represents.


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Labs Funded
Success Stories
AWOL, November 2002
AWOL, a one year old black male from Milner, GA, is one of the many Labs and Lab-mixes whose heartworm treatment was funded with help from LABMED. AWOL is one of the lucky dogs who can look forward to a healthy life as long as he receives a heartworm preventative on a regular basis. Heartworm is spread to dogs by mosquito bites and is detected by a blood test.
Prevention of heartworms is easy, but the treatment is hard on a dog. Heartworm preventatives kill the immature worms in a dog's blood and have little or no effect on the dog. Killing the adult worms is very hard on a dog, requiring hospitalization and four weeks of limited activity to prevent damage to the lungs as the adult heartworms die.
Please help us to educate dog owners about heartworm disease. Not everyone is aware of how life-threatening heartworms can be and how easy it is to prevent them. There are very few areas of the US where heartworm is not a threat to the health of dogs for at least part of the year. Administering heartworm preventative on a regular basis is an important part of responsible dog ownership!


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In 5-6 September 2008 the Universities of Manchester and Surrey organised in Manchester an international conference "Representing Islam: Comparative Perspectives".
In 5-6 September 2008 an international conference Representing Islam: Comparative Perspectives was organised jointly by the Universities of Manchester and Surrey. The meeting, in which over 100 eminent national and international speakers participated, was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Britain.
Initially, the "call for papers" of the conference claimed that representations of Islam have a profound influence on political cultures and national identities, as well as on attitudes to immigration, security and multiculturalism. The complexity of the notion of 'Islam' and the heterogeneous responses that it elicits are such that there is no uniform approach to its representation and social construction. The conference addressed this complexity by treating the comparative dimension of recent representations of Islam, encompassing different nations, political institutions, media institutions, and cultures. The conference was primarily concerned with the press, television, radio, film and the internet. However, it also included other channels of communication, such as translations, speeches or pamphlets, political discourse, and the visual arts.
For more information please click here


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MP3 Audio Sample
Short Synopsis
An engaging narrative about an incredible, life-giving organ and its imperiled modern fate.
Full Synopsis
Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it's sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier, and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer, even among men. What makes breasts so mercurial—and so vulnerable?
In this informative and highly entertaining account, intrepid science reporter Florence Williams sets out to uncover the latest scientific findings from the fields of anthropology, biology, and medicine. Her investigation follows the life cycle of the breast from puberty to pregnancy to menopause, taking her from a plastic surgeon's office where she learns about the importance of cup size in Texas to the laboratory where she discovers the presence of environmental toxins in her own breast milk. The result is a fascinating exploration of where breasts came from, where they have ended up, and what we can do to save them.
Author Florence Williams
Narrated by Kate Reading
Publication date May 7, 2012
Running time 10 hrs
Available Formats
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before the
Chairman Akaka, Senator Voinovich, and Members of the Subcommittee:
I appreciate this opportunity to discuss with you the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM's) role in leading efforts to strengthen the Federal acquisition workforce. You also asked me to address OPM's views and recommendations regarding S. 736, the "Federal Hiring Process Improvement Act of 2009," particularly as it would affect the acquisition workforce.
Strengthening the Acquisition Workforce
OPM has been in the forefront of the effort to strengthen the Federal Government's acquisition capacity. We have been collaborating for some time with the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI) and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on initiatives related to this effort.
In 2007, OPM designated acquisition as a Governmentwide mission-critical occupation requiring focused attention for recruitment and development. Since then, as part of their annual reporting requirement, agencies have been required to submit data to OPM to assess their acquisition workforce. Generally, agencies track the number of budgeted positions and the number of actual on-board employees they have, and set targets for closing the gap in hiring. The agencies also assess the acquisition competencies required of their workforce, develop strategies to address competency gaps, set targets, and conduct before and after assessments to measure progress. Agencies use FAI assessment results to identify their competency gaps, and OPM's Human Capital Officers (HCOs) assist with the target-setting process, as they do for all mission-critical occupations. The HCOs work with agencies during the year to establish and implement action plans to meet acquisition targets. Each December, agencies report in their annual Human Capital Management Report the progress made in meeting the targets for closing gaps in resources and competencies within the acquisition workforce.
In collaboration with the FAI, we introduced the idea of the Federal Government working as a unified employer to recruit and hire contract specialists at the entry level. We joined with representatives from the acquisition community and several agencies to implement this concept by—
Let me elaborate briefly on these initiatives.
Recruitment; Federal Acquisition Intern Coalition
To support its succession planning priorities, the OFPP asked the FAI to develop a Federal Acquisition Intern Coalition, with an emphasis on coordinating recruitment strategies and activities, as well as career development activities for entry-level and mid-level employees. FAI, in turn, sought OPM's assistance in establishing the Coalition by helping to develop tools for agency managers and raise the visibility of acquisition careers.
In partnership with a vendor, OPM created an easily recognizable employment brand that includes messaging, logo, and tagline. OPM helped develop the Coalition's website, which targets job seekers and provides information on careers in acquisition, including testimonials, current job opportunities, intern programs, and current information on the acquisition community.
OPM also helped design and develop recruitment materials, including a brochure, a career fact sheet, a branded banner display, and promotional items. OPM employees staffed career fairs to publicize Federal careers in acquisition. During these fairs, attendees were surveyed on their knowledge of and interest in acquisition careers. OPM staff conducted an evaluation study by gathering the baseline data to show current conditions, holding focus groups, analyzing and tabulating data, and providing a summary report of data. We produced two "Working for America" commercials to showcase careers in acquisition. These ads are posted on the websites of both OPM and FAI. OPM also regularly hosts workshops for the acquisition community on a variety of topics, such as hiring flexibilities, talent resources, workforce planning, and recruitment strategies. These workshops are webcast. The most recent one took place July 22, and the next one is scheduled for August 13.
Central Register Pilot for Entry-Level Contract Specialists
OPM also worked with FAI to pilot the use of a central register of pre-screened candidates for entry-level contract specialists at the GS-5/7 level or equivalent. We developed a new streamlined vacancy announcement to attract candidates to these positions. Based on the response to this pilot program, we are now providing this central register as a resource to all interested agencies. The central register can enhance their recruitment efforts by providing agencies with targeted lists of applicants who have been screened for basic eligibility and then ranked, using "category rating" procedures.
Here is how it works. OPM posted an open continuous job opportunity announcement for duty locations nationwide. Candidates apply with a resume and are grouped in categories, based on their responses to the on-line assessment questionnaire. Agencies submit their requests for candidates to OPM, specifying the grade level and duty location of the vacancies. OPM issues a certificate of eligibles for the specific grade level and location of each vacancy, using category rating procedures. This means that candidates in the highest qualified group are referred for employment consideration, with veterans who are 30 percent or more disabled placed at the top of the highest group. All others eligible for veterans' preference float to the top of the appropriate category, based on their responses to the questionnaire. Agencies must select from the top group of eligibles.
Candidates are being referred to multiple vacancies at the same time. A candidate's name may be referred simultaneously on all certificates for which the individual is qualified and is placed in the highest quality category group, and for which the individual indicated he or she is available. An OPM project manager monitors the referral of candidates and coordinates with the agencies during the selection process.
There are approximately 8,000 candidates on the register for 36 locations. Locations were determined by FAI and participating agencies. Since the pilot began, more than 800 applicants have been referred to 10 agencies and components. Sixty-seven selections have been made and, based on agency feedback, we expect more selections.
Dual Compensation Waivers and Direct Hire Authorities
In addition, I would like to briefly point out two statutory authorities that have been helpful to agencies in their acquisition workforce recruitment efforts. First, Congress authorized heads of Executive agencies to grant dual compensation waivers to acquisition personnel if they are uniquely qualified, the agency is experiencing exceptional difficulty in recruiting, or the agency has a temporary hiring emergency. Currently, more than 20 Federal departments and agencies are positioned to use this authority.
Second, Congress authorized agencies to use direct hire or expedited hiring procedures to appoint individuals in acquisition-related positions when they are experiencing a severe shortage of qualified individuals or a critical hiring need. From the beginning of fiscal year 2008 to March of this year, 207 individuals have been hired into non-Defense agencies under these authorities.
Ongoing Initiatives to Support Acquisition Recruitment and Staffing
In addition to the steps we have already taken, OPM is also proposing to expand the centralized hiring process by establishing central registers for contract specialists at the GS-9, 11, and 12 grade levels, using the streamlined vacancy announcement template. These registers will be used by agencies across the Federal Government to help fill mid-level contract specialist positions for the near term, but do not have the means to continue using the centralized register on an ongoing basis. We are carefully examining various assessment methods and will work with FAI to select the most appropriate tools to help predict candidates' future success on the job.
Another area we have focused on, with our partners in this endeavor, is effective communication and outreach, which are so vital to the development of the Federal acquisition workforce, given the wide dispersal of acquisition professionals across hundreds of organizational components of the Federal Government, each with its own goals, workforce priorities, and human resources policies and processes. FAI continuously reaches out to, and partners with, other agencies and organizations, communicating with, persuading, and serving key stakeholders.
We also need to be vigilant in seeking continuous improvement in our communication with agencies to make sure we are understanding the challenges they face and what will be most useful in their efforts to overcome obstacles.
You also asked me to address the "Federal Hiring Process Improvement Act of 2009," S. 736. I appreciate your and Senator Voinovich's leadership in focusing attention on the persistent need to improve our hiring processes in the Federal Government, and your sponsorship of this bill is part of your commendable efforts. S. 736 would make a number of changes aimed at simplifying the Federal employment process and making it more efficient and effective. These changes would not be aimed specifically at the acquisition workforce, but they would apply to the acquisition community just as they would affect the Federal workforce generally.
OPM strongly supports the principles embodied in S. 736 – making the Federal recruiting and hiring process as transparent, efficient, effective, and user-friendly as possible for job applicants and Federal agencies. We are already moving ahead on many of the provisions of S. 736.
OPM has designed templates to streamline job announcements for more than 20 mission-critical and heavily recruited occupations. We will be directing agencies to use plain language in their job announcements. We have streamlined the assessments under the Administrative Careers With America (ACWA) Program, which offers entry-level opportunities at the GS-5 and 7 levels. With these streamlined assessments, it now takes an applicant only 10 to 15 minutes to complete a self-assessment that can be used to apply to many other jobs. As we have described in previous testimony, we developed a "roadmap" of the entire hiring process to make it easier for agencies to streamline their procedures. These initiatives will go a long way toward helping agencies to reform their hiring processes.
OPM supports the intent of S. 736, but we are concerned that mandating good agency practices in legislation may result in agencies losing flexibility and the ability to adapt to change. The Administration recently sent out memoranda to Federal agencies with specific requirements and timeframes for Federal hiring reform. Specifically, agencies are expected, by December 15, to show significant progress in four areas of hiring – timeliness, plain language and streamlined announcements, communication with applicants, and involvement of hiring managers. OPM will be collaborating with OMB to ensure agencies' success in reforming the hiring process. In short, we believe we can achieve the intended results of S.736 by administrative means, by continuing to exercise leadership through our collaboration with OMB and the agencies. Of course, it is essential that any revisions to the Federal hiring process, whether legislative or administrative, are consistent with non-discrimination principles and equal employment law, as well as all of the merit system principles.
Thank you again for the opportunity to represent Director Berry in this important discussion. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.


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Denton do
: Went to Nick Denton's Kinja launch party in his new digs, which are the surest sign of his optimism and confidence in this blog business thing. Everyone lusted after that apartment. It even came with butlers.
Bloggers die to come out of their rabbit holes and act social and parties beat the hell out of conferences, because there's booze, so the place was thick with people (and smoke). Daniel Radosh; Lockhart Steele; Kate Lee, agent to the blog star; Choire Sicha; Meg Hourihan; Jason Kottke; Steven Levy; Jacob Weisberg, even a couple of VCs just to keep Calacanis guessing…
Finally met Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox, who, the world should know, looks not one thing like her logo. And that's good. In fact, I'd say that she could well be The Prettiest Blogger. And I say that not to be a D.O.M. but instead as a message to TV producers (and I know that a few of the political variety do read this): Get her on the air, fools. She's smart, witty, pretty and politically snarky and oh, how we'd die to hear somebody say something new that's actually blunt and honest in an election season. She could/should be the first blogger to become a TV star.
: Glenn sends us to a MediaBistro interview with Wonkette herself. I used to think that he was The Prettiest Blogger. Judge for yourself.
: UPDATE: And now the Christian Science Monitor is writing about Wonkette.
: Wonkette insists she is just an April Fool's joke.
: Pictures.


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Last month Target fired Tashawna Green — but not for being bad at her job. They fired her, she says, for trying to make her job better. Green, a 21-year-old single mom, was the most public supporter of a campaign to unionize the workers at her Long Island, New York store. Before an unsuccessful union vote there, she told The New York Times and other media outlets about the challenge of supporting her daughter on $8 an hour and insufficient hours. Her photo appeared in several newspapers.
Target, which has more than 1,760 American stores, earned $704 million in profits in the second quarter. Like its big-box competitor Walmart, Target has zero union employees in the United States. That means none of Target's workers may bargain collectively over wages or the company's refusal to schedule more workers for full-time hours. More than 50 of Costco's nearly 600 stores, in contrast, are unionized.
Target isn't claiming Green didn't show up to work, or couldn't do the job. Instead, the company put out a statement saying she was fired for acting "in an overly hostile, disruptive manner." Green and representatives of the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Union say that's just a tricky way of saying she wanted to join a union, and Target doesn't want its employees to have that option. The UFCW is filing charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), saying Target illegally punished her for engaging in activism.
It would be nice to say that what happened to Green is unusual, or that going to the government means she'll get justice. But the truth is that companies fire workers for union activity all the time, and they often get away with it.
Research from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that more than a third of companies respond to union elections by firing union activists. Other tactics that make workers fear losing their jobs are even more common, according to EPI. Under the current law, companies dead-set on keeping out unions have a lot to gain by firing workers like Tashawna Green. Firing union supporters removes them from the workplace and sends a chilling message to their co-workers.
Since none of us is perfect, it can be hard to prove to the government that union activism was the reason someone was fired — with appeals, the process can take years. Even if a worker wins a case, usually the stiffest punishment a company faces is bringing the worker back to work, paying the wages she missed (minus any money earned at another job in the meantime), and posting a notice saying that it won't fire workers for union organizing in the future. Unfortunately, that's a small price to pay for refusing to negotiate with your employees over their wages and benefits.
During the two years that Democrats held the presidency and both houses of Congress, it looked like the Employee Free Choice Act might pass. That bill would have tripled the damages for companies that fire workers for union activism, as well as given workers the option of winning union recognition just by signing up a majority of their co-workers. This majority sign-up ("card check") solution, which is the main way workers have won the opportunity to join unions in recent years, sparked a debate over its fairness. But there wasn't enough discussion of the problem that inspired it. Workers like Tashawna Green, who speak up to improve their jobs, too often lose their jobs as a result.
Workers who step up to organize their workplaces are really whistleblowers. They break a silence that can otherwise leave people thinking that the problems they're experiencing are theirs alone. They create an avenue for addressing workplace issues that can otherwise hurt not only workers, but also consumers and communities. These workplace whisteblowers deserve the respect of our culture and the protections of our legal system.


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Sojourners Magazine: January-February 1997
Subscribe to Sojourners for as little as $3.95!
Cover Story
In the breadth of her person, and in the specifics of the projects that she undertook, Jean Sindab wove together the long, proud lineage of struggle for economic, racial, and social justice...
Jean Sindab's place in history.
The courage and compassion of Jean Sindab.
Work that is a trap, work that demeans, work that slaughters, work that destroys souls or the world—this isn't divinely ordained, nor divinely blessed.
The lingering power of evangelical populism.
The Nation's "great unfinished task."
Traveling across the country during the 1996 Presidential campaign, I saw almost no yard signs or bumper stickers with the names of the presidential nominees on them.
The hunger for dialogue in the Catholic Church.
Working to close the School of the Americas
Newt's revolution moves north.
Poverty is now the enemy as Nicaraguans battle on.
For the first time in memory, the Latino community took to the streets of Washington, D.C., in large numbers on October 12, 1996.
Would it be cruel to extol the virtues of chocolate these dark, cold days of January and February, months traditionally reserved for dietary resolutions and abstention from such temptations?
During the fall 1996 Call to Renewal tour, we had the opportunity to speak directly to thousands of people across the country, and to hear their questions and concerns.
Wesley Woods is a United Methodist retirement high-rise in my Atlanta neighborhood.
The phone call came as it does to many parents at some point in the growing-up years of their children. Colleen had fallen off the jungle gym at school, and could I please pick her up?
I confess that on Election Day this past November I didn't vote my conscience or my pocketbook.
Culture Watch
The religious dimension of Paul Schrader's films.
Fear and Loathing at Big Joy Farm.
The Spirit's presence of fictional lives.
''Of the making of books, there is no end" goes a moth-eaten quotation. But maybe there is after all. At least that's the war cry of the latter-day Luddites.
Scott Adams unites the workers of the world.
Sam Phillips' sardonic look at popular culture.
Reynolds Price's story of good news.
New calendars adorn office desks and kitchen walls. Daily organizers with pages still fresh, crisp, and clean fill breast pockets, backpacks, and briefcases.
Novelist Jon Hassler's rich search for community.
I WANT TO celebrate with you your 25th anniversary ("Celebrating 25 Years," November-December 1996). I have been a loyal friend and subscriber for nearly that long.
IN HER ARTICLE about Dr. Kevorkian, Julie Polter is right when she says, "There is too much mystery inherent in death and life for us to claim any simple answers
The National Labor Committee, the group that linked Kathie Lee Gifford's clothing line with sweatshops, is now looking into Disney's production of children's clothing in a Burmese assembly plant.
I WOULD LIKE to thank you for your article on Jesse Helms in the September-October issue.
Across the country, people are hungry to put their faith into action.
IN "HEARTS & MINDS" (September-October 1996), Jim Wallis refers to President Clinton's character problem as though it is a clearly defined, verified fact, rather than a generalized accusation.
Dianna Ortiz, the Ursuline nun who vigiled and fasted in front of the White House for six weeks last spring to pressure the government to release the identity of her torturers...
If God is this winter wheat
IN "HEARTS & MINDS" (September-October 1996), Jim Wallis refers to President Clinton's character problem as though it is a clearly defined, verified fact, rather than a generalized accusation.
Bringing people together
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part....
Young, Catholic, and Feminist?
Our cover story is a tribute to Jean Sindab, a tireless worker for peace and justice and a joy-filled and fun-loving woman who died a year ago this month of cancer.
A theological program in Sing Sing prison rehabilitates and renews.
An interfaith alliance of religious activists—including Christians, Jews, and Buddhists—has joined other environmentalists...
Reflections on the revised common lectionary, cycle B.
Several of our readers have contacted us asking for the date and circumstances of Henri Nouwen's death.


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The future of sexuality is here, and boy it's predictably sad and weird: girls stripping for Bitcoin tips, a virtual currency that's not really worth anything. Start mining yer coins, boys! Welcome to GirlsGoneBitcoin.
Of course, as FWD's Katie Notopoulos reports, this is taking place on Reddit. Where else would the pretense of paying via super-encrypted pseudo-currency be a turn on.
The concept is simple: girls (or guys, occasionally!) upload photos of themselves stripping down. Want to see more, big boy? Pony up. Their Bitcoin addresses are posted alongside, allowing you to donate internet funny money to get to the money shot. Some sample sexy requests!
I'd like to buy a buttplug or some beads with my bitcoins! What do you think?
Moar boobs! Even moar inside.
(F) Jeans and Bra Part 2 (Bitcoin exclusive) P.S I know there is laundry on the floor :P
All the sexiness of Reddit, with all the ease of Bitcoin.
Strangely, many of the BitCoinersGoneWild are already about as wild as it can get—legs (and more) spread, clothes off, straight up naked. What's the incentive there? Bitcoins as a thank you? Thank you for providing yet another poorly-lit amateur self shot? Nevermind that Reddit already provides a massive repository of porn pics that don't require a byzantine "tipping" system—this is all about power.
Or at least the illusion of power—the same sensation that creepy-faced loser at the strip club feels when he reaches forward with a crumpled one, amplified by the mob lecherousness of Reddit. At least this gives Bitcoin enthusiasts something more to do with their reserves than buy guns and heroin. [Reddit (NSFW, duh) via FWD]


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Nintendo 3DS update brings 3D video recording
Day earlier than expected
After initial delays, Nintendo has released a software update for the Nintendo 3DS, enabling new features including 3D video recording.
Nintendo had planned to release the update before the end of November before then pushing it back to 8 December. Now it seems that Christmas has come one day early for 3DS owners as the update is available today.
This software update is fairly sparse when compared to the bumper overhaul the Xbox 360 dashboard update brought this week, but then 3D video recording is something the Xbox 360 definitely won't do. The other new features coming to the 3DS are new game content in StreetPass Mii Plaza, including Find Mii II as well as the transfer of downloaded software and data between Nintendo 3DS systems.
10-minute limit
Unfortunately, the 3D recording does come with a 10-minute limit, but then you probably won't find many people willing to watch a shaky 10 minute continuous take 3D film made on your 3DS.
It's another feature that fits into Nintendo's plan to focus more on casual, women and 50+ gamers. Though even if you've done what Nintendo wants and bought grandma a 3DS for Christmas she might not be shooting 3D videos on a daily basis.
If you're excitedly clutching your 3DS but don't have the update yet, you can check out Nintendo's instructions for how to perform a system update and you'll be filming a 3D present opening epic in no time.
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1345.4 - SA Stats, Oct 2008
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 28/10/2008
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In the year ended August 2008, the largest increase in dwelling units approved in South Australia was recorded for the Eyre Statistical Division (SD) (45.5%). This follows an 18.2% fall in the number of dwelling units approved in the Eyre SD in the year ending August 2007. The Murray Lands SD recorded the largest decrease in dwelling units approved in the year ended August 2008 (down 25.2%), following a 50.2% increase during the year ended August 2007.
Map of South Australia's Statistical Divisions (PDF 2.44MB)
In the June quarter 2008, the total value of building work done (in trend terms) in South Australia was $923.3m, an increase of 0.8% from $916.4m for the March quarter 2008. Engineering work done in the June quarter 2008 was $603.4m, an increase of 5.0% from the March quarter 2008 ($574.8m).
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MIAMI – More than a decade after foster child Rilya Wilson's disappearance shook up the state's child welfare system, the caregiver accused of killing the girl is finally set to go on trial in a highly circumstantial case hinging on jail inmates who say they heard the woman confess.
Jury selection is set to begin Monday in the trial of Geralyn Graham, which is expected to last about eight weeks. Graham, 66, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and has written letters to judges insisting she is innocent. She faces life in prison if convicted.
"I've never hurt a soul in my life," she said in one letter.
Rilya's body has never been found. Police have no witnesses to any killing and scant physical evidence. The crux of the case are alleged confessions Graham made to fellow jail inmates that she killed Rilya and buried her body near a lake.
"It is always problematic for the government when it has to build a case on jailhouse snitches," said Robert Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University who has followed the case over the years. "In the end, the government may lose, particularly if Graham can present a reasonable alternative explanation for Rilya's disappearance."
Rilya was born Sept. 29, 1996, to a homeless cocaine addict. The girl's name was an acronym for "remember I love you always." She was taken into state custody when she was less than 2 months old.
The girl was last seen in 2001 living in a home shared by Geralyn Graham and Pamela Graham, who are not related. When it was discovered in 2002 that she was no longer living there, the Grahams claimed a Department of Children and Families worker had taken her for medical tests and never returned.
An investigation showed that a DCF caseworker, Deborah Muskelly, did not make required monthly visits to the Grahams' home for more than a year, even though she was filing reports and telling judges the girl was fine. Muskelly was eventually placed on five years' probation after pleading guilty to official misconduct for falsifying time sheets.
The case had far broader ramifications, leading to the resignation of then-DCF director Kathleen Kearney and launching of several reforms, including a new missing child tracking system linked to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. State lawmakers also made it illegal to falsify records of visits between child welfare workers and children in the agency's care.
In addition, legislators required DCF to contract out casework to private organizations, which experts said has contributed to a 28 percent drop in the overall number of kids in care since Rilya disappeared. The state pays those organizations around a half billion dollars a year.
"That was the event that drove privatization, for all practical purposes, and truly changed case management," said current DCF Secretary David Wilkins.
Caseworkers are now required to visit a child monthly and carry GPS units that stamp a date and location to make sure every child is accounted for. But it wasn't until last July that caseworkers were required to go beyond simply taking a picture at those visits and get critical updates about how the child is doing in school, whether they have any medical concerns or how they are faring socially in the home.
Former Miami Herald publisher David Lawrence, who chaired a task force that examined the agency's failings in Rilya's case, said the case did lead to important reforms, but problems remain.
In 2011, 10-year-old Nubia Barahona was found dead in her adoptive father's pickup truck. Subsequent investigation revealed that she was routinely abused and that signs were missed by her caseworkers. Her adopted parents have pleaded not guilty to murder charges and could get the death penalty if convicted.
"At heart here is people who didn't want to be bothered by the system. It is beyond a tragic situation," Lawrence said of both cases. "You still need compassion, decency and common sense."
In Graham's case, the star prosecution witness will be Robin Lunceford, a career criminal who had been sentenced to life behind bars before revealing Graham's purported confession. Lunceford's sentence was reduced to 10 years after she came forward. She is now scheduled for release in March 2014.
Lunceford told detectives that Graham, whom she had befriended, was talking to her from an adjacent cell and "broke down, said she couldn't take it anymore, that she had killed the little girl and buried her near her home." Lunceford said Graham told her she smothered Rilya with a pillow because the girl insisted on wearing a Cleopatra costume for Halloween rather than going as an angel. A second inmate also will testify that Graham confessed to the killing in another conversation.
Other prosecution evidence centers on allegations of abuse, including claims that Graham tied Rilya to a bed or locked her in a small laundry room as punishment for misbehavior. There were also reports by friends and acquaintances that the girl was frequently seen with bruises and scratches.
Michael Grieco, a former Miami-Dade County prosecutor now in private practice, said that testimony may help build a circumstantial case against Graham.
"The prosecutors should and will focus on the alleged history of abuse," he said.
Graham has a long history of fraud and other crimes. When she was arrested, police found that she has used 47 aliases and was carrying 10 different driver's licenses. That history was somehow missed by a DCF background check.
"Her whole life was a scam. We still don't know who she was, even after she was fingerprinted," said former Miami-Dade detective Gregory Scott, who retired in 2004 and was an early investigator in Rilya's case.
Pamela Graham, who remains charged with child neglect, has been cooperating with prosecutors and is expected to testify. In sworn statements, she has insisted she does not know what happened to Rilya.
Ultimately, according to Nova law professor Jarvis, the jury will have to be convinced that there's no other explanation for Rilya's death in order to convict Graham.
"Other than foul play, is there any reasonable explanation for the missing person's disappearance?" he said. "Assuming the answer is no, is there any reasonable doubt that someone other than the accused is the perpetrator?"
Associated Press writer Kelli Kennedy contributed to this story.
Follow Curt Anderson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/miamicurt


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How We Burned 900 Calories During a History Lesson – Historical Hike at Deer Valley
Going on Deer Valley's guided historical hike with mountain host Michael O'Malley was a great experience! In my last post, I shared a little of the history he taught us and a lot about the host himself. There are a few more things you might want to know, however. Here you go:
We gathered at Sterling Express Lift and then hiked on a narrow trail through two amazingly beautiful aspen groves. Just when I started to notice my heart pounding and lungs burning, we stopped for a mining history lesson and a chance to catch our breath. I listened intently as Michael explained there were literally a thousand mining tunnels beneath us. He passed around black and white photos of how Deer Valley looked during those mining days. Guess what? Silver Lake was actually a lake at one time! I did not know that. I always wondered…
Wildlife was everywhere. We spotted two mule deer does on the hillside across from our trail. Then a few minutes later we saw three elk cows in the same area. They slowly came into a clearing and then moved past. I had never seen an elk, much less three and so close. Magical.
We also met some interesting people – there was a mix of locals and out-of-towners which included some hard core hikers who you'd want to saddle up to in a windstorm or if you were hungry – they had all kinds of supplies in their packs. One guy had bear repellant spray which of course we didn't need but would come in handy in a variety of circumstances. We met a mountain bike instructor, a tourist from San Francisco, a family from Connecticut and Jennifer the helpful mountain host.
When we regrouped at the end, my friend informed me we hiked 5.5 miles in 3.5 hours to an elevation of 9100 ft. which was about a 1000 ft. climb. She wore her heart rate monitor the whole time and told me that we had burned 900 calories and the guys had burned 1600. What? Are you kidding me? I was having such a good time, I never noticed that we were working out. Do you know how hard it is to burn 900 calories? In case you don't know, here are some examples:
Two hours on the rowing machine burns about 900 calories. I love the rowing machine but I am seriously bored to death after 20 minutes.
About two hours on a treadmill burns 900 calories — utter torture. Will never happen in my lifetime.
Five hours of yoga burns about 900 calories – I did a class once called Yin Yoga where you twist into a pretzel and then the instructor tells you to relax into the pose (really?) and you stay in that position for like 20 minutes or so to release the tension. Push ups are easier than that. Seriously.
An hour and a half of cardio boxing burns 900 calories- I actually took a cardio boxing class at my gym a couple of months ago. Don't ask me why I thought I was in good enough shape to take this class. I made it through the class but when I got home, I couldn't lift my arms even to feed myself and believe me I was starving. Two days later the real pain hit. Every muscle in my torso and upper body felt like it was being attacked by ice picks. A friend of mine who boxes told me to go back right away and work through it. Right.
So imagine my surprise that hiking in the most beautiful place in the world, learning all kinds of interesting history, meeting some really cool people, and seeing majestic animals burned up a boatload of calories …. with out feeling the burn. Somehow it feels like everything is right with the universe. The historical hike is one experience I definitely plan on repeating.


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WSU Plagiarism Information Site
Plagiarism has become a central academic integrity issue facing educational institutions everywhere. In early 2002, a group of interested people gathered to discuss the creation of a plagiarism information site for Washington State University. The group included WSU employees from a wide range of campus organizations including: the Writing Center, the English Department, the Center for Teaching Learning and Technology, the Office of Student Affairs, the WSU Libraries, and the University Ethics Interest Group.
The group sought to equip WSU affiliates with an effective tool, providing a comprehensive overview of the topic, offering a degree of clarity to an issue frought with confusion, and educating about WSU policies and procedures. This site features written work from representatives across the campus and is designed to meet the informational needs of both students and instructors.
Please send your questions or comments about this site to Corey Johnson. Enjoy the site!


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'Antioch': A New Initiative for the Study of the Rum Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch
[1] In 2006 a new charity, named 'Antioch', was set up and registered with the aim of promoting research on the cultural heritage of the Rum Orthodox (Chalcedonian) Patriarchate of Antioch. Although the early period, up to the time of the Arab conquests, is comparatively well known, the subsequent centuries have been very little studied, despite their importance, both for the history of the Orthodox Church as a whole, and for that of the Middle East in general. Discoveries of medieval wall paintings in Syria and Lebanon, as well as of hitherto unknown manuscripts, forgotten saints, and the identification of new Christian archaeological sites in recent years are just one indication of some of the new and unexpected aspects that are coming to light. At present, however, 'Antioch' is concentrating its attention on the very large number of manuscripts of Antiochian Orthodox provenance, written in four different languages, Greek, Syriac, Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Arabic. At the end of many of these the copyist has provided a colophon with notes stating where, when and for whom the manuscript was written; quite often, further information of a historical or topographical nature is also given. Work on these manuscripts has already brought to light a forgotten saint, besides providing a lot of new and valuable historical information. Once all this information has been collected together, it will make it possible to write a much more authoritative and reliable history of the Rum Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch than is at present available.
[2] At the present time 'Antioch' is supporting the research of Monk Elia Khalifeh, an Orthodox monk from Lebanon who is currently residing in Oxford, where he is able to benefit from the resources of the University's libraries, above all from its manuscripts and its collection of microfilms from St Catherine's Monastery, Sinai. He has already made an inventory of several thousand manuscripts in Syriac, Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Arabic, and is in the process of entering all the varied information contained in their colophons into a carefully designed data base. The aim of 'Antioch' is eventually to be able to make all this information available to scholars in the form of a fully searchable database, as well as to support and publish research on the Antiochian Orthodox heritage in general. In due course it is hoped that it will also be possible to organize conferences on the Antiochian Orthodox tradition, and, ideally, to establish a physical Centre to further promote research and to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge about this neglected and little-known tradition to a wider public.
[3] Needless to say, the future success and development of 'Antioch' depends on financial support for its work. Further information about 'Antioch' in general, and about how to support it, can be found on its website, www.AntiochCentre.net.


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Each year Conn Hallinan's blog Dispatches From the Edge awards news stories and newsmakers that fall under the category of "Are you serious?" Here are 2011's winners.
The Golden Lemon Award to Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest arms company, whose F-22 Raptor fighter has some "performance" problems: the pilots can't breathe.The U.S. Air Force was forced to "stand down" its fleet of 160+ F-22s—at $150 million apiece, the single most expensive fighter in the world—when pilots began experiencing "hypoxia-like symptoms" from a lack of oxygen. But the company got right on it, according to Lockheed Martin vice president Jeff Babione, who said he was "proud to be a part" of the team that got the radar-evading aircraft back into the air—for five weeks. When pilots continued to have problems, the F-22 fleet was grounded again.
According to the Air Force, no one can figure out why oxygen is not getting to the pilots, but that pilots "would undergo physiological tests." To see if the pilots can go without air?
Runner-up in this category is Lockheed Martins' F-35, at $385 billion the most expensive weapon system in U.S. history. The cost of an individual F-35 has jumped from $69 million to $113 million a plane, and while this is cheaper than the F-22, the U.S. plans to eventually purchase more than 16 times the number of F-35s than F-22s. It seems the F-35 fighter has "cracks" and "hot spots" that, according to the director of the program, Vice Adm. David Venlet, are "hard to get at."
Dispatches suggests that the Air Force issue ice packs and super glue to pilots.
The P.T. Barnum Award to Dennis Montgomery, a computer programmer who scammed the U.S. government for more than $20 million. Montgomery claimed he had software that could spot terrorist conspiracies hidden in broadcasts by the Qatar-based Arabic news network, Al Jazeera. He said his program could also detect hostile submarines and identify terrorists in Predator drone videos.
The Bush administration took his claims so seriously that in December 2003 it turned back flights from Britain, France and Mexico because the software had "discovered" the plane's flight information embedded in an Al Jazeera crawl bar. The White House, fearing the planes would be used to attack targets in the U.S., actually talked about shooting the planes down.
The CIA eventually concluded the software was a fabrication, but rather than rebuking those in charge during the hoax—Donald Kerr and George Tenet—both men got promotions. The spy agency also didn't bother to tell anyone in the military, so in 2009 the U.S. Air Force bought the bogus software for $3 million.
C. Northcote Parkinson Award to the U.S. Defense Department for upholding the British sociologist's dictum that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Parkinson—a social scientist with a wicked sense of humor—was hired after World War II to examine the future of the Royal Navy. He concluded that, given the military's deep love of fancy gold lace, as well as its addiction to bureaucracy, eventually there would be more admirals than ships. Needless to say, that is exactly what happened.But it is not just the Brits who yearn for the golden epaulets. According to the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), the U.S. military is adding brass to its ranks at a record pace. While the enlisted ranks have grown by 2 percent from 2001 to 2011, three and four star generals and flag rank admirals have increased 24 percent, one and two star generals and admirals by 12 percent, and lower ranking officers by 9.5 percent.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made an attempt to cut the ranks of the top brass, but as soon as Leon Panetta took over the post, he reversed the cuts and added six more generals. In fact, at the same time as the Pentagon was cutting the enlisted ranks by 10,000 in anticipation of an end to the Iraq War, it added 2,500 officers.
According to POGO, "Today's military is the most top-heavy force in U.S. history." Between 2012 and 2021, POGO estimates that the six new generals Panetta appointed will cost taxpayers $14 million.
However, there may be a silver lining here. Generals and admirals don't fight, that's the job of enlisted men. At this rate the U.S. will run out of privates and the business of war will be left to generals and admirals. If that comes to pass, Dispatches predicts an outbreak of pacifism.
The Confused Priorities Award is a three-way tie between British Prime Minister David Cameron, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and former Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern.
In the midst of a savage austerity program, with massive cutbacks in social spending, Cameron's Conservative-Liberal government will spend up to $40 billion on a new generation of missile-firing submarines. While British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said the submarine was necessary to maintain the country's nuclear deterrence, critics say the program is really a boondoggle for BAE Systems, the United Kingdom-based arms company that will make the new weapon system.
Canada's Harper got into the winner's circle by spending over $100 million on summit meetings and pork barrel projects for Conservative cabinet member Tony Clement. The summit expenditures included $13,711 for "glow sticks," $62 million for accommodations, and $4.3 million for a temporary fence to keep Canadians away from the lake where the Group of 8 meeting took place. Half of the summit money was used to build an office building in Fraser's district, as well as develop airports and communities that the cabinet member could take credit for. In the meantime, Harper slashed spending for health care and education, and cut $200 million from environmental protection and monitoring.
Ahern, Taoiseach of the Irish Dail from 1997 to 2008, oversaw the bank speculation and real estate bubble that destroyed Ireland's economy in 2008. Ahern claimed that no one told him that the financial situation was so dire, although an investigation by independent analyst Rob Wright found that the Fianna Fail government had repeatedly been warned that a crash was coming. Asked what his greatest regret was, Ahern replied that it was his failure to build a stadium to match those in Arab states. "I think unfortunately when I see little countries like Qatar and Kuwait…talking about their 10 stadiums and we never succeeded in getting one national stadium. That's an achievement I tried hard to do but I didn't get."
The White Elephant Award to the Greek Army for considering taking 400 free M1A1 Abrams tanks from the U.S. "This is a free offer," said Greek army spokesman Yiannis Sifakis.
Well, sort of free.
The Abrams, the U.S.'s main battle tank, is a 67.6-ton behemoth that burns 10 gallons of gas just to start, and gets 1.6 gallons to the mile. The tanks will also cost $11 million to transport to Greece.
In the meantime, the Greek Socialist government has laid off tens of thousands of workers, cut wages, slashed health care, increased sales taxes, and advanced the retirement age. Massive demonstration and general strikes have convulsed major cities, and the country is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Maybe the army is thinking that if German banks try to repossess the country, those 400 Abrams tanks might come in handy (if Greece can afford to gas to run them)?
The Dr. Frankenstein Award to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright for her sponsorship of Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, a man accused of murdering Serb prisoners during the 1999 Yugoslav War and selling their body parts.
Reporting on the scandal in CounterPunch, reporter Diana Johnstone, author of "Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions," cites a report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty implicating former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Thaci of running "safe houses" during the war where Serb prisoners were tortured and killed.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a human rights organization with 47 member states, sponsored the Marty investigation.
"An undetermined but apparently small number of prisoners were transferred in vans and trucks to an operating site near Tirana international airport [Albania], from which fresh organs could be flown rapidly to recipients," the Marty Report says. "Captives were killed, usually by a gunshot to the head, before being operated on to remove one of more of their organs." Kidneys seem to have been the major harvest.
Thaci has also been linked to the heroin trade and prostitution.
Albright and her aide, the late Richard Holbrooke, pushed Thaci into the leadership of Kosovo during the Rambouillet negotiations leading up to the war. According to Johnson, far more prominent leaders of the Kosovo delegation to those talks were pushed aside, and Thaci—known in law enforcement circles as "The Snake—became the face of the Albanians secession movement.
Asked about the Marty Report, U.S. State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley said the Americans would continue to work with Thaci because "any individual anywhere on the earth is innocent until proven otherwise." Of course, it also helps that Thaci approved the construction of a massive U.S. base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, giving the U.S. its first military foothold in the Balkans.
The Surreal Award to the U.S. Justice Department for finally agreeing that lawyers defending prisoners at Guantanamo can view classified files that were prominently displayed on the WikiLeaks website. The Department ruled that lawyers may access the documents, but cannot "download, save, print, or disseminate" the material, a ruling that attorney David Remes said was "still surreal."
The Grinch Award to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for complaining that Colombia's minimum wage was too high, and driving up the cost of labor. The minimum wage is $1.80 an hour and, for full-time workers, brings in around $300 a month.
The Historical Re-write Award to Jean-Francois Cope, general secretary of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative Union for Popular Movement and the man behind the "Burka Ban." Cope organized a recent conference on secularization that, according to French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, led to "a stigmatization of Muslims."
Cope defended the conference as "controversial but necessary," adding that "the values of France are like the Three Musketeers: liberty, equality, fraternity." Except that the Alexander Dumas novel was set in 1625, and the Musketeers were fighting for Louis XIII and the Catholic Church. "Liberty, equality, fraternity" was the slogan of the 1789 French Revolution, and was not highly thought of in the Feudal court of Bourbons.
The creative Language Award to the Obama administration for its denial that the American bombing of Libya constituted a war. It was, according to the White House, a "time-limited, scope-limited military action."
For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.


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As often happened whenever the late Harvey Pekar strayed too far from the short-story format, his posthumously released graphic history Harvey Pekar's Cleveland (Top Shelf) isn't always as cleanly organized or coherent as it ought to be. Pekar tells the story of his hometown both in the broader sense and through his personal experiences, and the more general Pekar gets, the messier his Cleveland becomes. He jumps around from topic to topic and repeats himself, trying to get at the economic and racial woes of a city that's gone through multiple cycles of civic pride and shame. It would be convenient to contend that had Pekar lived long enough to see this project all the way through, the result would've been less rambling. But similarly scattered late-period Pekar works like The Quitter and Our Movie Year suggest otherwise.
That said, once Cleveland gets past the sloppier contextual material, it becomes a much more enjoyable book. To some extent this is "Harvey Pekar's greatest hits," as he retells anecdotes about growing up in a Jewish family, getting a "flunky" job at a VA hospital, and suffering through two failed marriages before finding his anchor, Joyce Brabner. But by linking his biography explicitly to Cleveland, Pekar brings a fresh perspective to these old stories, grounding them in where he was living at the time, and how those neighborhoods have changed. These are the kinds of details that wouldn't have occurred to him as a younger writer, when he was too rooted in one place to see what was historically and culturally unique about it. And as illustrated by Joseph Remnant—whose style resembles an amalgam of two of Pekar's best collaborators, Robert Crumb and Joe Sacco—Cleveland recaptures the feel of the author's American Splendor heyday, and that sense that his readers had that they'd just casually run into him on the block. It's a bittersweet feeling, knowing that Cleveland now sports a Pekar-sized hole.
Harvey Pekar operated under the philosophy that an everyday working man's life should be considered as dramatic and worthy of contemplation as tales of royalty or extremity. John "Derf" Backderf's My Friend Dahmer (Abrams ComicArts) approaches non-fiction from a similarly casual angle, except that the "ordinary" guy he writes and draws about went on to become one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. As the title implies, My Friend Dahmer is about Jeffrey Dahmer, who was a classmate of Derf's in junior high and high school in a small town in Ohio. Expanded from an earlier short comic story and pamphlet-sized comic book, the 200-plus-page My Friend Dahmer just about exhausts Derf's store of Dahmer anecdotes, describing in detail how Derf and his buddies barely paid attention to Dahmer until late in high school, when Dahmer began doing a "hilarious" impression of a handicapped person which so impressed Derf's circle of friends that they started The Jeffrey Dahmer Fan Club to encourage him. But though they hung out with Dahmer, none of them really talked to him about his troubled family, which means that none of them really knew him.
My Friend Dahmer occasionally tells when it should show, as Derf states outright what's been going through his head in the years since he heard that his old acquaintance had been arrested. But the longer-form version of My Friend Dahmer is also better researched than the previous incarnations, with more information about Dahmer's stormy home life and his early experiments with dismembering animals, none of which Derf really knew about when he was drawing sketches of Dahmer and posting them all around the school. What's especially chilling about this book is how it illustrates the superficiality of most high-school relationships, where most of the people involved are so absorbed in their own lives that they fail to reach out to someone who could use their help—in this case, with tragic results. Even Derf's art gets this across, as he draws Dahmer at home as tortured by his violent sexual compulsions, then draws him at school as creepily placid, only stirring when he contorts his body on command for a cheap laugh.
The Silence Of Our Friends (First Second) is a different kind of "eyewitness to history" story than My Friend Dahmer. In the mid-'60s, Mark Long's family moved to Houston from San Antonio so that his TV reporter father could cover the Civil Rights movement. Long and Jim Demonakos have turned those experiences into a comic-book script, illustrated by the estimable Nate Powell, who tones down his usual experimental impulses to serve Long's straightforward story about his father's tenuously friendly relationship with a local black community leader. Still, Powell's own comics often depict the South as a place where the slow pace and friendly faces disguise the looming threat of violence, which makes him a good choice to illustrate a book about a community in turmoil. And Long has a distinct perspective on the racism of the era, showing how it seeped into every aspect of daily life, such that blacks didn't trust whites any more than whites accepted blacks. The Silence Of Our Friends starts as a family drama and becomes a courtroom drama, but throughout it's about how a large part of the Civil Rights struggle had to do with getting people of every color to confront their problems—however painful the process—rather than fumbling along with the sickly status quo.
Just in time for Black History Month, the 22nd volume of the "Graphic Classics" series offers comic-book versions of writing by Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. Du Bois. African-American Classics (Eureka) is a little different than past volumes in that it features more poems and more bluntly message-oriented stories, but it's a good overview of Harlem Renaissance-era literature, beautifully illustrated by Eureka , Stan Shaw, and Kyle Baker, among others. The art is as expressive as the words, conveying a feel of folklore stretching from one continent to another. …
Cartoonist Bill Griffith had the good and bad fortune to poke his head out of the underground and into the semi-mainstream with his daily newspaper strip Zippy The Pinhead. "Good" in that while many of his fellow travelers from the '60s undergrounds failed to make a living off their comics, Griffith persevered, and has reached a national audience with his often deeply personal reflections on Americana at its best and worst. "Bad" in that feeding the beast of a daily strip means that Griffith hasn't had a lot of opportunity to do much besides Zippy over the past few decades. While other colleagues have seen their short stories and graphic novels draw serious attention in literary circles, Griffith remains the "Are we having fun yet?" guy to many. Perhaps the long-overdue collection Lost And Found: Comics 1969-2003 (Fantagraphics) will change that. Leaning heavily on the stories Griffith drew in the early '70s for undergrounds like Young Lust, Short Order Comix, and the revolutionary Arcade, Lost And Found shows off more facets of Griffith, putting his obsessions with Hollywood, suburbia, and a certain type of corporate cockiness into a larger context. Zippy, Mr. Toad, and Claude Funston appear in a lot of these pieces, and the earlier stories in particular are crudely drawn, but Griffith's eye for the unusual and his puckish wit are prevalent even in longer form, and this book offers a glimpse of what might've been had Griffith followed a career path more like his friend and Arcade partner Art Spiegelman. …
Similarly, Griffith's wife Diane Noomin has seen her work scattered around anthologies like Wimmen's Comix and Twisted Sisters since she made her comics debut in 1972, but has never received the dedicated study afforded by her new book Glitz-2-Go: Collected Stories (Fantagraphics), which brings together nearly 200 pages of Noomin's work. The cartoonist's recurring character Didi Glitz—her fantasy of a take-no-shit dame draped in ersatz glamour—is all over this book, exploring her sexuality and selfhood with a string of insensitive men, pushy women, and a secret stash of "rubberware." But the best pieces in Glitz-2-Go are the ones where Noomin pulls back the curtain and deals directly with her own life, from being a Long Island teenager in the '60s to dealing with a string of miscarriages that ended her dreams of motherhood. From the cluttered panels to the bracing honesty, these strips are very much of a piece with the original underground comics movement, and may not be immediately accessible to people unused to that tradition. But for those who fondly remember the glory years of Dori Seda, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Joyce Farmer, and Roberta Gregory, it's a pleasure to see Noomin get her own showcase. …
Veteran artist Ernie Colón gets back to his horror comics roots with Inner Sanctum: Tales Of Horror, Mystery And Suspense (NBM), an adaptation of several stories from the radio series that used to terrify Colón as a boy in the Bronx in the '40s. Of course, a large part of what made Inner Sanctum Mystery so effective was the power of suggestion, as the sound effects and the oily Raymond Johnson narration led listeners deep into the dark. As skilled as Colón is, he can't help but reduce some of the original stories' shock value just by drawing what's better left to the imagination. Still, it's fun to see Colón attempting Warren-style horror again, and at the least, the overall gruesomeness and cleverness of these stories might drive some readers to rediscover the radio show.
During the '60s, Jim Henson hustled to get his work in front of as many as people as he could in as many different ways as he could, whether he was hauling his Muppets onto any TV show that'd have him, or pitching ideas for new series and movies to a string of execs in Hollywood. After receiving an Oscar nomination for his playful 1965 avant-garde short Time Piece, Henson and his writing partner Jerry Juhl started developing an existential Western that drew interest from several producers—this was the era of the "head movie," after all—but never came to fruition. Now artist Ramón Pérez (under the supervision of Lisa Henson and The Jim Henson Company) has adapted Henson and Juhl's script into graphic novel form, striving to retain the absurdism and overt artificiality of the original idea. Jim Henson's Tale Of Sand (Archaia) tells the story of a young man who gets drafted by a old-timey Western town to make his way across a desert filled with bizarre obstacles: sharks, dames, tanks, football teams, a stretch limo containing a ferocious lion, etc. As with Ernie Colón's Inner Sanctum, Pérez can only do so much to replicate the editing rhythms and juxtapositions of a different medium, but by working in text from the original script, he does get across the post-modernism that Henson and Juhl were going for, and is faithful enough to the structure to allow Henson-philes to imagine what the movie might've been like. That alone is a gift.
French cartoonist Guillaume Bianco recalls Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, and Edward Gorey with his album Billy Fog: The Gift Of Trouble Sight (Archaia), about a death-obsessed little boy who sees ghosts and demons that others can't. Combining illustrated poems, fake newspapers, games, factoids, conventional comics, and first-person musings by his hero, Bianco's book may seem a little dense and disconnected at first, but there is an actual story tying all these fragments together, having to do with the death of Billy's cat and how it gets him thinking about souls, Santa Claus, and whether all grown-ups are murderers because "they killed the kids they used to be." The Gift Of Trouble Sight is macabre, but never excessively so, and as Billy comes to grips with the permanence of death, Bianco achieves a profundity rare for this genre.
Faith Erin Hicks' Friends With Boys (First Second) is also about a kid who sees ghosts: high-school freshman Maggie McKay, who has spent her whole life being home-schooled by her mother (until Mom abruptly split). Now among her peers for the first time, Maggie has to learn the rules of the teenage caste system and to try to figure out how to satisfy the spectral lady who's been haunting her since she was a little girl. Similar in many ways to Vera Brosgol's Anya's Ghost, Friends With Boys is ultimately less invested in its supernatural elements and more concerned with Maggie and how she comes to terms with the many big changes in her life. This is a nice little book overall, pitched to readers a lot like its heroine: adolescent misfits prodded to grow up faster than they know how.
Lastly, from the "thinking outside the panel" department, cartoonist Stephan Pastis and Chronicle Books have assembled Pearls Before Swine: Only The Pearls, an iPad app containing 250 large-sized, full-color strips from the run of the series—half of which add brief, clickable audio commentary by Pastis—plus a few animations and behind-the-scenes videos of Pastis at work. In keeping with the strip's sensibility, the bonus material is irreverent, but not un-serious. Even with the requisite deadpan clowning, Pastis does impart actual information about how he puts Pearls together, including the squabbles he's had with his editors over even the minutest traces of "edge" in the strip—such as any inclusion of the word "sex." Other cartoonists have done similar "behind the comic" collections before, but the mixed-media presentation and the under-$5 price tag makes Only The Pearls an experiment worth supporting. If nothing else, the strips themselves are as funny as ever, no matter the presentation.


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FLORENCE, TEX.—"Look at that—isn't it gorgeous?" Sandy Peck asks as she rinses dirt from a flaked stone about the length and width of a pinky finger. Peck runs a hose over soil on a fine-mesh screen, prodding at stubborn clods of clay with a muddy glove. "Look, there's another one."
Peck, sorting soil that had been disturbed by a recent thunderstorm, is a volunteer looking for artifacts in the Gault Valley in central Texas, some 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Austin. The valley hasn't changed much over the last several thousand years: A spring-fed creek still runs among live oaks and pecan trees, jackrabbits and deer still live on the nearby uplands, and cobbles of chert, ideal for making stone tools, still bulge from the valley's limestone walls. Today, however, instead of working hides and shaping stones as they did 13,000 years ago, humans painstakingly sift the soil in search of ancient artifacts that will overturn long-held assumptions about the earliest Americans.
Since the 1930s textbooks have taught that the New World's first inhabitants, known for the town in New Mexico where their spear points were discovered, walked from Siberia to Alaska about 13,300 years ago. The Clovis people were believed to be highly mobile nomadic hunters, never settling in one place, instead surviving on massive mammoths, mastodons and ancient bison.
But in excavations starting in 1998 Gault has revealed that Clovis people lived at the site for extended periods over a span of 300 years, says Michael Collins, a research associate with the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory. The evidence? Scientists have found numerous tools manufactured from local stone, used until they were worn, then repaired repeatedly until they finally were discarded. In other words, Paleo-Indians were members of a settled community. "We're redefining Clovis," Collins says.
It's unusual to find a site that has both materials for stone tools and "enough resources that people could camp and live right there," says Dennis Stanford, head of theSmithsonian National Museum of Natural History anthropology department who has visited the Gault site several times. "Usually you don't get both, but at Gault you get the whole show. So it looks like people were living there for extended periods of time."
Gault also suggests previous assumptions about Clovis's diet were wrong. Sure, they ate mammoth and bison, but archaeologists are also finding bones from frogs, turtles, snakes and rabbits. "Coming home with three rabbits isn't as dramatic as the museum mural image of Clovis people sneaking up on a mammoth," says Collins's colleague, Andy Hemmings, but probably better reflects day-to-day life.
Not everyone is convinced that Clovis was such a homebody. "Gault is not completely rewriting what we know about Clovis," says Robert L. Kelly, head of the department of anthropology at the University of Wyoming. "[Collins] could be right that this particular population of Clovis was more settled than other peoples. But is Gault the pattern or is Gault an aberration? We don't know."
The Clovis finds would be dramatic enough, but Collins also claims to have found evidence of an earlier culture at Gault. In 2002 the team dug below Clovis layers and promptly found hundreds of stone flakes. The surrounding soil was dated to 350 years before Clovis. When they kept digging, the team dated other materials to even further back, although Collins used a technique that others have questioned, and that even he acknowledges is imprecise.
If it holds up, Collins's claim would add Gault to the list of proposed pre-Clovis sites, including Monte Verde in Chile, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania and Cactus Hill in Virginia. They're all controversial, however, based on charges of contamination and other problems.
Collins hopes to bolster his case by digging further at Gault. He'll also use another method to test the soil's age. And some 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from Gault, in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, members of his team will soon tackle the perplexing question of how Paleo-Indians got here in the first place. Until an ice-free corridor opened in northwestern Canada about 13,300 years ago, providing a route to the interior, a dome of ice divided Asia from North America. Some archaeologists have proposed an ice-free route along the northwestern coast; others suggest the first Americans, like the first Australians, had boats and used them either to travel east from Asia or, a few daring archaeologists propose, west from Europe. Hard evidence is unavailable because the coastline moved several hundreds of meters inland when the ice sheets melted.
"The archaeological record is out there underwater," says Hemmings, "so that's the next frontier in this search." Hemmings plans to spend two weeks this summer in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico looking for Clovis and pre-Clovis sites. In an expedition funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a team lead by Hemmings and James Adovasio of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., will explore promising sites along ancient coastlines using remotely operated vehicles. They've identified prime targets by studying underwater maps for features Clovis people are known to have preferred, such as cliff faces near streams or rivers.
Back on dry land, Collins believes Gault has more to tell us about early Americans. "It's a special place," says Collins, "and it's been a special place for a long, long time."