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If you live in Plains MT, chances are good that you're looking for ways to save money on auto insurance. While the cost of coverage can vary greatly depending on where you live, there are a few steps you can take to make sure you're getting the best possible rate. Here are six tips to help Montana residents get cheap auto insurance rates:
By following these tips, Plains residents can get cheap auto insurance rates without sacrificing quality coverage and peace of mind. Make sure to shop around for the best deal and ask about any applicable discounts before making your decision.
Montana is one of the few states that has its own set of regulations when it comes to auto insurance. In Plains MT, drivers must have at least the minimum required liability coverage before they can legally drive a car. Montana also has some unique laws that may surprise even seasoned drivers. Here are four unique auto insurance laws in Montana:
1) Uninsured Motor Vehicle Coverage: Montana requires uninsured motor vehicle coverage for all vehicles registered in Montana. This type of coverage pays for damages sustained by another driver if you are involved in an accident and found to be at fault, but don't have insurance to pay for the damages.
2) Personal Injury Protection (PIP): Montana requires all drivers to carry personal injury protection (PIP) coverage. PIP pays for medical expenses, lost wages, and other costs resulting from an accident without regard to who is at fault.
3) Montana Assigned Risk Plan: Montana requires that all drivers be covered by an insurance company approved by the Montana Assigned Risk Plan (MARP). MARP ensures that everyone in Montana has access to basic auto insurance regardless of their driving history or credit score.
4) No-Fault Insurance: Montana requires no-fault insurance which means that your own insurance company pays for your medical bills and damages if you are involved in an accident, regardless of who is at fault. This type of coverage helps protect both parties involved in a crash from having to bear the full financial burden.
By understanding Montana's unique auto insurance laws, you can ensure that you're properly protected while on the road. Make sure to speak with an experienced Plains insurance agent or broker to make sure that your coverage meets all Montana requirements.
Montana requires that all vehicle owners maintain liability insurance coverage. However, vehicle owners may want to consider additional protection in the form of mechanical breakdown insurance (MBI). This type of coverage helps pay for repairs to a car's main components due to wear and tear over time. The cost of MBI depends on the insurer, the make and model of your vehicle, and other factors. Here are 7 companies that offer MBI policies in Montana:
It may help your shopping experience to compare the rates of other cities by zip code such as 47997, 46979, 51551, 11569, 96162, 62510, 31999, 73933, 59859, and 29851.
Temporary car insurance in Plains is an excellent option for drivers who need coverage on a short-term basis. Whether you are visiting the state and need temporary coverage, or you just need coverage until your next policy renewal, Montana offers several types of temporary car insurance that can provide the protection you need. Here are four main purposes of temporary car insurance in Montana:
Living in Montana is a great experience - the mountainous landscape, outdoor recreation opportunities, and friendly people make it an attractive place to call home. But Plains drivers need more than just a good attitude: they also need full coverage auto insurance. Here are four reasons why you should consider purchasing a comprehensive policy in Montana:
Overall, comprehensive auto insurance is essential for Plains MT drivers looking to stay safe and secure on the state's highways and backroads. With full coverage auto insurance, you can protect yourself from potential financial losses related to uninsured motorist incidents, extreme weather conditions, hazardous roads, and animal-related accidents - so make sure to get a policy today!
Montana is a beautiful state with plenty of outdoor activities to enjoy, but when it comes to buying used cars, you should proceed with caution. Montana may offer some great deals on used vehicles, but there are also many pitfalls that come with purchasing pre-owned transportation. To avoid finding yourself in a sticky situation with your car purchase, we've compiled a list of the 10 worst used cars to buy in Montana.
Montana is a great place to find a new truck. Whether you're looking for a reliable work truck or just want something comfortable and stylish to get around town, Montana has plenty of options. We've rounded up 10 of the best new trucks that you can lease in Plains right now. From full-sized pickups to compact SUVs, these vehicles offer unbeatable value and performance. So, if you're in the market for a new vehicle, check out our list of the best trucks to lease in Montana and take your pick!
As college students in Plains, you know that finding the right car can be a challenge. You need something reliable and affordable. To help narrow down your search, we've put together this list of the 10 most popular cars for Montana college students. Whether you're commuting to class or taking road trips with friends, these vehicles will handle it all with ease.
Montana offers an abundance of stunning landscapes and awe-inspiring views. From majestic mountains to lush forests, Montana is the perfect destination for a memorable road trip. Here are five of Montana's must-see destinations:
5 Finally, there's Montana's famous Going Out West Again trip - a 350-mile loop through Montana's most iconic western towns such as Red Lodge and Livingston then back towards Bozeman. Visit Montana's historic mining towns, cowboy ranches and hot springs for a truly unforgettable experience.
Montana is one of the few states that offer insurance for Plains Uber and Lyft drivers. Insurance companies in Montana have developed special policies to protect rideshare drivers and their passengers. Here are four companies that can provide Plains-based Uber and Lyft drivers with the coverage they need:
Plains residents need to be aware of the most common driving infractions and their associated insurance increases. Montana is a state that has many different laws regarding driving, so it's important to know which violations may result in increased premiums. Here are the top 10 driving infractions in Montana and their associated insurance increases:
Plains residents are in luck when it comes to auto insurance. Montana is one of the few states that offer lower than average insurance rates for drivers. The Montana Department of Insurance publishes an annual list of average car insurance quotes by age group. Here is a look at the five most common age ranges and their respective average auto insurance quotes:
These are just a few examples of the affordable rates Plains drivers can enjoy when shopping for car insurance. Montana is one of many states that offer competitive auto insurance quotes, so make sure to shop around to find the best deals on coverage. Montana drivers also have access to a variety of discounts and coverage options, so be sure to ask your provider about these as well. With some research and comparison shopping, Montana residents can save big on their auto insurance.
Choosing between a national insurance company and a local Plains agent or broker for the best deal can be a nuanced decision, largely dependent on your individual needs and circumstances. National insurance companies have their advantages. They typically offer a wider variety of products and services, and may provide discounts for bundling different types of insurance such as auto, dwelling, and life. These companies usually have extensive customer service departments, often available 24/7, and their digital platforms for quotes, policy management, claims, and payments are usually quite comprehensive. However, the trade-off might be less personalized service. Since you're more likely to deal with different customer service representatives each time, building a relationship with your insurer could be more challenging. Additionally, national insurers may not fully comprehend the specific insurance needs and risks of your local area in Plains.
On the other hand, local Plains agents and brokers can offer more personalized service and the opportunity to build a longstanding relationship. They can guide you through the intricacies of insurance policies, assist with claims, and are generally more attuned to the particular risks and insurance needs of your locality. Brokers, representing multiple insurance companies, are in a position to shop around for the best deal for you. To get an idea of how much rates can vary by zip code you could compare ones such as 32168, 54121, 80829, 59859, 92082, 46373, 64830, 96162, 67473, and 34997. However, their range of products may not be as wide as national insurers, and their operating hours might not be as flexible. Also, customer service may not be available round the clock. In terms of digital accessibility, their platforms may not be as user-friendly or feature-rich as those of larger, national companies.
In conclusion, the better option is largely dependent on your preferences. If a personal relationship and local Plains expertise is valued, a local agent or broker could be your best bet. Conversely, if you prefer the convenience of digital tools, round-the-clock customer service, and a broader range of products, then a national insurance company might be the right choice. It's always prudent to compare quotes from different sources before making a decision.
Disclaimer: Please note that the content provided above is for informational purposes only and it does not constitute legal advice. You should always consult with an insurance professional or legal counsel for any questions related to insurance laws.
Sarah Wilson is a well-respected car insurance specialist and travel enthusiast. With a background in the insurance industry, Sarah has extensive knowledge of car insurance policies and the various factors that affect coverage and pricing. She is passionate about empowering women to make informed decisions about their car insurance, and has written extensively on the topic. Sarah is also a travel enthusiast and has explored various parts of the world, including many road trips. Her love for travel has inspired her to write about the best ways to stay protected on the road. Whether you're planning a cross-country trip or just need advice on the best car insurance policy for your needs, Sarah's articles provide credible and reliable information to help you make informed decisions.


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Many people contacted me to see if I, Shiraishi Island and the Moooo! Bar were okay after the March 11 earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster. I told everyone the same thing. "We're okay. We live 500 miles from the disaster zone. We haven't been affected at all."
We didn't even feel the earthquake, not even slightly. We have had no black-outs. We continue to have food, water and daily necessities.
But of course, this is not all true. The disaster has affected everyone in Japan, including the 650 people on Shiraishi Island in the middle of Japan's Seto Inland Sea. "What will happen to Japan?" laments my next-door neighbor, Kazu-chan. It's a big question.
Kazu-chan manages the International Villa on our island that hosts over 1,000 foreigners each year. After a US$150,000 renovation last year, the beautiful villa overlooking the sea sits strangely vacant, in peril of becoming Japan's next haikyo, or "modern ruin."
"We have no reservations at all for the International Villa this year," says Kazu-chan, the first time this has happened in the 20-year history of the villa. "Ever since March 11, we have had only cancellations."
Sea-kun, who runs a kayaking program on the island for junior high schools has been faced with cancellations this year from school groups coming from the Tohoku region.
On the beach, the proprietors will have a lean summer without the foreign tourists they have come to rely on as, year by year, the Japanese tourists have decreased and the foreign tourists increased.
As the warm days of spring envelop the island, the foreign tourists should start arriving. But no one is coming to Japan now. "We are far from Tohoku, but the foreign media has exacerbated the nuclear problem. No one will come to Japan this summer," said another islander. The 'Visit Japan' campaign is a distant memory.
Tohoku, the northeastern part of Japan hardest hit by the triple disaster, is not a major destination for foreign tourists. Most people fly into Tokyo and head south-west. Western Japan, including Kyoto, Nara, Kobe and Hiroshima haven't been affected at all, let alone the islands of Shikoku, Kyushu and all of Okinawa. From Tokyo to Okinawa is 1,500 kilometers, just half the total length of the country. But this is all hard to know if you don't live in Japan.
This is not the first time our island has experienced a decrease in foreign tourism. There was SARS and bird flu before this. But the Tohoku Earthquake is much bigger news. Many say this event will change Japan forever. We have survived before, but will we survive now?
Our locals have always welcomed the foreign tourists because they infuse variety into an otherwise austere island lifestyle. People often ask me what country most tourists come from, but my only answer is, "Everywhere!" They come from Holland, Sweden, France, Finland, Australia, Spain, Italy, Australia, the U.S., the U.K., even Trinidad and Tobago. Most are just travelling through Japan and choose to spend a day or two on the island.
The locals wonder, "Why Shiraishi Island?" not able to comprehend why our little island would be on any tourist's list of places to visit in Japan. The answers vary, but most tourists say they come to relax, experience Japanese culture first-hand and to soak up the quiet island life. Most have been referred by others.
Visitors are charmed by the simple island life and the friendliness of the locals. The islanders invite them into their homes for karaoke, food and drinks. Local businesses have walls full of postcards from all over the world--thank you notes from previous visitors who hold their memories dear.
In turn, the islanders are charmed by the tourists who regale them with tales of travelling around Japan (and the world), explaining the subtleties of different cultures and telling jokes over beers and sake. The foreigners bring their talents with them too: many are professional singers, dancers, writers or artists. They join in the island culture. They jam with us, drink with us, laugh with us and share our sorrows and joys.
Without the tourists, we would have little knowledge of other people, other countries, and other worlds outside of our own. They bring real experiences to us. We will miss them dearly.
Are we going to start referring to these as "the good ole days?"
The other night, I got a phone call from San-chan, who runs the restaurant and bar on the beach. "Come over to Kamiya," he said, referring to one of the old houses on the island. "We are doing something interesting." My husband and I grabbed a bottle of wine and headed towards the beach. Inside Kamiya, a traditional Japanese house over 100 years old, a group of locals was sitting around a large bonfire. Smoke wafted up through an opening in the ceiling and the walls of the room were black with 100 years of smoke. "This is how it used to be," they explained to me, "before we had heaters." I was astonished to see such a large, open fire inside a wooden house.
Beer and wine was passed around and someone brought out a guitar. We all settled into a typical island night of warmth, chattery and friendship.But something was missing: you.

subset: commoncrawl


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More than three quarters of pediatricians said they sometimes or often get asked by parents to use an "alternative" vaccination schedule that strays from national recommendations, according to a new survey of doctors.
And while almost all of them agreed with the current vaccination schedule for babies and young kids, and would follow it for their own child, most pediatricians were willing to give in to parents' wishes to delay vaccines for infections like chicken pox, hepatitis B and measles.
"I was a little surprised at the high level of pediatricians who reported having parental requests for (alternative schedules)," said Dr. Amanda Dempsey, who studies immunization and infectious diseases in kids at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, but wasn't involved in the new study.
"This seems to indicate that this is an ever-increasing problem."
Recent studies have shown that more parents are delaying or skipping certain vaccines, typically citing safety concerns, such as a link between vaccines and autism—a theory which scientists now agree holds no water.
Researchers worry that with an increasing number of kids unvaccinated or under-vaccinated, diseases like measles or whooping cough could spread through schools and communities, putting at risk even those who do get recommended vaccines on time.
For youngsters under six, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended vaccination schedule includes MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) shots, and vaccines to protect against whooping cough, chicken pox, hepatitis and seasonal flu, among others. (The full schedule is on the CDC website here: 1.usa.gov/k23A6d).
For the current study, researchers led by Dr. Aaron Wightman from the University of Washington in Seattle surveyed more than 200 pediatricians in their state about how often parents ask them for an alternative vaccination schedule—and how likely they are to agree to one.
In the online questionnaires, 77 percent of the doctors said parents "frequently" or "sometimes" asked to skip or delay certain vaccines. And six out of ten said they were comfortable using an alternative schedule if parents asked for it.
Pediatricians were more likely to budge from the recommended schedule for certain vaccines over others—for example, most said they would feel comfortable delaying hepatitis B or chicken pox vaccines, whereas fewer would consider straying from the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine (DTap) recommendations.
That suggests doctors are more adamant about going through with vaccines that prevent potentially dangerous bacterial infections that hit infants and young kids, researchers wrote in their Pediatrics report on Monday.
Still, "it's kind of a slippery slope," Dempsey told Reuters Health. Delaying any vaccine "undermines the importance of the schedule in general."
Her own research has suggested that more than 10 percent of parents use an alternative vaccination schedule, and two percent refuse vaccines altogether.
But there's no evidence that any alternative schedules are safe or effective, she emphasized. What's more, because no vaccine gives 100 percent protection, even kids who have been vaccinated are put at risk when many of their school or community peers skip or delay their vaccines, Dempsey added.
She said that pediatricians should talk to every parent and try to help them make the safest decision for their child—but that may become increasingly difficult if the popularity of alternative vaccination schedules continues to grow.
The new study, Dempsey added, "suggests to me that it's possible that this may become more the norm in the future, as more and more pediatricians are being asked to do this."


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An event every day that begins at 10:00 am, repeating until October 31, 2022
On view May 19, 2022 – October 2022 at the Jewish Museum-FIU
Norman Giller was one of the founders of Miami Modern (MiMo), a regionalized style of Modernist architecture. Through the use of new materials and technology, he was able to realize his ideas in a post-war II booming Florida. Giller's body of work includes designs for President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress in Latin America, revolutionized motel design, created more than 3,000 housing units for United States military bases as well as a bevy of modern residential, commercial and institutional projects. Two of his projects, The Carillon Hotel and The Diplomat Hotel are iconic symbols of the glitz and glamour that transformed Miami into an urban playground.
Giller's work demands attention and recognition and there is no one better than his son, architect Ira Giller, to guide us through this retrospective of Giller's work. With Ira's invaluable insight, the projects shown here are more than just brick and mortar, they are windows into a man's creativity. Ira's own style builds upon Norman's legacy with his creative ingenuity as well as adding much to the narrative with his renowned work as well.


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George William "Bill" James (born October 5, 1949, in Holton, Kansas) is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose. His Baseball Abstract books in the 1980s are the modern predecessor to websites using sabermetrics such as Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Primer (now Baseball Think Factory).


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After the bricked up revenant of a child bites Elisabeth on the hand, her world starts changing. Something in The Marsh is stirring.
This is the fifth part in a short story series that began as just that, a few unrelated short stories. Last week began to tie in a vague plot in Witchcraft and Conspiracy, this week returns to the Victorian era following Elisabeth after An Absent Child. Pieces are beginning to fall into place for the paranormal brothers, but that is one hundred years in the future.
The links are below and may contribute to a better plot understanding.
If you want to see more then please say so in the comments and please feel free to share any of my post.
Elisabeth spent the following week avoiding both cellar and room at the top of the stairs. It was now noticeable that each time someone passed the latter on the landing. They all subconsciously swerved giving it a wide berth. As far as she was aware none, other than herself, had actually opened the door at all. It was like it didn't exist. Inside, her mind said otherwise. Something else was bleeding out, and it was that darkness saying "keep out" deep inside the conscious of passers by.
Not her though. It had called her in to show the way to some unhallowed folly – tomb – lying in the middle of The Marshes. A path only visible from the window in a long disused child's room. At night she still saw the way in her dreams. During the days since the cellar, Elisabeth had systematically walked the grounds. Always failing to see anything other than an overgrown copse, way out beyond the gardens and surrounded by bogs and wetlands. Even the trees seemed, at ground level, to have no discernible order, and try as she might even the window of the avoided room was nowhere in sight.
Today she was sitting in the day room overlooking the gardens whilst reworking the bandage covering the hand, that was what? Bitten, scratched, snagged on a nail? Elisabeth knew bitten was the correct answer, but was reluctant to consider it a reality. The further she got from that night the more it all seemed unlikely.
How could the cellar hold the ghost of a bricked up child who was able to sink teeth into the palm of her hand? Something irrational said it could. Moreover it made the hairs on her neck stand out and a chill shudder ripple through her body. The unwrapped bandage again showed signs of blood. On her palm the two tiny punctures were clearly visible and still not healing properly. Her physician was somewhat perplexed by this, and convinced carbolic soaked bandages were essential to prevent infection until the wounds knitted together. Elisabeth sighed and reapplied fresh dressings. A most strange bite she thought, two tiny pin pricks where there should be more marks if it were truly teeth.
Her husband, Albert, was away in London and unlikely to return for several weeks. Part of her thought the draw might be a mistress, but that was merely justification for Jonathan. The move here was partly to axe that connection and ensure complications concerning her unborn child's father would remain silent. With Albert away again, old regrets returned and she found her thoughts becoming untoward and focussed on memoirs of her ex lover and his penchant for experimentation. In particular, the rush she had found whilst blindfolded.
She felt herself becoming unnecessary and shook her head in an effort to displace the feelings of wantonness. Being alone in a big house made isolation all the more potent. She had needs and they were no longer being met. Being discovered with a paramour would not befit her status and leave her in ruins. She enjoyed the indulgence, but was not in love with Jonathan. It was better he was no longer in the picture. Rising Elisabeth decided fresh air might cleanse the senses and wash away the licentious thoughts.
Outside early morning sunlight was dappling through the trees and the garden was half alive with birdsong. She stood on the threshold of the patio doors, that were now swung outwards. Half alive she thought, how can that be? For a reason she knew not, Her mind was picking up nuances that, previously, had been unnoticed. Drawing out emotions, sounds and feelings that were now more exact. It was like a slumbering part of her mind had woken up and brought new depth to existing sensations. Perhaps that was why the brief thoughts of Jonathan had seared the images of lust into her mind a short while ago.
Returning to the garden, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Half alive it was so obvious now. In front and to the right there was the sounds of life. Insects chattering, leaves rustling and birds. How could she have not noticed the birds before? They were so loud and distinct. The left was dead. Or possibly just incredibly silent, or afraid to speak out. It felt wrong. Opening her eyes she glanced toward the island way out over The Marshes.
Her eyes burned with a new clarity. Things seemed sharper, more defined, and yet to the left colour was greyed out and the wetlands exposed leaving the path to folly clearly visible. Solid ground wending a course through the marshes, edged by the wisps of mist washing against the land. Surrounded by sedges and reeds that were now withered leaving desiccated revenants of what lay there only minutes before.
Elisabeth held her breath, tracing the walkway back from island to the edge of her garden where it joined what should have been a random stand of trees. Except they were no longer random. Skeletal oaks marched to the bog shore, forming a corridor leading to the base of the house. Exactly where the two collided was hidden from view, but she guessed at directly below the room that chose not to reveal itself. She was aware of the quickening of her heartbeat echoing in her chest and resounding in her ears. Feeling her pulse forcing the blood round arteries and veins as her eyes watched the line where daylight met grey, where silence and decay existed on one side and life on the other.
"My lady, will you be taking breakfast shortly?"
Elisabeth turned slowly to see her maid standing just inside the day room. For a moment she considered the girl before her as rather pretty with a delicate white neck in which the life pulse was acutely visible. Briefly, her eyes flashed crimson imagining the red liquid coursing round her veins. Then it was gone, but not before the maid searched for the floor avoiding eye contact. It was like her mistress had dipped into her very soul, leaving her feeling violated and, for the first time ever, scared by what she had just witnessed. It was the eyes, they had turned the colour of blood. Albeit briefly, but they had. Filled with horror and surrounded by obsidian where the whites should be.
"Alice, is everything alright? You look as if you have seen a ghost?"
The maid reluctantly looked up again expecting the worst but finding Elisabeth smiling down upon her.
"You eyes Ma'am, they were wrong for a moment, but it may have been me. They is perfectly clear now."
She was trembling. Something Elisabeth picked up on immediately.
"What do you mean…wrong
Alice took a small step backwards.
"They looked like you was possessed by the Devil."
Thoughts of the grey line outside flooded into Elisabeth's mind.
"Alice, would you be so kind as to look outside and tell me what you can see?"
"It's alright, I won't bite." Unlike the child in the cellar. "Just tell me what you see over The Marshes. Anything odd about them, that sort of thing."
Alice tentatively moved to the threshold between day room and garden, half expecting something to be entirely wrong with the world.
"It all seems the same to me, just grasses and bogs and an overgrown bit of land in the distance."
"And the sky?"
"Blue as blue Ma'am, suns out and no clouds at all."
Elisabeth moved behind her casting her own eyes across the vista. Nothing out of the ordinary, no half alive or dead swamp. There was one change though. Now she had seen the causeway to the island to her it was clear as day. Winding through the tufts of sedge leading toward the aisle of trees that now, also stood clear amidst the stands that had, previously, appeared randomised. Her gaze dropped again to the nape of the maid's neck exposed under the bun her hair was tied up in. She placed a hand on the girls shoulder watching in slow time as a finger nail deftly traced a path over the pale skin before her hand settled more firmly turning Alice round in an arc so they were both moving back inside.
"I think perhaps I shall take breakfast now after all."
"As you wish Ma'am."
"And Alice," it was an afterthought, "have you ever heard anyone comment on anything strange about this house?"
The maid paused by the door leading to the kitchens.
"I have heard rumours Ma'am. The cook won't go into the cellar on her lonesome on account of strange noises. And there ain't no-one that will go near that room atop the main stairs an account of the girl that was murdered by her parents long ago. They say going inside sells your soul to the Devil himself."
Elisabeth went cold. They looked like you was possessed by the Devil.
"Do you know why they murdered her?"
"They say she was possessed by a demon and, being God fearing folk, her parents did her away. They never found no body though. Probably lost in The Marshes. They never found the father neither. The girls Mom said the house devoured him. More likely the bogs claimed him too. She ended up in Bedlam and that was the end of her."
Elisabeth remained quiet and allowed the maid to leave and organise breakfast. She knew part of the truth. The child was not bog bound, but bricked up in the cellar as, in her words, a monster. The room clearly needed exorcising and bringing back to life, but could it truly devour people? More likely the father may have seen the route into the folly and wandered over the marshes to investigate. Possibly losing his footing and falling in, never to be seen again. But what of the Feriante? The girl seemed perilously afraid of him, if it was a him. What if the father had made it across and found something inside the folly and come to some disagreeable end there? Little wonder the mother lost her sanity and ended up in the asylum.
She turned back toward the patio doors and stepped outside. Everything seemed normal now. The folly was hidden beneath foliage, the path had blended back into the marsh, and the trees no longer looked purposeful, but randomly strewn across the gardens. Birds drifted left to right and the grey line was lost to a blue sky filled with early morning sun. Elisabeth drew a deep breath deciding to place the earlier unsettlement to one side for now. It was obvious she would need to visit both cellar and room again. Perhaps even look deeper at where the trees had led beneath the window. It was doubtful she would have courage enough to follow the marsh path. Although if things continued she might follow the child's mother into the lunatic asylum. Reminding herself "I do not believe in ghosts," she stepped outside.
As she moved from shadow into full sun, a most curious thing happened. The early morning warmth settled onto her exposed right arm. Except this time it grew unbearably causing her skin to boil forcing her to recoil backwards, screaming in pain. She watched steam fizz off her arm, before small flames charred her flesh, filling her nostrils with the acrid stench of burnt meat. Tripping over the threshold in blind panic she fell, catching the side of her head on the low table between the sofas in the day room. Her world went black.
She awoke on the very same floor with Alice knelt over her and dabbing a cold compress onto her brow.
"Ma'am are you alright?"
Elisabeth tried to sit up, but the room was spinning so she chose to remain prone. Her mind still felt numbed pain; mostly from the bruise and pounding in her head.
"My arm Alice, what has happened to my arm?"
The maid continued to soothe her forehead.
"Nothin ma'am, it seems you took a fall coming back inside. The physician will be here presently. Just you stay restful."
Elisabeth's eyes dropped onto her arm and were greeted by pallid white skin. Not even a mark. Bedlam for you I fear.
Looking up, she watched the pulse of blood throbbing in the maids neck.
If you made it here, then thank you for taking the time to read. Like I said before, these add back story to other books. And yes, I know they need tweaking, but if they become a manuscript then that is where the transformation from short story anthology will turn into the real deal.
Shares or comments are welcome and if you want more then please say so lest I distract…something I am very good at doing !!
© G Jefferies and Fictionisfood, 2016. All rights reserved.


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|Ship, relationship, couple
|See also:
|OTP, OT3, OT4, Pairing Name, Broccoli Test, Crossover Pairing, Rarepair
|Click here for related articles on Fanlore.
Pairing refers to the characters who make up the romantic focus of a fanwork. The term often appears in headers and is a common search or filter term in archives. In most fandoms, the term is applied to stories where the focus is on an explored sexual or romantic relationship. Pairings can be heterosexual, slash or femslash. They may or may not be canon. Some fans do use the term pairing to refer to the characters in a friendship fic or smarm story where no romance exists.
In Japanese fandoms, the same concept is referred to as kappuringu (カップリング from the English word coupling), or CP in short. The shortened version is used in Chinese, too.[1]
Origins of Usage
In the early days of media fandom (which included Star Trek: The Original Series and The Man From UNCLE), the word "pairing" was not used in describing fan fiction, partly because the primary focus of fan fiction in this period was on creating stories that could play out as new episodes, whether there were romantic encounters in the storyline or not. "Pairing" seems to have come about as a result of the Star Trek fandom's recognition of slash after 1982. (There were also no age statements and no tags in this early period.)
A rare and early of the term was in 1985: "'Arcanum,' a new, bi-monthly letterzine dedicated to the exploration and enjoyment of the "oblique" premise... share your favourite pairings with us..." [2]
By 1992, the use of "pairing" was well established in the slash fanfiction world: for instance, "Perhaps I should mention at the [outset of my review of the fanzine Homosapiens Too that] there was a contest for most outrageous crossover pairing.[3]
Pairing Names
The most common way to indicate a pairing is "Character A/Character B," but other symbols such as x, & and + are used as well. Occasionally this leads to intra-fandom confusion as to whether an "A/B/C/D" fic is actually pairing off all those characters, or whether the author is just listing all the characters that are in the story. Portmanteaus or "name smooshes" are also common but disliked by many; see Pairing Name for more information.
Pairings vs. Threesomes and Moresomes
Pairing is sometimes used in a manner which presumes that the story is about a couple and will not focus on a polyamorous relationship, or threesome. Due to the common use of the term in headers, many threesome and poly stories list the characters in their poly relationship under the term pairing. Many of the stories posted for the Polyamory Big Bang[4] use Pairing in the header.
In 2010, the AO3 changed their headers to use the term Relationship to reflect the actual use of the field for poly groupings, friendships and other kinds of relationships in a story. The archive tags also support the use of Character A&Character B in the relationship field for friendship-focused stories. The reaction to the change was not wholly positive as some fans feel that the term relationship carries an automatic connotation of romance [5] and therefore is not precisely appropriate for all stories about two characters having sex; for instance, hatesex, non-consensual or dubiously consensual sex outside of an actual relationship.
Fandom Organization around Pairings
Common genres of slash based on pairing type include buddyslash and enemyslash.
Many popular pairings or ships have their own archives, communities, or even newsletters and more broadly-focused newsletters are often organized by pairing rather than just genre.
See also: Gen for more detailed discussion of the sometimes hazy distinction between pairing-focused fanworks and gen works.
Some Fans Are Not Fans of Pairings
- "I don't mind romances and pairings, but I'd rather if they weren't the central plot. I really enjoyed really great stories that had wonderful plots and forward momentum, and the romance that was in it (if any) was organic and natural and not at all central. And I agree, those do seem hard to find lately. Possibly because of the way archives now seem to organize with pairing/gen/het/slash." [6]
- "I have a story posted at Housefic and a pairing is a REQUIRED field - but everyone is too busy running around doing action/mystery stuff to be in love or lust. They recommend to post it as "gen", but this really isn't correct, either." [7]
- "I think the problem might be that fanfiction is growing up if that makes sense. In other words, while there my have been a wide variety of stories that were told in the olden days,I wonder if there were more clear generic categories, so that Romance really was the huge category in which same-sex pairings could be placed. I'm not sure if there was no desire to tell stories with that adventure mystery and a random background same sex pairing or if there was no clear outlet and thus they weren't produced or if there wasn't an audience...and I'm not sure whether the sheer increase in numbers and the multifannish experience might have changed readerly and writerly needs or whether an influx of fans who came across fanfiction in unusual venues and look for slightly different things have expanded the types of stories that get written. Like you, I feel we have outgrown the labels and I really wish we could restrict slash and het to generic categories rather than descriptive "any same-sex or opposite-sex pairing." Because, I agree, that a large segment of writing is kind of unlabelable [is that a word??? *g*]" [8]
Further Reading/Meta
- A Caution About Public Criticism by Nascent, one topic: do authors write popular pairings for the feedback? (July 25, 1998)
- Lack of Pairing Diversity- Why?, comments on Star Trek pairings (May 31, 2003)
- Shipper Wars Rant, Archived version by Melusina (2004)
- The internet is for... ah, you know..., Archived version (post and comments about shipping and pairing, history of terms, and prevalence) (November 15, 2006)
- you have got to be kidding me, Archived version by seperis (August 1, 2006)
- Pairings, wave theory, interpretive communities, Archived version by torch (March 22, 2007)
- ^ TheFaustianPact, in Please stop overuse the acronyms. r/fanfiction
- ^ from an ad for a proposed letterzine
- ^ Sandy Hereld post to the Virgule-L mailing list on Oct 19, 1992, quoted with permission.
- ^ PolyBigBang, accessed September 24, 2010
- ^ Release Notes for Release 0.8.1, accessed September 24, 2010
- ^ The internet is for... ah, you know..., Archived version (post and comments about shipping, and pairing, history of terms, and prevalence) (2006)
- ^ The internet is for... ah, you know..., Archived version (post and comments about shipping, and pairing, history of terms, and prevalence) (2006)
- ^ comment by cathexys, recs, and meta, Archived version, post by cofax, March 21, 2007


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Featured News - Current News - Archived News - News Categories
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation reminds hunters that chronic wasting disease continues to pose a potential threat to New York's wild white-tailed deer herd, and hunters should take precautions to prevent the spread of the disease. Late last year, CWD was found on a deer farm in Pennsylvania and, in early 2013, CWD was confirmed in Pennsylvania's wild white-tailed deer herd.
"Preventing the introduction of chronic wasting disease into New York is vital to protecting our deer herds and is a high priority for DEC," said DEC Commissioner Joe Martens. "DEC's deer management and outreach efforts work to ensure the health of New York's deer herd and to protect the recreational and viewing opportunities deer provide. The most effective way to protect New York's deer herd is to keep CWD infectious material out of the state, and hunters can play an important role in this effort."
CWD is a highly contagious and deadly brain and nervous system disease that affects deer, elk, moose and other members of the deer family. CWD is always fatal and there are no vaccines or treatment available. The agent that causes the disease is called a prion and it is virtually indestructible. Prions are found in the lymph nodes, brain and spinal tissues of infected animals, which can shed (spread) prions in their urine, saliva and feces. Also, certain parts of dead animals remain infectious on the landscape and in the soil for many years. There is no evidence that CWD can infect humans, but DEC urges caution when handling or processing CWD susceptible animals.
Individuals who hunt deer, elk or moose outside of New York should be familiar with New York's CWD regulation (6 NYCRR Part 189) regarding the importation of cervid carcasses and meat back into New York before returning home. It is illegal to bring in whole carcasses from any CWD susceptible animal taken at a shooting preserve or to bring in whole carcasses from any state or province that has had CWD confirmed in wild or captive cervid herds. It is also illegal to ship the unprocessed trophy head from those preserves or CWD-positive states or provinces. It is legal to import finished mounted heads, however. A person may only bring back the meat, hide and antlers, and certain parts must be removed before entering New York. A full list of prohibited parts can be found at http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7191.html.
Before leaving to hunt out-of-state:
•Know the CWD status of the state or province you plan to hunt in since it can change at any time. For example, four additional states became CWD positive in 2012: Iowa, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania.
•If caught in possession of an illegal carcass with the prohibited parts in New York, the carcass will be confiscated and destroyed (including antlers, hide and meat).
•Know if the state or province you hunt in requires CWD samples to be submitted after harvest and before you return home.
•Plan accordingly for how to handle an animal if your hunt is successful.
•Locate meat processors in the state or province where you are hunting ahead of time so you can get your carcass processed quickly and legally before returning to New York.
•If you decide to process your own animals, de-boning or quartering deer, elk or moose is easy if you plan ahead and have proper equipment. You can find "how to" videos on the Internet before you go hunting.
•If you intend to have a trophy mounted, you will need to know how to prepare the hide, cape and antlers to eliminate potentially infectious CWD material.
•Proper handling of wild meat and the trophy will eliminate all the prohibited parts required by New York's CWD regulation.
DEC recommends that hunters dispose of any cervid carcass waste, even from New York deer, into a proper waste stream either by putting butcher scrap in with household trash or otherwise ensuring it ends up in a licensed landfill. Landowners may dispose of their own deer on their property, but it is illegal in all cases for deer cutters (meat processors/butchers) and taxidermists to dispose of waste generated from their business in any way other than a landfill or rendering facility.
DEC also recommends people not use real deer urine-based lures because CWD can be transmitted through infected deer urine. Deer urine, used in commercial lures or scents, originates from captive deer on deer farms. In many cases, the urine from multiple deer farms is combined for commercial use. If there are CWD prions in the urine-based product, it can contaminate the soil and potentially spread CWD to deer in that hunting area. If healthy animals ingest enough infectious CWD material, it could result in the establishment or spread of the disease. There are proven synthetic deer lure alternatives available on the market.
Every year, hunters in New York are found in possession of deer or other cervid carcasses taken out of state. Many of these were imported illegally. Bringing in animals from CWD-positive states or provinces and discarding the scrap on the landscape increases the risk that CWD will become re-established in New York.
This disease threatens the deer herd for every hunter and could jeopardize the quality of the hunting experience forever. In some states where the disease is well established, deer herds are experiencing infection rates as high as 50 percent in older-age bucks and nearly 30 percent in the overall herd. New York is fortunate that CWD was not verified in any additional deer since the initial discovery in Oneida County in 2005. DEC remains vigilant about keeping CWD out of the state and continues to monitor the latest science about the disease to help keep New York's herds healthy.
For more information about CWD and the latest news on the disease, visit www.dec.ny.gov or www.cwd-info.org.


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Technical Reports
Display by Author: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
Efficiency versus Convergence of Boolean Kernels for On-Line Learning Algorithms
|Khardon, Roni; Roth, Dan; Servedio, Rocco
|Download Formats:
The paper studies machine learning problems where each example is described using a set of Boolean features and where hypotheses are represented by linear threshold elements. One method of increasing the expressiveness of learned hypotheses in this context is to expand the feature set to include conjunctions of basic features. This can be done explicitly or where possible by using a kernel function. Focusing on the well known Perceptron and Winnow algorithms, the paper demonstrates a tradeoff between the computational efficiency with which the algorithm can be run over the expanded feature space and the generalization ability of the corresponding learning algorithm. We first describe several kernel functions which capture either limited forms of conjunctions or all conjunctions. We show that these kernels can be used to efficiently run the Perceptron algorithm over a feature space of exponentially many conjunctions; however we also show that using such kernels, the Perceptron algorithm can provably make an exponential number of mistakes even when learning simple functions. We then consider the question of whether kernel functions can analogously be used to run the multiplicative-update Winnow algorithm over an expanded feature space of exponentially many conjunctions. Known upper bounds imply that the Winnow algorithm can learn Disjunctive Normal Form (DNF) formulae with a polynomial mistake bound in this setting. However, we prove that it is computationally hard to simulate Winnow's behavior for learning DNF over such a feature set. This implies that the kernel functions which correspond to running Winnow for this problem are not efficiently computable, and that there is no general construction that can run Winnow with kernels.
Faculty: for help posting a technical report please visit the User Guide.


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The first morning I met Kevin Crain, a Managing Director at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, he was feeling tired, as he did most days.
We were at a conference Kevin was hosting for the institutional retirement team and a group of their corporate clients. He'd invited me to the event to speak about managing personal energy.
Before my talk, we got to chatting and Kevin mentioned that he'd gotten less than six hours of sleep the night before, and that he didn't often get much more.
That's not too different from the average American, who gets between six and six and a half hours of sleep a night, or the thirty percent of working Americans who get less than 6 hours. And yet the research suggests that nearly all of us require between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night to feel fully rested, and only a tiny percentage of us feel rested with less than 7 hours.
The costs show up physically, emotionally, and cognitively.
Kevin wasn't overweight, had no history of heart disease in his family, and worked out regularly — in fact, he had once been a competitive marathoner. And yet five years earlier, at the age of 46, he had suffered a mild heart attack.
Two factors were likely at play. First, sleeping less than 6 hours a night increases the risk of developing or dying from heart disease by an astonishing 48 percent. Second, Kevin worked very long hours, at very high intensity, and he experienced a high level of stress much of the time.
I offered to try to help. Two weeks after his conference, we caught up by phone and I quickly focused in on his sleep habits. He typically went to bed around 1:00 am, he said, but there was no good reason for staying up that late. It was just habitual.
He woke up before 6:00 am, in order to be at work by 7:15. Once again, he acknowledged that there was no compelling reason to start that early. It was just something he'd always done. My suggestions were very simple. "What if, as an experiment, you chose a highly specific time to go to bed — say 11:30 pm — and you began winding down at least a half hour before that? And what if you woke up an hour later than you do now?"
Kevin did exactly that, and dutifully from day one. There is no single behavioral change we've seen in our work with thousands of executives that more quickly and powerfully influences mood, focus, and productivity than a full night's sleep.
In Kevin's case, the impact was also rapid and dramatic. In the mornings, he stopped rushing out the door and instead sat down for breakfast, spending a half hour chatting with his wife and two teenager daughters and flipping through the newspaper.
In the past, he'd find himself exhausted by mid-morning. Now, when he got to work around 8:30 or 8:45 am, he felt a higher and more consistent level of energy. In turn, he had more focus and more clarity all the way through to lunch, even if his meetings ran back to back. In the evenings, when he got home, Kevin felt less drained and more present with his family. The effects of sleeping more cascaded through his life.
After a month, we added a new behavior to his life at work. At 12 noon every day, Kevin gets up from his desk and takes a half hour walk outside. He doesn't bring along his Blackberry and he's realized the world doesn't end. Instead, he uses the time to clear his head or to think through key issues that arose in the morning meetings.
In the past, when he felt something didn't go right at one of his meetings, his inclination was to fire off an email to a direct report right away. "Ninety-five percent of my reactions were negative and counterproductive," he told me.
Now, the walk gives him time to take a step back. He's sending far fewer emails, and instead he's asking himself, "What do I need to do to get this to a better place?" By the time he addresses the issue with anyone else, he's calmed down.
Between sleeping longer, coming into work later, and taking a half hour walk, Kevin is actually working an hour and a half less each day than he did in the past. "I'm actually more productive than I used to be because I'm more attentive to the issues I should be focusing on," he says.
"In the past, I'd come in to work already feeling tired, and I'd put my energy into getting small tactical things done, rapid fire. That allowed me to feel productive without expending too much energy, but it was like eating chocolate. The satisfaction didn't last. Now I'm putting my energy into longer-lasting, strategic activities. They take more intellectual energy, but they're more satisfying, they add more value, and they're what I really should be doing as a leader."
The lesson: Two behaviors we've devalued and sometimes even demonized — rest and renewal — have a profound impact on people's productivity at work and their satisfaction across their lives.


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Note: This article is over a year old and information contained in it may no longer be accurate. Please use the contact information in the lower-left corner to verify any information in this article.
Alumna gives $1 million to Great Conversation program
November 29, 2011
Until recently, Karen Buchwald Wright '74 had never even heard of St. Olaf College's Great Conversation program.
But then she sat down for lunch with President David R. Anderson '74, who suggested that the program — a sequence of five rigorous courses that traces the development of literary and artistic expression, philosophic thought, religious belief, and historical reflections on Western culture into the modern world — might interest her.
It did. So much so that Wright provided the college with a $1 million gift to establish the Karen Buchwald Wright '74 Endowment for the Support of the Great Conversation. The spendable portion of the endowment's annual earnings will be doubled through the Strategic Initiative Match, a St. Olaf Board of Regents program that provides matching funds for certain gifts above $50,000 that support the college's strategic plan.
Wright hopes her gift will not only help maintain the strength of the Great Conversation, but will lead to the creative expansion of the program. She wants to ensure that current and future generations of students have a solid understanding of the events and philosophies that have shaped Western civilization and, more specifically, the United States. "The philosophies that inform the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are the fruit of a very long chain of events that I think the Great Conversation does a good job of examining," she says.
The Great Conversation wasn't yet established while Wright was a student at St. Olaf, but she developed her own wildlife research major through the Paracollege, a since-discontinued program that focused on individual study. She took a lot of biology and psychology courses, graduating in just two-and-a-half years with the goal, she says, of becoming "a Jane Goodall."
Instead she worked for several companies in Minneapolis before returning to Mount Vernon, Ohio, in 1980 to work for the company her parents established. While raising four sons, Wright rose through the ranks at Ariel Corporation, which designs and manufactures natural gas compressors, and eventually took over as CEO and president in 2001.
Several years ago she created the Ariel Foundation, an organization focused on enhancing the quality of life in Mount Vernon by supporting education, parks, and the arts. She's also involved with a number of other nonprofit organizations, including serving on the advisory board to the association that operates George Washington's plantation estate in northern Virginia, named Mount Vernon.
"I'm kind of in the mode of saying 'I'm really lucky; I'm the second generation to lead a successful business, and I've been able to take it to the next level, and it's the right thing to do to give back and make it possible for other people to have these opportunities,'" Wright says.


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Yesterday, Wikileaks published a draft chapter from the biggest trade agreement in years: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a treaty between the U.S. and 11 other nations to promote free trade in the Pacific. Negotiated in secret for the past three years, the TPP covers labor regulation, health standards, the environment, and, perhaps most controversially, intellectual property—a field that the Internet has transformed but which is not yet effectively regulated internationally. What Wikileaks dropped is the TPP's August draft of a new genre of intellectual property law—a "21st century" agreement, as its signatories have dubbed it. It shows the U.S. pushing for rules that would tighten copyright restrictions, drive up drug prices globally, and likely change the Internet forever. In many cases, it also shows other nations resisting the U.S.'s terms.
Trade negotiations have almost always been confidential. And they've leaked before, derailing entire treaties. TPP proposals for individual countries have also already gone public—but this document is the first to reveal the state of negotiations and show different countries' positions and demands. It's not pretty: the U.S. demands are draconian, and it's the strongest negotiator in the group. But does the leak make the U.S. look so bad that it could sink the TPP? The answer, for better or worse, is probably no. Here are four key reasons why.
The leak's biggest revelation is that U.S. demands resemble laws that Congress has struck down—and that nobody else wants rules so strict.
The Stop Online Piracy Act, which Congress rejected, reemerges in the TPP. U.S. negotiators want a law that forces ISPs to cut off anyone who receives multiple copyright infringement notices—a difficult-to-enforce policy that was one of the reasons SOPA failed. They also want to criminally prosecute small-scale for-profit copying, and to hold ISPs accountable for their users' copyright violations. The aggression extends into other IP realms—the U.S. wants to lengthen patents on crucial drugs for diseases like cancer and HIV, for example, which would make them prohibitively expensive in poorer countries.
The chapter shows the U.S. making these demands and most other countries rejecting them—a stalemate. It's unclear what's happened in the months since this August draft, but the U.S. holds one crucial advantage in the negotiations: market access for less developed nations. Under the TPP, countries like Vietnam will be able to sell more shoes to Americans, said Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, which strongly opposes the partnership. "The U.S. is sitting there like the Grand Poobah saying that if you want to sell it here, here are your rules," she said.
The TPP talks are far along—and the public hasn't made much fuss about them.
One former trade official familiar with the negotiations said that, at least within the talks, the leak was unlikely to change dynamics. "Everybody in the room already knows that the U.S. is isolated if the U.S. is isolated," he said. "The people that can affect the substantive outcome... have already been a part of this process." And they're almost done: Obama wants to finalize the deal by the end of 2013, a deadline that is rapidly approaching.
Up until now, public opinion of the deal has generally been bland—last week The New York Times endorsed the agreement. "The hope... is that by completing deals with Europe and Pacific nations, Washington will set an example for the rest of the world to follow," the editorial reads. Some people "are worried about provisions on intellectual property that could restrict the availability of generic medicines and grant longer copyright protections to big media companies," it muses. But then it drops the point.
But a fuss probably isn't going to start in the U.S. now.
When Wikileaks dropped cables that exposed U.S. diplomatic scandals, the outrage that followed was loud and clamorous. What they've dropped this time plays to interests closer to the organization's heart—but not necessarily to the passions of the nation. In his press release, Julian Assange seems to realize that people don't exactly take to the streets over IP, patents, copyright, or Internet regulation. "If instituted, the TPP's IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons," he writes. "If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you're ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs."
This particular genre of leak fires up groups like the EFF or Anonymous, which were already invested in internet freedom causes. What the leak doesn't do—what Wikileaks and its affiliates need to improve if "transparency" is going to effect any meaningful change—is convince huge numbers of people that these this abstract issue affects people in their daily lives. By publishing the TPP IP clause, Wikileaks politicizes it. An association with Wikileaks makes the TPP chapter more about limiting internet freedom than about extending patents on cancer and HIV drugs, driving up their prices. These are both points that the U.S. pushes for in its negotiations. The latter issue certainly matters to more people worldwide—and drums up more passion than the torrent-rights set ever did.
Maybe if another group had exposed the IP negotiations or maybe if Wikileaks wasn't headed by Julian Assange, the fallout of these revelations would be different. Without an invested public, it doesn't much matter if the negotiations are shrouded in mystery.
So if the TPP fails here, it probably won't be because of Wikileaks.
In other signing countries, reaction to the leaks has been stronger, different in nature, since many of the health provisions in the TPP resemble U.S. law that can make treatment prohibitively expensive. "If you go to the Sydney Morning Herald, the headlines are all about access to medicine," said Wallach. But in the US, the most pronounced differences are in Internet freedom—hence the focus on SOPA, rather than more tangible humanitarian concerns. That's not to say that the health law changes in the US wouldn't be serious—the TPP suggests we allow surgical procedures and plants and lifeforms to be patented.
But abroad, the TPP leaks shows an IP regime with health laws that resemble the United States—and countries are alarmed. In all likelihood they won't agree to the proposed terms. It's unclear how much ground the U.S. will have to cede: Wallach thinks that "It's going to come down to no agreement or getting something other than what [the U.S.] has demanded." If the United States can't convince other nations to fold then it might just refuse to participate in the deal, and without the U.S., the treaty loses most, if not all, of its power.
Congress might also reject the deal. On the same day as the leak, 150 House Democrats released a letter asking for more transparency. "If Congress and the public are not informed of the exact terms of the agreement until the conclusion of the process," it reads, "then any opportunity for meaningful input is lost." Twenty-two House Republicans signed a letter to the same effect on Tuesday. But Joseph Laroski, another former official who worked on four TPP chapters, thinks there's no chance that countries will agree to letting Congress change the terms. "I wouldn't expect any country to close [the deal] unless they knew the U.S. was going to go to the Hill for an up or down vote."
Ultimately, neither of these scenarios has much to do with Wikleaks at all.


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Telos Lake, Allagash Wilderness Waterway, Maine
April 29 & 30, 2016
I recently got back from a camping/photo trip in the northern Maine woods with my good friend Garrett Evans, shooting the night sky from some new, unique locations.
This is the Milky Way reflecting in Round Pond on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway with Mt. Katahdin in the distance. Even to the naked eye the reflection of the stars in the water was amazing! To the left is Chamberlain Bridge, to the right is Garrett shooting along the shore, and near the center is a 48% moon rising.
The first spherical panorama took a few days to blend and stitch as it's really three panoramas blended together: I shot the sky at 17 seconds for sharp stars, the reflection at 30 seconds to make it a little brighter, and one minute exposures of everything else at a lower ISO after the moonrise for more foreground details, as well as separate frames of the moon and Garrett. I merged the exposures separately for each frame in Photoshop first with a combination of Raya Pro and luminosity masks, aligned everything with PTGui Pro (including the two separate exposures of the moon and Garrett), and then blended everything together manually via masks in Photoshop. As a result there were a lot of layers and the .PSB file is about 12GB before flattening.
Camera settings: 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 6400, 17 seconds for the sky; ISO 6400, 30 seconds for the water; ISO 3200, 60 seconds after moonrise for shadow details; ISO 1600, 1/125 & 1/30 second for the moon and reflection.
Stitching data: 28 images merged into 2 rows of 6 columns and aligned with PTGui Pro. Blended with Photoshop.
Equipment used: Nikon D810, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, Promote Control, and Really Right Stuff TVC-34L tripod w/ leveling base & multi-row panning head. Edited with Lightroom. Long exposure noise reduction via PixelFixer. Planned with PhotoPills.
The boat launch panorama was actually taken first as a test. I decided to re-locate around the bend for a better reflection and view of the mountains afterward. I kept this panorama because I like the wharf and canoes, and I had captured seven Eta Aquarid meteors--see if you can find them!
Camera settings: 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 5000, 17 seconds for the sky & ISO 5000, 120 seconds for the ground.
Stitching data: 24 images merged into 2 rows of 6 columns and aligned with PTGui Pro. Blended with Photoshop.
Pan Around!
Here is some 360° behind-the-scenes video with Garrett and I walking around Telos Lake in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, Maine and planning some Milky Way shots later that night, taken with a Ricoh Theta S camera. Life as a photographer is not as glamorous as some may think (what career is?!); there is a lot of studying maps & weather, scouting & hiking, and lots of editing & post-processing afterward. Scouting and shooting are two of my favorite components though. Be sure to pan around during the video! (Note: panning might not work on every browser or mobile device.)
Check out the rest of the photos in the gallery below.
Telos Lake
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Blackmagic Design Inc today announced a major new update for all its Videohub SDI routers. This new Videohub 4.2 software update features a new updated design, new multipage view, more equipment icons, and a software development kit to let any developer write custom software for Videohub routers.
Blackmagic Design customers who enjoy the powerful broadcast quality of Videohub routers will love the new updated design of the Videohub user interface with its new elegant look and feel. The new software update also introduces a new multipage view where users can swap whole pages of buttons for a massive 550 sources and 110 destinations. The new Multipage feature makes it even easier to have many more buttons for sources and destinations.
The new buttons view now has more icon types to represent common post production equipment. Another common request from developers, system integrators and broadcasters has been to allow custom programming for all Videohub routers. This new software update introduces an easy to use Software Developer Kit (SDK) so custom programming for all Blackmagic Videohub routers is now extremely easy. This new SDK is free of charge and includes full documentation.
By using the new SDK, any developer can now easily add extra protocol support for integration into other large routing infrastructures. In addition to system integrators who are building custom video systems, it's now possible to design custom interfaces, web interfaces, or interfaces to custom hardware with all Videohub routers. Blackmagic Design's new Videohub SDK supports industry standard C++ and includes all libraries and software sample code.
"Both creative and engineering customers can now have the freedom to use the Videohub software, or write their own customized control software to suit their workflows," said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. "With this update, I think Videohub is the easiest to use SDI routers for broadcasters and post houses." Availability and Price This new Videohub software update and Videohub SDK are available now for download from the Blackmagic Design website at www.blackmagic-design.com/support/ About Blackmagic Design Blackmagic Design creates the world's most advanced video editing products, color correctors, film restoration software, video converters, routers and waveform monitors for the feature film, post-production and broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design's, DeckLink, Mini Converters, Videohub and UltraScope waveform products revolutionize the television industry by making advanced post production tools affordable to thousands of creative professionals. Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Emmy™ award winning color correction products continue to dominate and lead the industry with ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. www.blackmagic-design.com


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Intel (INTC) releases its fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, and judging by Tuesday's price action — INTC stock finished up nearly 4% on the day — investors are optimistic. In fact, since September, Intel shares are up about 20%, far outpacing the S&P 500.
The consensus analyst forecast is for Intel earnings to come in at 52 cents per share, though Intel has been full of surprises of late. Last quarter, Intel earnings beat estimates by a whopping 9%.
Interestingly, while analysts have been raising their estimates for fourth quarter 2013 (see table), in the past 30 days, 11 of 39 analysts have lowered their forecasts for Q1 2014, and 14 out of 45 have lowered their forecast for full-year 2014. The consensus rating is "hold," which is code for "sell" in analyst-speak.
Now, I don't pretend to have inside information here, but the consensus seems awfully bearish, particularly given that Intel's problems are nothing new. Intel depends heavily on PC sales to generate demand for its processors, and PC sales have been in decline for seven consecutive quarters.
One major factor in the decline in PC sales is long-term in nature and won't be changing any time soon: the emergence of smartphones and tablet as a viable alternative for basic computing tasks. But there are also shorter-term factors at work, such as a weak global economy with high unemployment and a general revolt against Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows 8 by both consumers and businesses.
Well, improvement on the employment front is happening sporadically, as last month's job report showed only 74,000 jobs being created in December. But with the new-and-improved Windows 8.1 rounding off some of the more unpleasant edges of Windows 8, I expect to see resistance from both consumers and corporate IT departments slowly melt away.
And naturally, PC chips are not Intel's only line of business. A little more than 20% of Intel's revenues come from its server business, and this has been a great source of growth in recent years. The Data Center Group enjoyed 12% revenue growth last quarter, and I expect to see robust growth here for the foreseeable future. The rise of cloud computing has created new demand for server chips, and this is not a trend I see reversing.
Based on everything I've said so far, INTC stock would be worth buying at current prices. It trades for 14 times expected earnings and yields 3.5% in dividends, making it attractive as a bond substitute if nothing else. And unlike bond coupon payments, Intel's dividend has a very high probability of rising in the years ahead.
But what if Intel actually turned out to be more than a slow-growth legacy tech company? What if — just maybe — it found a new source of revenue and INTC stock became a growth story again?
Well, as it would turn out, I think that is highly likely. I recently wrote that Intel's aggressive move into the "Internet of things" could make Intel the next Apple (AAPL). I realize that this is a controversial statement, but remember that in 2000, Apple was an also-ran in the PC wars before the iPod transformed the company into the world's premier gadget company. And as the concept of the "smarthouse" gains steam, you're going to see Intel chips in everything from your refrigerator to your baby's pajamas.
I expect that Intel earnings will come in at least as good as the consensus estimates this quarter. But hit or miss, I consider INTC stock to be an attractive buy.
Charles Lewis Sizemore, CFA, is the chief investment officer of the investment firm Sizemore Capital Management. As of this writing, he was long INTC. Check out his new premium service, Macro Trend Investor, which includes a free copy of his e-book, The New Megatrend Investor: The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy That Will Make You Rich.


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Drawing by Jaakko Pallasvuo
Drawing by Jaakko Pallasvuo
In the past decade we've seen art flow and exponentially overflow through information networks. Pallasvuo's years as a practicing artist have overlapped with the peak years of sharing culture. Now he just wants to shut the fuck up.