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CAYCE, S.C. — Cayce Department of Public Safety officers will give a new update Friday on the investigation into the death of Faye Swetlik, the Cayce girl who was missing for several days.
A news conference has been scheduled for 11:45 AM. WLTX will have coverage of the event online and on-air.
Cayce Department of Public Safety Chief Byron Snellgrove announced Thursday that Swetlik had been found dead, and officers said the body of an adult male has also been recovered.
His voice trembling, Snellgrove said at a news conference, "it is with extremely heavy hearts we announce we have found the body of Faye Marie Swetlik."
Snellgrove added that the coroner confirmed the child's identity. He did not say where the child's remains were discovered.
Coroner Margaret Fisher later said the child was found in the neighborhood around 11 a.m. An autopsy will be performed on her on Saturday at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
Authorities are treating this as a homicide, but no arrests have been made, according to Snellgrove.
He also announced another discovery: a man was found dead in the neighborhood as well. At this time, the investigation into that death is just beginning.
Snellgrove described the whole investigation as "fluid," although he added that there is no danger to the community.
Cayce DPS is still asking for information that can help the investigation. That tip line is (803) 205-4444.
Video: Police Chief Announces Faye Swetlik has died
Snellgrove then left the news conference without taking any reporter questions.
LIVE: Continuing coverage of the death of Faye Swetlik
Springdale Elementary School, where Faye went to school, sent the following recording home to students and parents after the announcement:
"We know how hard something like this is even for adults to understand," it said. "In general, after something like this children need to know that they are safe and their home is safe. Remember too that children look to the adults in their lives and watch how they handle grief and loss and take their ques from you in difficult situations like this If you do discuss the death, use very simple language and ideas as death is a very concept for young children to grasp, listed below are a few general strategies you may choose to use to talk with your child about death. Give honest brief explanation's, avoid over answering questions keep responses at the child's level of understanding. Listen and hug. Use a calm reassuring voice. Avoid forcing the discussion. Remind children that it is natural and acceptable to show emotion when someone we loves dies. If you are worried about how your child is doing please do not hesitate to call our school We are here to support your student through this."
The Previous Investigation:
Three hours before the announcement of Swetlik's death, Cayce DPS Sgt. Evan Antley spoke, saying the agency was leaving "no stone unturned."
Late Wednesday night, officers released a video which included several pictures of two vehicles. One was an SUV, which was identified, was a silver sedan. He'd said the vehicle occupant may have had information relating to the investigation.
Swetlik was last seen around 3:44 p.m. Monday while playing in her front yard at Londonderry Lane in Cayce just off Highway 302 in the Churchill Heights neighborhood. Snellgrove said Tuesday that the little girl's mother was home at the time of the disappearance.
Antley called the search the largest investigation he's ever been a part of, and involves his agency working hand in hand with the FBI and SLED. He added that they'd gathered a lot of video.
"We've gone to every door, talked to every homeowner, we're following up on every house that we have missed," Antley said.
People who don't live in the neighborhood were being held out.
Sgt. Antley said they had towed vehicles, but could not give any additional information about what was inside those cars. He also confirmed they'd looked in trash cans, trucks and did send investigators to a landfill off Edmund Highway, but said that's all part of being thorough.
Investigators said Faye rode the bus home from school and got off near her home. During their investigation, officers released a video taken from a bus surveillance camera of the moment when the little girl got off the vehicle.
Watch the Video Below:
The search area was expanded out past the initial one-mile radius, stretching almost to Interstate 26.
More than 250 officers were part of the search, going door to door, speaking to neighbors and searching the family home. Snellgrove said he invited the FBI to join the search, and they are actively participating in the search.
Antley said they had a systematic way of doing things and that's why bringing in volunteers would have been counterproductive to collecting evidence.
'I Want My Baby Back'" The Family Speaks Out:
Faye's grandmother, Ruth Collins, spoke out after a prayer vigil on her granddaughter's disappearance Tuesday
"I want my baby back," Collins said. "We've got to find her."
Collins attended the prayer vigil with other family members and close friends.
"We're worried of course, very distraught, but we have to keep thinking of positive thoughts," says Monica Foutz, a friend of the family. "We have to keep thinking that they're going to find her. We're just waiting on them to do it."
WLTX's sister station WCNC Charlotte went to Faye's father's home in Rowan County Tuesday afternoon. His girlfriend, who considers herself Faye's stepmother, said they last saw Faye around Christmas time, but they were actually planning to visit her in Cayce, South Carolina this weekend.The girlfriend said they are hoping anyone with video surveillance will provide it to police, adding they also hope anyone with information will call the special tip line for the case.
Who was Faye?
Swetlik was a first-grader at Springdale Elementary School. Snellgrove talked Tuesday little bit about the kind of girl Swetlik was.
"Faye is a bubbly, energetic," he said at the time. "Faye's teacher loves her, Faye's SRO loves her, Faye's classmates love her. When she walks into a room she brightens it up. Everybody loves Faye."
Snellgrove said the girl loved dresses, fancy shoes, spending time with her family, cats, and playing outside.
Foutz and Collins said Faye liked to collect rocks, play outside and take selfies with her family and friends.
"She's fun, bubbly, loves to color, always has a smile on her face and the prettiest blue eyes you've ever seen," says the family friend. "A smile that would melt your heart."


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Rachel Moskowitz, a senior at Boston University, caught a bus down to New York last Wednesday for an event that could make or break her career: Fashion Week. Moskowitz's ticket to the weeklong industry showcase was an internship backstage with the womenswear designer Rebecca Taylor. The public relations major planned seating charts, stuffed gift bags and steamed clothes in preparation for the fashion show on Friday.
"I actually got to watch the show -- I didn't have to work once it started," Moskowitz said. "And to be able to say you worked fashion week is so cool."
Moskowitz is one of hundreds of unpaid workers behind the scene at New York Fashion Week, running through Thursday all over Manhattan. She's trading long hours of manual and clerical labor for the chance to be in the thick of glamour. In the summer months, Moskowitz and her fellow interns will fill the offices of magazines, PR firms and production companies, hoping that their hard work will eventually lead to coveted fashion jobs.
Yet the legality of such internships has come under scrutiny. On February 1, Xuedan "Diana" Wang, a former Harper's Bazaar intern, filed a lawsuit against publishing behemoth Hearst Corporation. The class action, a first for the fashion industry, seeks damages for Wang's five months of unpaid labor in the magazine's accessories department. Two new interns joined the case last week, according to Wang's attorney Elizabeth Wagoner.
"We were completely overworked," Wang, a 28 year old Ohio native, told The Huffington Post in an interview. "It was an outrageous burden for a bunch of interns."
At Harper's Bazaar, Wang worked 40 to 55 hours a week as a "head intern," supervising eight other unpaid workers as they carried bags of clothes to and from PR firms, effectively serving as a messenger service for the magazine.
Wang believes that her experience at Harper's Bazaar wasn't an internship, but a job that deserved compensation. She claims that the work did not comply with the U.S. Department of Labor's guidelines for internships.
Hearst, meanwhile, maintains that Wang's internship was perfectly legal. "The internship programs at each of our magazines are designed to enhance the educational experience of students who are receiving academic credit for their participation, and are otherwise fully in compliance with applicable laws," a company spokeswoman said in a statement. "We intend to vigorously defend this matter."
Wang, who had already graduated from Ohio State when she began the internship, received course credit by contacting the office of continuing studies and paying around $700 for two additional credit hours to be added to her transcript.
Despite the credit hours, Wang maintains that the internship was the "very opposite of any kind of educational experience."
The Department of Labor's guidelines for internships at for-profit companies, issued in April 2010, were intended to rein in the expanding intern workforce, currently beyond the reach of other labor laws. The guidelines have yet to be referenced in court, and in Wang's case, they stand to influence any judicial decision on whether she should in fact receive compensation for her five months at Harper's Bazaar.
Internships, according to the guidelines, must be similar to "educational" training, must provide no "immediate advantage" to employers and must not displace regular salaried employees. If internships fail to meet these requirements, they are considered work, and subject to regulations like minimum wage.
According to Wang, her internship at Harper's Bazaar consisted primarily of sending other unpaid interns to pick up bags of clothes from PR firms. "It was all very menial," she said. "We were barely supervised."
The work environment was harried and fast-paced. As "head intern," Wang worked long hours, waiting for interns to return so she could organize hundreds of items of clothing and check them in to the magazine's closet. If something went wrong or came in late, Wang took the blame.
"The other interns took the subway, for the most part," Wang said, adding that they paid their own fare. "Sometimes they had so many bags that they could barely walk on the sidewalk."
Wang, who hails from a small town in Southwestern Ohio, graduated in 2010 with a degree in strategic communication. After saving up money by working on her own for a year, she moved to to New York to start her career in fashion. "It was my childhood dream," she said. "Harper's Bazaar was my favorite magazine growing up."
When her internship ended in December, Wang hoped to receive a letter of recommendation from her employer that would lead to a paying job. Her supervisor, the Senior Accessories Editor for the magazine, declined to write a letter, bringing up mistakes Wang had made in giving instructions to other interns.
"It was a very stressful job," Wang said in her defense. "There was always a shortage of labor ... I thought about quitting but I wanted to see it through to the end because I was desperate for that recommendation."
"[My supervisor's] advice was to get another internship," Wang said. 'I had blown through thousands providing a service to this magazine ... It was devastating."
Wang's supervisor did not return a request for comment for this article.
Wang's experience was not unique -- fashion internships, like those in some other industries, regularly require interns to make deliveries, do clerical work and stay long hours.
Companies hope that course credit from schools will stand as acceptable proof that the internships are "educational," and that they can therefore continue to offer them without pay under Department of Labor guidelines.
For some interns still in school, this works out well: Moskowitz, for example, saved $8,000 on tuition by using her summer internship at Rebecca Taylor toward graduation requirements. Others, like Wang, are forced to shell out money themselves just to receive letters of credit.
It remains to be seen whether a letter of credit will stand as proof that an internship is "educational" in court. Wang's case is only the second case to deal explicitly with unpaid internships or reference the Department of Labor's guidelines. The first, filed in late 2011 against Fox Searchlight by a former intern, also uses Outten & Golden LLP, Wang's lawyers, as representation.
Wang first considered suing a few weeks after her internship ended, when she read about the Fox Searchlight case on the Internet. That led her to Department of Labor's guidelines.
"As soon as I read [the guidelines] I knew immediately that what they had us doing wasn't appropriate," she said.
The fashion world is taking a "wait and see" approach to the lawsuit, according to Susan Scafidi, founder of the Fashion Law Institute and professor at Fordham University. "No one is changing their programs just yet as that would be an advance admission of guilt," she said. "But there is some quiet attention to exactly what kind of work interns are doing."
Many interns, like Moskowitz, are thrilled to get professional experience and to be part of the fashion world, no matter if the work is difficult. "It gives you a great name to put on your resume," said Moskowitz. "Internships are hard. You have to be dedicated ... In my opinion, when you sign up, you know what you're getting into."
Internships have long been a part of the fashion world, according to Scafidi, and are viewed as important vocational training by members of the industry. "Fashion has always been place where people can learn on the job," she said. "There's an effort to make sure interns get a valuable experience."
Only recently, in the current bleak job market, have internships begun to generate debate. With only 54 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds currently employed, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, internships are replacing entry level jobs.
Many recent grads are now willing to take any work experience, paid or otherwise. Aliza Bogner, vice president of Human Resources at Alison Brod, a fashion PR firm, says that her company received more than 50 emails this year from people offering to volunteer at fashion week, many of them college grads.
"We didn't take any of them," said Bogner. "Ever since we heard about the new labor laws, we don't accept interns without course credit."
Bogner questions whether other PR firms are as careful about the guidelines. "When you have people who graduated college and are begging to work for free, and they need the experience on their resumes, it's hard to turn them away," she said.
The proliferation of internships also raises a class issue -- for the most part, only children with wealthy parents can afford to spend much of their early twenties working unpaid jobs.
Wang acknowledges that money played a big role in her decision to pursue legal action. "All of this wouldn't have bothered me so much if I had had more money," she said. "If I could just do another internship so flippantly like [my supervisor] told me to, it would be fine."
Susan Scafidi thinks that Wang and her lawyers' biggest challenge will be getting more interns to come forward and join the class action suit. Interns who can afford to work for free have little incentive to sue and risk being blacklisted for jobs.
As they stand, the Department of Labor's guidelines are largely up to interns to enforce. With no legal body currently investigating company practices, interns must come forward and speak about violations for any changes to occur.
"In terms of workplace abuses, I don't know if interns are high on the Department of Labor's list," Scafidi said.
Wang herself acknowledges that she has probably botched all chances of a fashion career. Still, she hopes that the high-profile nature of her case will help shift the climate of the industry for other interns.
"There are so many people like me who want to be a part [of this industry] so badly," she said. "They deserve a fair chance."
Have you worked as an unpaid intern? Tell us about your experience by emailing email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Carrollton, TX - Heart and Vascular - Baylor Scott & White Health
Get Started Today
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The Baylor Scott & White Health cardiology experts in Carrollton, TX, provide comprehensive heart and vascular disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment options.
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Heart and vascular conditions treated
- Advanced heart failure
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Popular Science
Popular Science gives our readers the information and tools to improve their technology and their world. The core belief that Popular Science and our readers share: The future is going to be better, and science and technology are the driving forces that will help make it better.
Common terms and phrases
academy anatomy army assortative mating atomic theory average Biometrika body capture century Chang Chih-tung characters China correlation cost of living course diminishing returns ecliptic electrical charge electrical field electrons elementary charges energy of agitation exact experiments fact factor Forearm Galen gallery Galton given graduates Grammar of Science gravity Hipparchus Hippocrates Homogamy husband and wife hydrogen hypothesis income increased industrial influence ionization J. J. THOMSON kinetic theory knowledge land law of diminishing marriage means measure medicine method modern molecule nature negative neutral molecule nineteenth observation obtained officer oil drops particles partner deaf persons physical plates population positive ions practise precession probably problem production province pyramid quantity races records resemblance schools scientific sexual selection social speed star stature surgery theory of electricity theory of matter thing tion to-day units University


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VG (very good) Peace Dollars – one hundred (100) coins
Designed by Anthony de Francisci, the Peace Dollar was issued in 1921 to commemorate the peace following World War I. The obverse depicts a left facing profile of Liberty, the word LIBERTY around the rim above her radiating crown, IN GOD WE TRUST horizontally and the date at the bottom. The reverse features a perched American bald eagle with an olive branch in its talons, the word PEACE below its perch; above its head UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and E PLURIBUS UNUM and ONE DOLLAR horizontally across the coin just below the eagle's body.
I carry a 1925 Peace in the coin pocket of my jeans every day. True story.
Peace Dollar specifications:
Years: 1921-1935
Mint Marks: none (Philadelphia), D (Denver), S (San Francisco)
Denomination: $1
Manufacturer: U.S. Mint
Silver Content: .7734 troy oz
Purity: .900
Grading Service: none
Grade: VG (very good)
Thickness: 3.1 mm
Diameter: 38.1 mm
Edge: reeded


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Performing acoustic delta, country, and folk blues, the Felonius Smith Trio carries on the exciting tradition of pre-war blues.
"ABOUT AS DOWN-HOME as they come, Felonius Smith demonstrates a tremendous familiarity with that old-fashioned toe-tapping music culled from last century's acoustic Piedmont blues, country blues, Delta, ragtime, gospel and folk. With his standout finger-picking style and slide guitar expertise, Jeff "Felonius Smith" makes his playing seem as easy as a lazy afternoon on the front porch of some old Smoky Mountain retreat."
— Sarah Quelland, San Jose Metro
Our new Live In Concert CD "Bucking The Blues" is HERE!
Listen to it and more Felonius Smith music, below:


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Sealing Leaky Ponds
Sealing Leaky Ponds
It is discouraging to have a new pond fill with water and then see it go dry within a few weeks. Leaky ponds are common in some areas of Kansas, and almost all ponds will leak to some degree, especially new ponds. In Kansas, evaporation can be expected to range from about 4 feet per year in the eastern part of the state to about 6 feet per year in the west. Most evaporation occurs during the summer, especially in hot, dry, windy periods. During this time, about half an inch of water can be lost to evaporation each day. Water loss greater than this can usually be considered leakage. The pond owner can determine his pond's leakage rate by measuring the water level drop with a marked stick during a period of cold or very humid, calm weather. Leaks in ponds may be the result of permeable sand, gravel, or fractured rock layers that either exist throughout the basin naturally or were exposed by construction. Improper bonding of the embankment to an impermeable foundation soil can also lead to leakage. Some ponds are constructed in areas where all the soil in the basin is permeable, so the leak cannot be pinpointed. Deeper ponds tend to leak more because of the increased water pressure on the porous areas. Techniques are available to seal the leaky and potentially leaky areas. Most sealing techniques are expensive and require considerable work.
Soil Layer
If a small gravel or rock area is causing leaks, a bulldozer can be used to remove some of the problem material. The area can then be covered with a layer of soil high in clay (at least 10% clay) from some part of the basin. The added soil should be at least 1 foot thick and preferably 2 feet thick. This soil should be compacted as it is being deposited. A sheepfoot roller is recommended for serious leak areas.
Bentonite is a material that expands greatly when wet. Mixed with sand or permeable soil and water, it seeps into pores making an impermeable layer. Bentonite is usually applied at 1-2 pounds per square foot of pond bottom (more in areas over 1 feet deep). The dry powdered form creates a protective barrier when placed in a thin layer and covered with several inches of soil. Powdered bentonite can also be uniformly applied on the pond bottom and then mixed into the top 4-6 inches of soil with a disc and compacted. This method is quite successful in sealing a pond, but the seal can be punctured if cattle walk on the muddy pond bottom. A leaky pond which contains water can also be sealed by pouring a slurry of bentonite or spreading granular bentonite over the surface of the pond. This technique is usually not as successful as applying bentonite to the dry pond bottom because it is difficult to achieve an even application of the material. Bentonite is available from most feed mills or well drillers.
Trampling a pond basin with cattle or hogs will sometimes seal permeable soil. Livestock should be fenced into the pond area and fed in the dry pond basin for several months. The combination of many hooves and manure and waste feed being worked into the soil sometimes makes a seal. This is especially effective if the pond basin occasionally becomes wet. However, the pond could fill up before the basin has been completely sealed.
For ponds with rock 2 1/2 feet or more below the surface, organic matter can be used for sealing. The soil surface should be covered with about 6 pounds (dry weight) of livestock manure, straw, grass, leaves, or sawdust per square yard. An 8 inch protective layer of soil should then be placed over the organic matter. A biochemical reaction will take place between the soil and the organic matter to seal the basin.
Plastic membranes which can be placed over pond basins are available. They are expensive and must be protected from rupture. If livestock are present, their access to the pond must be prevented.
An emulsion of oil-soluble resinous polymers can be used to seal a pond without draining. The effectiveness of this material varies with condition and character of the soil, water, and climate, as well as manner of application. It is expensive and is toxic to fish, but a pond treated with polymers can be restocked within a few days after the water clears.
In the past, salt was used because sodium disperses clay particles, causing them to plug pores in the soil. It is no longer recommended because of possible water contamination.


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The following book is not a novel, but it is a work of fiction all the same. . . . It is impossible nowadays to fathom the depths of a life lived more than twelve hundred years ago, so the only thing remaining for a writer to fall back on is his own imagination. (vii)What, exactly, do we know? We have narratives of Charlemagne's long reign, but, says Fried, these are paltry, biased, and tell us little about the king's motives or aims. We have a large body of laws and administrative orders enacted by his council, and an even better record of church councils over which he presided. Scattered among the documents saved by Europe's oldest monasteries are copies of some of these decrees marked with corrections, as if this were the very parchment brought into the royal council for final debate and approval. We have a handful of official letters from Charlemagne to the Pope and other worthies, and a fair sample of letters by churchmen who knew the emperor well. We have poems written to praise him. We have two dialogues written by Alcuin, a priest who was one of Charlemagne's closest advisers, that take the form of conversations between Alcuin and emperor himself; some historians think these might vaguely approximate actual discussions between the two men, or at least cover topics they actually discussed. Most famously we have a brief biography written by a man who knew Charlemagne well, the courtier Einhard. But Einhard is oddly silent about most of the things modern readers would like to know, which makes his text as much a frustration for biographers as a help.
The other Charlemagne was a pious son of the church who worked all his reign to spread the Christian faith, reform and purify the church, uphold the authority of the pope, and educate his people in the basics of Christian doctrine. This is the Charlemagne who interests Johannes Fried. Fried is an expert in the intellectual history of this era, and he knows the ins and outs of every text. Fried is out to show that the church reforms and educational programs launched by Charlemagne were crucial to intellectual life in Europe over the next several centuries, that Charlemagne was personally involved in all of this, and that his immersion in Christian thought and church administration completely change the emperor's approach to ruling.
This renaissance in knowledge and aptitude was not sought for its own sake, nor was competence in Latin revived just for the purposes of logic. The purpose of both, as the Church Father St. Augustine had stressed in his writings, was to promote the soul's redemption, the true faith, the correct observance of sacred rites, and the understanding of the Holy Scriptures and of the world order ordained by God, and thereby to support a form of rule that was pleasing to God and included welfare provision for the poor and disadvantaged, another key requirement of religion. Religious motives really did drive Charlemagne's concern for education, and along with this his desire to establish the first step in the rationalization of European intellectual culture. . . .These are radical ideas, but Fried has some strong arguments. For example, Charlemagne's council enacted several laws over the years trying to keep the free men who made up his army from being turned into serfs by powerful lords, each law prefaced with a statement saying that the old laws had been ignored. The counts, the chief secular officials of the empire, were criticized on this point again and again. In his last set of laws Charlemagne enacted that henceforth no count could strip a man of his freedom unless a bishop were also present and concurred in the ruling. This seems like a clear attempt to rectify the shortcomings of secular justice with the church's help.
This culture of learning was meant to shape every aspect of life, including divine worship, the Church in general, and even the decisions taken by the royal council. The defense of the faith, resistance to heresy, and order within the realm all cried out for it; grammar was needed for prayer, rhetoric for ruling, and dialectics for faith, while the sum total of knowledge was required to maintain the divine order of the world. These arts provided a theoretical grounding for real life, for the philosophy and exercise of power, and for Charlemagne's Frankish Empire as a whole. (284)
Fried's Charlemagne despaired of secular power. He gave up thinking that he could bring his great empire to order by more laws and more wars. He came to believe that only divine order, flowing through a perfectly ordered church, administered by learned priests and bishops, backed by the great learning of the Church Fathers, could bring peace and justice to this fallen world. Captured by the logic of theology and canon law, he saw in the rationality of Catholic learning and the holiness of the church the only hope for his fractious age.
I can't decide what to make of Fried's Charlemagne. If Charlemagne really turned against the whole basis of his ancestors' rule, it seems odd that his friend Einhard would have failed to mention it. It has happened many times in history that the court of an aging king was taken over by a faction of ideologues, and I can imagine that this might have happened to Charlemagne; perhaps the imperial acts that fascinate Fried were more the product of a cabal of churchmen than of the emperor himself. But on the other hand the subsequent history of Europe to some extent bears out the views that Fried attributes to Charlemagne: secular authority did fail to maintain order, the empire collapsed into civil war, and whatever order, justice and learning survived in the crumbling Frankish empire was maintained by the church.
This is a thick book dense with learning, not for the faint-hearted. But the writing is good and there are lots of interesting little stories and small triumphs of research to keep things moving, so anyone with interest and plenty of time can learn a lot about the Carolingian age from Fried. Even more, you can see in this book the mind of a great scholar at work. Fried displays here the kinds of arguments and insights that are possible for someone who has mastered the vast apparatus of historical scholarship on an intensely studied period. Fried has also delved deeply into the available sources, squeezing them to the limit for the stories they can tell. It is an amazing performance. If it fails to completely convince, that is partly because Fried is honest about the limits of our understanding. He has, as he warned in his preface, gone beyond what can be proved to what can only be imagined; and he has done this in a very impressive way.
Johannes Fried, Charlemagne. Translated by Peter Lewis, from the Harvard University Press, 2016; German original 2013. 554 pages of text, 75 pages of notes.


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(visited by Mushtaq Mahmood, Shahzad Mahmood, Rumana Mahmood, Waheeda Mahmood and Fowzia Mahmood)
01-Feb-2004 -- During our extended `Īdu-l-Aḍḥā holidays of January/February 2004 to Syria, we combined the on-road tour of the archaeologically and culturally rich country with visits to six Confluences (33N 36E, 34N 37E, 36N 39E, 36N 38E, 36N 37E and 35N 37E).
Having successfully completed the visit to Confluence 36N 39E, we drove around the Lake Asad via al-Thawra to get to Qal`at Jābir, which is an impressive 12th century fortress built during the time of the famous Nūr al-Dīn.
We then caught the Highway 4, which was now hugging the Euphrates valley, heading west for about 50 km until we passed the village of Maskana. Our next Confluence was only about 3 km past the village to the left. We were lucky to find a dirt track leading towards the Confluence from the main road. The Confluence was once again in the middle of an agricultural field, surrounded by trees at the borders and which had been recently ploughed. Since it was an `Īd day, there was no one around, so we gingerly walked the few meters to the Confluence.
Our next confluence visit was to be to 36N 37E, which was near Aleppo, where we were planning to spend a couple of days.


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Adam Peck / ThinkProgress – 2013-01-22 00:07:28
(January 19, 2013) — If the gun advocates behind this year's inaugural Gun Appreciation Day had hoped to use the day's festivities to build support for their anti-regulation platform, they are going to have to wait another year.
Emergency personnel had to be called to the scene of the Dixie Gun and Knife Show in Raleigh, North Carolina after a gun accidentally discharged and shot three people at the show's safety check-in booth just after 1 pm. Both victims were transported to an area hospital, and the Raleigh Fire Department announced that the show would be closed for the rest of the day.
Gun Appreciation Day is the combined effort of dozens of far-right organizations who have been vocal opponents of gun control advocates' efforts to reduce the number of dangerous weapons on our streets and prevent them from ending up in the hands of people with criminal backgrounds or a history of mental illness.
In response to a renewed push for sensible reforms of gun laws after the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, groups like the National Rifle Association and the founders of Gun Appreciation Day have instead advocated for an increase in the number of guns in public places like elementary schools, arguing — falsely — that more guns will mean more protection for individuals.
But today's unfortunate accident, which took place at a safety check in surrounded by hundreds of people who presumably have at least some training on how to properly handle a dangerous weapon, undermines that case. Earlier this week, an armed security officer at a Michigan charter school accidentally left his gun in a restroom that is regularly used by students as young as five years old.
A representative from Political Media, the group responsible for organizing Gun Appreciation Day, was not immediately available for comment.
Two similar incidents occurred at entirely separate gun shows in the Midwest, one in the Cleveland suburb of Medina, Ohio and the other at the state fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Indiana. In Ohio, the local ABC affiliate reports that one individual was brought to a hospital by EMS, and in Indiana Channel 8 WISH says that an individual shot himself in the hand while trying to reload his gun in the show parking lot. That brings the tally to 4 victims of gun violence so far at three different gun shows during the country's first Gun Appreciation Day.
CNN is reporting that three people were injured at the gun show in Raleigh, not two as originally reported. All were victims of a shotgun that fired while the owner was removing it from a case.
Ole Andreas Imsen · Kongsvinger
If only there had been someone with a gun there who could have stopped it from happening….
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.


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Galilean Nights Update
21 October 2009
The official press release from IYA2009/IAU, Galilean Nights: Get Ready for a Galileo Experience! went out today announcing
the start of Galilean Nights. With over 1000 events now registered the next few days will certainly see huge numbers of people observing the skies. You can see the press release here: http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iya0918/ Many events already have in place a "Plan B" in case of bad weather or other circumstances affecting activities, but up today on the Galilean Nights website are some suggestions of activities to consider in the event of not being able to carry out the observing that is planned: http://www.galileannights.org/runningevents_planb.html (Thanks to Nelma Silva and Ricardo Reis from CAUP (www.astro.up.pt) for the first draft)
Once your events are over, we really want to hear from you to find out how things went and to hear all of your stories. So please be sure to share the experience with us, by sending in a short report and photographs from all of your activities, this will also help us to evaluate the Galilean Nights project as a whole. To recognise the dedication and hard-work that goes into organising these events, there will also be a number of awards given out, covering the following categories: Outstanding Galilean Nights Event; Largest number of registered events held by a single group; Largest single registered event; Community outreach and Most innovative event. The recipients of the awards will be chosen based on the event reports. More details of what should be included in the reports will be announced on the website soon, but you can start preparing now!
IYA2009 Staff Writer, Lee Pullen, has started his Live Blog, building up to his upcoming trip to Munich where he will be reporting from the different Galilean Nights events taking place there. Alongside the Live Blog is the Galilean Nights group blog, with posts written by event organisers, sharing their plans for Galilean Nights and stories from their IYA2009 activities. You can access both blogs through the Galilean Nights webiste (www.galileannights.org) or you can follow both blogs directly by going to the Cosmic Diary (www.cosmicdiary.org) and choosing one of the two Galilean Nights links from the right-hand menu. Both blogs have RSS feeds that you can sign up to.
For the SPoCs and Local Contacts, if you can make one last effort to get events from your countries registered on the Galilean Nights website: http://www.galileannights.org/register_event.html. If you have events registered elsewhere you can also send along a data export so that they can be added directly to the database quickly and easily.
Good luck to all of you with your events over the next few days, I hope everything goes very well and be sure to add photos from your activities on the Galilean Nights Flick group: www.flickr.com/groups/galileannights
Search IYA2009 Updates
National Nodes: 148
Organisational Nodes: 40
Organisational Associates:33
National Websites: 111
Cornerstone Projects: 12
Special Task Groups: 11
Special Projects:16
Official Products:8
Media Partners:22


text:
Memphis, TN – Jerryd Bayless tallied 19 points, four assists and four steals off the bench in the Memphis Grizzlies' 103-97 win over the Dallas Mavericks.
Ed Davis added 11 points and 11 rebounds for the Grizzlies, who are one game behind the Denver Nuggets for the third seed in the Western Conference.
"We scored 65 points in the second half, we got up and down the court, we defended, and got the bench guys in," Grizzlies head coach Lionel Hollins said.
Dirk Nowitzki netted 26 points to lead Dallas, which had won four of its last five tilts coming in.
The Grizzlies overcame a 14-point, first-half deficit and Davis' three-point play capped a 9-0 run that gave Memphis an 86-78 lead midway through the fourth.
Keyon Dooling's third 3-pointer of the stanza made it 97-87 with 2:31 remaining and Dallas never got within less than five the rest of the way.
Earlier, a 9-0 Mavs spurt vaulted them to a 44-30 edge a little past the midway point of the second before the home team took a 46-38 cushion into the locker room.
The Grizzlies, though, began the third on a 13-4 run to give them the lead. Tayshaun Prince had four points during the surge, which was capped on Tony Allen's dunk to make it 51-50 with 7:12 to go in the period.
"They were the more aggressive team in the second half. We were missing shots and they were making shots," Mavs guard Mike James said.
It remained a one-possession contest for the rest of the stanza before Memphis took a 68-67 margin into the final frame.
Game Notes
Memphis scored 25 points off of 15 Dallas turnovers ... Memphis held a 40-30 points in the paint advantage ... Vince Carter had 22 points and five rebounds for the Mavericks.


text:
Wonders of
We're hosting works of Valerio Li Vigni, architectural photographer and contributor to UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
MOS - Meeting of Styles 2015 - Milan, Italy
The international event where writers from all over the world give a chosen place a new awesome appearance. This time in Trezzano sul Naviglio, a town on the outskirts of Milan, Italy.Read More


text:
Product Overview
Click here to visit the Ignatius Critical Editions website
Edited by Joseph Pearce
Contributors to this volume:
James Bemis
Paul A. Cantor
Robert Carballo, Ph.D.
Scott Crider
Joseph Pearce
Jack Trotter
R.V. Young
One of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays, King Lear is also one of the most thought-provoking. The play turns on the practical ramifications of the words of Christ that we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's. When confronted with the demand that she should render unto Caesar that which is God's, Cordelia chooses to "love and be silent". As the play unfolds each of the principal characters learns wisdom through suffering. This edition includes new critical essays by some of the leading lights in contemporary literary scholarship.
The Ignatius Critical Editions represent a tradition-oriented alternative to popular textbook series such as the Norton Critical Editions or Oxford World Classics, and are designed to concentrate on traditional readings of the Classics of world literature. While many modern critical editions have succumbed to the fads of modernism and post-modernism, this series will concentrate on tradition-oriented criticism of these great works.
Edited by acclaimed literary biographer, Joseph Pearce, the Ignatius Critical Editions will ensure that traditional moral readings of the works are given prominence, instead of the feminist, or deconstructionist readings that often proliferate in other series of 'critical editions'. As such, they represent a genuine extension of consumer-choice, enabling educators, students and lovers of good literature to buy editions of classic literary works without having to 'buy into' the ideologies of secular fundamentalism.
The series is ideal for anyone wishing to understand great works of western civilization, enabling the modern reader to enjoy these classics in the company of some of the finest literature professors alive today.
Editorial Reviews
"Critical editions that treat great books as though they were a living part of the great tradition. It's a sad commentary on our times that this should seem an innovation. Still, at least it has allowed Ignatius Press to offer this important series. Students and scholars will be forever grateful."
Joseph Bottum, First Things.
Patrick S.J. Carmack, President, Great Books Academy, Great Books Program, and the Angelicum Academy
"The real battle for America's soul is not waged in legislative halls but in lecture halls. Congratulations to the courageous souls at Ignatius Press for firing off what is nothing less than a direct hit in the culture war. For too long, the Western Canon has been co-opted by those who, in fact, hate the West and the three things for which she stands: the good, the beautiful, and the true. These magnificent editions, edited by a scholar who loves all three, belong on the shelves of every campus bookstore, every high-school classroom, and every home school."
Christopher Check, Executive Vice President, The Rockford Institute
Chris Michalski, ISI Books, Imprint of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute p>"For many years I've avoided recent "critical" editions, stuffed and padded as they are with political faddists and special interest hacks. What a delight to find an edition of a work of literary art treated with the reverence, the critical tact, and the wonder its beauty and wisdom demand!"
Anthony Esolen, Ph.D.,Professor of Renaissance English, Providence College


text:
If it wasn't true before, it's definitely true now. Hacking isn't just for giggles, it's a major threat to international security.
On Wednesday, McAfee released a 14-page report that details the largest coordinated cyber attack recorded to date. This particular attack, possibly orchestrated by China, broke into 72 organizations over the course of five years.
The targets include the US, Canada, Taiwan, India, South Korea, and Vietnam. The attack also hit the UN, the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-doping agency, defense contractors, tech companies and more. Most attacks lasted less than a month, but some, like that on the UN Secretariat, lasted for almost two years.
We may have wanted to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend a cyber attack like this wasn't happening, but after this report, even my grandmother will know what this "cyber thingamabobber" is [Reuters; Shutterstock/Alexander Lukin]


text:
ETA News Release: [02/18/2014]
Contact Name: Jason Kuruvilla or David Roberts
Phone Number: (202) 693-6587 or x5945
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com or email@example.com
Release Number: 14-0257-NAT
Approximately $73M in YouthBuild grants to help disadvantaged youth
develop job and leadership skills made available by US Labor Department
Grant applications are now being accepted for latest round of funding
WASHINGTON The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the availability of approximately $73 million in YouthBuild grant funds to develop programs that will help out-of-school youth complete high school or General Educational Development programs, as well as learn critical occupational skills in construction, health care, information technology and other in-demand fields.
"Too many of our young men and women face challenges that prevent them from reaching their full potential," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. "The YouthBuild program helps them overcome these challenges by providing participants with the resources they need to develop the life and job skills that lead to a place in the middle class."
The department will award approximately 75 grants with a maximum funding of up to $1.1 million each. The grants will be awarded to organizations that oversee education and employment services for disadvantaged youths in their communities. The department anticipates serving approximately 4,950 young people in this grant cycle.
YouthBuild serves as an alternative education program that provides classroom instruction, case managers and occupational skills training for 16- to 24-year-olds at risk of falling out of the labor force. Participants are often those who have been in the juvenile justice system, are aging out of foster care, dropped out of high school or are at risk of failing to reach key educational milestones.
Successful grantees have historically provided construction skills training to participating students and must continue to offer that training. However, new guidelines issued in February 2012 expanded the list of eligible industries that grantees are allowed to offer skills training opportunities for to include training in high-demand occupations, such as health care and information technology. Students in YouthBuild also receive leadership development training and access to community service activities to ensure that they maintain a connection to their communities through volunteerism.
The solicitation for grant applications, which includes information about how to apply for a grant, is available to view at http://www.grants.gov.
For more information on YouthBuild and other youth employment and training programs, visit http://www.doleta.gov/youth_services.


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In 1870, the first road was built along the Pacific coast from Sausalito, California, and a tent settlement sprang up amongst the willow trees at the beach, which gave rise to the town's original name, Willow Camp. Sausalito was laid in 1871, and soon after surveyor Alfred Easkoot was renting tents on the beach to tourists while adopting the pose of a waggish sea salt. Within a decade, "Captain" Easkoot's encampment was challenged by a resort built by Nathan Stinson, whose Willow Camp also included a dance floor.
Stinson would end up owning some 1,700 acres, including what's become the town center. More than century later, perhaps Easkoot would be satisfied that at least the town's creek carries his name
The Mill Valley and Mt. Tamalpais Scenic Railroad opened in 1896, making Willow Camp more accessible. Visitors could ride the train to West Point Inn and then hike or arrange a stagecoach to take them to the beach. In 1906, refugees from the San Francisco earthquake came to the area and built some of the area's first businesses. Stinson Beach became the official town name in 1916, in honor of the largest landowners, Rose and Nathan Stinson.
In 1939, the beach was sold to Marin County. It was transferred to the State of California in 1950, and was eventually transferred to the National Park Service in 1977. Stinson Beach is located at (37.89847, -122.63878), between Bolinas and Muir Beach. The CDP has a total area of 1.07 square miles (2.8 km²), of which, 1.06 square miles (2.7 km²) of it is land and 0.02 square miles (0.1 km²) of it (2%) is water.
Point Reyes Lighthouse, Point Reyes National Seashore
A 308 step walkway leads to this 1870 lighthouse, built high on a Point Reyes cliff. Whale-watching is very popular here January through March.
Bolinas Lagoon Preserve
Great egrets and great blue herons nest here each spring. Harbor Seals are also inhabitants of Bolinas Lagoon. They may be watched from a distance, but approaching the seals or harassing them in any way is a violation of federal law and is strictly enforced.
Mt. Tamalpais State Park
For more than a century visitors have enjoyed the attractions of the spectacular mountain towering over the bay north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Muir Woods
Coast redwoods, some more than 500 years old, cover 560 acres, filling the area with a rich pine aroma. Trails through the shady groves pass markers describing the trees and their growth cycles.
Marin Headlands
Covering 12,000 acres, the Marin Headlands features well-marked hiking, biking and equestrian trails that cross high bluffs and grassy meadows.
Stinson Beach, CA climate is mild during summer when temperatures tend to be in the 60's and cool during winter when temperatures tend to be in the 50's.
The warmest month of the year is July with an average maximum temperature of 85.00 degrees Fahrenheit, while the coldest month of the year is December with an average minimum temperature of 40.60 degrees Fahrenheit.
Temperature variations between night and day tend to be relatively big during summer with a difference that can reach 31 degrees Fahrenheit, and fairly limited during winter with an average difference of 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
The annual average precipitation at Stinson Beach is 37.59 Inches. Winter months tend to be wetter than summer months. The wettest month of the year is January with an average rainfall of 7.32 Inches.
Total Population: 750
Median Age: 49.57 years
Average Household Income: $134,979
Average Total Household Expenditure: $88,224
The magnificent ridge that rises above Stinson is, like the beach below, federally owned as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. A trail upward – the Matt Davis Trail – can be picked up near the community center. South of town along Highway 1 lies the bottom end of the two-plus-mile-long Steep Ravine Trail, which as the name implies, offers a easier hike downhill than up. Those wanting to tackle the trail from the other direction can start the descent from the Pantoll Ranger Station (altitude around 1,500 feet) on Panoramic Highway, which leaves Highway 1 in Stinson and scales the shoulder of Mount Tamalpais.
Stinson Beach is in the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District, the Tamalpais Union High School District, and the Marin Community College District. Students in primary grades (kindergarten – grade 2) attend Stinson Beach School, while elementary grade students (grades 3–8) attend Bolinas School. Stinson Beach is in the attendance area of Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California.
|Fire Chief
|(415) 868-0622
|Golden Gate Transit
|Information and Weather
|(415) 868-1922
|Stinson Beach Medical Center
|(415) 868-9656
Stinson MLS Listings
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There are so many music subscription services right now that it's hard to notice, let alone care about even more competitors that pop up. But the new Google Play Music All Access, which features unlimited streaming, is built to take on Spotify for real.
What's its secret? Google (GOOG) has Android, the world's largest mobile platform, to help champion its cause.
On a fundamental level, Google Play Music All Access isn't doing anything that Spotify and Rdio aren't doing. For $10 a month, you can log on, search for any track your heart desires, and it then streams from Google's servers. If you want to listen offline, you can cache it to your device.
But Google is combining some of the best qualities exclusive to each service. Like Rdio, its mobile and web-based user interfaces are clean and intuitive, allowing you to build your own library of streaming content from Google's catalog. And it's the only service other than Spotify that really lets you merge your personal music library with the streaming catalog. And when you choose to launch its Pandora-esque radio feature, you can rearrange the automatically generated playlist.
Related: Google+ wants to kill Apple's iPhoto
But none of these are as important as the fact that Google has hundreds of millions of Android users who are already familiar with and invested in many of Google's other services. If Google can build some of the functionality of the music service into its other apps (i.e. the new Google Hangouts chat app), that could go a long way to attracting a critical mass of paid subscribers.
After briefly playing with both the web client and the Android app, it's clear Google isn't messing around. The app is attractive, relatively easy to use and fast. Every aspect of the interface, on both the web and the app, is visual without being loud and distracting.
The handling of the personal library could be a bit more intuitive and could benefit from a clearer definition of what's been uploaded and what tracks are offered by the service. While your own files are mostly meant to be uploaded to the cloud, it will also incorporate any files you have saved locally on your Android phone.
In many ways, this is what Spotify should have been doing for awhile. But the Swedish startup does still have a few advantages. It has more songs, strong label relations, an ever-so-slightly more developed social sharing component and a desktop app that lets you incorporate your personal files without having to upload to the cloud. But these aren't things that are out of Google's reach.
But even if everything is great, it's also possible people will want to stick with whatever service they already use, since they've carefully constructed their collections, playlists and preferences there. Ditching Spotify or Rdio would mean abandoning all that time spent tinkering.
But to help entice some of those customers, Google is making a shrewd offer: Sign up before June 30, and you only have to pay $8 a month, compared to the $10 a month that's typical for many other music services.
So can Google really become a threat to the subscription music juggernaut that is Spotify? Google is definitely putting all the pieces in place to at least give itself a fighting chance. Now all it needs is a better name than Google Play Music All Access.


text:
Don Hopkins' Gallery
My name is
Don Hopkins
, and I'm a hacker. But not the evil kind that breaks into computers, steals credit card numbers, patents software, or works for the NSA. I'm into user interface and graphics programming, research and design. For fun I create and play with interactive graphical toys. In real life, I'm working at
on a game designed by
Will Wright
Playing with real time
Cellular Automata
is as much fun as putting grapes, marshmellow peeps, peppermint patties, bars of soap, and alluminum foil in the microwave, but much easier to clean up, and don't smell bad!
PseudoScientific Visualization
is a whimsical way of looking at deep and complex networks, like the map of the
. Pseudo-Science meets Scientific Visualization: get your free psychic reading now!
I performed at the
show at CHI'90, demonstrating
pie menus
pseudoscientific visualization
at breakneck speed!
ScriptX DreamScape Demo
is a live performance I gave at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, that didn't crash! (If it did, I would have had to do push-ups on stage.)
is an Actualized Fantasy Screen Waster, not to be confused with a virtual reality screen saver.
I ported
twice: first the
version on
, then the multi player version on
. It won some awards, and toured with the
Electric Carnival
at Lollapalooza '94.
X11 SimCity Demo
is a good example of
pie menus
in action.
Abbe Don helped me video tape this
HyperLook SimCity Demo
at the Exploratorium, that also shows many bizarre special effects you can get by crossing
Cellular Automata
and PostScript!
is a real time visual programming language that I worked on for Levity and Interval. It was originally called Body Electric, and was designed by Chuck Blanchard at VPL for programming virtual reality.
The Unix-Haters Handbook
chapter about the
X-Windows Disaster
was my attempt writing computer comedy.
The NeWS Toolkit (TNT)
is an Open Look toolkit, that I helped develop at Sun. I used it to create
, that lets you graphically order a pizza via fax!
Levi Kruger
is a very talented artist, whose psychedellic artwork appears on some of my
web pages


text:
When I set out to shop the Chrome Web Store, I wasn't just browsing for fun. The Chromebook Pixel's many charms had lured me toward Google's Web-centric Chrome OS, but I needed to know whether it offered an ecosystem I could live with long-term—especially since I'd be leaving behind all the Windows applications I've used for years. The Chromebook's popularity has only increased over the past year, so I couldn't be the only Windows user with a wandering eye.
I already knew that the Chrome Web Store offered decent alternatives to the business apps that I use most of the time. The bigger adjustment for me required basic trust. A Microsoft application, whatever its faults, rolls out on the desktop like a marching band, with a drum major, fanfare, and neat formations. You know you're getting something from a big company with some level of oversight and accountability. But the Chrome Web Store has no marching band—just a mob of random players, all vying for my attention. Who are these people? Can I trust their apps? Finding the classy ones—and avoiding the creepy and the crummy ones—is a DIY job I didn't want.
Creepy: Bad Piggies malware and other epidemics
There are good reasons to be wary. Late last year, impostor versions of the popular Rovio game Bad Piggies created a malware epidemic in the Chrome Web Store. Before Google could get a handle on the situation, tens of thousands of users had downloaded fake Bad Piggie games that displayed extra ads and sniffed out passwords. And just a few months ago, another Chrome app scam hijacked users' Facebook accounts to generate fake Likes and bogus posts.
Malware isn't exclusive to the Chrome Web Store, of course, but the way Google handles new apps invites trouble. Apple and Microsoft vet apps before allowing them to post on their app stores, but Google's automated scanning procedure checks new apps after they appear in the store. "That's a losing gambit," says Paul Roberts, editor of The Security Ledger, "because it still allows a window of time for malicious content to appear on the Chrome Web Store."
Roberts says Google has addressed the biggest problem that led to the Bad Piggies malware: Chrome extensions, the little software programs that can modify the Chrome browser. "Google changed Chrome so that extensions could only be installed from the Chrome Web Store and not from third-party sites," he said. Google also disabled existing extensions that were installed by third-party applications.
What's puzzling is that Google's Android ecosystem is already plagued with malware, so you'd think the company would have tried to prevent a similar fate within the Chrome ecosystem. Google's reactive approach makes the thought of leaving the safe, cocoon-like environment of the Windows OS a lot harder, because we can never be quite sure about what lurks on the Chrome OS frontier.
Crummy: Chaotic app experience
The real danger may lurk in the chaos of app store. It's not just that some of the apps are simply bookmarks to websites—although this can be surprising, even when you remember that Chrome apps are expressly designed to live on the Web. As one PCWorld colleague and Chrome OS aficionado said, "If you can't deal with the fact that most 'apps' are actually websites, then Chrome OS probably isn't for you."
And it's not even that many of the apps are little rinky-dink things that hardly seem worth the bother. You can find those worthless trinkets in any app marketplace.
What really flummoxed me was how hard it can be to find the official versions of popular websites. If they exist at all, they often must compete with a crowd of third-party apps with the same or similar names. I'm not knocking the legitimate apps, which can improve a website's stock experience with a Chrome-specific viewer or a better interface. But other apps, unfortunately, simply co-opt a site's name to get you to look at an ad-ridden version of the online property.
Let's take Wikipedia as an example. Searching for it in the Chrome Web Store yields a long list of apps with Wikipedia in the name.
The app at the top, Wikipedia Instant, sure seems popular, with more than 23,000 users, and a big green checkmark highlighting it. But when it launches, all that appears is a nearly blank page with ads on either side. The real Wikipedia is a nonprofit site with no advertising.
Where was the real Wikipedia? I found it a few items down on the list, also with a green checkmark, but with only 215 users. This was the app that I wanted, but somehow, a clearly inferior unofficial version had ended up the winner in the app popularity contest.
I found a similar situation with Reddit: Eight apps had Reddit in their names. The most popular app, called 'reddit', was just a link to Reddit's webpage, but it had 12,422 users. One called Minimal Reddit offered a colorful alternative interface and had 743 users. I had to search hard for the official, trademarked Reddit Chrome app, which had just 17 users.
Classy: Authentic Chrome OS apps
It's too bad that it's so easy to get lost in the Chrome app weeds, because some great stuff is out there. Real Reddit is fine, but I preferred another app called Reditr Beta, as it offered a TweetDeck-like design and a much slicker look.
My favorite Chrome app, for The New York Times, is also much more than just a recap of the website. It has a wide layout for easy browsing, and right-hand navigation for getting to specific sections. It's touch-enabled, so I can swipe the screen from my Chromebook Pixel if I want to. I enjoy this version much more than the standard browser view.
Native-like 'packaged' apps are Chrome's destiny
In an ironic twist that can't be lost on Google, the next step for Chrome apps seems to be moving away from the Web. Called packaged apps, "these apps provide app experiences that are every bit bit as good as native apps," said Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, product manager on the Chrome team. "They work offline by default, have a rich and immersive user interface, operate outside the browser, and have access to powerful new capabilities."
The apps download to and launch from your Chrome device, and they also allow for local storage and offline functionality. In other words, they look and act a lot like the native applications that the Chrome OS was supposed to forsake.
While packaged apps may take a while to appear in the Chrome Web Store, they can't come too soon for some people. Ben Bajarin, principal at market-intelligence firm Creative Strategies, believes the best way to feed the Chrome Web Store will be to port Android apps over to the Chrome OS. "The key to the Chrome store is getting developer support and a critical mass of applications so consumers find it valuable," Bajarin said.
Chrome Web Store needs more apps
The Chrome Web Store does need some help. It launched in December 2010 with 500 apps, and has grown to more than 32,000 apps as of mid-March, according to the Chrome OS Apps website. That number pales, of course, next to the 839,000-plus apps reported to reside in Apple's App Store. But it's not even as good as the much-younger Windows 8 store's 58,000-plus apps (per MetroStore Scanner)—and Microsoft struggled to get that far.
Of course, the typical user will download a very small fraction of any of these thousands of apps, but a repository needs a critical mass of popular apps to keep people coming back for more. Chris Sorensen of Chrome OS Apps notes that only 14,000-odd Chrome apps have more than 500 users. The app store population took a big hit late last year, Sorensen said, when Google dropped a lot of apps that had zero users.
After my deep dive into the Chrome Web Store, I realize it isn't just a place where you get apps. It's also an ecosystem barometer for the Chrome OS, just like the app stores are for iOS and Windows and, of course, Android. Users judge these ecosystems by the quality and quantity of the available apps, and they choose to participate based on what they perceive. Developers do the same thing. So if you're Google or Microsoft or Apple, you know your app store had better be good, or no one's going to want to join your ecosystem, which means developers won't make apps for it, and then your ecosystem could die the death of a thousand bailing users.
For the Chrome Web Store to avoid that fate, it's going to have to feel safer, better organized, and better curated. Branded apps should get some advantage over third-party wannabes, to increase the perception of quality. And when those packaged apps come along, give me a call.


text:
Williams Crenshaw
< back
to Quotes from Women, Power & Peace
Williams Crenshaw, JD.,is a civil rights activist
and a professor of law at UCLA and Columbia
University Law School. She cofounded the African-American
Policy Forum to highlight the centrality of
gender in racial justice discourses and is
a founding member of the Women's Media
Initiative. A 2005-2007 ACLU Ira Glasser Racial
Justice Fellow, Crenshaw is the founding coordinator
of the Critical Race Theory Workshop and co-editor
of Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That
Shaped the Movement.
time just feels right for something big to
happen, something new, something profound,
something meaningful to turn our world around
we are standing on the precipice of a new day
where women can move from the ante-room to
the board room, from being shackled in the
house, to being installed in The White House.
not about supplication, it's about power.
It's not about asking, it's about
demanding. It's not about convincing
those who are currently in power, it's
about changing the very face of power itself.
believe that women in power is absolutely essential,
and that women in power is absolutely not enough.
America learns here, is what it projects abroad.
And when we project abroad effects everyone's
we aren't intersectional, some of us,
the most vulnerable, are going to fall through
the cracks.
we don't pay attention to the margins,
when we don't acknowledge the intersection,
where the places of power overlap, we not only
fail to see the women who fall between our
movements, sometimes we pit our movements against
each other.
average sentence for someone convicted of raping
a black woman is two years, and the sentence
for raping a white woman is ten.
is what happens when our movements are pitted
against each other. Women lose. People of color
lose. We all lose.
come from a whole range of backgrounds. If
our visions of peace don't include these
differences, then our peace will be partial.
can celebrate some of our victories but it
is important for us to learn. It is important
for us to move from images of women's
rights that look exclusive and exclusionary
and to different ideas of how inclusion is
supposed to look.
long as we are imagining and fantasizing about
a female President, why not fantasize about
a truly intersectional feminist politics.
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new | resources | ask
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events | marketplace | about
us | e-mail
us | join
our mailing list
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Todd McFarlane began drawing comic book heroes in high school. His big break came just a few weeks before he graduated from college in March 1984, with a B.A. in General Studies. Todd accepted a job offer from Marvel/Epic Comics penciling 'Scorpio Rose', an eleven-page back-up story in the comic book 'Coyote'. He then worked for DC for a while, pencilling titles like 'All-Star Squadron' and 'Infinity Inc' until 1987. He eventually worked his way to the top of Marvel's artist roster with successful runs on 'The Incredible Hulk' and 'Amazing Spider-Man'. Marvel gave McFarlane a new title that he solely could write, pencil, and ink: 'Spider-Man'. The first issue appeared in September 1990, and became the best-selling comic book of all time, selling more than 2.5 million copies. Following this incredible success, McFarlane decided to leave both Spider-Man and Marvel in August, 1991 to form his own publishing company: Image Comics, together with his colleagues Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valantino.
Here, he published the comic he had created nearly ten years before, 'Spawn'. Since its debut in May 1992, 'Spawn' has continued to be the #1 selling comic title in the U.S., as well as in several European and Latin American countries. Todd's unique art style and controversial storytelling contributed to Spawn's continued popularity. Soon after, Todd created several spin-off mini-series based on Spawn, such as 'Violator', 'Sam and Twitch' and 'Hellspawn'.
'Spawn, The Movie', opened August 1, 1997, at theaters nationwide. Released on video in August 1997, Todd McFarlane's animated 'Spawn, Season 1', became HBO Home Video's top-selling original programming video of all time. Todd McFarlane Productions Inc., was the proud recipient of two major awards: an Emmy and a Gold DiVi award for the HBO series and the 'Spawn' motion picture DVD.
Todd McFarlane was an influence on Robert Obert.


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One of the most surprising aspects of the May 18th eruption of Mount St. Helens was the devastating lateral blast that ravaged such a large area. We'll be spending the next few posts on that subject. It's a complicated aspect of a very complex eruption, so before we dive in, let's have a look at historic lateral blasts, what we knew before the whole side of Mount St. Helens blew out, and some of what we learned from her.
Lateral blasts weren't completely unknown before 1980. In 1888, Bandai-san in Japan experienced a catastrophic eruption that removed 1.5 cubic kilometers (.36 cubic miles) of its summit. Its former Fuji-like summit was reduced to a shattered remnant - much like another volcano we've become intimate with. Imperial University of Tokyo geologists Seikei Sekiya and Y. Kikuchi thought the deposits left at base of Bandai-san's north slope were the result of a landslide; Soviet volcanologist G. S. Gorshkov put them down to a directed blast. Could it have been both? Mount St. Helens tipped us off to the possibility that such blasts were very much related to landsliding: an earthquake knocks an unstable slope loose, the resulting landslide depressurizes a magma chamber (and/or hydrothermal system?) beneath, and boom.
In 1956, Bezymianny volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula exploded in 1956 - an eruption Gorshkov classified as "really gigantic." And it was - the eruption destroyed a large part of the volcano. Gorshkov's Figure 16 shows the pre-eruption outline superposed over the post-eruption edifice. Fans of the Mount St. Helens series should find this eerily familiar.
After May 18th, 1980, volcanologists looked back on Bezymianny and found the destruction there making a certain amount of sense.
Shiveluch, also in Kamchatka, erupted violently in 1964. Gorshkov wrote a seminal paper on the blast entitled "Gigantic Directed Blast at Shiveluch Volcano (Kamchatka)," referenced often by USGS geologists as they worked to make sense of the events at Mount St. Helens. The lateral (directed) blast here removed several domes painstakingly built by the mountain in previous eruptive periods and left a shell.
"It is necessary to add," Gorshkov wrote, "that the formerly picturesque volcano foot having been rich in animals and vegetation, turned into a barren stony desert, covered with thousands of large and small hills." He could have been describing the devastated area at Mount St. Helens.
The two lateral blasts, happening within less than a decade of each other on the same peninsula, led Gorshkov and his fellow geologists to define directed blasts as a new kind of eruption, and caused volcanologists to take a closer look at previous eruptions that hadn't been formerly understood as lateral eruptions.
Geologists even found evidence of previous lateral eruptions at Mount St. Helens. Crandell and Mullineaux noted in their hazard assessment that "such blasts often are associated with the formation of a volcanic dome, and they generally only affect the side of the volcano on which the dome is being erupted." They advised that lateral blasts could affect areas out to at least 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). They were very aware that Mount St. Helens was capable of producing a directed blast, perhaps even a sizable one - but no one predicted the scale of what she ultimately unleashed. The only confirmed lateral blasts she'd been responsible for previously had happened just over 1,000 years previously, and those were just two piddly things not even a tenth of the size of her May 18th extravaganza.
There were other directed blasts at other volcanoes - Lassen Peak in California in 1915, for instance, where a lateral blast destroyed a large swath of the northeast slope, and Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea, where an eruption similar in type but smaller in size to Mount St. Helens occurred in 1951 - but they all had something else in common: their directed blasts, for various reasons, weren't nearly as well observed. Mount St. Helens, however, was crawling with geologists, bristling with sophisticated equipment, and festooned with photographers. Her eruption happened on a sunny morning on a clear day near a populated area. And that lateral blast became perhaps the best-documented, most closely-studied directed blast in history.
Geologists were overflying the mountain the instant it erupted, were photographing and flying around it throughout the eruption, and were on the ground before the ash had a chance to settle. They dug into the fresh deposits, documented and sampled and measured, took eyewitness statements, studied their photographs, and collected readings from a variety of instruments that had recorded the whole event. They could follow the whole sequence in series of photographs, correlate those photos to observations on the ground, and figure out just what causes volcanoes to sometimes blow out laterally.
Mount St. Helens also provided a laboratory where we learned how to recognize the eruptive products of directed blasts. One of the major axioms of geology is "the present is the key to the past." When it comes to volcanoes, the past is also the key to the future. But you have to know what you're looking at in order to decipher what those deposits are trying to tell you. The May 18th directed blast left plenty of deposits for geologists to study. They provided a nice compare-and-contrast that helped geologists understand the difference between classic pyroclastic surges and this bizarre horizontal eruptive style. Knowing what to look for would help geologists recognize similar landslides, now called sector collapses, at hundreds of other volcanoes.
We're now far more aware that those big, beautiful stratovolcanoes have a distressing tendency to fall down in major ways, and don't always blow up so much as blow out. This helps us understand the hazards we face as more people live and play near and on these dangerous but captivating mountains. The lessons we learned from Mount St. Helens help us save lives.
Previous: The Cataclysm: "One of the Most Dramatic Mass-Movement Events of Historic Time."
Next: The Cataclysm: "A Sudden Exposure of Volatile Material."
Crandell, D. R., and Mullineaux, D. R., 1978: Potential hazards from future eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1383-C.
Gorshkov, G.S. (1959): Gigantic eruption of the volcano Bezymianny. Bulletin Volcanologique, ser. 2, v. 20, p. 77-109.
Gorshkov, G.S. and Dubik, Y.M. (1970): Gigantic Directed Blast at Shiveluch Volcano (Kamchatka). Bulletin Volcanologique, v. 34, p. 261-268.
Lipman, Peter W., and Mullineaux, Donal R., Editors (1981): The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1250.


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The second season of Joe Johnson's second, more ridiculous contract with the Atlanta Hawks demonstrated some practical understanding of his strengths and limitations. Up to a point, it was as good a season as could reasonably expected from Johnson at this stage of his career. That point was the playoffs.
During the regular season, Johnson, presumably recognizing his increasing inability to create high-percentage shots for himself or for teammates, demonstrated a greater willingness to finish rather than start possessions and he finished possessions from behind the three-point line more often (per minute and as a percentage of his field goal attempts) than in any previous season in Atlanta. The result of his slightly smaller role in the offense: significantly more efficient scoring at the cost of some assists. A fair trade.
With Mike Bibby and Jamal Crawford replaced in the rotation by Jeff Teague and Kirk Hinrich, Johnson was no longer burdened with futile defensive assignments. Johnson took on a role more suited to his lack of athleticism and general defensive passivity. He stopped fouling almost completely (committing a little more than one personal foul every 36 minutes and committing more than three personal fouls in a game on three occasions, one of them being the triple overtime loss to Miami) and let his already poor defensive rebounding rate shrink to 9.2%. Neither of these prevented the Hawks from improving significantly defensively, suggesting that reducing Johnson's defensive role was a net positive. He even had a (relative) shot blocking explosion, rejecting 13 shots in 2127 minutes after blocking just 12 shots in more than 5400 minutes during the previous two seasons combined.
Despite the positive results, all this sensibility regarding Joe Johnson disappeared in the playoffs. Injuries didn't help matters but, even at less than 100%, Josh Smith and Al Horford clearly looked superior, outplaying the overextended Johnson in the playoffs. That's old news. In a new development, Jeff Teague joined them in outshining Johnson.
Johnson repeatedly failed to create good shots for himself or his teammates while struggling to chase Paul Pierce around screens for much of the series. Yet it was Johnson, dribbling nowhere good against a set defense to which the Hawks turned again and again until elimination. It was the worst of Johnson's five mediocre-to-poor playoff performances as a Hawk.
The series also re-raised the question of whether the limitations Johnson's contract has put on the team from a player personnel standpoint will continue to carryover onto the court. There are now three younger teammates (Smith, Horford, and Teague) capable of making Johnson a more effective player the more they are on the court, the more they have the ball in their hands. The Hawks are overpaying Joe Johnson to be an above average player. The overpayments* will continue after Johnson has ceased to be an above average player. The team must get maximum value out of him while there remains value to be had.
*Since Rashard Lewis was traded again this week, a word regarding untradeable contracts: untradeable contracts become tradeable once another team is in possessions of a contract (or contracts) as large, but longer than the one you want to get out from under. Joe Johnson's contract has four years to run and more than $89 million due. Also, unlike Lewis, Johnson's contract is fully guaranteed.


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Author: Michelle Hodkin
Pages: 450
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Genre: YA Paranormal Thriller/Romance
Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
It can.
She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.
There is.
She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.
She's wrong.


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These are the instructions to Flash Stock Rom or any custom rom using Smart Phone Flash Tool (SP Flash Tool) on Windows Computer.
Requirements: Your Android Smartphone should have at-least 40-50 percent of battery to perform the Flashing Process.
Flash Stock Rom using Smart Phone Flash Tool
Step 1: Download and install Android USB Driver on your computer. In case Android USB Drivers are already installed on your Computer then skip this step.
Step 2: Power Off your Android Smartphone and remove the Battery (if it is removable).
Step 3: Download the Stock Rom or Custom Rom that you want to Flash on your Android Smartphone and extract it on your Computer.
Step 4: Download and Extract Smart Phone Flash Tool on Your Computer. After Extracting you will be able to see the following files:
Step 5: Now Open Flash_tool.exe (you will find this from the extracted files in Step#6).
Step 6: Once Smart Phone Flash Tool is launched, Click on the Download Tab.
Step 7: In the Download Tab, now click on the scatter-loading button.
Step 8: Now, Locate the Scatter File (you will find the scatter file in the Stock rom folder).
Step 9: Now, Click on the Download Button to begin the Flashing Process.
Step 10: Now, Connect your Smartphone to the Computer using USB Cable (without battery- if it is removable). After connecting the device to the computer Press Volume Down or Volume Up key, so that your computer easily detect your smartphone.
Step 11: Once Flashing is completed, a Green Ring will appear.
Step 12: Close the Smart Phone Flash Tool on your computer and disconnect your Android Smartphone from the computer.
Congratulations, Now your Android Smartphone is successfully running the Stock Rom you have Downloaded.


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The Managed Services Model Has Changed — Have You?
By Jay McCall, Business Solutions magazine.
By evolving its managed services, this MSP continues to win customers and is reaping a projected 25% increase in profit this year.
Five years ago Vertical Solutions was a break-fix VAR that made the decision to get into selling managed services. As much as Bruce Nelson, the president of this 30-employee company could tell you about that experience — and there were several lessons he had to learn along the way — it's not the story you really need to hear from Nelson. If you've been reading Business Solutions for any time now, you know we've covered that topic several times and from several angles. Nelson's story centers around a question so many VARs-turned-MSPs ask themselves once they've become accustomed to the recurring revenue business model: "What's next?" The question is usually followed by concerns about how they can distinguish themselves from other managed services providers and prevent their managed services offering from becoming commoditized, much like so many have experienced with their hardware margins. All that to tell you this: If the commoditization of managed services is something you've been fretting over, Nelson's story offers hope.
What's Next In Managed Services?
About 18 months ago, Nelson started taking a mental inventory of his business. His company was established enough in managed services that it had handled hundreds of thousands of tickets, and he had become comfortable with his technology vendors (e.g. remote monitoring and management, professional services automation, backup and disaster recovery). According to Nelson, he started asking himself, "What challenges do my clients still have that I'm not currently helping them with, but could be?" As he started reflecting on some of the trends he'd been hearing about among larger enterprises moving toward thin-client computing and pushing applications and IT infrastructure to remote data centers and to the cloud, the "aha moment" came to him. "What's happening in the enterprise is similar to what's happening with consumers. People are using cloudbased services such as iTunes, Facebook, or Snapfish to manage their music, social media, and photos. Why can't my SMB customers use my company to have that same experience with all of their IT needs?" To some extent, he was already providing some of these services, such as saving a copy of his customers' data in the cloud for disaster recovery purposes. But, why couldn't his customers put more computing resources such as servers and applications in the cloud and pay Vertical Solutions to manage it?
Following his revelation, Nelson realized three things needed to happen before this could become a reality:
1. He needed to make sure a full managed services offering made business sense for his customers as well as his company. "We spent a few months creating various scenarios and price points and comparing what our clients were already paying for traditional managed services with this new model," says Nelson. "The increased level of security and services for a similar investment really jumped out to us. Over a five-year period the cost tends to be fairly close, but when you look at the level of services you get in a hosted scenario, it's almost a no-brainer to make the move to the cloud."
2. Nelson needed to find the right cloud provider that would be channel-friendly and provide reliable service. "After researching several options, we selected Expedient as our private cloud provider," says Nelson. "They have a topnotch data center that meets all the latest certification requirements [e.g. SSAE 16], and they have a reputation for working well with the channel, which we were able to verify through conversations with their other customers."
3. He would have to move all of his IT infrastructure and applications to the cloud before he could expect his customers to try it. "Once we found a cloud service provider we trusted, we started migrating our various cloudbased solutions to their data center over a six-month period," he says. "The biggest challenge we ran into during this transition was pushback from some of our team members. We have a very technical group, but we learned that some people are fearful of change, so we made sure to keep in regular contact with the group and reinforce that this was how we were going to run the business. Eventually, we were able to get everyone's buy-in."
Today, Nelson and his team use only a terminal server to access their business applications. "I can access all my applications — email, Office documents, CRM [customer relationship management], or ERP [enterprise resource planning] from any Internet-enabled device," he says. Nelson has found that demonstrating this to his clients goes a long way in helping overcome objections about accessing data in the cloud. "After I demonstrate how I access my applications, I tell them, 'If I lose this laptop, my client data is not on this device — it's totally secure from data theft.'" He then follows up with, "Does that meet your security requirements?'"
Putting Next Gen Managed Services Into Practice
After vetting out the processes and pricing of moving his clients to the cloud, Nelson and his team were ready to start talking with customers. "The best candidates were the ones whose servers were approaching their end of life, and we were already planning to talk about this subject anyway," he says. He was surprised to find so many of his customers were very open to the idea of moving their server to the cloud, which Nelson credits to the trend of how consumers are interacting with cloud-based services.
One of the lessons Vertical Solutions learned early on is that it doesn't work to allow customers to piecemeal their outsourced services — and to pay you to manage one piece and another company to manage another piece (e.g. a customer that buys its application from one provider, but wants to use your company to host the application). "We had some pushback from one company about the cost of our Office 365 service, which was $6 per user per month — $2 more per month than what the local cable company was offering," he says. Nelson was able to overcome this objection by contrasting the cable company's service reputation with his company's reputation. "Do you really want to call your cable company when you need support for your documents, email, or other critical business processes?" he asked the customer.
Nelson has also found that larger companies are not a good fit for this fully hosted service offering. "Once a company surpasses 250 employees, it usually has enough capital to afford its own internal resources," he says. "The sweet spot is the company with 25 to 250 employees that needs high availability, but doesn't have the internal IT resources to meet this need." The average cost for Vertical Solutions' typical client (around 30 users) is around $3,500 per month for full monitoring and extended help desk services. "Our managed services cost less than what a customer would pay to employ a level-1 engineer, let alone to have a team of engineers at their disposal," says Nelson.
Probably the biggest obstacle Vertical Solutions has had to overcome since offering cloud-based managed services is the emotional component of taking a client's physical server out of their office. "We actually had to take one customer to our cloud provider's data center so they could see for themselves the security measures that are in place, plus the state-of-the-art equipment, the air-conditioned server rooms, and the redundant power supplies. Once they saw all that, they told us they wished they had made the move sooner."
To complement his move to a fully cloud-based managed services model, Nelson actively solicited customer feedback on what he could do to improve his customer service. "Based on customers' feedback, we made the necessary adjustments to our controls and workflows," says Nelson. "Specifically, we made sure that our staffing size, skill set, and mix of level-1, level-2, and level-3 support exceeded our customers' expectations." According to Nelson, it paid off because he never receives complaints about Vertical Solutions' technical services.
The MSP expects its move toward hosted solutions to continue building momentum. "We view this move as the foundation for the new anytime, anywhere office," he says. "The world is shrinking and users are accessing their IT systems from various mobile devices — and this trend will only continue. Our solutions and services provide the platform for this transformation."


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Last week brought the very sad news of the death of Mark Hanson.
Source: Staniforth PR/Flickr
I didn't know Mark as well as others - our paths crossed within political and PR circles - but I did want to dedicate a blog post to put on record the fact that his warmth, generosity and wry intelligence touched my life as it clearly did so many more.
My condolences and deepest sympathies are extended to his wife, family, friends, colleagues and anyone else who knew him.
Mark's family have suggested that if anyone wishes to make a donation in Mark's name they can do so here to MIND and Mayhew Animal Home.