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Showing results for tags 'lactarius delicios'.
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Anyone EVER cultivated Milky caps (Lactarius delicios) at home???
liquidwolf posted a topic in MycologyHi guys i'm wondering if there is any way to cultivate milky caps / Lactarius delicios at home??? From the research and trials i've done it seems like a challenge if not impossible. They are a fantastic edible mushroom and it sucks only having access to them during the on season, plus the competition amongst pickers around my local haunts. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!! I've tried to gather pine needles and soil from some pine forests known for good seasonal yealds, put in a large plastic pot and then innoculate with spore prints and syringes as well as mycellium gathered from the area. I kept it moist and tried to get the seasonal temp right and give the lot plenty of sunshine. Tried both indoor and out. The results are pretty much this post. Iove these shrooms they are so good i can never get enough! Regards LW.


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This 1950's ranch house was brought into the 21st century and integrated with the landscape in Sands Point, New York, by studio Ohlhausen DuBois Architects. A glass pavilion for the daily living, cooking and dining activities was added to the original structure. This glass pavilion ties into a series of terraces, gardens, swimming pool and outdoor living spaces.
The addition of the glass pavilion allows the house to extend out into the property. The use of glass on three sides contrasts with the more closed nature of the original structure, which was converted to bedrooms, bathrooms, and a study. The gardens and outdoor living spaces were designed simultaneously with the glass pavilion and were conceived as extensions of the new indoor living spaces.
The architects incorporated sustainability into their project, which includes, "reuse the existing structure and as much of the landscape as we could, which allowed us to take advantage of the mature plantings and the good south facing orientation of the original house. Highly insulate the existing house and install high performance windows and glass doors. Minimize summer cooling with high performance glazing, deep overhangs, and good sun screening. Minimize winter heating with dark stone floors and a radiant heating system."

subset: commoncrawl


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The groundhog that saw its shadow last week, predicting six more weeks of winter, has plenty to brag about this week.
A new winter storm system is expected to blanket the area on Wednesday morning, bringing between 1 and 4 inches of accumulation, according to the National Weather Service.
There's uncertainty regarding accumulation amounts, but more snow is expected north of New York City, which is expected to get an inch or less of accumulation.
"This storm is expected to develop in the southern Plains and move northeastward - exactly where this storm moves will determine who will see mainly snow and who will see mainly rain," AccuWeather.com meteorologist Jacob Sojda said. "Those sandwiched in between are likely to receive an icy mix."
Snow could continue into Wednesday night.
The outlook for Thursday calls for sunny skies and a high around 30.
Check back to Daily Voice for updates.
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The Nuxalk word for "rock" is spoken the way it sounds, like feet dragging over a rocky riverbed. When Clyde Tallio says it, he has to conjure saliva from the back of his throat and splash it against the back of his teeth to make it sound right. The word seems impossible to spell out in English.
"Our language is formed because of the environment we live in," Tallio explains. "The English language doesn't reflect that environment and it doesn't reflect the teachings and the spirituality of the land."
That the 25-year-old from Bella Coola, B.C. can pronounce the word at all is impressive enough, but what's even more impressive is that the word is being spoken at all.
Tallio is part of a movement of young aboriginals who are working to save their traditional tongues, fighting a tide that threatens to kill the languages off for good.
The "Report on the Status of B.C. First Nations Languages, " released by the First People's Cultural Council in 2010, concluded that First Nation language fluency in the province had plummeted from 100 per cent in 1890 to 5.1 per cent in 2010.
The report stated that only 8.2 per cent of the total First Nation population were semi-speakers and that language learners made up only 11.1 per cent of aboriginals in B.C.
The cultural council noted a number of causes for the decline, but one of the biggest was government-run residential schools, which began operating in B.C. in the 1880s.
Children attending the schools were "trained, forced and shamed" into abandoning their languages, the report said, adding that even when they left, they could not go back to speaking their languages or teach them to their kids because of "residual shame and trauma."
Tallio has helped revitalize the language in a number of ways. At 25, he's the youngest fluent speaker of his people's language and has taken a leading role in trying to teach younger people how to speak in their traditional tongue.
He's been teaching Nuxalk at the community's Acwsalcta school for the past five years, leading groups of students who are graduating this year. His pupils are mostly in high school and they follow his lessons in traditional song and dance, as well as potlatch and salmon ceremonies.
Tallio also leads the Nuxalk Rediscovery Camp, a program where youth can connect directly with their land. They travel up an inlet to the northern region of Nuxalk territory where they learn to till the land, see sacred sites and tell stories.
Clyde Tallio, 25, is the youngest fluent speaker of the Nuxalk language. (Flickr: UBC Library)
Tallio's role is "cultural leader," tasked with telling stories about the spirits that Nuxalk people are descended from.
"This is a perfect opportunity to take our youth and be in an environment that's drug and alcohol free, free of all technologies and just learn how to be ourselves," he told The Huffington Post B.C.
As Tallio tells it, there's an increasing passion among Nuxalk youth to learn the language. He relates the story of one of his students who was asked to give a speech. Tallio only expected him to give a short speech demonstrating progress with the language, but every word he spoke was perfect. He blew his teacher away.
"I don't see young people push it away or reject it as it once was," Tallio says. "I think we've accomplished a lot because we've returned the spirit of being Nuxalk back to our people."
A similar story is unfolding in the traditional territory of the Squamish Nation near Vancouver. For three years, Dustin Rivers, a 22-year-old community activist, has been holding "Language Nights" that allow Squamish members to practise in a collaborative environment.
As he tells it, revitalizing the language is a good antidote to other problems such as drug and alcohol addiction.
"It also benefits other ways. With high self-esteem, we have youth that transfer that strength into other areas, whether it be school or sports or other things, so it starts to create this net benefit across the whole community," Rivers says.
Rivers began offering the classes as an alternative to traditional language courses taught through the school system. He found that Squamish members didn't succeed in that environment because the courses were modeled after second-language classes, which often involve translating English words directly into other languages.
At Language Nights, instead of being instructed on what they should be learning, participants are allowed to "hunt" the parts of the language they want to learn, and develop enough foundational skills that they can speak it with confidence. Mistakes are treated as speed bumps rather than bad marks on a report card.
The nights attract an average of two dozen people. Many have been young people from the community, with young mothers showing a particular enthusiasm for learning the language.
"There was kind of a long-term vision, where they really felt like the language is important not just for me, but for my children," Rivers says.
Learning the language in an informal, collaborative environment has shown him that the current generation of young aboriginals is "taking charge" of preserving Squamish culture and language, and giving hope to a people who have long strived to reclaim their identity.
"There's a lot of benefit in reclaiming our culture and saying for ourselves that we have problems, but we're going to solve them and our culture and traditional values are going to lead us in finding these solutions."
What do you think about this story? Join the conversation below or tweet us @HuffPostCanada with the #AskingY tag. We may feature your comments in an upcoming post. You can also check out our Tumblr, and our dedicated page for more from the Asking Y series.
Also on HuffPost


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Criteria to become a pilot
You need a medical certificate before flying solo in an airplane, helicopter, gyroplane, or airship. We suggest you get your medical certificate before beginning flight training. This will alert you to any condition that would prevent you from becoming a pilot before you pay for lessons.
If you are going to pilot a balloon or glider, you don't need a medical certificate. All you need to do is write a statement certifying that you have no medical defect that would make you unable to pilot a balloon or glider.
If required, how do I get a medical certificate?
By passing a physical examination administered by a doctor who is an FAA-authorized aviation medical examiner.
Where do I get my medical certificate?
From any FAA-authorized aviation medical examiner. There are approximately 6, 000 of them in the U.S.
Where can I get a list of FAA-authorized aviation medical examiners?
The FAA publishes a directory that lists them by name and address. You can get a copy from any FAA Flight Standards District Office, air traffic control facility, or flight service station. Airport managers and some aviation businesses may also be able to supply this information. Locate an Aviation Medical Examiner.
When required, what class of medical certificate must a student pilot have?
Third-class, although any class will suffice. Medical certificates are designated as first-class, second-class, or third-class. Generally, first-class is designed for the airline transport pilot; second-class for the commercial pilot; and third-class for the student, recreational and private pilot.
If I have a physical disability, can I get a medical certificate?
Yes. Medical certificates can be issued in many cases where physical disabilities are involved. Depending on the nature of the disability, you may have some operating limitations. If you have any questions, contact an FAA-authorized aviation medical examiner before beginning flight training.


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The Fallago Rig project, located 35 kilometres from Edinburgh, features 48 Vestas V90-3MW turbines and has been in operation since January.
The investment was made without the use of third-party debt. Financial terms and the interest that Hermes will hold were not revealed.
EDF will continue to own equity in the wind farm and will still run the site, providing operations, maintenance and asset management services.
Fallago Rig has a long-term power purchase agreement with EDF Energy.
This is not Hermes' first acquisition in Scotland. In June, it bought a 50% stake in the 72MW Braes of Doune onshore wind farm in Stirlingshire from utility company Centrica.


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Debates about poverty play out over a heavy sub-text of race. Competing theories assign blame either to moral and cognitive deficiencies of poor people themselves, or to greedy over-lords who unjustly exploit and suppress workers and their families. The class politics are obvious, but arguing the essential unfitness of poor people is aided immeasurably by the rhetoric and logic of racism. If made of somewhat different stuff and recognized as lesser peoples, then both exploitation and the misery they experience seem defensible, or at least unavoidable. Science defeated the hard racial argument in the middle of last century when geneticists determined that race is a biological fiction. But the concept of culture offered a workaround that retained the utility of race by substituting ethnicity. The shift to culture, instead of hard-wired traits, has appealed to liberal "third way" reform thinkers as well as those on the right, forging an odd alliance who find common ground in the hagiography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
The "culture of poverty," a concept ironically made popular by a trio of liberal leftists in the 1960s, asserts that children raised in poverty learn failure from their upbringing and pass it on to their own children, much like inherited physical traits. Shared cultures in "ghetto" communities produce dysfunctional patterns of thought and behavior that perpetuate poverty. Oscar Lewis, anthropologist; Michael Harrington, muckraking journalist; and Daniel P. Moynihan, federal policy analyst and future politician, were the three figures who helped ignite a contentious debate early in the War on Poverty, which not coincidentally over-lapped with the Civil Rights movement.
Moynihan's influence has been most enduring. His 1965 report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (PDF), brought this idea to the mass media in the midst of an extended urban uprising in the Watts section of LA. As an assistant secretary in Lyndon Johnson's Department of Labor, he issued an official verdict that African American poverty was mired in a "tangle of pathology" resulting from excessive numbers of female headed households. Moynihan conceded that male unemployment unsettles marital stability, but believed that racial disparities in joblessness reflected a family structure that produced uncompetitive workers, implicitly justifying employer discrimination. Growing public unease over urban violence magnified the report's message that African American culture was pathological.
The leaked report was followed by weeks of coverage and many extreme reactions. The government was launching a campaign to end poverty; an official report defined the problem in terms of gender, race, and culture, deflecting attention from substantive obstacles and economic problems then (and still) confronting African Americans. The report was dissected by critics and supporters alike. Moynihan's naïve statistical inferences and reliance on limited secondary sources weakened his position and tended to discredit his thesis. Anthropologists and historians published research that contradicted his assertions. Through the 70s and early 80s, the report lost its luster. Moynihan complained periodically about the criticism he had endured over his report, claiming he had been the victim of ideological enemies on the left. It could have ended there.
The 1980s was a period of revanchism against the Great Society, backlash against what were deemed excessively liberal conditions in the preceding two decades. Under Reagan, Sen. Moynihan opposed the new harsh policies, but his earlier ideas about black poverty gained renewed support, especially from right wing commentators like Charles Murray. Also included, however, was liberal sociologist William Julius Wilson who praised Moynihan's foresight, excoriated his critics, and instated culture into his quest to understand poverty. Wilson framed inner city poverty as the home of the "underclass" where black middle class flight had left a zone bereft of upstanding two parent families, a cultural sink lacking effective norms. Faced with wrenching industrial changes, their defective culture worsened the problems — a combination of cultural and structural causes, suggesting possible partial solutions addressing bad culture rather than unfair economics. This approach resonated with many in the Republican administration, but it also drew interest from a widening circle of academics and liberal policy analysts.
In 2007, the American Academy of Social and Political Science established an annual award in Moynihan's name for public intellectuals of note. Their journal published a special issue titled "The Moynihan Report Revisited," with largely praiseful articles and missing some noted critics. The Urban Institute borrowed the title for their own conference and publication [[http://www.issuelab.org/resource/moynihan_report_revisited_the]] that was also mainly an homage to Moynihan's allegedly prescient contributions. In 2010 Herbert Gans, a sociologist who had written an early response to the report, revisited it in light of all the new praise for its importance. He came to the same conclusion he had 45 years earlier; it was not good research or a credible argument. He praised Moynihan's work as a senator, but not as a scholar or early policy analyst.
Nevertheless, Moynihan's fame as a social prophet has continued to grow and his ideas arguably have helped steer scarce poverty funding into neoliberal programs aimed at teaching poor people about the virtues of middle class culture, or forcibly displacing them for their own good. And we have spent billions more incarcerating and punishing non-violent poor people of color based on faulty perceptions of crime and risk. Both critics and supporters credit the Moynihan Report for helping shape the policy environment that ended welfare and anointed the view that poverty, race, and crime are all tied together. Alice O'Connor's book, Poverty Knowledge, offers an incisive analysis, as described in my recent book, Blaming the Poor.
In the United States poverty and race are frequently connected in the mind's eye, in what Joe Feagin has called the white racial frame, where facts disappear in the mist of centuries long racial conditioning, like the fact that "welfare queens" in the days before welfare was ended were overwhelmingly white. Current revivals of Moynihan's haplessly racist caricature of immoral black single mothers and their dangerous teenaged sons disregard the fact that single motherhood has soared among all ethnic groups, especially among people with low incomes, a predictable response to dire economic conditions. It is not cultural, but structural; not racial but a reflection of class inequality and material scarcity. Moynihan was fond of saying that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Moynihan's sloppy research and undeservedly popular conclusion illustrates that caution very well.
Susan Greenbaum is Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of South Florida


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Here are a few ideas that might help him see why this matters to you:
- Get him to read a book, such as The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth or maybe a selected article or blog post, such as Dr. Sarah Buckley's Epidurals: risks and concerns for mother and baby or Navelgazing Midwife's Pointless Hospital "Rituals".
- If he is the kind of guy who doesn't like to read, have him watch a birth documentary with you. Some possibilities are The Business of Being Born and Pregnant in America.
- Set up a meeting for the two of you with the midwife or doula you would like to hire. She may be able to address some of his concerns.
- Get him to take a childbirth class with you. Choose a class that covers the benefits and risks of your various options, rather than one that only teaches what is standard practice at the hospital.
- Sit him down and have a heart-to-heart. Explain how much your baby's birth matters to you and why you want to be involved in the decisions about it.


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Edwards Mansion
- Serving:
- Serving Inland Empire
- Address:
- 2064 Orange Tree Ln.
- City, Zip Code & State
- Redlands, CA 92374
Our magnificent mansion is a perfect location for any wedding or formal celebration. Our ambiance and opulence make us a top choice in the area for banquet hall and catered functions.
This spectacular Victorian mansion is a very popular choice for elegant and memorable affairs. The elegant house and beautiful garden complete with romantically lit gazebo are always popular with guests at Quinceañeras, proms, banquets, private parties and, of course, weddings.
This historic home was built in 1890, and has been meticulously restored. Some of the features of the grounds of this renowned banquet facility are a turn-of-the-century wedding chapel, white party pavilions, gazebos, a Victorian tea garden, greenhouse and a beautiful waterfall. Our pavilions are climate controlled and are an excellent setting for a corporate meeting or Quinceañera. Our gazebos make for a deeply romantic setting for exchanging your vows and our lovely garden is an ideal setting for a cocktail party or wedding reception.
Our on-site venues provide an excellent selection suited to a variety of tastes and budgets. The Cypress Garden is a lovely outdoor space which accommodates 75 standing or 50 seated guests. The Edwardian Suite on the second floor has a glorious Victorian charm and can accommodate up to 75 seated guests. The Greenhouse is an exciting locale for those who like the aspects of both an indoor and outdoor event, with the glass ceiling offering up lovely sky views. The Crystal Garden Room incorporates a festive art deco look with its black and white decor, checkered porcelain floor and elegant crystal chandeliers. Our Party Pavilions and the Tea Garden are outstanding for outdoor events.
Our experienced Executive Chef will create a delectable menu for you and your guests. We offer everything from simple sandwiches to fine faire, as well as a large choice of appetizers and desserts. The cooking of our meals is done on the premises so that you can be assured of total freshness. We offer full service event planning for functions such as weddings, private parties, sweet 16s, Quinceañeras, holiday parties and corporate occasions. We are happy to assist you with a variety of planning services such as:
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Former Miss Venezuela shot dead
Updated: 2014-01-08 14:54
Miss Universe 2005 contestant Monica Spear of Venezuela takes part in an AIDS candlelight memorial in a Bangkok hotel to remember those who have lost their lives to the disease in this May 16, 2005 file photo. [Photo/Agencies]
CARACAS, Venezuela - A former Miss Venezuela and her ex-husband were shot and killed and their 5-year-old daughter wounded when they resisted robbers by locking themselves inside their car after tire punctures disabled it on an isolated stretch of highway, police said Tuesday.
The slaying of Monica Spear, 29, a popular soap-opera actress, and Thomas Henry Berry, a 39-year-old British citizen, was the latest high-profile crime in a country where killings are common in armed robberies and where rampant kidnapping has ensnared even foreign ambassadors and professional baseball players.
Monday's killings followed a pattern in Venezuela of late-night assaults carried out by disabling cars with obstacles placed on roadways or by removing sewer covers.
Spear and Berry were slain at about 10:30 pm between Puerto Cabello, the country's main port, and the provincial capital of Valencia. They were returning from vacation to Caracas on a badly maintained stretch of highway that is lightly traveled at that hour.
Their four-door sedan hit "a sharp object that had been placed on the highway" which punctured at least two of its tires, the director of the country's investigative police, Jose Gregorio Sierralta, told reporters.
Two tow trucks arrived almost immediately afterward, said Sierralta, and the attack occurred after the car had been lifted onto one of the trucks.
Seeing the assailants coming, the travelers locked themselves inside and the assailants fired at least six shots, he said.
"They fired with viciousness," President Nicolas Maduro said of the attackers in comments to state TV.
Police in Puerto Cabello arrested five suspects, some under the age of 18, Sierralta added. It could not immediately be determined if Spear and Berry had called the tow trucks, or if any of the drivers were among those arrested for suspected involvement in the killings.
The daughter, Maya, was in stable condition after treatment for a leg wound and was with relatives in Caracas, said Sierralta.
The family had spent New Year's in the mountains of the western state of Merida then traveled to the plains, said Luis Carlos Dominguez, a longtime friend and former business associate of Berry. He said Berry was raised in Venezuela and ran a travel agency.
"He knew Venezuela a lot better than many Venezuelans," said Dominguez, describing the slain couple as people "who really loved the country," had a good relationship despite their divorce and made it a point to vacation together.
"They weren't together," he said. "But they were very attached for the benefit of their daughter."
He said Venezuelans can only hope that their deaths bring "a bit more strength to the fight against crime."
Violent crime soared during the 14-year rule of Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer last March. Venezuelans list crime as their most pressing worry.
The country has one of the world's highest murder rates _ the United Nations has ranked it 5th globally _ and violent crime is so rampant that Venezuelans tend to stay home after dark.
Spear's death triggered a wave of anger on social media directed at the government's poor record on crime.
Maduro lamented "the loss of a very spiritual young woman" actively involved in various charities.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles called on Maduro to put aside political differences and unite "to win the fight against insecurity" that claimed nearly 25,000 lives last year. "It's an emergency."
In response to the killings, Maduro announced that he would convene a security meeting on Wednesday that had originally been scheduled for the end of January. The meeting will bring together state governors and mayors of Venezuela's 79 most dangerous cities.
According to the nonprofit Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, the oil-rich South American country's murder rate was 79 per 100,000 inhabitants last year. Government statistics put the rate lower. The nonprofit group says 95 percent of murders go unsolved.
Spear was crowned Miss Venezuela in 2004, was 5th runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant the following year and had acted in numerous soap operas, most recently in "Pasion Prohibida" for the U.S.-based Telemundo network.
She split her time between Caracas and south Florida, said Dominguez, while the England-born Berry lived in Caracas.
Spear had more than 355,000 followers on Twitter and her feed over the last week included brief videos of vacation scenes sent on the popular Instagram service.
In one video, posted Sunday and described as being taken on the plains of Apure state, Spear looks at the camera while riding a horse, turns away and then looks back, blowing a kiss.
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Android SDK m5-rc14 now available
February 13th, 2008 | Published in Google Android
On behalf of the entire Android team, I'm happy to let you know that an updated version of the Android SDK – we're calling it m5-rc14 – is now available. Today, we're continuing the early look at the Android SDK that we started back in November by providing updates to the Android APIs and the developer tools based, in part, on the great feedback and suggestions developers have been giving us. We're excited about the progress that we've made and look forward to making additional updates in the future as the platform evolves towards production-readiness.
There are a couple of changes in m5-rc14 I'd like to highlight:
- New user interface - As I mentioned when we introduced the m3 version of the Android SDK, we're continuing to refine the UI that's available for Android. m5-rc14 replaces the previous placeholder with a new UI, but as before, work on it is still in-progress.
- Layout animations - Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package. Check out the LayoutAnimation*.java files in the APIDemos sample code for examples of how this works.
- Geo-coding - android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.
- New media codecs - The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.
- Updated Eclipse plug-in - A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.
You can find more information about what's changed in a couple of documents that we've published. First is an overview of the changes to the Android APIs in API Changes Overview. If you want a more granular view of what's changed, an API diff between m3-rc37 and m5-rc14 is also available. Finally, Upgrading the SDK provides links to the two previously referenced documents and the release notes, as well as instructions on how to upgrade your development environment.
We still need your help in shaping the platform, so if you find issues with the Android APIs or the developer tools, please let us know through the Android Issue Tracker. If you have general comments or questions, please head on over to the Android groups to get in touch.
We're looking forward to all the applications that developers will create using this new version of the Android SDK. Of course, you can use m5-rc14 or any older version of the SDK for your Android Developers Challenge submission.


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Like all food trends, Christmas cookies have come and gone throughout the years, as bakers search for the newest and tastiest treats to make for spectacular gifts. However, there is one particular cookie that has been invited back to the holiday parties for decades now, always popular to bake and receive. That would be the sugar cookie, so simple and yet with so very appealing, I tend to think that it has become such a staple of holiday cookie platters mostly due to its versatility. Easily flavored with spices and extracts to suit everyone's tastes, it's more of a blank canvas than anything else. Of course, the real draw for me is how easily shaped and decorated sugar cookies can be, allowing for an entirely new look every single holiday season, even if the recipe never changes.
While it would certainly be much quicker to make these classics as drop cookies, it's all about the cut-outs, if you ask me. Endless varieties of cookie cutters catch my eye every time I find myself shopping for kitchen supplies, and now is the time of year I can put those impulse buys to good use. These shaped cookies can do more than just feed the stomach, but also treat the eyes, and quite possibly elevate one's mood. The effort put into making these cookies into something special is what truly makes them a perfect gift. It takes a bit of patience, skill, and luck, but I have a few tips to help you get started in case you need some reassurance.
1. Always chill your dough thoroughly before working with it, even if the recipe you're using doesn't say to. It will be so much easier to work with when it's cold, and you will get a smoother surface when it's not so sticky as well. If you want to take out some extra insurance, you can also toss your rolling pin into the fridge beforehand as well!
2. Can't find or don't have a rolling pin in your kitchen? No need to run out to the store, an empty bottle or thick wooden dowel will work just fine.
3. Place your ball of dough directly on the silpat or piece of parchment paper that you plan to bake on. This is an especially good idea if you want to make more intricate pieces, as they are more likely to get mashed and distorted if you need to move them after cutting. You should still lightly flour this surface though, just to prevent any foreseeable mishaps.
4. Lightly flour the rolling pin and cookie cutters to prevent sticking.
5. Thinner is generally better when you're gauging the thickness of the dough. Of course, you don't want to so thin that you get holes or tears, but I prefer to keep it about 1/8 of an inch thick. However, as long as the entire length of dough is completely even, you'll be in good shape. Just keep in mind that thicker cookies will take longer to bake, and are more likely to brown around the edges or stay soft in the middle. And depending on how you like them, that may be a positive thing, too!
6. Lay out as many cookie cutters as possible at once. You'll get a better idea of how much space you have left, and how best to arrange them to prevent waste.
7. Press down firmly, making sure that the cutters push all the way through your layer of dough. If you remove the shape and discover that your cookie is still attached to the main dough in some areas do not replace the cutter and try again. You're more likely to add extra unsightly lines than cut it out perfectly. Instead, carefully run a paring knife around the uncut edges, tracing the design exactly.
8. Remove the excess dough between your shapes in manageable strips. Don't try to peel it all off at once, and definitely don't rush. The smaller details will need some additional attention to stay intact, so break off the length of extra dough periodically and pick it up fresh from new corners if you get stuck.
9. If at any point your dough isn't cooperating, chances are that it has simply become too warm. Pop the whole tray back into the fridge for a few minutes to cool down before proceeding and you'll get much better results.
10. Re-roll scraps no more than two times; beyond that, the dough will become rather tough and unpleasant to eat. Of course, you could always use those cookies as ornaments so as not to waste anything!
That all sounds pretty simple now, right? So if you're still with me, head on over to the post I wrote a year ago with a few tips on how to ice your perfectly shaped cookies once they're baked and cooled.


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Microsoft Excel isn't only for spreadsheets. It can also be used to create art. Don't believe me? Just ask 73 year-old Tatsuo Horiuchi. He'll tell ya.
But why Excel? "Other specialized graphic software is expensive, and Excel came pre-installed in PCs," Horiuchi told Japanese website PC Online, adding that he found the program easy to use and more capable than actual paint.
The retiree said that he didn't use Excel at his job. "I saw other people neatly drawing graphs, and I thought it seemed like Excel could be used to draw art." Before he retired from his company, he felt like he wanted to do something new, bought a computer, and started using Excel. And in the last ten years, he has established himself as a digital artist, showing his work in exhibitions.
Other artists have used Excel to draw and paint in, sure. However, how many of them are senior citizens creating traditional and stunning Japanese motifs? Not many!
堀内辰男のエクセルで描くパソコン画 [Tatsuo Horiuchi]
エクセルで本格的な絵画を描く、油絵や日本画の画家が「仲間」[PC Online]
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.


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PHYSICIAN'S WARRANTY OF VACCINE SAFETY: How to Help Guarantee Your Child's Health and Well-Being
Excerpted from WorldTruth.TV. Please follow link below to download pdf's and attachments:
"I have yet to meet a Physician that will sign this form now downloaded by hundreds of parents. The reason they won't sign is two-fold: First, they do not want to place themselves in a vulnerable position of being negligent for not providing informed consent to thousands of other parents; and second, many of them realize after their own extensive research that the risks far outweigh any benefits when it comes to vaccination.
Then are those Physicians who have questioned the vaccination schedules and will pursue their own research. Many of them are now awakening themselves thanks to ongoing research and pressure from parents and even other colleagues to look at other perspectives besides their own indoctrination. If you are pressured by any Physician to vaccinate, please download and print this form (and send us a Physician signed copy if possible). Assertively state to your Doctor that it is the only way you will fully informed to consider vaccination, and that an analyses of the risks and benefits will better allow you evaluate the decision."
PHYSICIAN'S WARRANTY OF VACCINE SAFETY I (Physician's name, degree)_______________, _____ am a physician licensed to practice medicine in the State/Province of _________. My State/Provincial license number is ___________ , and my DEA number is ____________. My medical specialty is _______________I have a thorough understanding of the risks and benefits of all the medications that I prescribe for or administer to my patients. In the case of (Patient's name) ______________ , age _____ , whom I have examined, I find that certain risk factors exist that justify the recommended vaccinations. The following is a list of said risk factors and the vaccinations that will protect against them:
Risk Factor __________________________
Vaccination __________________________
Risk Factor __________________________
Vaccination __________________________
Risk Factor __________________________
Vaccination __________________________I am aware that vaccines may contain many of the following chemicals, excipients, preservatives and fillers:* aluminum hydroxide
* aluminum phosphate
* ammonium sulfate
* amphotericin B
* animal tissues: pig blood, horse blood, rabbit brain,
* arginine hydrochloride
* dog kidney, monkey kidney,
* dibasic potassium phosphate
* chick embryo, chicken egg, duck egg
* calf (bovine) serum
* betapropiolactone
* fetal bovine serum
* formaldehyde
* formalin
* gelatin
* gentamicin sulfate
* glycerol
* human diploid cells (originating from human aborted fetal tissue)
* hydrocortisone
* hydrolized gelatin
* mercury thimerosol (thimerosal, Merthiolate(r))
* monosodium glutamate (MSG)
* monobasic potassium phosphate
* neomycin
* neomycin sulfate
* nonylphenol ethoxylate
* octylphenol ethoxylate
* octoxynol 10
* phenol red indicator
* phenoxyethanol (antifreeze)
* potassium chloride
* potassium diphosphate
* potassium monophosphate
* polymyxin B
* polysorbate 20
* polysorbate 80
* porcine (pig) pancreatic hydrolysate of casein
* residual MRC5 proteins
* sodium deoxycholate
* sorbitol
* thimerosal
* tri(n)butylphosphate,
* VERO cells, a continuous line of monkey kidney cells, and
* washed sheep red bloodand, hereby, warrant that these ingredients are safe for injection into the body of my patient. I have researched reports to the contrary, such as reports that mercury thimerosal causes severe neurological and immunological damage, and find that they are not credible.I am aware that some vaccines have been found to have been contaminated with Simian Virus 40 (SV 40) and that SV 40 is causally linked by some researchers to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and mesotheliomas in humans as well as in experimental animals. I hereby warrant that the vaccines I employ in my practice do not contain SV 40 or any other live viruses. (Alternately, I hereby warrant that said SV-40 virus or other viruses pose no substantive risk to my patient.)I hereby warrant that the vaccines I am recommending for the care of (Patient's name) _______________ do not contain any tissue from aborted human babies (also known as "fetuses").In order to protect my patient's well being, I have taken the following steps to guarantee that the vaccines I will use will contain no damaging contaminants.STEPS TAKEN: _________________________
I have personally investigated the reports made to the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) and state that it is my professional opinion that the vaccines I am recommending are safe for administration to a child under the age of 5 years.
The bases for my opinion are itemized on Exhibit A, attached hereto, — "Physician's Bases for Professional Opinion of Vaccine Safety." (Please itemize each recommended vaccine separately along with the bases for arriving at the conclusion that the vaccine is safe for administration to a child under the age of 5 years.)
The professional journal articles I have relied upon in the issuance of this Physician's Warranty of Vaccine Safety are itemized on Exhibit B , attached hereto, — "Scientific Articles in Support of Physician's Warranty of Vaccine Safety."
The professional journal articles that I have read which contain opinions adverse to my opinion are itemized on Exhibit C , attached hereto, — "Scientific Articles Contrary to Physician's Opinion of Vaccine Safety"
The reasons for my determining that the articles in Exhibit C were invalid are delineated in Attachment D , attached hereto, — "Physician's Reasons for Determining the Invalidity of Adverse Scientific Opinions."
Hepatitis B
I understand that 60 percent of patients who are vaccinated for Hepatitis B will lose detectable antibodies to Hepatitis B within 12 years. I understand that in 1996 only 54 cases of Hepatitis B were reported to the CDC in the 0-1 year age group. I understand that in the VAERS, there were 1,080 total reports of adverse reactions from Hepatitis B vaccine in 1996 in the 0-1 year age group, with 47 deaths reported.
I understand that 50 percent of patients who contract Hepatitis B develop no symptoms after exposure. I understand that 30 percent will develop only flu-like symptoms and will have lifetime immunity. I understand that 20 percent will develop the symptoms of the disease, but that 95 percent will fully recover and have lifetime immunity.
I understand that 5 percent of the patients who are exposed to Hepatitis B will become chronic carriers of the disease. I understand that 75 percent of the chronic carriers will live with an asymptomatic infection and that only 25 percent of the chronic carriers will develop chronic liver disease or liver cancer, 10-30 years after the acute infection. The following scientific studies have been performed to demonstrate the safety of the Hepatitis B vaccine in children under the age of 5 years.
In addition to the recommended vaccinations as protections against the above cited risk factors, I have recommended other non-vaccine measures to protect the health of my patient and have enumerated said non-vaccine measures on Exhibit D , attached hereto, "Non-vaccine Measures to Protect Against Risk Factors" I am issuing this Physician's Warranty of Vaccine Safety in my professional capacity as the attending physician to (Patient's name) ________________________________. Regardless of the legal entity under which I normally practice medicine, I am issuing this statement in both my business and individual capacities and hereby waive any statutory, Common Law, Constitutional, UCC, international treaty, and any other legal immunities from liability lawsuits in the instant case. I issue this document of my own free will after consultation with competent legal counsel whose name is _____________________________, an attorney admitted to the Bar in the State of __________________ .
preventdisease.com (excerpted from WorldTruth.TV)
Disclaimer: All information, data and material contained, presented, or provided on Arcanum Wholistic Clinic is for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed or intended as providing medical or legal advice. Decisions you make about your family's healthcare are important and should be made in consultation with a competent medical professional.
- Angry Momma Bear Expresses Her Feelings About Mandatory Vaccines
- Vaccination: The Hidden Truth


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OCEAN CITY- Ocean City Recreation and Parks Department action continued this week with a handful of big games. The following is a brief glance at some recent league action:
(bullet) Tequila Duffybird 27- Greene Turtle 7: Chase George led the Tequila Duffybird attack with his arm and on the ground as the team prevailed over the Greene Turtle. George got the scoring started with a 16-yard touchdown run. He then hit Dennis Eade with a 20-yard TD pass. George threw another 12-yard touchdown pass to Denny Ferry to increase the lead to 20-0. The Greene Turtle got on the board with an eight-yard touchdown pass from Allen Hawk to Brett Case. Tequila Duffybird then put the game away for good with an 18-yard touchdown pass from George to Eade to complete the 27-7 win.
(bullet) Gemcraft Homes 21- Kirby's Pub 18: In a battle of league front-runners, Gemcraft Homes edged Kirby's on a late touchdown for the 21-18 win. Kirby's Bart Talbert got the scoring started with a 16-yard TD pass to Steve Lewis. Gemcraft answered a short time later with a 36-yard bomb from Ray Taranto to Eric Givens. After both teams exchanged interceptions, Kirby's took the lead on a two-yard touchdown run by Wayne Bowden. Gemcraft's Taranto hit Givens again, this time on an 18-yard TD strike, to retake the lead at 14-12. Talbert then threw a 12-yard scoring strike to Ryan Murphy to put Kirby's back on top at 18-14, but another touchdown pass from Taranto to Givens put Gemcraft ahead for good at 21-18.
(bullet) Buxy's Salty Dog 19- Crab Cake Factory 7: Buxy's stayed right in the middle of the lead in the standings with a 19-7 win over the Crab Cake Factory. Rick Hahn got Buxy's on the board early with a 60-yard touchdown bomb to Pat Spicer. The Hahn to Spicer connection accounted for Buxy's second score of the night, this time on a 16-yard touchdown reception. Crab Cake Factory got on the board with a 24-yard touchdown pass from Steve Fowler to Glen Sudder to cut the lead to 12-7. Buxy's settled the issue once and for all with a six-yard touchdown strike from Hahn to Evan Dittler.
(bullet) Three Brothers Pizza 25- Century Carpet Cleaning 14: In a see-saw match-up, Three Brothers prevailed over Century Carpet by the score of 25-14. Three Brothers got on the board first with a 16-yard TD pass from Chip Purnell to Kyle Seitz. The Crab Cake factory then scored on a safety by Neil Kernan to cut the lead to 6-2. Purnell then ran for a 14-yard touchdown to put Three Brothers ahead 12-2. Crab Cake Factory's Joe D'Ascoli hit Joey Pino with an eight-yard touchdown pass to cut the lead to 12-8. Three Brothers put the game away for good with a 62-yard TD run by Chip Purnell and a 72-yard interception return by Antwoine Purnell for the 25-14 victory.


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Music, Magic And Spectacle At The 15th Annual Arcata Eye Ball, Saturday, Feb. 18
Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. at the Arcata Theatre Lounge
The Arcata Eye presents the 15th Annual Arcata Eye Ball, Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. at the Arcata Theatre Lounge, 1036 G St. Tickets are $15 each, two for $25, available at The Works, Wildberries Marketplace, People's Records, Wildwood Music, the Arcata Eye and arcatatheater.com. All ages may attend, those 17 and under with an adult.
Featured performers include the Arcata Eye Rockestra, composed of local musicians from various bands and backgrounds. Once again, the Eye Ball will feature performances by Dell'Arte, the Pom Pom Queens and Rutabaga Queens, joined this year by International Superclown Shea FreeLove. Former Arcata Mayor Bob Ornelas will serve as Master of Ceremonies.
The Eye Ball is a benefit for the Arcata Eye newspaper, with live and silent auctions by the Eureka Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This year, a portion of the proceeds will benefit the Union Labor Health Foundation's Dental Angel Fund, which provides dental care for local disadvantaged children.
Headlining the 2012 Eye Ball is the Arcata Eye Rockestra, offering a variety of classic rock favorites with an Arcata twist. This year's line-up is: Rob Amerman: guitar, vocals; Kelly Brannon: drums; Pete Ciotti: guitar, drums, vocals; Dan Davis, bass; Andrew Goff: bass, keyboards, vocals; Kelly Hoover: keyboards, guitar, vocals; Kevin Hoover: drums; Josephine Johnson: vocals; Marla Joy: bass, sax, flute, vocals; Mark Lovelace: guitar, vocals; Terrence McNally: vocals; Wolf Navarro: guitar, vocals; Rick Park: guitar, vocals; Ross Rowley: bass, vocals; and Hank Sims: guitarrón, vocals.
As a special feature, Hank Sims and Andrew Goff will perform recently discovered music recorded by Arcata's beloved "Ragman," Pete Villarreal. Hear Pete's music online at arcataeye.com.
Dell'Arte wowed the 2010 Eye Ball with dramatic readings of the Eye's world-famous Police Log. Last year featured the vocal stylings of the Dell'Arte Odd Fellows.
The Rutabaga Queens, your benevolent monarchs of the Kinetic Kingdom, will raise heck and spread glory just as they do at the Kinetic Grand Championship.
The Pom Pom Queens, re-dubbed the Eye Dolls, will dazzle attendees with their saucy gyrations.
International Superclown Shea FreeLove will astound and baffle with hair-raising and mind-bending antics.
For more information, visit arcataeye.com, the Eye's Facebook page, arcatatheater.com or call (707) 826-7000.


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Essentially a control cabinet is subject to the Low Voltage Directive and EMC Directive. These directives call for an EU declaration of conformity and CE mark to be issued (not included). A declaration of incorporation in accordance with the Machinery Directive is impossible, therefore.
A control cabinet with controller is a significant part of a machine, but by definition it is not partly completed machinery.
As the control cabinet becomes a machine component, it must be assessed in line with the conformity assessment procedure (to be completed by the machine builder). This means that more information is needed than that stipulated by the Low Voltage Directive or EMC Directive. The machine builder should therefore also have compliance with the provisions of the Machinery Directive confirmed. As there is no legal entitlement in this regard, this should be agreed privately before the contract is concluded.


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It was one of the biggest child prostitution cases in state history, culminating last year in the conviction of six Boston pimps involved in a violent prostitution ring that enslaved girls from local neighborhoods.
And the case would not have been won without Jessica.
She was the first young prostitute to share her story with investigators and one of the terrified young witnesses whose court testimony was key to the convictions.
She is still paying the price for her quiet heroism. Five years after escaping the harrowing life of a teenage prostitute in Boston, the 22-year-old college student often wakes up drenched in sweat, her mind crowded with memories of beatings and threats of worse.
Today, she lives hundred of miles from the turf of her tormenters, especially Eddie Jones and Darryl Tavares. The two pimps treated her like their property, Jessica told a federal jury last November, coercing her to have sex with strangers and pocketing the money she made.
She says her mouth still throbs from the time Jones stomped on her with his Timberland boots, breaking several teeth. A scar on her cheek is a permanent reminder of a vicious altercation with Tavares; Jessica says he slashed her with a potato peeler to mark her as his property.
Next month, Jones, 27, is scheduled to be sentenced in US District Court in Boston for his role in her abuse and that of other young prostitution victims. Tavares, 26, is already serving a 25-year prison sentence. They were convicted last November on charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to take women across state lines for the purpose of prostitution. Jessica and six other young women testified during their trial.
Four other men pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, avoiding trial and receiving sentences of 48 to 60 months.
"People need to know what these guys have done," Jessica said in a recent interview with the Globe. "I'm glad they are off the streets and they can't harm anyone else."
Fearing retribution from others still active in local prostitution, she spoke on condition that her real name and location remain secret. The Globe does not name sexual assault victims without their consent.
The Boston trial marked the dramatic end of the largest child prostitution case brought by federal prosecutors in Massachusetts since 2003, when the FBI, the US Department of Justice, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children launched a campaign called the Innocence Lost initiative to combat child prostitution.
The case covered incidents that happened between 2001 and 2005, but the sexual exploitation of children for commercial gain remains a pervasive problem. In fact, advocates and authorities say it has grown more insidious in recent years. Street corners and alleys have been largely replaced by smartphones and websites, making it easier for solicitations and payments to take place out of police view.
"It's a modern form of slavery," said Susan Goldfarb, executive director of the Children's Advocacy Center of Suffolk County, a program run in partnership with the district attorney's office. At least once a week, the center receives a referral about a local child being used sexually to make someone else money. "This is a huge industry," Goldfarb said.
Court records in the federal case document a booming prostitution business in New England, and its dependence on minors. It is an underworld that often goes unobserved and unremarked in Boston - even the federal trial won remarkably little notice - until its victims summon the courage to speak of it.
Those witnesses, all now adults, offered a rare and vivid portrait of the cruel culture known as "the game," with its own language and rigid regulations.
Among the rules: girls were forbidden to look directly at their pimps; they could not keep any money they earned. Standard reprisals for even the slightest violations included beatings and rapes.
The case also illustrates the challenges prosecutors face when targeting pimps who specialize in terrorizing and manipulating young victims recruited from foster homes, MBTA stations, and high schools. The girls, often transients or from shattered families, can be hard to track down or reluctant to testify, either out of fear or because they are psychologically attached to their abusers.
It took court orders to compel most witnesses, but not Jessica, to testify in the Boston trial. A Hyde Park woman was brought before the grand jury in handcuffs. Another said Tavares punched her and threatened her after learning she had been subpoenaed. "I don't want to die over this," she told jurors. For her safety, Jessica was relocated out of state by federal authorities.
Some advocates question the prosecutors' decision to force already traumatized witnesses to tell their stories in court.
"They are setting them up for danger," said Audrey Porter, a former prostitute who works as a mentor for the My Life, My Choice Project, a Boston nonprofit that helps at-risk and exploited youth. The group was launched in 2002 after the murder of a 17-year-old foster youth who was working as a prostitute. "The reason we don't see more prosecutions is because the girls are afraid," Porter said.
But local and federal authorities argue that without such testimony the six men involved in the prostitution ring would still be ensnaring teenage girls.
"These guys are waging psychological warfare on the youth of our inner cities," said Tamara Harty, an FBI agent and lead investigator in the prostitution case. "My main goal is to get these guys off the streets."
- - -
There are no statistics on the number of sexually exploited youth in the Boston area, but more than 300 girls in Suffolk County have been identified as being at-risk or victims of prostitution, according to the Children's Advocacy Center. Most are 12 to 14 years old when they are introduced to the trade. While boys are also abused by child predators, girls here are more likely to fall under the control of a pimp, local advocates say. Nationwide, there are at least 100,000 children being exploited for paid sex, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"A lot of Americans don't think it is a problem here," said John Shehan, executive director of the exploited child division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "It is happening in mainstream America. The only way not to find it is simply not to look for it."
The Boston investigation began in August 2005 when Harty, the FBI agent, met Jessica at a local hospital. She was bruised and scared, recovering from a beating she said she received from a group of girls dispatched by Tavares to punish her after a disagreement.
At first, Jessica did not want to talk. She had been raised to mistrust police and trained by pimps to lie about her age. As a child, she said, she was neglected by her parents and sexually abused by her mother's drug dealer. She was frequently shuttled between relatives in the Boston area and repeatedly changed schools.
Over weeks of meetings with Harty at the hospital and later at several group homes, Jessica began to trust the FBI agent. Harty brought her fast food and listened. It fostered a relationship that continues today.
"I realized she wasn't out to get me," Jessica said of Harty. "She doesn't characterize us as bad. Some people don't understand. They think we are all evil and that we chose this life."
Harty was already versed in the world of prostitution. She helped prosecute Lance Williams of Revere, who was sentenced in 2005 to 11 1/2 years in prison for his involvement in trafficking minors to a brothel in Kittery, Maine. She also worked the case of Evelyn Diaz, a Chelsea woman known as Messiah. In 2007, Diaz was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for prostituting teenagers as young as 13 in Boston and New York.
The agent knew from the start that teenagers like Jessica do not necessarily want to be saved. The streets can be a potent draw, offering vulnerable girls a brush with glamour, a community of colleagues, and the possibility - no matter how remote - of love.
"It's a lot like a cult mentality," Harty said. "These girls and women have been brainwashed by these men."
During their conversations, Jessica described how she met Tavares on a snowy winter night in 2005 on Berkeley Street in Boston. Days earlier, she had made her first attempt to make money through sex.
She was in her third year of high school, sharing an apartment with a group of women already working in the sex trade. She said she left her father's home because he demanded $900 in rent, a sum she could not possibly earn at a legitimate job.
Tavares was a wiry, tattoo-covered rapper who went by the street name of Young Stallion. He approached the teen, who shivered in skimpy clothing, and persuaded her she needed someone who would not let her work in such frigid weather. Jessica went home with him, they had intercourse, and she turned over what little cash she had in her wallet. That minor transaction has major implications in the sex trade: It meant Jessica was Tavares's to sell.
The winter encounter began a punishing eight-month journey during which she traveled to Atlantic City, Florida, New Hampshire, and Philadelphia as various pimps traded her as if she were a commodity.
Jessica did not always mind; parts of the lifestyle were attractive, and she became close with other girls in the same predicament. They sometimes met for breakfast and went to hairdressers and nail salons. It began to feel like the family life she had never experienced.
But there was always an underlying sense of dread, reinforced by violent attacks from pimps and, sometimes, customers.
In spring 2005, Jessica had suffered enough and tried to leave the life behind. Weeks later, however, she saw Tavares at a festival in Dorchester and they argued. The next day, she was attacked by the girls she believes he sent.
Bruised, afraid, and alone, Jessica made a decision that would effectively force her into exile. She became the FBI's first juvenile witness in the case against East Coast pimps who ran girls from Maine to Florida.
"She was afraid, scared, hurt, and willing to tell us her story," said Sergeant Kelley O'Connell, former head of the Boston Police Department's Human Trafficking Unit.
- - -
Soon after meeting Harty in 2005, Jessica was moved out of state to a home for troubled youth. Meantime, federal authorities and local police worked to build their case. With each new lead, they found more witnesses, and more pimps who were trading girls from Lynn, Dorchester, and Hyde Park, back and forth like playing cards, according to Leah Foley, an assistant US attorney involved in the prosecution.
If a girl acted up or tired of her pimp, she was handed off to another in an effort to keep them under control, prosecutors said.
The investigators confirmed the girls' stories by patiently accumulating a trove of evidence, including phone and hotel records, some of which showed multiple-night stays at area hotels, paid in cash.
Gaining witnesses' trust and keeping track of them during the years it took to get the case to court was a challenge, said O'Connell. She still keeps in contact with Jessica, joining a small cadre of female investigators, prosecutors, and advocates who act as her informal support group.
"With trafficking victims they don't have a support base; there aren't a lot of resources," said O'Connell. "The hardest thing is trying to find a place to keep them safe and try to make sure they stay there."
One witness told authorities she was a 16-year-old runaway from Lynn in 2003 when Tavares picked her up outside her foster home. He took her to his apartment, holding out to the teen the possibility of a normal life after years spent bouncing between foster homes. Instead, she told the jury, he taught her to sell her body for money, from $50 for oral sex to $100 for intercourse.
"I had nowhere to go," she said. "He told me that this was it, that it was me and him and if I left that, this was going to haunt me for the rest of my life. He would find me."
Another witness said she was a student at Madison Park High School in Hyde Park when Jones, known as Young Indian, drew her into the business in 2005 by promising "a house, cars, all the good things people want," according to her testimony. He once tried to strangle her in Washington, D.C., after she said she had to return to Boston. "Eddie Jones likes to hit females," she told the jury.
In 2007, about two years after Harty and Jessica's first meeting, six men were indicted. Tavares and Jones opted to go to trial.
Jones declined to testify in his defense, and his attorney declined to comment for this article. But Tavares told the jury that pimping was a family business he learned from his father and stepfather. He defined it as taking care of women, finding them work, collecting their money, and acting as a "father figure."
He admitted he hit those who broke his rules. At his sentencing, Tavares apologized to his victims, particularly to Jessica.
"I was a monster willing to sacrifice someone else's body for my personal gain," he said. "I never took into consideration that it could have been my own daughters or sisters in the same lifestyle."
During the hearing, Judge Nancy Gertner said the trial produced some of the most disturbing testimony she had ever heard. It detailed "totally callous violence without justification, solely for the purposes of humiliating and degrading women," Gertner said.
Afterward, some witnesses kept working as prostitutes. Others have since married, successfully distancing themselves from the trade.
Jessica is taking college classes in hope of becoming a social worker. She is frustrated that her juvenile arrest record for prostitution is impeding her progress. (She was arrested several times by Boston police during the few months she spent with Tavares.)
In recent years, local prosecutors and police have become more inclined to treat exploited youth as victims, and such arrests have become infrequent.
Leading the way, the Suffolk district attorney's office made a pledge in 2005 to treat child prostitutes as victims despite a state law that allows for their arrest and conviction.
But the policy change came too late for Jessica, who joined the Army National Guard in 2007 and was later discharged because her criminal background was considered a security risk.
Last spring, she said she was forced to switch universities because school officials were uncomfortable with her police record. She is now struggling to get even a menial job, and her attempts to have her record wiped clean have failed.
She is also coming to the realization that imprisonment of the men who exploited her offers only a tentative end to her ordeal. Some are scheduled to be released soon, and Tavares has filed a motion for a new trial, citing biased jurors and false testimony.
Fear is always stalking Jessica. It is enough to make her sometimes regret cooperating with prosecutors.
But then she considers the alternative. "It was taking the lesser of two evils," she said. "I could have been dead."
Jenifer B. McKim can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Audrey Porter, a former prostitute who now mentors youth, talks about the Boston sex trade, go to www.boston.com/business.


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GDC Canada 2009
Microsoft's Don Mattrick doing a keynote.
San Francisco – Feb. 24, 2009 –Don Mattrick, senior vice president, Interactive Entertainment Business, at Microsoft, will deliver a keynote address at the inaugural Game Developers Conference® Canada (GDC Canada). Mattrick leads the Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows businesses at Microsoft. Mattrick and his team are responsible for driving game development at Microsoft Game Studios as well as cultivating relationships with third-party game publishers and developers around the world. He will be joined onstage by Victor Lucas, creator, executive producer and co-host of "The Electric Playground" and "Reviews on the Run" for an engaging interview and discussion on the dynamic changes and growing influence of Canadian game development in a keynote titled "The Evolution of the Canadian Game Industry: A Conversation with Don Mattrick." Initial sessions have been announced on the GDC Canada website ( www.GDC-Canada.com), with speakers from Relic Entertainment, EA, Radical Entertainment and Threewave Software confirmed, and others being added continuously. GDC Canada takes place on May 12-13, 2009 at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Previous to his work at Microsoft, Don Mattrick helped bring to life such successful game franchises as "Need for Speed," "Harry Potter" and "The Sims" during his tenure at Distinctive Software and Electronic Arts (EA). With 25 years of broad industry and game development experience, Mattrick's portfolio includes some of the most successful games in the world, including a number of series established during his time at EA, EALA, EA Tiburon, EA Canada and Distinctive Software Inc. Raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Mattrick has been an active member of the province's business and educational community. He has served on several public and private boards, including the advisory board for USC School of Cinematic Arts and the Premier's Technology Council in British Columbia.
"While it's one thing to discuss the thriving game development field in Canada, it's another thing entirely to have shaped the transformation of this growing industry yourself; Don Mattrick has done just that," says Izora de Lillard, Event Director at Think Services Game Group. "The mark Don has left, and will invariably continue to leave, on Canadian game development makes him the perfect person to discuss the future role that Canadian developers will play in the industry."
The keynote will be presented in the form of an extensive on-stage interview, with games journalist Victor Lucas, creator and co-host of "The Electric Playground," asking Mattrick a series of questions exploring the changing landscape of Canadian game development and Mattrick's own role in expanding Canada's role in the industry.
GDC Canada will provide insight into the thriving Canadian game development community and will serve as an opportunity for developers to share best practices for fostering excellence and quality games within their region and distributed globally. To register for GDC Canada, learn about sponsorship opportunities or to view conference information, please visit www.gdc-canada.com.
About Reboot Communications
Reboot Communications Ltd. is a Canadian company based in British Columbia, that specializes in organizing and implementing national and international conferences focused on information technology, public safety, privacy and security, health, electronic gaming and counterterrorism. Over the past twelve years, Reboot has provided a full spectrum of conference management services to the private and public sector, including: marketing and communications, logistics, agenda development, sponsorship sales, research and intergovernmental expertise. For more information please visit: http://www.rebootconference.com/
About the Think Services Game Group
A core provider of essential information to the professional game industry, the Think Services Game Group offers market-defining content, and drives community through its award winning lineup of print, online, event and research products and services. These include Game Developer Magazine, Game Developer Research, the Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com, GameCareerGuide.com, WorldsInMotion.biz, GameSetWatch.com, GamesOnDeck.com, SeriousGamesSource.com, the Game Developers Conference®, the Austin Game Developers Conference®, the Paris Game Developers Conference®, GDC Mobile, the Game Career Seminars, the Independent Games Festival and Summit, and the Game Developers Choice Awards. For more information, please visit http://www.tsgamegroup.com/).
# # #
Contact: Sibel Sunar / Craig Sinel
fortyseven communications
firstname.lastname@example.com / firstname.lastname@example.com
Ahmad White
Think Services Game Group


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One of the interesting types of projects your humble blogger gets to work on from time to time concerns product liability and mass tort issues that arise from the M&A context, including due diligence going into a deal and successor liability issues coming out of a deal. Recently a federal court held that the successor to the assets of an aircraft manufacturer was not liable for injuries arsing from the crash of an airplane built before the acquisition. See Thornton v. M7 Aerospace LP, No. 12 C 329, (N.D. Ill., 10/23/12).
The aircraft was a Fairchild Aircraft SA227-DC Metro 23, with tail number VH-TFU. On approach to Lockhart River Airport, Australia, the aircraft crashed, resulting in the deaths of the passengers and crew. The incident was one of the worst civil aviation accidents in Australian history. The plane was designed, manufactured, assembled, tested, and sold by Fairchild Aircraft, Inc. Fairchild went bankrupt in 2002 and as a result, Fairchild and defendant executed an Asset Purchase Agreement. The agreement stated that the buyer/defendant assumed no "liability for personal injury or property damage arising at any time out of or in connection with goods manufactured, produced, distributed or sold by the Sellers prior to the Closing Date, including but not limited to any Product Liability claims."
In 2007, plaintiffs commenced this negligence and strict products liability action against numerous defendants including defendant M7. In the Second Amended Complaint, plaintiffs asserted claims against M7 in two categories: direct claims and indirect claims. First, plaintiffs' indirect claims sought to impose vicarious liability on defendant as successor-in-interest to Fairchild. Plaintiffs alleged that defendant "is indirectly liable in strict product liability and negligence for the actions of its predecessor, Fairchild, in its defective and negligent design of the [Subject Aircraft], its failure to warn of the defects and its failure to advise operators to fit the aircraft with an "Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System." Second, plaintiffs' direct claims sought to impose liability on defendant for its independent conduct in allegedly breaching of its own duty to so warn and advise.
The EGPWS claims argued M7 was negligent in failing to advise the owner and operator of the aircraft to install a new system that system was an improvement on the conventional ground proximity warning system because, among other reasons, it allegedly was capable of providing increased warning time to pilots about potential terrain conflicts by incorporating additional functions into the conventional ground proximity warning system.
Defendant moved for summary judgment. On plaintiff's claims of successor liability, it argued that
M& had as a matter of law "no liability as the successor corporation to Fairchild." The Court agreed.
Under applicable Illinois law, a corporation which purchases the assets of another corporation is not generally liable for the debts and liabilities of the transferor in the absence of an agreement providing otherwise. The court explained that this traditional rule of successor corporate non-liability developed as a response to the need to protect bona fide purchasers from unassumed liability and was designed to maximize the fluidity of corporate assets. See Diguilio v. Goss Int'l Corp., 389 Ill. App. 3d 1052, 1059-60, 329 Ill. Dec. 657, 906 N.E.3d 1268 (Ill. App. Ct. 2009).
A successor corporation can face liability, if one of the following four exceptions applies: (1) if there is an express or implied agreement of assumption; (2) if the transaction between the purchaser and the seller corporation is a consolidation or merger; (3) if the purchaser is a continuation of the seller; or (4) if the transaction is an attempt to escape liability for the seller's obligations. Illinois does not recognize the so-called product line exception.
Here, the undisputed evidence showed that the Bankruptcy Court approved the transfer of
Fairchild's assets "free and clear of any and all liens, claims and encumbrances", and to a purchaser that was not an insider, affiliate or owner of Fairchild. Plaintiffs argued that defendant ought to have successor liability because it "impliedly assumed Fairchild's continuing duty to warn." But, the court noted, the question is not whether M7 impliedly assumed a duty to warn, but rather whether M7 had an implied agreement with Fairchild whereby M7 agreed to assume Fairchild's liabilities. And it did not.
On the direct claim, plaintiffs alleged that defendant owed – and breached – an independent duty to advise owners and operators of the accident aircraft to fit that aircraft with an Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System. To prevail on their claims of direct (i.e. non-successor) liability, plaintiffs needed to establish that defendant owed an independent duty to warn of the alleged defects in the plane. Illinois courts have recognized a limited cause of action against the purchaser of a
product line for failing to warn of defects in its predecessor's products. See Kaleta v. Whittaker Corp., 221 Ill. App. 3d 705, 715, 164 Ill. Dec. 651, 583 N.E.2d 567 (1991). The critical element required for the imposition of this duty is a continuing relationship between the successor and the
predecessor's customers benefitting the successor. To determine the presence of a nexus or
relationship effective to create a duty to warn, the following factors are considered: (1) succession to a predecessor's service contracts; (2) coverage of the particular machine under a service contract; (3) service of that machine by the purchaser corporation; and (4) a purchaser corporation's knowledge of defects and of the location or owner of that machine.
Here, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, there was an insufficient nexus or relationship between defendant and the operator of the aircraft to impose an independent duty to warn upon defendant. Plaintiffs focused their argument on the relationship between defendant and the product line generally, but that is not the legal standard: Illinois law focuses on the relationship between the successor (here, defendant) and the operator of the allegedly defective unit (here, Transair). It was undisputed that M7 did not assume any of Fairchild's serve contracts relating
to the plane, and that M7 never serviced, maintained, or repaired the plane. There was no evidence that it worked on or had any contact with the subject aircraft.
Finally, under a voluntary undertaking theory of liability, the duty of care to be imposed upon a defendant is limited to the extent of the undertaking." Bell v. Hutsell, 2011 IL 110724, 353 Ill. Dec. 288, 293-95, 955 N.E.2d 1099 (2011) (stating that Illinois courts look to the Restatement (Second) of Torts to define the theory). Here, defendant argued that plaintiffs' voluntarily undertaking theory fails because even if it undertook a duty (which it disputed) regarding warnings and advice to owners and operators, plaintiffs failed to proffer sufficient evidence of reliance. Again, the Court agreed. Illinois law requires proof of reliance; that is, proof that the operator (here, Transair) relied on the defendant's voluntary undertaking of a duty to warn. See, e.g., Chisolm v. Stephens, 47 Ill. App. 3d 999, 7 Ill. Dec. 795, 365 N.E.2d 80, 86 (Ill. App. Ct. 1977). Plaintiffs offered no such proof.
Summary judgment granted.


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Posts Tagged 'Stranger Things'
Stranger Things Is All The Things
The Netflix series Stranger Things is all the things. I'm serious. I've never been affected by a television show like this before.
I'm going to attempt to explain. Please don't get the men in white coats. I will also attempt not to spoil anything because you should watch Stranger Things and be amazed by it. There is a chance that I will mention something that happens on the show but I'm going to try not to.
(Make your own 'Strange'ified text at MakeItStranger.com. But wait until you've watched the show.)
Everything about Stranger Things, including the pitch-perfect and totally brilliant fonts, is pure nostalgia. You can read about those aspects of the series everywhere. (Links are included below.)
What I haven't read yet is what I think, which is the following:
Stranger Things is a dream I had but didn't have, memories of a life I never lived but also did.
That's harder to explain. I'll give it a shot.
I grew up in the city. Lived in an apartment. Never learned to ride a bike. The kids in Stranger Things live in the suburbs, in houses, and ride their bikes everywhere.
Somehow, as I watched the series, especially the middle episodes (there are only eight in total, which is perfect both for your time and for the story being told), I found myself viewing the screen through a haze that I can only describe as memory, or a dream, or some combination of the two. The rest of my living room faded out and all I could see was my television. I mean this almost literally. It was an experience that I wish everyone could have because it was unlike anything I've ever felt before, at least when it comes to a TV show.
I suppose one could say that what I'm describing is what happens when you see a great movie, or at least what used to happen when you were younger and less jaded about entertainment. Maybe you are still less jaded, and if so, I envy you. In a world with so many entertainment options, it is difficult not to evaluate work differently than I once did. The sheer joy of seeing Star Wars for the first time is something that no one will ever experience again, if for no other reason than because no movie will ever come out of nowhere the way Star Wars did in 1977. That doesn't mean the new stuff isn't good. It is. (We all know how I feel about the first Avengers movie.) It's simply different.
Stranger Things is different as well. Yes, the show taps into old movies, referencing specific ones. That's not why I loved it. (If you're interested in knowing what those references are, that information is very easy to come by.) What the show did for me was the following: it managed to be both entertaining and, in some very strange way, present a life experience that I never actually had. It's the deepest form of nostalgia.
I want to repeat that one more time because it sounds so unbelievably odd: Stranger Things felt like something that happened to me, even though it obviously didn't. (Again, I don't want to spoil anything for you, but trust me, Stranger Things didn't happen to anybody.)
A person could argue that this is simply the movie references at work. This person may be right. I don't think they are. Somehow, the Duffer Brothers created a piece of entertainment that sprang forth from my own brain, from my my own memories of something I never actually experienced. That is an impressive piece of work.
A few specific things I loved about the show:
- The moment when Winona Ryder, who is so good in this she deserves every award, is going to leave her house but decides she's going to stay instead. It sums up her character, and it's an astonishing piece of acting.
- The kids. Where did they get these kids, a time machine? I didn't think they made kids like that anymore.
- No parents. Yes, the kids have parents. But they are rarely seen. That's extremely retro, and so important to the artistic success of the show. As a parent, I would never allow my children to be on their own the way I was, which is the way the kids on the show are. It was a different time. And I'm not a 'helicopter parent'. Mothers and fathers simply don't allow children to do their own thing the way parents in the 80s did. That's not a social commentary, it's a fact.
- The walkie-talkies.
- The majority of the adults, in particular the two parents (other than Winona Ryder) that we see more often than others, and also the science teacher. Well, and the police officers. OK, I like everybody on the show.
- Yelling through rooms. "Time for dinner!" "OKAY! (gets quieter) Now listen, here's what we need to do." (Not a direct quote.) The jump between jarringly loud and normal speaking voices is something that I don't think we do anymore. I know I did it. It's a small detail, one of many, that make Stranger Things possibly even greater than the sum of its wonderful parts.
- THE KIDS. ALL OF THEM. Everyone is talking about the main group of kids, and for good reason. They're amazing. I want to include every kid, even the ones with small roles. And speaking of small roles…
- The characters, and the actors who play those characters. Every detail in Stranger Things has been picked over in numerous articles online. This is because those details were carefully chosen. (Apparently there is one car that isn't the correct year. I can't find the story but I'm sure you can if you want to.) Every character, even the small ones, gets something to do. The main characters each have so much going on that in a lesser show it would be distracting. On Stranger Things, it isn't. Orange is the New Black, another brilliant (for different reasons) Netflix series, manages a similar feat. But Stranger Things does it in a shorter amount of time and on a show with kooky stuff. Orange is the New Black is brilliant in part because it is based on events that actually happened, and as it continues, on events that still are happening, even if it's not these specific events happening to these specific people. (That is, prisons are super messed up places and horrible things are happening in them.) Stranger Things somehow is about things that happened even though there is no way they could have happened. And in real life, everybody has a story. EVERYBODY ON STRANGER THINGS HAS A STORY. You don't get to hear about all of their stories, which is also just like real life. (Again, please don't get the men in white coats. I am aware that Stranger Things is a television show.)
There are so many other pleasures that came from watching this show. A friend told me when I started watching it that Stranger Things had "all the feels." I thought I knew what he meant but I didn't. Stranger Things brought up emotions in me that I didn't know I could still access. I frequently had to pause an episode because I found myself getting more than a little verklempt. Three times while watching Stranger Things, I ate chocolate. Not because I was hungry, because I needed it. That has literally never happened to me before.
I hope you watch Stranger Things and that you enjoy it. I realize I've probably oversold it to the point where if the show doesn't give you a foot massage while feeding you peeled grapes it won't live up to the type. I apologize for that. Watch it anyway. It's really good.
Other articles:
(Warning: many of these stories will reveal details of Stranger Things that it would be better for you not to know before you watch. This may not matter to you, which is fine. The warning is because I want to do my part to give you the experience that I had, which is impossible. But I want to try. I'm getting verklempt again. OK, here's the list.)
Stranger Things Is a Nerdy Story That Is So Much More Than Its References, io9
Gizmodo's Stranger Things coverage
I don't totally agree with this, but I'm glad someone did it:
Stranger Things, Side-By-Side With Every Excellent Film It Borrows From (Sploid/Gizmodo)
An article from The Guardian about Winona Ryder, who is SO GOOD ON THIS SHOW
Read this Business Insider article only after you've watched the series; I don't even want to include the title because it's spoilery.
Watch this after you've watched the show. It's very funny. (io9)
A review of Stranger Things and another Netflix series, The Get Down (The New Yorker)
Here are even more articles. Some of them look cool. See the disclaimer, but also this one: if don't want to know anything about the show before you watch it, wait until after you do to read these stories. It's OK. We'll wait. And if you want to talk about Stranger Things, leave a comment below, or hit me up on Twitter.