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The American Academy of Pediatrics has released new guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute otitis media, which is doctor-speak for an ear infection.
An ear infection is one of the most common maladies of early childhood and also one of the most common reasons antibiotics are prescribed. Guidelines from 2004 recommended that pediatricians use "watchful waiting" before prescribing antibiotics for an ear infection in some children.
The new guidelines for treating ear infections with oral antibiotics are more specific and further clarify which are the best children to observe and those that should be treated right away. This will reduce the number of unnecessary antibiotics that are prescribed, which in turn may help prevent antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Many parents worry that their child may develop an ear infection after having a cold, but for a child between 6 months and 12 years old, a mild ear infection found during a visit to their pediatrician may now be observed for 72 hours.
According to the new guidelines, children need to receive immediate antibiotics if they have a severe ear infection (with a fever of 102.2 degrees or higher, or significant pain), have a ruptured ear drum with drainage or an ear infection in both ears in a child age 2 or under. This will really change current treatment and the number of antibiotics prescribed.
As pediatricians and parents know, many things that cause ear pain, from an erupting new molar to a cold or sore throat. But if the eardrum is not bulging, the best treatment is pain control. This can be accomplished with acetaminophen or ibuprofen and watchful waiting to see if a child's symptoms worsen or if the pain resolves. In studies, 2 out of 3 children get better without an antibiotic.
More and more parents are responsive to using fewer antibiotics for their children, and these new recommendations reinforce that antibiotics are not appropriate for viral infections or pain. Save antibiotics for bacterial infections.
Hubbard is co-host of "The Kid's Doctor" radio show.

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Number: 111- 56
Date: October 4, 2010
Senate Passes H.R. 1722
Telework Improvements Act of 2010
On September 29, 2010, the Senate amended and passed H.R. 1722, the "Telework Improvements Act of 2010," by unanimous consent. This follows passage of the bill by the House on July 14, 2010, (by a vote of 290-131). See (Legislative Bulletin 111-46). The bill now goes back to the House for its action.
The bill, as amended by the Senate, contains the following provisions of interest to SSA (significant differences from the House-passed bill are shown in italics).
Executive Agencies Telework Requirement
- Would require the head of each executive agency, in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), to establish a teleworking policy within 180 days of enactment; determine the eligibility of all employees of the agency to participate in telework; and notify employees of their eligibility to telework.
- Would require that the telework policy ensure that telework does not diminish employee performance or agency operations; require a mandatory written agreement outlining the specific work arrangement that is agreed to between management and employee; and, provide that an employee may not be authorized to telework if performance of that employee does not comply with the terms of the written agreement between management and employee.
- Would allow agencies to temporarily deny permission to telework if, in the judgment of the agency head, the employee is needed to respond to an emergency.
- Would prohibit an employee from teleworking if the employee has:
- Been officially disciplined for being absent without permission for more than five days in a calendar year; or
- Been officially disciplined for viewing, downloading, or exchanging pornography including child pornography, on a Federal Government computer or while performing official Federal Government duties.
Training and Monitoring
- Would require the head of each executive agency to:
- Provide an interactive training program, that includes information security guidelines, for supervisors, managers, and all employees who are authorized to telework;
- Incorporate telework in agency continuity of operations plans and use telework in response to emergencies; and,
- Make no distinction between teleworkers and non-teleworkers for the purposes of periodic appraisals of job performance; training, rewarding, reassigning, promoting, reducing in grade, retaining, and removing employees.
- Provide an interactive training program, that includes information security guidelines, for supervisors, managers, and all employees who are authorized to telework;
Policy and Support
- Would require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), within 120 days of enactment, to issue policy guidance regarding the purchase of computer systems by agencies that enable and support telework.
- Would require that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) provide policy guidance for telework in the areas of pay and leave, agency closure, performance management, official worksite, recruitment and retention, and accommodations for employees with disabilities.
- Would require OMB, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to issue guidelines, not later than 180 days after enactment, that ensure the adequacy of information and security protections for information and information systems used in, or otherwise affected by, teleworking.
Telework Managing Officer
- Would create in each agency a Telework Managing Officer, designated by the agency's Chief Human Capital Officer, who would serve as the primary resource and point of contact in developing and implementing a plan to incorporate telework into the agency's regular business and continuity of operations' strategies.
- Would require each Telework Managing Officer to provide telework program information to OPM and the Government Accountability Office in order for them to prepare annual reports to Congress. Information would include techniques used to verify and validate telework data and numbers on denials of permission to telework.
- Would require on an annual basis the Chief Human Capital Officer of the agency in consultation with the Telework Managing Officer of the agency to submit a report to the Chair and Vice Chair of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council on agency management efforts to promote telework.
Effective Date
- Unless otherwise indicated above, the provisions of the bill would be effective upon enactment.


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Q In adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD), how do fluoxetine, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and their combination compare for effectiveness?
randomised controlled trial (RCT).
blinded (patients and healthcare providers [fluoxetine v placebo comparison], and outcome assessors).
Follow up period:
12 weeks.
outpatient clinic in the US.
439 adolescents (mean age 15 y, 54% girls) who had a DSM-IV diagnosis of MDD, could attend an outpatient clinic, scored ⩾45 on the Children's Depression Rating Scale–Revised (CDRS–R), had a full scale IQ ⩾80, and were not taking antidepressants. Exclusion criteria included bipolar disorder, severe conduct disorder, substance abuse/dependence, 2 failed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) trials, and poor response to CBT.
fluoxetine, from 10 mg/day to a maximum of 40 mg/day by week 8 (n = 109); CBT (n = 111); CBT plus fluoxetine (n = 107); or placebo (n = 112). CBT consisted of 15 sessions (50–60 min each) for 12 weeks and aimed to correct depressive thought patterns and increase positive reinforcing behaviour patterns.
CDRS–R score (range 17–133; high scores = greater depression); Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire–Junior High School Version score; and Clinical Global Impressions–Improvement (CGI–I) response rate (much improved or very much improved).
Patient follow up:
82% (100% included in intention to treat analysis).
Fluoxetine plus CBT led to greater improvement in CDRS-R scores than placebo ({mean difference 7.6},* p = 0.001), fluoxetine {mean difference 4.4},* p = 0.02), or CBT ({mean difference 9.4},* p = 0.001). Fluoxetine plus CBT also reduced suicidal thoughts. Fluoxetine plus CBT and fluoxetine had greater CGI-I response rates relative to placebo and CBT alone. Numbers needed to treat were 3 (95% CI 2 to 4) for fluoxetine plus CBT and 4 (CI 3 to 8) for fluoxetine alone relative to placebo. The 2 fluoxetine groups had more harm related events than the CBT alone and placebo groups (table⇓).
In adolescents with major depressive disorder, fluoxetine plus cognitive behavioural therapy was most effective.
A modified version of this abstract appears in Evidence-Based Medicine.
Few well designed studies have assessed treatments for MDD in adolescents. A recent public health advisory from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)1 questioned the safety of SSRIs because of increased suicidal behaviours in adolescents and children.2 In the UK, the regulator has strongly advised against the use of all SSRIs except fluoxetine in adolescents and children (http://www.mhra.gov.uk/news/ssri_101203.htm accessed 13 Jan 2005).
TADS offers some strong support for 12 weeks of fluoxetine plus ⩾11 sessions of simultaneous CBT. Study strengths are the RCT design, double blinding in the fluoxetine and placebo groups, the inclusion of adolescents with comorbidities, and the data safety and monitoring protocol conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health.
Patients in the CBT plus fluoxetine and CBT alone groups were not blinded, which might have affected the findings if these patients expected improved outcomes. Adolescents with substance abuse, recent suicide attempts, or suicidal ideation were excluded; thus findings are not generalisable to all adolescents with MDD. Some of these adolescents are most in need of treatment. A study weakness was the exclusion of non-English speaking adolescents or parents. The modal income reflected a high middle class, thus missing many adolescents with lower socioeconomic status who have MDD. The study report did not describe how the fidelity of the CBT intervention was monitored. The treatment duration of 12 weeks does not offer support for longer use of either treatment.
TADS provides evidence that fluoxetine plus CBT is effective for adolescents with MDD, including those with some comorbid conditions. However, the advisory from the FDA should also be considered. Antidepressant medications may increase the risk of suicidality or other harm related adverse events. Nurses must continue to monitor depressed adolescents for suicidal thinking and behaviour. This includes providing anticipatory guidance to parents or guardians about signs to observe and actions to take. Further study is needed to determine the longer term effects of combined pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments for the wide array of adolescents who have MDD.
↵* Information provided by author.
↵* Calculated from data in article.
For correspondence: Dr J S March, Department of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA. jsmarchacpub.duke.edu
Sources of funding: National Institute of Mental Health; fluoxetine and placebo supplied by Lilly Inc.
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They're the local fruit with a funny name.
More than ever before, it seems, people love photography.
Those who know Rendal "Ren" Wall call him "the real deal.
A frame containing the personnel file and a picture of a
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What began as a hobby for their father and his twin broth
Dancer Samantha Soltis rehearses Loïe Fuller's Fire Dance.
Dancer Samantha Soltis rehearses Loïe Fuller's Fire Dance.
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This page displays information about the major you selected and helps you identify the community colleges where you can fulfill major preparation requirements.
University Majors
The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry provides a strong education in chemistry and biochemistry that prepares its students to function and thrive in our society. The department attempts to increase the problem solving and critical thinking skills of all students. Non-science students learn about the scientific and chemical aspects of everyday life that allow them to understand issues related to the environment, energy production, disease prevention, and nutrition. Students of the sciences learn the fundamentals of chemistry that control the interactions of elements and molecules which form the building blocks in nature. Chemistry majors receive extensive instruction in predicting chemical reactivity. Building on an understanding of mathematics, physics, and biology, chemistry majors receive a background in the major disciplines of chemistry including inorganic, analytical, organic, physical, and biochemistry. Students learn the protocols and techniques for working safely with chemicals. The department recognizes the importance of the pursuit of new knowledge in the development of skilled scientists and productive members of society, and encourages its students to participate in research projects and cooperative educational opportunities.
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Craggy Gardens North Carolina Blue Ridge Parkway Autumn NC scenic landscape photography featuring foggy conditions
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Object Movie
From PanoTools.org Wiki
Revision as of 23:27, 22 March 2006 by Thomas Rauscher (talk)
Object Movies are "inverted panoramas" where you see a scene from outside. Object Movies consist of a series of images and they do not need further manipulation like stitching or remapping.
The simplest form is single row of images around and object. A multi row object movie consists of multible rows normally with differnet tilt angles.
Sinse Object Movies only consists of images they are not limited to turning objects.


text: Latest Video News President Trump signs $380 Billion in business deals with Saudi Arabia (Video) Trump makes Saudi Arabia great again. Published 2 years ago on May 21, 2017 By Alex Christoforou 249 Views Share Tweet Donald Trump marks his first visit overseas as US President with a historic stop to Saudi Arabia, signing $380 billion in business deals and a whopping $110 billion in military sales. Trump is the first American president to make Saudi Arabia, or any Muslim-majority country, his inaugural stop overseas. Expect Saudi Arabia to ramp up its propagation of the Wahhabi terrorist ideology, continue to flood Syria with jihadist – ISIS fighters, and escalate its bombing of Yemen. The liberal left, mainstream media is silent on Trump's deal with the Saudi Arabian dictatorship that suppresses woman's rights and kills gays. RT reprots… Liked it? Take a second to support The Duran on Patreon! Related Topics:Donald TrumpSaudi Arabia Up Next Summer of riots kicks off in USA with "March for Truth" 70-city protest against Trump and Russia Don't Miss Donald Trump's boring predictability tour Advertisement You may like Why The Senate Vote To End Yemen War Is So Important Watch: Democrat Chuck Schumer shows his East Coast elitism on live TV The 'America Last' Express Hurtles On: Saudi Arabia, INF, Ukraine Click to comment Leave a Reply This comment form is under antispam protection This comment form is under antispam protection Subscribe Notify of new follow-up comments new replies to my comments Latest Understanding the Holodomor and why Russia says nothing A descendant of Holodomor victims takes the rest of us to school as to whether or not Russia needs to shoulder the blame. Published 19 hours ago on December 18, 2018 By Seraphim Hanisch One of the charges that nationalist Ukrainians often lodge against their Russian neighbors is that the Russian government has never acknowledged or formally apologized to Ukraine for the "Holodomor" that took place in Ukraine in 1932-1933. This was a man-made famine that killed an estimated seven to 10 million Ukrainians , though higher estimates claim 12.5 million and lower ones now claim 3.3 million. No matter what the total was, it amounts to a lot of people that starved to death. The charge that modern-day Russia ought to apologize for this event is usually met with silence, which further enrages those Ukrainians that believe that this issue must be resolved by the Russian acknowledgement of responsibility for it. Indeed, the prime charge of these Ukrainians is that the Russians committed a genocide against the Ukrainian people. This is a claim Russia denies. To the outside observer who does not know this history of Russia and Ukraine's relationship, and who does not know or understand the characteristics of the Soviet Union, this charge seems as simple and laid out as that of the Native Americans or the blacks demanding some sort of recompense or restitution for the damages inflicted on these societies through conquest and / or slavery. But we discovered someone who had family connections involved in the Holodomor, and who offers her own perspective, which is instructive in why perhaps the Russian Federation does not say anything about this situation. Scene in Kharkiv with dead from the famine 1932-33 lying along the street. The speaker is Anna Vinogradova, a Russian Israeli-American, who answered the question through Quora of "Why doesn't Russia recognize the Holodomor as a genocide?" She openly admits that she speaks only for herself, but her answer is still instructive. We offer it here, with some corrections for the sake of smooth and understandable English: I can't speak for Russia and what it does and doesn't recognize. I can speak for myself. I am a great-granddaughter of a "Kulak" (кулак), or well-to-do peasant, who lived close to the Russia/Ukraine border. The word "кулак" means "fist" in Russian, and it wasn't a good thing for a person to be called by this label. A кулак was an exploiter of peasants and a class enemy of the new state of workers and poor peasants. In other words, while under Communism, to be called a кулак was to bring a death sentence upon yourself. At some point, every rural class enemy, every peasant who wasn't a member of a collective farm was eliminated one way or another. Because Ukraine has very fertile land and the Ukrainian style of agriculture often favors individual farms as opposed to villages, there is no question that many, many Ukrainian peasants were considered class enemies like my great grandfather, and eliminated in class warfare. I have no doubt that class warfare included starvation, among other things. The catch? My great grandfather was an ethnic Russian living in Russia. What nationality were the communists who persecuted and eventually shot him? They were of every nationality there was (in the Soviet Union), and they were led by a Ukrainian, who was taking orders from a Georgian. Now, tell me, why I, a descendant of an unjustly killed Russian peasant, need to apologize to the descendants of the Ukrainians who killed him on the orders of a Georgian? What about the Russian, Kazakh golodomor (Russian rendering of the same famine)? What about the butchers, who came from all ethnicities? Can someone explain why it's only okay to talk about Ukrainian victims and Russian persecutors? Why do we need to rewrite history decades later to convert that brutal class war into an ethnic war that it wasn't? Ethnic warfare did not start in Russia until after WWII, when some ethnicities were accused of collaboration with the Nazis and brutal group punishments were implemented. It was all based on class up to that time. The communists of those years were fanatically internationalist. "Working people of all countries, unite!" was their slogan and they were fanatical about it. As for the crimes of Communism, Russia has been healing this wound for decades, and Russia's government has made its anticommunist position very clear. This testimony is most instructive. First, it points out information that the charge of the Holodomor as "genocide!" neatly leaves out. In identifying the internationalist aspects of the Soviet Union, Ukraine further was not a country identified as somehow worthy of genocidal actions. Such a thought makes no sense, especially given the great importance of Ukraine as the "breadbasket" of the Soviet Union, which it was. Secondly, it shows a very western-style of "divide to conquer" with a conveniently incendiary single-word propaganda tool that is no doubt able to excite any Ukrainian who may be neutral to slightly disaffected about Russia, and then after that, all Ukrainians are now victims of the mighty evil overlords in Moscow. How convenient is this when the evil overlords in Kyiv don't want their citizens to know what they are doing? We saw this on Saturday – taken to a very high peak when President Petro Poroshenko announced the new leading "Hierarch" of the "Ukrainian National Church" and said not one single word about Christ, but only: "This day will go down in history as the day of the creation of an autocephalous Orthodox church in Ukraine… This is the day of the creation of the church as an independent structure… What is this church? It is a church without Putin. It is a church without Kirill, without prayer for the Russian authorities and the Russian army." But as long as Russia is made the "problem", millions of scandalized Ukrainians will not care what this new Church actually does or teaches, which means it is likely to teach just about anything. Russia had its own Holodomor. The history of the event shows that this was a result of several factors – imposed socialist economics on a deeply individualized form of agrarian capitalism (bad for morale and worse for food production), really inane centralized planning of cropland use, and a governmental structure that really did not exist to serve the governed, but to impose an ideology on people who really were not all that interested in it. Personal blame might well lay with Stalin, a Georgian, but the biggest source of the famine lay in the structures imposed under communism as a way of economic strategy. This is not Russia's fault. It is the economic model that failed. Liked it? Take a second to support The Duran on Patreon! Continue Reading Latest Mueller Finally Releases Heavily Redacted Key Flynn Memo On Eve Of Sentencing Published 20 hours ago on December 18, 2018 By Alex Christoforou Via Zerohedge… Having initially snubbed Judge Emmet Sullivan's order to release the original 302 report from the Michael Flynn interrogation in January 2017, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally produced the heavily redacted document, just hours before sentencing is due to be handed down. The memo – in full below – details then-national security adviser Michael Flynn's interview with FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, and shows Flynn was repeatedly asked about his contacts with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and in each instance, Flynn denied (or did not recall) any such conversations. The agents had transcripts of Flynn's phone calls to Russian Ambassador Kislyak, thus showing Flynn to be lying. Flynn pleaded guilty guilty last December to lying to the FBI agents about those conversations with Kislyak. The redactions in the document seem oddly placed but otherwise, there is nothing remarkable about the content… Aside from perhaps Flynn's incredulity at the media attention… Flynn is set to be sentenced in that federal court on Tuesday. Of course, as Christina Laila notes, the real crime is that Flynn was unmasked during his phone calls to Kislyak and his calls were illegally leaked by a senior Obama official to the Washington Post. * * * Full document below… Liked it? Take a second to support The Duran on Patreon! Continue Reading Latest Don't Laugh : It's Giving Putin What He Wants The fact of the matter is that humorous lampooning of western establishment Russia narratives writes itself. Published 20 hours ago on December 18, 2018 By Caitlin Johnstone Authored by Caitlin Johnstone: The BBC has published an article titled "How Putin's Russia turned humour into a weapon" about the Kremlin's latest addition to its horrifying deadly hybrid warfare arsenal: comedy. The article is authored by Olga Robinson, whom the BBC, unhindered by any trace of self-awareness, has titled "Senior Journalist (Disinformation)". Robinson demonstrates the qualifications and acumen which earned her that title by warning the BBC's audience that the Kremlin has been using humor to dismiss and ridicule accusations that have been leveled against it by western governments, a "form of trolling" that she reports is designed to "deliberately lower the level of discussion". Turns out jokes are a Russian disinformation conspiracy.Is nothing safe? What will those barbarian Others think of next? Weaponizing our tears? https://t.co/0CFcTL65q0 — Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) December 15, 2018 "Russia's move towards using humour to influence its campaigns is a relatively recent phenomenon," Robinson explains, without speculating as to why Russians might have suddenly begun laughing at their western accusers. She gives no consideration to the possibility that the tightly knit alliance of western nations who suddenly began hysterically shrieking about Russia two years ago have simply gotten much more ridiculous and easier to make fun of during that time. Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the emergence of a demented media environment wherein everything around the world from French protests to American culture wars to British discontent with the European Union gets blamed on Russia without any facts or evidence. Wherein BBC reporters now correct guests and caution them against voicing skepticism of anti-Russia narratives because the UK is in "an information war" with that nation. Wherein the same cable news Russiagate pundit can claim that both Rex Tillerson's hiring and his later firing were the result of a Russian conspiracy to benefit the Kremlin. Wherein mainstream outlets can circulate blatantly false information about Julian Assange and unnamed "Russians" and then blame the falseness of that reporting on Russian disinformation. Wherein Pokemon Go, cutesy Facebook memes and $4,700 in Google ads are sincerely cited as methods by which Hillary Clinton's $1.2 billion presidential campaign was outdone. Wherein conspiracy theories that Putin has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government have been blaring on mainstream headline news for two years with absolutely nothing to show for it to this day. Nope, the only possibility is that the Kremlin suddenly figured out that humor is a thing. The fact of the matter is that humorous lampooning of western establishment Russia narratives writes itself. The hypocrisy is so cartoonish, the emotions are so breathlessly over-the-top, the stories so riddled with plot holes and the agendas underlying them so glaringly obvious that they translate very easily into laughs. I myself recently authored a satire piece that a lot of people loved and which got picked up by numerous alternative media outlets, and all I did was write down all the various escalations this administration has made against Russia as though they were commands being given to Trump by Putin. It was extremely easy to write, and it was pretty damn funny if I do say so myself. And it didn't take any Kremlin rubles or dezinformatsiya from St Petersburg to figure out how to write it. "Ben Nimmo, an Atlantic Council researcher on Russian disinformation, told the BBC that attempts to create funny memes were part of the strategy as 'disinformation for the information age'," the article warns. Nimmo, ironically, is himself intimately involved with the British domestic disinformation firm Integrity Initiative, whose shady government-sponsored psyops against the Labour Party have sparked a national scandal that is likely far from reaching peak intensity. "Most comedy programmes on Russian state television these days are anodyne affairs which either do not touch on political topics, or direct humour at the Kremlin's perceived enemies abroad," Robinson writes, which I found funny since I'd just recently read an excellent essay by Michael Tracey titled "Why has late night swapped laughs for lusting after Mueller?" "If the late night 'comedy' of the Trump era has something resembling a 'message,' it's that large segments of the nation's liberal TV viewership are nervously tracking every Russia development with a passion that cannot be conducive to mental health – or for that matter, political efficacy," Tracey writes, documenting numerous examples of the ways late night comedy now has audiences cheering for a US intelligence insider and Bush appointee instead of challenging power-serving media orthodoxies as programs like The Daily Show once did. If you wanted the opposite of "anodyne affairs", it would be comedians ridiculing the way all the establishment talking heads are manipulating their audiences into supporting the US intelligence community and FBI insiders. It would be excoriating the media environment in which unfathomably powerful world-dominating government agencies are subject to less scrutiny and criticism than a man trapped in an embassy who published inconvenient facts about those agencies. It certainly wouldn't be the cast of Saturday Night Live singing "All I Want for Christmas Is You" to a framed portrait if Robert Mueller wearing a Santa hat. It doesn't get much more anodyne than that. Russia makes fun of western establishment narratives about it because those narratives are so incredibly easy to make fun of that they are essentially asking for it, and the nerdy way empire loyalists are suddenly crying victim about it is itself more comedy. When Guardian writer Carole Cadwalladr began insinuating that RT covering standard newsworthy people like Julian Assange and Nigel Farage was a conspiracy to "boost" those people for the advancement of Russian agendas instead of a news outlet doing the thing that news reporting is, RT rightly made fun of her for it. Cadwalladr reacted to RT's mockery with a claim that she was a victim of "attacks", instead of the recipient of perfectly justified ridicule for circulating an intensely moronic conspiracy theory. Ah well. People are nuts and we're hurtling toward a direct confrontation with a nuclear superpower. Sometimes there's nothing else to do but laugh. As Wavy Gravy said, "Keep your sense of humor, my friend; if you don't have a sense of humor it just isn't funny anymore." Liked it? Take a second to support The Duran on Patreon! Continue Reading JOIN OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL Your donations make all the difference. Together we can expose fake news lies and deliver truth. Amount to donate in USD$: 5 100 Validating payment information... Waiting for PayPal...Validating payment information...Waiting for PayPal... Advertisement Advertisement Latest Popular Videos Links16 hours ago America's Technology and Sanctions War Will End, by Bifurcating the Global Economy Links16 hours ago Putin: Russia's advanced weapons will make those accustomed to militarist rhetoric think Links16 hours ago Can America Fight Two Cold Wars at Once? 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Harpo's World
text and art by Sylvia Spain
Page 2
PERSIA: Harpo sees the pizza and starts running!
AKANE: This lowers the basket which pulls the rope and lifts the pizza out of the box.
PERSIA: The gears turn…
AKANE: …which generates electricity and turns on the light.
TEEGAN: I thought inventions were supposed to make things easier.
PERSIA: It's easy for us.
TEEGAN: How do you turn it off?
PERSIA AND AKANE: Hmmm—hadn't thought of that.
SQUIRREL (thinking): I don't think that will be a problem.
- Using the same kinds of devices found in this cartoon, invent a device that picks up clothing left on the floor. Draw a diagram of your device. Then write a few sentences that describe how each part of the device helps another part work.
[anno: Answers and drawings will vary.]


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Re: Objective: Naboo RPG
Jag was quickly on his feet after the sniper shot. His worn beskar had saved him more than once. His vode were slowly making their way through the ranks of enemies. Jag spied a speeder and for once decided to be clever. A speeder would make a great weapon to ram into enemies. Unmanned of course. Jag broke off from the line and made his way to the speeder. Before he could make it within three steps the speeder erupted in flame and exploded throwing Jag off his feet, Jag only had time to curse himself for being a di'kut before smashing him into a wall 25 feet away. He crumbled to the ground out cold.
((Viking1, let me know if you wanted a different result and I will edit))


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Where Daisies Bloom
Sunday, September 10
per painter
Learn more
Make it your own with family names, positive affirmations and more on your personalized jars in this garden of daisies.
No Refund and Class Credit Policy:
(Based on class start time)
Due to the custom nature of ALL of our classes, NO REFUNDS will be issued for reservations. However, if you cancel with at least 48 hours' notice your payment will be turned into a store credit that can ONLY be used for a future class within 30 days. Please email us (firstname.lastname@example.com) to cancel.
If you no-show for a class that you have a spot reserved, or don't give at least 48 hours' notice, you forfeit your reservation payment. Seats are transferable, but you need to notify us at least 3 hours prior to a class with the name change.
CLASS MINIMUM: If a public class does not meet the minimum of 10 painters, you may be notified and we will fully refund or reschedule your class.
LATE ARRIVAL POLICY: Arrivals more than 15 minutes after painting session has started are welcome to paint, but will need to catch up on their own.
By purchasing your seats you confirm agreement with this policy.


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Still dominating the news, Kiva has been featured in a BusinessWeek SmallBiz slideshow. Take a minute to browse through some pics of our entrepreneurs - and forward the slideshow to your friends! There's no better way to show how Kiva works than to send them a slideshow of Kiva stories.
Click through to the story here, and click on the picture of Kem Pharin in her boat surrounded by water spinach fields to click through to the slideshow.


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Colleen Kane
The Paul Konerko era already was nearing its end when I started covering the White Sox in August 2013, and so while the captain's home runs and RBIs have still colored parts of my experiences with the team, they are not what has left the biggest impression.
From my vantage point, his final year has been about helping the Sox usher in a new era more than anything else, and seeing him do that through the younger players' eyes is what has stuck out to me.
I heard Adam Eaton during spring training, having just joined the team, talk enthusiastically about being invited to Konerko's house in Arizona to hit in his batting cage. I heard Conor...


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NEWBURGH — A Newburgh non-profit aiming to feed the city's neediest come Thanksgiving, used Sunday's warm, sunny day as an early opportunity to raise money for its efforts.
NEWBURGH — A Newburgh non-profit aiming to feed the city's neediest come Thanksgiving, used Sunday's warm, sunny day as an early opportunity to raise money for its efforts.
In spring attire, participants sipped glasses of white wine and mingled casually over a sweeping view of the Hudson River at 388 Grand St. — the former home of Thomas "Archie" Stewart, whose vision helped lay the groundwork for Stewart International Airport before he died in 1998.
The ritzy afternoon in the posh end of the city was Newburgh Loaves and Fishes' first fundraiser held at that home; it aimed to help bolster residents whose means were not as fortunate as those who gave their time and money Sunday.
Martha Host, president of Newburgh Loaves and Fishes, said more and more people have been taking advantage of the free Thanksgiving baskets since they started the effort in 1998.
In 1998, the group gave away 100 baskets filled with things like cranberry sauce, corn, gravy and a full frozen turkey, to those in need, said Host.
In 2012, that number ballooned to 1,175 — or one out of about every 25 people in the city. The group raised $4,100, almost a third of what they said would be needed to buy enough turkeys for everyone who needs one.
This year, they expect to meet or exceed that number, said Host. And though they were able to get by with enough turkeys for everyone last year, Host said it was difficult, with so many giving to other efforts like Hurricane Sandy.
People can only give so much, he said. "How do you say one thing is more important than another?" said Host.
Giving the free Thanksgiving meals awway was an acknowledgement that no matter what people's situation was, they deserve a meal, Host said.
"They may have some problems, but we all have problems — we're all human," he said.


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- Semi-soft quad skate. PVC leather construction.
- High quality heel support and anatomically correct insoles with additional cushioning.
- PU cast 82A 58mm wheels with our exclusive design to prevent axles protruding and damaging flooring.
- PU injected stopper with easily replaceable bolts.
- Nylon hi-impact chassis with aluminium trucks.
- ABEC 7 bearings.
- Embroidered loop tag. Printed wheels and side logos. Embossed print on tongue. Printed footbed.
- Wheel Size: 54mm x 32mm
- Vegan Friendly
If you fancy something sweet, then grab yourself some Candi!


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Frances Overholser, 83
Frances Maxine Overholser, 83, of Columbia City, passed away at 1:20 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013, at Parkview Whitley Hospital, Columbia City. Born Sept. 13, 1929, in Churubusco, she was the daughter of John Franklin and Zula (Hawk) Davis.Her early years were spent in Churubusco where she graduated from Churubusco High School with the Class of 1947. Following her marriage to Kenneth Clark in 1950, she resided in Thorncreek Township Whitley County for 24 years. Sadly, their 19 year marriage ended in 1969 with Kenneth's passing. Maxine was blessed to find love again and on Jan. 1, 1973, she married Frank Overholser who passed away in 1990. She lived in Larwill until moving to Columbia City in 2006. She was a cook at Thorncreek School and the Columbia Restaurant. Maxine, also, owned and operated a restaurant and M&M Bargains and Ceramic Shop in Larwill.A former member of St. Matthew's United Methodist Church and Larwill United Methodist Church, she gave of herself serving in both churches Women's organizations. Maxine will be lovingly remembered by her daughters, Diana (Duane) Smith of Columbia City, Karen (Kenneth) Cupp of South Whitley, Carol Clark and Cheryl (Jim) Rice of Columbia City; friend, Andrea (Merle) Anderson of Larwill; three stepdaughters, Sharon (Richard) Brundige of Arizona, Norma Kepler of Fort Wayne, Shirley Jeffers of Wabash; nine grandchildren; 15 great- grandchildren and seven stepgrandchildren. In addition to her parents, first and second husband, she was preceded in death by brothers and sister, Isaac, Keith, Ora, Juanita Richards, Warren, Arleigh, Charles, Harry, Calvin, Howard, Arthur, Joseph and Robert Davis and one grandson, Wesley L. Smith. A memorial service will be held Saturday, Feb. 16 at 3 p.m. at DeMoney-Grimes Countryside Park Funeral Home, 600 Countryside Dr., Columbia City. The burial will follow at the Blue River Community Cemetery. Memorials may be given in memory of Mrs. Overholser to the donor's choice of charity. Envelopes will be available at the funeral home. Visit www.demoneygrimes.com to send family condolences or sign the guest register book.


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Have you noticed - Christmas is almost here! Time flies, doesn't it? And is it from the high speed of time or just the season but the weather is getting colder!
That is why today, Kanelstrand paired with KnellyBean to give you a warm and soft cowl, to keep you cozily snuggled all winter!
The KnellyBean shop is packed with beautiful colorful handmade accessories and supplies which I am sure you will fall in love with. And the greatest thing of all is that Erika - the crafter behind it - is a dreamer! I wish there were more dreamers out there making their dreams come true in such a vibrant way.
Before I show you what we have up for grabs this week, let me tell you that Erika is offering a 10% discount to all Kanelstrand readers. Use code KANEL10 at checkout.
I strongly recommend you to drop by her shop and chose some lovely handmade Christmas presents not only because the awesome cowls and accessories will blow your mind but also because the KnellyBean shop is donating a portion of the sales to the Scleroderma Foundation to help fund research and awareness of the disease. To learn more about Scleroderma, click here.
And, now, here is the beautiful, cozy cowl you can win this week! It is chunky, it is soft and it will definitely keep you warm! The pattern gives it extra thickness without making it heavy, and it can be reversed for a different pattern, when you feel like switching up your look.
To enter, just follow the Rafflecopter widget!
a Rafflecopter giveaway


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Next Episode of The Movie Game is
not planed. TV Show was canceled.
The series premiered on June 8, 1988 and was originally hosted by Phillip Schofield. Later hosts were Jonathan Morris and John Barrowman. Three teams of two children would answers questions on films and the winners would go on to play the end game to win prizes.
Looks like something went completely wrong!
But don't worry - it can happen to the best of us,
- and it just happened to you.
Please try again later or contact us.


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Monday Morning Offering - 3
Image: George Mendoza
Good morning, good God!
How can it be Monday again, so soon?
Does time fly by as quickly for you, Lord,
as it does for me?
As I open my eyes from sleep
I see another week stretching before me.
What do you see, Lord?
This might be a Monday morning when
(A) a new week is the last thing I want to face,
or (B) a new week is just what I want...
(A) Oh, God! not another week!
I've piled up enough hurt and uncertainty,
enough difficulty and confusion
to last me a life time!
Please let this week be a lighter one for me...
Please help me let go some of what I carry...
Help me drop it into your hands, your lap...
Lighten the load I carry, Lord,
and help me find in the week ahead
some time in the warm sun,
moments of peace and prayer with you,
good work, well done,
openness to the love around me,
and new hope that indeed you walk by my side
and carry me when the going gets too tough...
(B) A new week: praise God!
I look forward, Lord,
to the opportunities this week offers:
opportunities for what I don't yet know -
but will soon enough find out...
Who knows what this week will bring, Lord?
Well, actually, you know!
And because you do know,
please make sure I miss none of the gifts of grace
you will spread on the path before me...
And because you already know the week ahead,
give me a keen eye for missteps and mistakes
I might make along the way...
~ ~ ~
Perhaps the first grace of this week, Lord,
is noticing that both these morning offerings, A and B,
are my morning offerings:
perhaps for different weeks or different days,
or perhaps both of them, for every day of every week...
Just this moment to begin the week with you, Lord,
is a grace and a gift...
Whatever this week may bring, Lord,
keep me on the path of truth,
the way of justice,
the highway of peace...
When I'm tempted to wonder if you're still by my side,
when I reach out but can't find your hand right away,
remind me of this moment,
of its peace and promise...
It's a seven day week before me, Lord,
but help me take it a day at a time,
or an hour or a minute at a time,
as I need...
Wake me each day this week
with an offering of the day ahead
into your heart and hands...
Posted by Concord Pastor at 6:00 AM
2 comments:
- AnonymousJuly 14, 2008 at 8:40 PM
I love to wake up to this morning prayers. It starts Monday off just right. Thx.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 14, 2008 at 8:40 PM
I love to wake up to this morning prayers. It starts Monday off just right. Thx.ReplyDelete
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Doctor Who's return next month is to materialise in cinemas around the world to coincide with its screening on BBC1.
The first feature-length edition of the new series, called Deep Breath, will be beamed into screens around the globe from August 23 to allow fans to share the moment as Peter Capaldi takes on the role of The Doctor.
It follows international cinema performances at 1,500 venues last year for the 50th anniversary edition of the show, which proved a huge box office draw for BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the corporation.
The programme's executive producer Steven Moffat said: "Last November The Doctor didn't just conquer the world on television, he did it in the cinemas too. And like the show-off he is, he can't resist another go - one taste of the silver screen is never enough.
"On August 23, the new Doctor will begin his new adventures on BBC1 and in cinemas all over the world. Movie-land beware - Capaldi is coming to get you."
The first episode of the series will be set in Victorian London and will feature familiar characters Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart) and Strax (Dan Starkey), in addition to Jenna Coleman as The Doctor's sidekick Clara Oswald.
Further details about the participating cinemas for the screenings organised by Worldwide will be announced at a later date with more information at www.doctorwho.tv/watch/cinema. Those in the US and Canada will take place from August 25.
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Copart, Inc. (NASDAQ: CPRT) announced today that it will release earnings for the fourth quarter and year ended July 31, 2013 after the close of market on Tuesday, September 24, 2013. On Wednesday, September 25, 2013 a conference call will be held at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time (10 a.m. Central) to discuss the results and answer questions regarding the company's performance for the quarter and year ended July 31, 2013. The call will be webcast live and can be accessed at http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=682297&s=1&k=53B067B7327E8356C223CD689A7999D0 It will be available for replay through the same URL through October 25, 2013. If you do not have Internet access you can access an audio replay at (888) 203-1112 using confirmation code #7330277. The audio replay will be available through October 23, 2013. About Copart: Copart, founded in 1982, provides vehicle sellers with a full range of remarketing services to process and sell salvage and clean title vehicles to dealers, dismantlers, rebuilders, exporters and, in some states, to end users. Copart remarkets the vehicles through Internet sales utilizing its patented VB 2 technology. Copart sells vehicles on behalf of insurance companies, banks, finance companies, fleet operators, dealers, car dealerships and others as well as cars sourced from the general public. The company currently operates in the United States and Canada ( www.copart.com), the United Kingdom ( www.copart.co.uk), Brazil ( www.copart.com.br), Germany ( www.copart.de), the United Arab Emirates ( www.copart.ae) and Spain ( www.autoresiduos.com). Copart links sellers to more than 750,000 members in over 140 countries worldwide through our online multi-channel platform. For more information, or to become a member, visit www.copart.com.
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Building Intuition for In-water Optics and Ocean Color Remote Sensing: Spectrophotometer Activity with littleBits™
This activity demonstrates optical properties of water: that different constituents in water affect the transmission, absorption, and scattering of different colors in the visible light spectrum. Inexpensive, off-the-shelf components are used to... (View More) build a light sensor and source, creating a simple spectrophotometer that can measure light absorption. In the second part of this activity, principles of ocean color remote sensing are applied to measure reflectance. Using components that are clearly visible allows students to configure them in different ways. Playing with the instrument design gives students a practical understanding of spectrophotometers, in-water optics, and remote sensing. As an extension of this concept, students are encouraged to think about how ocean color is used to estimate the concentration of chlorophyll to infer phytoplankton abundance, colored dissolved organic matter, and suspended sediments. (View Less)
In this activity, students build a model of an active galaxy. From this, they will learn about the geometry of the components of an active galaxy and develop an understanding that different viewing angles can lead to dramatically different... (View More) interpretations of a galaxy's appearance. The activity includes background information, glossary, essential questions, extension activities, transfer activities, adaptations for visually-impaired students, and an answer key. Additional materials needed to do this activity include a compass. This is activity one of three in the Active Galaxies education unit. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $5 - $10 per group of students


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Not long ago California's San Joaquin Valley Acala cotton was the envy of domestic producers across the U. S. Cotton Belt. Textile mills worldwide demanded it and paid a hefty premium for the quality.
"We have made our money in California by producing a cotton no one else could produce," Craig Stevens, Dunavant of California, Fresno, Calif., told attendees at the recent Central Coast Cotton Conference in Monterey. However, that is now "in jeopardy. Our lead in the world market is being eroded," said the second generation SJV cotton merchandiser.
Some of the stiffest competition is coming from across state lines, not international datelines.
Texas has become California's chief quality competitor. Stevens said producers, ginners, cotton breeders and others have made tremendous strides improving quality and yield in the past few years. And the quality improvement is coming statewide, from the new FiberMax varieties grown in the Coastal Bend area to the Texas Panhandle where increasingly more picker cottons are being grown.
"The seed companies have done a great job of expanding technology," Stevens says. "Growers in Texas are having a heck of a lot of fun. Their yields are up. Their prices are up. Their quality is up. They're putting money into farms. It is not just planting for the loan anymore."
California is no longer alone at the top of the quality domain and "we're going to have to get used to it."
Comparing averages from the USDA's Visalia and Lubbock classing offices paints a rather interesting, if not ominous, picture of California's imminent challenges. The gaps between quality measurements across the board are becoming increasingly narrow and almost indistinguishable in some cases.
"When customers come to us for SJV cotton the wish range for micronaire is 4.0-4.3," Stevens says. "Last year the Visalia classing office was averaging 4.25. This year it's 4.26. So we don't have a big change here. Obviously this is a mid-season number for 2007 rather than a final, so that number could change a little, but so far we're on track. No big surprises."
Uniformity is a percentage measurement that growers don't necessarily get a lot of credit for, but it factors heavily into what the mills desire now that everyone is using HVI measurements to determine cotton's fiber characteristics, according to Stevens. "A farmer can get an extra 25 points in loan proceeds for high uniformity, but it's not factored into any other premiums or discounts in the farmer's invoices," says.
"However, it means a lot to a textile mill. When you have a higher level of uniform fibers, you have a higher level of confidence in how the cotton is going to perform. Higher uniformity to a textile mill means higher efficiency and that's huge."
California has always led on uniformity, but that gap is beginning to narrow quite significantly. At mid-season of 2007, the Corpus Christi classing office was averaging 81.5 percent as compared to Visalia which was averaging 82.3, according to Stevens.
"That's a pretty scary number for a merchant in California," he says. "Roller-ginned Acala cotton at Visalia was at 83.8. That's one of the reasons we are roller ginning more Acala cotton. The roller gin is a little gentler on the fiber."
Strength has always been another hallmark of California's premier cotton fiber offering. "It is probably the second largest component to our basis," Stevens says. "California, over the years in the Acalas, has enjoyed 10, 20 and even 30 cents more per pound than any other cotton in the United States, and it's because we have length and strength."
Stevens credits the San Joaquin Valley Cotton Board, the rigorous testing program, and the efforts on the part of seed companies for focusing on the effort to produce varieties with longer and stronger fiber characteristics. At mid-season, Visalia's classing office was averaging a strength of 33.4 grams per tex as compared to 33.9 last year.
"Lubbock is at 29.5," he says. "They're on the chart, man! It's spooky. I guess the good news is when the mills come here, they want 30 grams per tex and above. There's nothing with a 2 in front of it. No one in the country can offer a 30 grams per tex or better, so in that respect we still have a good lead, but they're closing the gap there too."
Finally, it's length that is the real eye-opener and the single largest contributor to California's basis, according to Stevens. The Lubbock classing office average earlier this harvest season was 35.7 with 1.2 million bales ginned.
"They're not done yet," he says. "Here's the real spooky number. The Visalia classing office was averaging 36.7 staple, and Corpus Christi was 36.5. The increase in the staple length in Texas cotton is dramatic. Granted, we started at a higher point, but our improvement is not nearly what others have made."
California's has something Texas has not had. It has been called the "X" factor, differences in quality mills can detect that set SJV apart from the rest of the Cotton Belt.
"The X factor is definitely there," Stevens says. "I think uniformity is the X factor today. It's a measurement that hasn't been around that long. It came along with the advent of the HVI machine. Nobody really used it when the HVI machine came out, but then we started to expand what the machine could do. If I had to pick a number, uniformity means a lot. That's the X factor to the mills.
"Now there are some other things as well. It's a combination of soil conditions, the testing program, etc. But uniformity is where we really stand out from the rest of the country. No one else even comes close to that number."
Protecting California's "X" factor will be a tough challenge going forward. With other states rapidly closing the gap in quality and yield, California cotton growers will have to pay even more attention to the quality characteristics of varieties that set them apart from the rest of the world as well as the rest of the U.S.
"We need to be aware of the threat that Texas poses and make some good decisions about varieties we plant," Stevens says. "Obviously you pick yield first. Do me a favor. Pick two high yielders and look at the quality."
Although California's Pima niche is fairly well protected at the moment, Stevens urges the same diligence there when it comes to quality. He received a cell phone call from a fellow merchant in Arkansas asking him to describe what a field of Pima cotton looked like. After describing the color difference and blooms, the merchant said "I am standing in a field of Pima cotton in Arkansas."
"Other people want a piece of this Pima pie so make the same decisions with Pima that you do with Acala."
On the upside, California producers have the long-term advantage of generally predictable and favorable weather conditions as compared to growers in other states.
Over the years, consistency has been a key marketing tool which has been capitalized on by rigorous testing and ever-higher standards for approved California varieties.
"I think we have the San Joaquin Valley Cotton Board to thank for that," Stevens says. "Not too many varieties have come through the ranks that don't perform consistently year in and year out. By the time you get through that three-year testing period, you've got a pretty darn good seed, and you have a pretty good idea how that seed is going to react, and how it's going to behave."
"As a merchant we're just trying to figure out ways to maintain a basis for California cotton," Stevens says. "I know for a fact that if California farmers start getting per pound what Texas farmers are willing to accept for their cotton, we're out of business."


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Atlanta, GA – Dr. Alveda King, Pastoral Associate of Priests for Life, reacted today to the case of an African American teenager who is suing a Michigan doctor for an alleged forced abortion.
"I can't help but notice that no so called 'pro-choice' leaders are rushing to the aid of a black Michigan teenager who says she was held down on an operating table while an abortionist took her baby without consent," said Dr. King. "The silence of the pro-abortion 'champions' is deafening, but the silence of the lambs slaughtered in the clinics is heart wrenching. Once again, it's clear that the abortion lobby supports only one choice."
Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.


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Vintage knitwear
Vintage Jumpers & Cardigans
From 90s patterned jumpers and retro turtlenecks to staple V-neck knits, browse our collection of men's vintage and designer knitwear - we've got just what you need to stay cosy and stylish this winter. For classic styles, check out our knits by Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren. For a more retro look, opt for a knitted cardigan buttoned up and styled over a patterned shirt.


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Tru2RedNGold25 wrote:Us as Niners fan have every right to rep Niners all day everyday when we have the hardware to back it up do can u guys say that???
CANHawk wrote:dunceface wrote:Well I heard X likes scones with currant berries in them
Scones are nothing more than failed muffins.
Hawkstorian wrote:Should the Seahawks sign him?
Return to [ THE OFFICIAL NET NATION FAN FORUM ]


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posted by Thom Holwerda on Mon 13th Mar 2006 22:00 UTC
Microsoft has delayed a special slimmed-down version of Windows XP for legacy PCs, which is based on the Windows Embedded code base. The Redmond company had expected to make the operating system available to Software Assurance customers this month, but now says Windows Fundamentals will ship 'in late 2006.' Windows Fundamentals can run on older machines that do not support XP while providing the same level of security.


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5 ORIGINAL ALBUMS: 1. Pithecanthropus Erectus 2. The Clown 3. Blues & Roots 4. Oh Yeah 5. Tonight at Noon The greatest bassist leader jazz has ever known, Mingus, with his spirited playing and spontaneity, always kept his ears and fingers on the pulse. The albums this giant of music recorded for Atlantic between 1956 and 1961 are rightly considered his best.
"It's a work of outrageous, joyous genius, and the perfect note for any music lover to end the year on." Metro
Charles Mingus - Moanin'


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Investment Fraud Online Case Examples
Wanda Robertson (Indiana)
Method of fraud: Craig's List website
Earlier this year, the Indiana Securities Division worked to obtain a criminal conviction of an Indiana woman who solicited victims using the website Craig's List. In addition to asking people to invest money in her fake company, Wanda Robertson also asked for their personal information. She later used this information to apply for loans and credit cards. Following the investigation by the Indiana State Police with assistance from the Prosecution Assistance Unit, Robertson plead guilty to three Class C felony violations of the Indiana Securities Act – and was sentenced to four years in prison, to be followed by four years of probation. Robertson was also ordered to repay over $170,000 to victims of her scheme. Read more.
Gold Certificate Securities (Canada)
Method of fraud: Dating website
In June 2010, a New Brunswick resident fell victim to investment fraud via an online dating website. The fraudster contacted the victim on the dating site, built a relationship with them and eventually offered the chance to invest in gold certificates. The victim lost thousands of dollars before a bank employee suspected the victim might be involved in a scam based on the quantity and frequency of withdrawals from their account. Read more.
Isaac Bruton (Colorado)
Method of fraud: Craig's List website
Earlier this year, Isaac Bruton, who also went by Michael Brouton, was ordered by Colorado Securities Commissioner Fred Joseph to stop seeking investors in his "stock trading program" in which he promised 100-percent monthly returns. He promoted the investment opportunity using the website Craig's List. He allegedly used investor funds to pay for personal expenses and failed to register the securities with the state. The state sued Bruton in March. Read more.
Imperia Invest IBC (Maine)
Method of fraud: Online chat communities
In May 2010, the Maine Office of Securities issued a cease and desist order prohibiting the company Imperia Invest IBC from soliciting Maine investors through the offer of unregistered securities. The company solicited victims online, most notably using an online chat site for people who are deaf. One victim invested $1,000 after being promised a multi-million dollar payout within six months. Read more.
Phillip Offil, Jr. (Michigan)
Method of fraud: Spam e-mail messages
Texas Securities lawyer and 15-year employee of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Phillip W. Offil, Jr. offered shares of the Michigan-based AVL Global, Inc. to public investors while his colleagues manipulated the demand for the stock. Though AVL Global was essentially a defunct business, Offil's scheme created demand for over 15 million shares through misleading press releases and spam e-mail messages, resulting in aggregate losses of more than $4.8 million from victims. Via unsolicited fax and e-mail messages, company officials claimed that there was, "a dramatic increase," for its products and that the Botswana Department of Defense may purchase thousands of GPS devices from AVL. However, by this time the small African country had declined to purchase the products because the nation did not receive adequate satellite coverage to facilitate GPS usage, and AVL Global had actually closed its manufacturing plant and moved into a 100-square foot office with only one employee. Offil was sentenced to eight years in prison on April 23, 2010. Read more.
James Rivera (Maine)
Method of fraud: Webinars
In 2008, the Maine Office of Securities warned investors about Almighty Winds, Inc., and Apostles, Inc., two companies supposedly developing new technologies using windmills. James Rivera, who operated out of California, made sales pitches to Maine investors over the internet using webinars. He also appeared to have used his participation in a non-denominational Christian church to identify potential investors, who in turn recommended other investors based in part on their shared religious beliefs. Ultimately, the investment he was offering weren't registered with the Office of Securities nor was he licensed to sell securities in Maine and victims lost a total of $215,000. Read more.
Jonathan Curshen (Colorado)
Method of fraud: various websites
The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ordered Jonathan Curshen to pay pre-judgment interest of $50,718.48 and a $66,235 civil penalty for his role in an online "Pump and Dump" scheme. Curshen was found to have knowingly failed to disclose that he was being paid to promote the common stock of Freedom Golf Corporation, a struggling corporation that is now out of business. Curshen posted a link to a fabricated "investor report" on various websites, despite his knowledge of the company's failing financial stability. He also posted numerous messages touting Freedom Golf on various websites without disclosing he was a paid promoter or that he was personally benefitting from selling Freedom Golf stock. Read more.
Carol McKeown and Daniel Ryan (Canada)
Method of fraud: Facebook, Twitter, company website
The SEC alleges that since at least April 2009, Carol McKeown and Daniel F. Ryan, a couple residing in Montreal, Canada, received millions of shares of touted companies through their two corporations, defendants Downshire Capital Inc., and Meadow Vista Financial Corp., as compensation for their touting. McKeown and Ryan sold the shares on the open market while PennyStockChaser simultaneously predicted massive price increases for the issuers, a practice known as "scalping." According to the SEC's complaint, the defendants profited by selling penny stocks at or around the same time that they were touting them on http://www.pennystockchaser.com/. The pair fraudulently touted penny stocks through their website as well as on Facebook and Twitter. The SEC alleges that McKeown, Ryan and their corporations have realized at least $2.4 million in sales proceeds from their scalping scheme. Read more.
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There Be Dragons (US - BD RA)
Gabe discovers that there are NOT any dragons. There isn't much else either...
This is terribly embarrassing, but the bulk of my knowledge pertaining to the Spanish Civil War has been acquired through Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. I learned a bit in researching the history of horror film censorship under the rule of General Franco and in art school when we learned all about Salvador Dali, but generally speaking the larger battle know as World War II (which ran in tandem in Europe) has overshadowed the conflict in my memory banks (it still kind of blows my mind that Spain was a dictatorship until the 1970s). There Be Dragons is the account of a man named Manolo (Wes Bentley), who describes his part in the war to his son Robert (Dougray Scott). Manolo grew up as a childhood friend of Josemaría Escrivá (Charlie Cox). As the war started dividing the country along fascist and communist lines, the boys grow apart. Josemaría would become a priest and be driven underground by anti-Catholic revolutionaries. His steadfast devotion to his faith in God and humanity eventual leads him to found Opus Dei, an institution of the Catholic Church, which teaches that ordinary human life is a path to sanctity (he was eventually canonized in 2002). While Josemaría finds his calling, Manolo is recruited by the German influenced fascists as a mole in the communist ranks, where he falls in love with a beautiful Hungarian revolutionary named Ildiko (Olga Kurylenko).
Writer/director Roland Joffé is largely known for one of the most spectacular swan dives in Hollywood director history. His first two feature films, The Killing Fields and The Mission, each garnered multiple Academy Award nominations, including two for best director. That's a hell of a high bar to set, one only matched, as far as I know, by William Friedkin, who had actually made a handful of features before he hit the ground running with The French Connection and The Exorcist. Following The Mission, Joffé made the Paul Newman flop Fat Man and Little Boy, the hyper-saccharine City of Joy, and ghost directed/produced Super Mario Bros.. From Super Mario Bros[I] things took a rather steep turn to the unfortunate, including an extremely poorly received adaptation of [I]The Scarlet Letter, the rarely seen Goodbye Lover, Captivity (the death throe of the 'torture porn' subgenre), and You and I (a biography of Russian lipstick lesbian pop duo t.A.T.u.). Even Michael Cimino and Peter Bogdanovich didn't nosedive this thoroughly. There Be Dragons was meant to be a return to form for the once celebrated director. Frankly I'd rather watch the t.A.T.u. movie.
As a historical primer, Joffé does a decent job laying out the facts for those of us outside the know (aside from some lumpy era political infusion), but as a storyteller he sets out too many framing devices early in the film. The story isn't so much hard to follow as it is over-told. The flow from scene to scene is deceptively smooth, which acts to disguise how unnecessary a lot of the plotting is. Editor Richard Nord's and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain's best efforts at gracefully unraveling the film visually cannot overcome dopey narration and a gratuitous flashback structure. This is already a film about two characters, two characters with only the thinnest connection between them (possibly entirely unrelated to the historical record), nobody needs a third subplot, especially not one snagged from Tim Burton's Big Fish (or whatever storybook Burton snagged it from). Romantic subplots also suffer from random aside syndrome and by about the one hour mark the film has devolved into nearly unbearable boredom.
The dialogue is a mesh of clichés and awkward prose ('You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs!'/'Right is not an omelet, and people are not eggs.'). Worse yet it's repetitive, especially when characters break into monologues about religious and political philosophy. Heavy-handedness has never been outside of Joffé's wheelhouse and even worked in the case of The Mission, but here it just seems like he just doesn't have a working dramatic barometer. The actors don't ham it up too regularly (to the contrary, they underplay almost everything), but the off-balance theatricality of their dialogue and actions make it incredibly difficult to really care about anything that happens to them. Wes Bentley, who is first seen wearing some surprisingly shoddy old age make-up, is pretty good while onscreen (at times he disappears into the character entirely), but his narration is almost obnoxiously stale. Charlie Cox is a nice and warm presence, but also a pretty bland one, evoking little of his usual charm. Dougray Scott's acting is oddly detached throughout the film, as if he's extending the bulk of his energy on portraying an accurate accent. Olga Kurylenko suffers the worst thanks to thin characterization and never rises beyond the status of Bentley's love object.
There Be Dragons is a handsome looking film at the very least, and this 1080p, 2.35:1 image is swimming with detail. Joffé and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain utilize a muted, natural palette, and fill every frame with almost excessive baroque elements. Detail levels are sharp from front-facing, close-up textures to rich backgrounds brimming with set pieces and natural backdrops. The moss encrusted stonework and heavily decorative wallpapers are the most brilliant bits in terms of detail. Sequences featuring frosted edges or smoky elements fair quite well too, and feature solid, warm blends. The colour follows the longstanding tradition of 'browning-out' the bulk of the palette to signify times past. The war era footage features sickly blue-green tints on interiors, and strong red and purple highlights. The '80s footage is a bit cooler, with more consistent yellow highlights. Black levels are deep and consistent, like ink, and contrast is sharp, but the stylistic choices lead to a lack of true whites during the flashback footage (likely intentional). The coolest sequences feature the most grain and even a touch of low-level noise, and there are inconsistent edge haloes throughout the film (a few shots feature white lines on every black edge), but there's very little in the way of major digital or film-based artefacts.
This Blu-ray comes fitted with the usual DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack. There isn't too much here to celebrate, but there aren't any standout shortcomings either. Dialogue and silence both take precedence for much of the film, and entire sequences roll by without any stereo or surround noise. When we're meant to find ourselves place in the thick of a busy street or other outside area the general ambience is soft, but effective, and directional elements move with accuracy. Some of the battle sequences are presented as somewhat muted, at least in comparison to something like Saving Private Ryan (to create a feel of flashback?), but even these muffled bangs and pops feature heavy directional influence, and decent LFE presence (many of the military sound effects sound surprisingly canned). Any scene featuring airplanes is particularly outstanding. Stephen Warbeck's score is mostly featured in the stereo channels alone, and is often mixed pretty low on the track overall with only a handful of exceptional bursts of energy or warmth.
Extras include an interview with Wes Bentley entitled Facing Your Dragons (4:00, HD), which mostly acts as a super cheap EPK (Bentley clearly didn't prepare himself), and a series of 16 deleted/extended scenes (31:00, SD), most of which act to fill in Scott's character, along with a lot of the childhoods of the two leads.
There Be Dragons is an incredibly handsome waste of time. It's not a return to form for long floundering writer/director Roland Joffé, it's not emotionally or dramatically satisfying, and I learned more about the Spanish Civil War and Josemaría Escrivá researching wikipedia for this review than I did watching the film itself. I'm sure someone will find satisfaction in its awkward prose and longwinded tone, but most folks will probably want to skip it in favour of revisiting The Mission, The Killing Fields or Super Mario Bros. again. This Blu-ray disc looks great, sounds pretty good, and features 30-plus minutes of deleted/extended footage.
* Note: The images on this page are not representative of the Blu-ray image quality.
Review by Gabriel Powers
Uniblab Member Join Date: February 2011 Location: Brazil Posts: 67
This one I would pass even if I actually could see it. Its deeply problematic production warranted the stillborn distribution it ended up getting - see the comment below this article (http://www.ncregister.com/blog/an-agnostic-dire...) from its original screenwriter.
Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13
Disc Details
Release Date: 10th January 2012
Discs: 1
Disc Type: Blu-ray Disc
RCE: No
Video: 1080p
Aspect: 2.35:1
Anamorphic: No
Colour: Yes
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Extras: Facing Your Dragons with Wes Bentley, Deleted/Extended Scenes, Trailers
Easter Egg: No
Feature Details
Director: Roland Joffé
Cast: Charlie Cox, Wes Bentley, Dougray Scott, Unax Ugalde, Olga Kurylenko
Genre: Drama
Length: 122 minutes
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Video: Airplane Crash In-Cockpit Footage -- Stinson 108-3
Original, Exclusive Videos from AVweb | Reader-Submitted & Viral Videos
Video of a plane crash as it was experienced from the right seat, inside the cockpit. The accident took place on Saturday, June 30, 2012 near Bruce Meadows airstrip, not far from Stanley, Idaho. At the time of this report, information was preliminary and subject to change, but some had been collected by the NTSB. The aircraft is a Stinson model 108-3, a 165-horsepower single-engine high-wing propeller-driven plane capable of carrying four, plus full fuel and light baggage. All four occupants survived the crash with the pilot suffering the worst injury. The cause of the crash is yet undetermined, but an aircraft's performance is dependent, among other things, on the density of the air it moves through. The pilot appears to have faced "high-density altitude" conditions, which degrade an aircraft's take-off and climb performance.
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In October, the FBI and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) executed search warrants on two California produce companies. It does seem kind of surreal, actually, that the FBI would carry out a spinach bust, but e.coli contamination in packaged spinach did, after all, sicken 199 people, including five New Mexicans, and lead to the death of three people.
(For those who would rather not know, the bacteria e.coli is found in human or animal feces, and though exposure to it is usually harmless, it can cause diarrhea, cramps and fever. In some instances, it can also lead to kidney damage, and, in old people or children, even death.)
The outbreak began in early August, though panic didn't really take over until September, as grocery stores, restaurants and households dumped out their spinach and swore off leafy greens.
When the FDA traced the contaminated spinach to California's Natural Selection Foods, it settled the minds of millions, but it also gave groups such as The Heartland Institute the opportunity to take a bizarre potshot at organic growers: According to Jay Lehr, science director of the Libertarian Institute, "The recent e. coli outbreak thought to be tied to organic spinach farms in California should serve to remind Americans that organic food is not necessarily safer food." (For clarity's sake, it's helpful to point out that although Natural Selection Foods does process and package organic produce, the e.coli contamination was found in conventional spinach.) Meanwhile, as the FDA continues investigating the exact origins of the contamination, Natural Foods Selection CEO Charles Sweat is blaming growers, saying the contamination came from their fields, not his packing and shipping facilities.
But in the larger sense, food safety isn't about growers versus packing facilities, or even organic versus conventional farmers. It's about knowing where food comes from, how it was grown and what it's been exposed to—from seed to dinner plate.
The San Juan Bautista-based Natural Selection Foods packages and distributes greens under 30 different brands, including Earthbound Farms (which was the company's original name and now applies to the organic side of the business), Dole, Emeril, Bellissima, Rave Spinach, Green Harvest, Mills Family Farm, President's Choice, SYSCO, O Organic, Trader Joe's and Ready Pac. In turn, all of these companies use spinach in hundreds of their own products.
If that seems mind-boggling, it's even harder to try and trace where produce comes from in the first place. The contaminated spinach appears to have come from one of nine farms in three California counties, but the company also packages and distributes produce from across California, Arizona, Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Canada, Chile and New Zealand. All told, the company packages produce that's grown on more than 26,000 acres.
It's probably fair to say that the vast majority of Americans are completely oblivious as to the origins of the food they eat. But after this latest debacle, how many people were left staring at their bags of spinach—a terrorist threat right there in the kitchen—and wondering where on earth those greens came from?
Those who buy their produce locally here in New Mexico could be smug. There is no shortage of places to buy local produce that's grown right here in the state: Go to La Montanita's Co-op, pick up a box of produce once a week at Los Poblanos Organics on Rio Grande or stop at any of the farmer's markets during the summer. Other options include Santa Fe's Beneficial Farms and Ranch Collaborative. As the demand for local food and organic food has increased over the past few years, it's getting easier and easier for consumers to make choices that allow them to know exactly where their food comes from.
But it's not enough to know where the food comes from. Consumers might also want to know what water that food is irrigated or cleaned with. In the case of the California spinach, the FDA points out that although this outbreak has been linked to the one supplier, there "has been a long history of E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks involving leafy greens from the central California region." Since the FDA provides no context for this statement, it's helpful to check out the FDA's Good Agricultural Practices Guide.
According to that guide, produce can be contaminated through exposure to: contaminated agricultural water (for irrigation or crop protection), wild or domestic animals, sick or unhygienic workers, manure-contaminated production areas and equipment, contamination on adjacent lands, and contaminated water that's used to wash or cool produce.
It's at this point that industrial and local food production overlap: Everybody needs water and water quality is an issue almost everywhere. Even here in the Middle Rio Grande—where the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) distributes water to about 70,000 acres of cropland between Cochiti Reservoir and the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge—there is the potential for e.coli contamination.
Last year, the state and the Ciudad Soil and Water Conservation District released a report showing high levels of fecal coliform—the human and animal waste associated with the bacteria e.coli—in the Rio Grande.
Federal standards for fecal coliform are based on the designated uses of a body of water. Designations for the Middle Rio Grande include "irrigation, limited warmwater fishery, livestock watering, wildlife habitat and secondary contact" and this stretch of the river is divided into two sections which then have their own standards. From the Alameda Bridge downstream to Elephant Butte (the stretch through Albuquerque, in other words), levels aren't supposed to exceed 1,000 fecal coliforms per 100 ml of water over the course of monthly sampling. North of Albuquerque, samples aren't supposed to exceed 200 fecal coliforms per 100 ml of water over the course of a month.
On an average day, the levels through Albuquerque are 20 to 30 times the federal standards for fecal coliform; during flooding (remember July?) the levels are nearly astronomical.
And that's the water used to irrigate crops? Granted, the majority of farmers in the Middle Rio Grande grow forage crops such as alfalfa and hay—products that never make it onto dinner plates in their original form. And smart growers, whether the housewife with a plot of tomatoes in the backyard or organic farmers along the bosque, know not to irrigate food crops with water from the Middle Rio Grande. Although this seems a shame—river water that can't come into contact with food—it's a reality of modern life.
For instance, although Los Poblanos Organics, just east of Rio Grande Boulevard as it winds toward Los Ranchos, has rights to MRGCD ditch water, that water isn't used to irrigate food crops, says Monte Skarsgard, the head of farming operations. Produce is watered using a drip irrigation system with water pumped from a well. That practice, he says, "conserves the water, and the water purity coming out of the well is a lot better." He knows exactly where that water's coming from, he says, and knows it's clean. To Skarsgard, it's a matter of trust: Consumers can trust him and other local growers to know what they're doing. "Everyone's busy," he says, "so we try and take that off people's minds." Los Poblanos grows everything from greens and tomatoes to squash and eggplant in its own fields, but it also helps distribute produce from other local farms. "We'll go and find the people that are doing good jobs and hopefully the people will trust us enough that they'll trust we're making the right choices for them."
By the same token, if consumers actually know where their food is coming from—not just what store or packaging company, but possibly even which field—then there can be real "food security." Consumers don't have to wait for the government to track where contaminated food may have ended up, nor where it might have come from. Just as the spinach hysteria has started to die down, in fact, there have been two more national recalls: one of lettuce grown in California and one of bottled carrot juice.
When shopping on the local scale, says Skarsgard, you can walk up to the producer—whether at a farmer's market or at a farm like Los Poblanos—and ask questions such as, "What did you feed these chickens?" or "Where'd you get the water to spray these crops?" "It's really neat to have that connection to the food on a philosophical level," he says. "But it's also great on a food security level that you know what's happening."