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Willow Smith Announces Debut Album Release Date
Hey, Willow Smith fans! The wait is almost over for the hair-whipping hip-hopper's debut — and for a new music video!
Smith video-chatted with BET's '106th & Park,' where she announced her 'Fireball' video will debut next week. The clip, featuring Grammy nominee Nicki Minaj, began filming last month. Meanwhile, Smith's debut album will hit shelves on April 3, 2012.
To tide fans over until the 'Fireball' video debuts, Smith performed the blazing single on 'X Factor.' Last week, the tiny bombshell also released a cute cover of Frank Ocean's 'Thinking About You' last week, following in big brother Jaden — and Justin Bieber's — footsteps.
Rap-Up reports that the album will come from Roc Nation. While Smith scored a huge hit with 'Whip My Hair,' its two follow up singles, 'Fireball' and '21st Century Girl' didn't blow up as well on the charts. Smith's producer, Ronald "Jukebox" Jackson described the album as "very international" and multi-genre — and explains the wait.
"Willow is kind of a combination of what 'Whip My Hair' was," Jackson said. "Willow just isn't a pop star, she isn't just an urban artist; she's very international," he explained. "A lot of her music has a very big influence of everything from rock to pop to hip-hop."
So what's the hold up? Smith's youth! "I did like eight, nine songs on Willow, so right now, we're in the process of just trying to close out the album," Jackson said. "It's just the whole process. You got to think about it: She's a 10-year old girl. She's gotta have a life, she's gotta be a kid."


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Serves: Makes 8 servings
Ingredients:Chocolate Soufflés
- 6 ounces semisweet chocolate
- 6 large eggs
- ¾ cup sugar, divided use, plus more for ramekins
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- Espresso Crème Anglaise, recipe follows
- A little powdered sugar for sprinkling on top
Espresso Crème Anglaise
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
- 4 large egg yolks
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 cup brewed espresso coffee
- |2 tablespoons instant espresso powder
Procedures:Place rack in middle of oven and turn on to 350°F. Butter eight 6-ounce individual soufflé dishes. Sprinkle inside of each with a bit of sugar, tipping to coat evenly. Set on baking sheet.
Place chocolate in a heat proof bowl and set over a pot of simmering water. Do not let the bottom of the pot come into contact with the water. Heat until chocolate melts. Remove from heat and set aside while you make the base
Make soufflé base: Separate eggs, placing yolks in one mixer bowl and whites in another. Add ½ cup of the sugar and the salt to the egg yolks. Beat with mixer on medium-high speed until very light, fluffy and thick—about 3 minutes. (Mixture should be so thick that when you lift turned-off beaters, an egg yolk "ribbon" falls that takes 3 to 4 seconds to dissolve.) Set aside.
Stir cream and vanilla into the melted chocolate. Stir in ⅓ of the egg yolk mixture. Fold in remaining egg yolk mixture in 2 additions. Set aside.
Beat egg whites with mixer on medium speed until fluffy but not stiff —3 to 4 minutes. Sprinkle in remaining 1 tablespoon of the sugar. Beat 1 minute longer on medium speed—until whites are shiny and firm but not stiff. (Beaten whites should form a soft peak —looks like top of a Dairy Queen ice cream cone—when turned-off beaters are lifted out.) Stir ⅓ of egg whites into chocolate base. Gently fold in remaining egg whites in 2 additions. Divide evenly among prepared soufflé molds. At this point you can refrigerate the soufflés for several hours before baking, but then they will need to bake longer (20 to 23 minutes).
Bake and serve: Place molds on baking sheet in middle of oven and set timer for 15 minutes. Don't open oven during baking. When timer goes off, soufflés should be puffed and cracked on top. When you gently shake the baking sheet, soufflés should jiggle only slightly (when you spoon out the center to eat, it should be creamy). If soufflés are really loose, quickly close oven and bake 2 to 3 minutes longer. Serve immediately—before the soufflés begin to fall, have each guest crack open the top of the soufflé with a spoon and pour in the Espresso Crème Anglaise. Dust the top with confectioners' sugar.
Espresso Crème Anglaise
Pour the heavy cream and vanilla bean and seeds into a saucepan and place over medium-low heat. Bring the mixture to a brief simmer, until bubbles form around the edge of the pot; do not boil. Remove from heat. Discard the vanilla bean. The vanilla bean can be rinsed and dried and kept for another use.
In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, coffee, and espresso powder, until well blended. Temper the yolks by gradually whisking in the hot cream mixture (do not add too quickly or the eggs will cook.) Return the custard back to the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until it's thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 8 to 10 minutes. Serve immediately with Chocolate Soufflés. (If not serving immediately, press plastic wrap on the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming and refrigerate.)


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Daily deal websites similar to Groupon, Buy.com, and LivingSocial have taken over the cyberspace by storm. Every time you Google something and visit websites or log in to social networking websites like Facebook & My Space, you can advertisements similar to Groupon.com that announce fabulous deals to lure the visitors.
More and more sites and daily deals are coming up day-by-day with the help of top-notch services from leading web development companies. With the recent overnight success of daily deal websites, it's no surprise that a lot of companies around the world will try to imitate this newest trend of business model.
One of the main marketing tactics that many of the deal websites adopt is to woo people to subscribe to their daily deal by offering the most possible discount on every deal. Such discounted and limited-time offers and deals on the daily deal websites attract lot of customers all over the world, to shop for the various items listed in the website.
Small and medium businesses have started jumping-on to various daily-deal models, as they give the easiest possible way to hook newer and newer customers in the digital age. Traditional ways of advertising no longer pay off, and newer ones like daily deals have started taking their place. Hence starting a daily deal website using groupon clone software products is the best way to get the maximum profit and a unique identity in the world of business


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Battle Royale Forums
Welcome to Battle Royale Forums. Join us today and become part of the growing group of survivors.
Dismiss Notice
We're going to be moving WDF to battleroyaleforums.com. WDF is going to become a sub-forum of this new domain. The focus of the rest of the site is going to change, but nothing is going to change for the TWD and FTWD specific forums. You will still be able to use walkingdeadforums.com to get to any of the forums you used to and it'll redirect to the same forum or thread on the new domain. Also, while the main forum theme will change, the theme for the TWD and FTWD forums will remain the same. The domain will probably change tomorrow or Wednesday.
Feedback thread here.
Fast or slow Zombies
Discussion in 'Zombie Chatter' started by Loc, Dec 18, 2010.
Page 1 of 2


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… guess who was at Robert's Western World last night?
It's a place that never, ever fails to make me smile. So much fun, so much music, so much Nashville … it's always a good night out.
Also, this post is really just an excuse to say: ohmygosh, I must knit this shawl right. now. Literary allusion? Lace? Wooly yarn? Check, check, and check. Now to decided what color … I'm thinking something lilac-y … don't know why, but I really want a kind of bright purple giant lace tablecloth to wrap up in.


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Take A Stand, produced by Trippi, McMahon and Squier for the Credit Union Campaign for Consumer Choice.
Increasingly, political consultants are moving from pushing candidates to pushing issues, a change that is unlikely to meet with universal approbation. Take A Stand is the creation of political consultant Steve McMahon on behalf of credit unions. At issue is legislation that would undermine the unions' federally endorsed/guaranteed/protected competitive advantage over conventional banks.
The spot uses a tactic common among candidates who don't want to take the in-your-face-negative route. Its strategy is "comparative": Affirmation moves seamlessly into attack; the positive sets up the negative.
The message is explicit from the get-go: "Big banks" are bad banks, the high-cost alternative you don't need to settle for. The option, already availed of by "70 million Americans" just like you, is … the credit union. The initial visuals are fuzzy and sweet, and ring newish variations on familiar themes of family and friends, companionship and security. Though the family gathered around the table in this Ozzie and Harriet update is stolidly suburban, it comprises Asians; though the spot proffers a squishily trite bedtime-story shot, it does so with an explicit nod to the minority family, an implicit nod to the minority parent.
With their "low rate loans," credit unions let the American family bite off their bit of the dream, be it new wheels, new digs, or a college degree. The spot serves up a sanitized, sitcom version of the grand melting pot; the images of diversity are carefully calibrated, almost disingenuously casual. We've seen the Asian family clustered around cake, and we've seen the black mother reading to her child. We also get the picnicking towheads, the strolling seniors, the black graduate.
Now the nub: the entirely credible complaint that big banks levy higher ATM fees. Focus groups have identified this as a pet consumer peeve, and Take A Stand urges viewers to do just that. The visual limns an urban skyline, superimposing a sinister message–"Now the big banks want to take away your right to join a credit union"–over an unsourced headline: "Tell banks to back off." Chyron and narrative alike tap the eons-old, morally loaded distinction between concrete jungle (home to "the malefactors of great wealth," as Theodore Roosevelt dubbed monster corporations) and Walden wood (or its '90s version, the manicured burbs). And you're given an 800 number, which is left on-screen through the succeeding scenes. The sponsors of the spot really want you to make that call–after which you'll be patched through to the office of your senator or representative, your name added to a petition, and so on. After all, there are several issue-advocacy techniques designed to show members of Congress your "grassroots support."
The end is even sweeter, and pairs clasped hands: the grown-up hand and the kiddie hand; the black hand and the white hand, and so on. So what if the narrative is a tad cluttered by all the calls to action? It's to Steve McMahon's credit that Take A Stand's populism is entirely palatable. The proof of its success, however, may well lie in the length of that petition.
–Robert Shrum


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Magnesium Sulfate
General Injectables & Vaccines, Inc.
MAGNESIUM SULFATE - magnesium sulfate heptahydrate injection, solution
General Injectables & Vaccines, Inc
Disclaimer: This drug has not been found by FDA to be safe and effective, and this labeling has not been approved by FDA. For further information about unapproved drugs, click here.
50% Magnesium Sulfate 0.5 gm/mL Injection, USP 2 mL Single Dose Vial
2.03 mM/mL of Magnesium Sulfate Heptahydrate
Osmolarity 4.06 mOsmol/mL
Magnesium Sulfate Injection, USP (50%) for IV and IM use is a sterile concentrated solution of Magnesium Sulfate USP. Each mL contains: Magnesium Sulfate (Heptahydrate) 500 mg,
which provides 4.06 mEq each of Magnesium (Mg++) and Sulfate (SO4 =), Water for Injection q.s. The pH (5.5 - 7.0) is adjusted with Sulfuric Acid and/or Sodium Hydroxide. The solution contains no bacteriostatic agent or other preservatives. The molecular formula is MgSO4 • 7H2O and the molecular weight is 246.47.
2Clinical Pharmacology
Magnesium is the second most plentiful cation of the intracellular fluids. It is essential for the activity of many enzyme systems and plays an important role with regard to neurochemical transmission and muscular excitability. Deficits are accompanied by a variety of structural and functional disturbances.
3Indications and Usage
Magnesium Sulfate is indicated in the following conditions:
Convulsions (treatment) - Intravenous magnesium sulfate is indicated for immediate control of life threatening convulsions in the treatment of severe toxemias (pre-eclampsia and eclampsia) of pregnancy and in the treatment of acute nephritis in children.
Hypomagnesemia (prophylaxis and treatment) - Magnesium Sulfate is indicated for replacement therapy in magnesium deficiency, especially in acute hypomagnesemia accompanied by signs of tetany similar to those of hypocalcemia.
Magnesium Sulfate is also used to prevent or treat magnesium deficiency in patients receiving total parenteral nutrition.
Tetany, uterine (treatment) - Magnesium Sulfate is indicated in uterine tetany as a myometrial relaxant.
Magnesium Sulfate should not be administered parenterally in patients with heart block or myocardial damage.
Magnesium Sulfate should be given very cautiously in the presence of serious impairment of renal function since it is excreted almost entirely by the kidneys.
The principle hazard in parenteral magnesium therapy is the production of abnormally high levels of magnesium in the plasma. Such high levels may cause flushing, sweating, hypotension, circulatory collapse and depression of cardiac and central nervous system function. The most immediate danger to life is respiratory depression.
During the period of parenteral therapy with magnesium salts, the patient should be watched carefully. A preparation of calcium, such as the gluconate or gluceptate should be at hand for intravenous administration as an antidote.
In the presence of severe renal insufficiency, no more than 20 grams of magnesium should be given within a forty-eight hour period. In eclampsia, however, renal function is not seriously impaired and magnesium may be more rapidly excreted.
This product contains aluminum that may be toxic. Aluminum may reach toxic levels with prolonged parenteral administration if kidney function is impaired. Premature neonates are particularly at risk because their kidneys are immature, and they require large amounts of calcium and phosphate solutions, which contain aluminum. Research indicates that patients with impaired kidney function, including premature neonates, who receive parenteral levels of aluminum at greater than 4 to 5 mcg/kg/day accumulate aluminum at levels associated with central nervous system and bone toxicity. Tissue loading may occur at even lower rates of administration.
When barbiturates, narcotics, or other hypnotics (or systemic anesthetics) are to be given in conjunction with magnesium, their dosage should be adjusted with caution because of the additive
central depressive effects of magnesium.
Pregnancy - Teratogenic effects: Pregnancy category C. Animal reproduction studies have not been conducted with Magnesium Sulfate Injection, USP 50%. It is also not known whether
Magnesium Sulfate Injection, USP 50% can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman or can affect reproduction capacity. Magnesium Sulfate Injection, USP 50% should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.
7Adverse Reactions
Flushing, sweating, sharply lowered blood pressure, hypothermia, stupor and ultimately, respiratory depression.
8Dosage and Administration
Intramuscular: Adults and older children: For severe hypomagnesemia, 1 to 5 g (2 to 10 mL of 50% solution) daily in divided doses; administration is repeated daily until serum levels have returned to normal. If deficiency is not severe, 1 g (2 mL of 50% solution) can be given once or twice daily. Serum magnesium levels should serve as a guide to continued dosage.
Intravenous: 1 to 4 g Magnesium Sulfate may be given intravenously in 10% to 20% solution, but only with great caution; the rate should not exceed 1.5 mL of 10% solution or equivalent per minute until relaxation is obtained.
Intravenous Infusion: 4 g in 250 mL of 5% Dextrose Injection at a rate not exceeding 3 mL per minute.
Usual Dose Range: 1 to 40 g daily.
Electrolyte Replenisher: Intramuscular 1 to 2 g in 50% solution four times a day until serum magnesium is within normal limits.
Usual Pediatric Dose: Intramuscular 20 to 40 mg per kg of body weight in a 20% solution repeated as necessary.
For Eclampsia: Initially 1 to 2 g in 25% or 50% solution is given intramuscularly. Subsequently, 1 g is given every 30 minutes until relief is obtained. The blood pressure should be monitored after each injection.
Parenteral drug products should be inspected visually for particulate matter and discoloration prior to administration, whenever solution and container permit.
9How Supplied
|Product No.
|Vial Sizes
|2 mL Single Dose vial
|Boxes of 25
|10 mL Single Dose vial
|Boxes of 25
|50 mL Single Dose vial
|Boxes of 2
Store at 20° to 25°C (68° to 77°F); excursions permitted to 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F) (See USP Controlled Room Temperature).
Discard unused portion.
Rev. 1/09
Rx Only
magnesium sulfate heptahydrate injection, solution
|Labeler - General Injectables & Vaccines, Inc (108250663)
|Business Operations
|General Injectables & Vaccines, Inc


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Baltimore, Maryland
Maryland Institute College Of Art
Baltimore International College
Coppin State College
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore Hebrew University
University Of Maryland Baltimore
Find More information about Baltimore, Maryland at wikipedia
All Related CommentsAll related comments for properties in Baltimore, Maryland
David l walker is a 2 degree rapes keep all kids awaySee this property: STOCKTON, BALTIMORE, MD
Alvin Tue Nov 18, 14 21:00:23
very well kept property very organized very presentable has a few issues but nothing that a little money couldn't take care of property looks very beautiful is worth looking intoSee this property: 708 S NORTH POINT RD, BALTIMORE, MD
beetle Tue Sep 23, 14 19:14:00
I live around the corner from this house and every time I walk by with my dog he starts to wine and become very scared. I walked past this house last night and I swear there was a shadow figure sitting behind a guy smoking a CIG on the porch. I don't k ow bout this place I get a weird fell I g all the time when I read the above post I had to say something!! This is crazy.See this property: 10 MIDSHIP RD, BALTIMORE, MD
Kevin Snipolets Thu May 29, 14 21:12:15
My grandmother use to live in this house in 1936. Her mother was a Hoodoo Witch doctor who used to draw symbols with chicken blood in the basement in a closet. She use to practice animal sacrifice in the basement. She would work with black magick. Whenever we went over we would see a black shadow man roam through the second and third floors and in the attic which is where she would conduct her rituals. I know this for a fact I attended her rituals with my mother and aunt.See this property: 10 MIDSHIP RD, BALTIMORE, MD
Kim Shoticks Thu May 29, 14 21:07:37
MY NAME IS MONYAE JOHNSON AND IM INTERESTED IN THE HOUSE/APARTMENT AD U POSTED ON CRAIGLIST.PLEASE CONTACT ME ASAP AT MY CELL 4102204400 OR MY EMAIL email@example.com this property: 1808 EAST OLIVER STREET, BALTIMORE, MD
Monyae Sat Mar 08, 14 17:23:55
YES, I NEED TO SPEAK TO THE OWNER, A MR. WILLIAM A GREEN. IT IS IN REGARDS TO HIS ST. JUDE MEDICAL PACEMAKER. IT IS IMPORTANT FOR HIM TO CALL ME AT 800-550-1648 EXT 2994, MY NAME IS CORRIENA. THANK YOU,See this property: 5030 DENMORE AVE, BALTIMORE, MD
Corriena Fri Nov 08, 13 15:48:20
I would like to know more information on this property.See this property: 4414 DAYTONA AVENUE, BALTIMORE, MD
Dawn Taylor Thu Oct 17, 13 22:15:33
Like to find owner, I would like to buy this homeSee this property: 914 RAMSAY ST, BALTIMORE, MD
Daion Tue Apr 02, 13 23:10:21
im trying to contact the owner of this propertSee this property: 2403 TALBOT RD, BALTIMORE, MD
Lakeisha Allen-Gamble Mon Feb 04, 13 00:10:00
Who owns this house? I would like to see home and possibly purchase with VA loan.See this property: 1730 E. 25TH STREET, BALTIMORE, MD
Aretha Redden Tue Jan 15, 13 15:12:22
I need some information about 731 E 23rd St, Baltimore MD 21218See this property: 731 E 23RD ST, BALTIMORE MD 21218, BALTIMORE, MD
Shahi Wed Jan 09, 13 02:33:46
I'm interested in this property and what like to know who owns it.See this property: 3424 2ND STREET, BALTIMORE, MD
Debbie Fri Jan 04, 13 17:12:22
want to find house no 39 1509See this property: RALWORTH, BALTIMORE, MD
elton charles Sat Oct 27, 12 01:56:34
elton charles houseSee this property: RALWORTH ROAD, BALTIMORE, MD
elton charles Fri Oct 26, 12 21:00:39
I have noticed this home just sitting. I would love to find out who owns the home. I have children and I am soon to be married. We would enjoy to rehab this home and move in.See this property: 5437 OLD FREDERICK ROAD, BALTIMORE, MD
Jessica Leitkowski Sat Oct 13, 12 11:13:35
any specific history regarding this property?See this property: 3413 KEENE AVENUE, BALTIMORE, MD
Beth Lang Mon Sep 24, 12 21:27:24
I am the ownerSee this property: 6300 LAURELTON AVE, BALTIMORE, MD
Dinah Sewell Mon Sep 24, 12 13:25:55
LOOKING FOR LAST OWNERSee this property: 1 EAST CHASE WHO OWNS UNIT 505, BALTIMORE, MD
gary shivers Mon Aug 20, 12 20:09:37
Hi im interested in renting to own 342 imla street i can afford 700 a month paymentsSee this property: 342 IMLA STREET, BALTIMORE, MD
sandra smith Sat Jul 28, 12 17:19:53
I WANT TO KNOW THE CURRENT OWNER OF 5616 MAGNOLIA AVESee this property: 5616 MAGNOLIA AVENUE BALTIMORE 21215 CURRENT TENANTS, BALTIMORE, MD
BARR N Sun Jul 22, 12 19:09:01


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By Rita Rubin
Reprinted from: What If I Have a C-Section?: How to Prepare, How to Decide, How to Recover Quickly by Rita Rubin © 2004 by Rita Rubin. (September 2004; $12.95US/$18.95CAN; 1-57954-907-1) Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher by calling (800) 848-4735 or visit their website at www.rodalestore.com.
If you're trying to figure out your chances of having a C-section, look in your wallet. If you have a health insurance card, research shows that you're more likely to deliver by cesarean than a woman who's uninsured or covered by Medicaid, the state/federal program for low-income Americans. And your driver's license yields more information than all those diplomas hanging in your obstetrician's office -- that is, if you were honest about your age and weight when you applied for your license!
If you were over your ideal weight before you conceived, or you gained more than 40 pounds while pregnant, you're more likely to deliver by cesarean. Those extra pounds raise your risk of developing diabetes or high blood pressure, which in turn increases your chance of having a C-section. Even if you avoid those complications, it's important to remember that the more weight you gain, the bigger your baby might be -- and bigger babies tend to be harder to push out. Studies by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere also suggest that the heavier you are, the longer your labor might be.
And even if you're a rail, simply being closer to your 40th than your 30th birthday raises your chance of delivering by cesarean, especially if it's your first baby. If you're one of those so-called "mature" pregnant women (don't you love those terms?) preparing to deliver your first baby, you're in good company. Growing numbers of women who delayed childbearing because of graduate school, career advancement, infertility, or late and second marriages are now tossing hair dye along with diapers into their shopping carts. Just look at these numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
In 2002, birth rates for women age 35 to 39 and age 40 to 44 were the highest in more than 30 years -- 41 births per 1,000 women and 8 per 1,000 women, respectively.
From 1990 to 2002, the number of babies born to women age 40 to 44 nearly doubled -- from 48,607 to 95,788.
The birth rate for women age 45 to 49 has been stable since 2000, but the actual number of births to women in this age group more than quadrupled between 1984 and 2002. That's because there are more of these women -- thanks to the baby boomer bulge -- and they're more likely to give birth, partly because of infertility treatments.
The majority of pregnant women over 35, or even over 40, deliver healthy babies. But there's no getting around the fact that the older you are, the more likely you are to deliver your baby by C-section. For example, Harvard researchers found that 43 percent of first-time mothers age 40 and older who delivered at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1998 had cesareans, compared to only 12 percent of those under 35. One reason for that disparity is pretty simple: The older you get, the more likely you are to experience pregnancy complications that predispose you to a cesarean. They include:
- Multiples (often a result of infertility treatments)
- Breech babies
- Illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure
But even if you don't have any of the above risk factors, you should be aware that simply being a first-time mother who's at least 35 years old increases your chance of having a C-section. Part of that may be physiological; part of it may be cultural. A San Francisco study of 8,500 first-time moms who delivered full-term, head-down babies found that the older they were, the longer they labored. Their cervixes dilated more slowly, and it took longer for them to push their babies out. Not surprisingly, then, the older they were, the more likely they were to receive oxytocin (frequently referred to by one of its brand names, Pitocin) to ramp up their labor. But it's not like your uterus suddenly heads south when you hit 35. Here's a cheery thought: The study found that the chance that your uterus has lost its oomph actually begins to increase when you're in your early 20s -- long before you begin to entertain thoughts of Botox or bifocals.
Even if you're as healthy as a horse and your uterus is chugging along just fine, your age might still mean the difference between a C-section and a vaginal delivery. Perhaps you've spent many years and many thousands of dollars in your quest for motherhood. It's understandable that you -- and your doctor -- might be a little more anxious about your baby's safety than if you were 10 or 15 years younger. This condition has been dubbed "precious baby" or "premium baby" syndrome, and it can lead to a lower threshold for performing C-sections. In other words, if there's even the slightest suggestion that your baby is in trouble during labor, your doctor would resort to a cesarean faster than with a younger patient who could easily get pregnant again. You might find this line of thinking perfectly logical, or you might not. But however you feel about it, you should discuss your feelings with your doctor well in advance of your due date. No matter what your age, remember that you're not destined to have your labor stall or your doctor choose a C-section without your knowledge or consent.
Reprinted from: What If I Have a C-Section?: How to Prepare, How to Decide, How to Recover Quickly by Rita Rubin © 2004 by Rita Rubin. (September 2004; $12.95US/$18.95CAN; 1-57954-907-1) Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher by calling (800) 848-4735 or visit their website at www.rodalestore.com.
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A Christian apologetics ministry dedicated to demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible through archaeological and biblical research.
Kathleen Kenyon declared the Biblical story to be false and the academic world accepted her conclusions. Do her conclusions hold up to scrutiny? Continue reading
Our Ministry relies on the generosity of people like you. Every small donation helps us develop and publish great articles.
Please support ABR!
This article was first published by ABR in the Spring 2003 issue of Bible and Spade.
The ancient city of Jericho lay about 6 mi (10 km) from the Jordan River and about 7.5 mi (12 km) northwest of the Dead Sea, 670 ft (204 m) below sea level and about 3,000 ft (914 m) below Jerusalem, 14 mi (22 km) away. A large gushing spring and the fertile plain surrounding the city earned it the distinction "the city of palm trees" (Dt 34:3; 2 Chr 28:15). A major east-west road ran next to the city, intersecting with the Jordan at a ford nearby, making Jericho a strategic crossroads.
The city had already been occupied for many centuries before the Israelites arrived. It had an inner wall and an outer fortified wall, several feet thick, enclosing about 9 acres of land. To the Israelites entering the Promised Land, Jericho presented a major obstacle.
According to the Bible, Joshua and the Israelites crossed the Jordan in the springtime and then celebrated the Passover on the plains outside Jericho, eating some of the fresh grain of the land since it was harvest time (Jos 3:15–17; 5:10–12). For seven days the Israelites marched around the city, accompanied by priests blowing trumpets. On the seventh day, after their seventh circuit around the city, the priests blew their trumpets, the people shouted, and the walls of the city, as the old song goes, "came a-tumblin' down."
Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city...with the edge of the sword" (Joshua 6:20–21, NKJV).
Section drawing of the north balk of Kathleen Kenyon's 1950s west trench through the fortification system at Jericho. The yellow area is what remains of the earthen embankment that surrounded the tell at the time of the Conquest. It was held in place by a stone retaining wall. Atop the retaining wall and also at the crest of the embankment there were once mud brick walls. When the walls collapsed (Jos 6:20), they were deposited at the base of the retaining wall, shown.
Only Rahab, who had hidden the Israelite spies, and her family were spared from the destruction (Jos 6:17, 22–26). The Israelites burned the city and all that was in it (vs 24). Over later centuries other peoples occupied, built on and abandoned the same site many times. Eventually it grew into a huge mound of earth and rubble several dozen feet high.
In the 19th and 20th centuries several organized excavations were carried out at the site. The most notable were those of the British archaeologists John Garstang (1930–1936) and Kathleen Kenyon (1952–1958). Garstang found fallen city walls, burned stores of grain and evidence of destruction of the city by fire, all of which he dated to about 1400 BC—right in line with the Biblical chronology of the city's destruction.
Kathleen Kenyon found much of the same evidence—collapsed walls, stores of grain and an ash layer from a massive conflagration. However, she reached a completely different conclusion. Rather than supporting the Biblical account, her finds at Jericho, she said, disproved the Biblical story. Why? She dated the city's destruction to around 1550 BC, meaning the site had been abandoned and therefore there was no city for the Israelites to capture at the time of the conquest.
Jericho retaining wall from the time of the Conquest that held in place an earthen embankment, Italian-Palestinian excavation, 1997. The Israelites marched around this wall for seven days. When the mud brick city walls collapsed, they were deposited at the base of the retaining wall forming a ramp by which the Israelites could enter the city (see drawing).
Her statements had a major impact on the scholarly world. Many hailed her findings as proof that the Bible was historically unreliable, that it couldn't be trusted. The only logical conclusion, agreed the scholars, was that its supposed historical annals were but myth fabricated much later in Israel's history. This became the accepted reality, entrenched in archaeological and academic circles.
Kathleen Kenyon died in 1978. However, detailed reports on her findings at Jericho weren't published until 1981–1983. Several years later, when archaeologist Bryant Wood—then a visiting professor at the University of Toronto—examined her findings, he was surprised to find that "Kenyon's analysis was based on what was not found at Jericho rather than what was found" (1990:50).
He realized she had based her dating on the fact that she did not find a particular kind of imported pottery found at other sites in the Near East—thus Jericho must have been unoccupied at the time. The problem, Dr. Wood learned, was that she had excavated in a poor section of town in which the inhabitants could not have afforded to buy and use such imported pottery.
More surprising still, he discovered that Kathleen Kenyon actually had found indigenous pottery that dates precisely to the time of the Biblical conquest of the city, but inexplicably ignored it. She also overlooked the fact that her predecessor, John Garstang, had found painted pottery from the time of the conquest. Egyptian amulets he found at a nearby cemetery also indicated the site was regularly inhabited from several centuries before until right around the Biblically derived date of the city's fall. Thus there was no occupation gap as she had supposed.
In spite of such major problems with her conclusions, Kenyon's view remains entrenched in the minds of many to this day. Yet in reality what Kenyon, Garstang and other excavators have found at Jericho correlates precisely with the account in the book of Joshua. They found collapsed walls, not walls that were broken down from the outside but that had fallen down (Jos 6:20). The walls had not fallen inward, but outward, creating a ramp of fallen bricks by which the Israelites "went up into the city, every man straight before him" (Jos 6:20).
The unusually large stores of carbonized grain found in the ruins showed that the city had endured only a short siege, which the Bible numbers at seven days (Jos 6:12–20), and that the grain had been recently harvested (Jos 3:15). Also, because grain was a valuable commodity almost always plundered by conquering forces, the large amount of grain left in the ruins is puzzling—but consistent with God's command that nothing in the city be taken except valuable metals to be used for the treasury of the LORD (Jos 6:24).
The city had also been burned, exactly as the Bible records (Jos 6:24). As Kathleen Kenyon herself noted:
The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire, and every room was filled with fallen bricks, timbers, and household utensils; in most rooms the fallen debris was heavily burnt, but the collapse of the walls of the eastern rooms seems to have taken place before they were affected by the fire (Wood 1990:56).
The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire, and every room was filled with fallen bricks, timbers, and household utensils; in most rooms the fallen debris was heavily burnt, but the collapse of the walls of the eastern rooms seems to have taken place before they were affected by the fire (Wood 1990:56).
As she observed, the walls had collapsed before the city was burned—again, exactly as the Bible states.
Pottery found by John Garstang in the 1930s in the destruction layer at Jericho (note evidence of burning). This distinctive pottery, decorated with red and black geometric patterns, was in use only in the later part of the 15th century BC, the time of the Israelite Conquest according to Biblical chronology.
Archaeology—subject as it is to archaeologists' decisions, interpretations and even biases—is admittedly not an exact science. Yet, when viewed objectively, the evidence uncovered at Jericho precisely fits with the Biblical account. Rather than disproving the Bible, when findings from Jericho are correctly interpreted, the exact opposite is the case. In all aspects of the Biblical account that can be verified by archaeology, the evidence from Jericho supports the accuracy of the Bible in every detail. (Reprint by permission from GoodNews 7.2 [2002]: 10-11).
Recommended Resources for Further Study
Second Great Battleof Jericho DVD
Wood, B.G.1990 Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence. Biblical Archaeology Review 16.2:44–58.
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I constantly discover agreements between archeologists and biblical accounts. The History channel alone is full of these findings, all of which I find intriguing. I'm not sure if historical accounts prove or disprove the Bible, but I do know that it's interesting fodder for thought and discussion.
bible lessons - 7/8/2010 12:44:02 AM
I have pondered over this several times myself. Forgive me as I comment 2 years after you post, but as I write my mid-term thesis I came across this. Your perspectives are enlightening!
Susan - 3/3/2011 11:31:22 PM
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text:
While data mining laws are mired in the courts, a number of alternatives are proliferating to help states manage costs and help physicians control encounters with sales reps.
One voluntary, national program making headway is the Physician Data Restriction Program (PDRP), the American Medical Association's opt-out plan to control physician prescription data. Nearly 12,000 doctors have signed up, at a rate of 120-130 per week, according to Jeremy Lazarus, MD, a member of the AMA Board of Trustees and a speaker of its House of Delegates.
Acceptance hasn't come cheap. "We've spent half a million dollars on advertising in 70 medical journals to raise awareness of the program," Lazarus told MM&M.
The awareness campaign, aimed at all physicians, appears to be making an impact. About 65% of sign-ups have come from outside of AMA's roughly 240,000-member base.
PDRP began in July 2006 as a way for doctors—a number of whom were irritated by reps pressuring them to improve their prescribing numbers—to prevent intrusive details. In theory, reps shouldn't have knowledge of what a PDRP physician is prescribing. It was seen as a chance for pharmaceutical companies to establish appropriate internal policies or face the consequences—state laws prohibiting the sale of prescription records.
Is it working? Lazarus said industry is being true to its agreement with the AMA. Among participants, "so far we've had no complaints," he said. "This gives us a way of gauging whether pharmaceutical companies are taking this seriously, and so far it appears that they are."
The program isn't a complete loss for drug companies, which still get access to the data. Moreover, the ability to use information for research purposes is maintained.
"Our data are used widely throughout the healthcare system by government agencies, including the FDA and CDC, by academics and researchers, consumer groups and professional groups," noted Randy Frankel, VP for external affairs, IMS Health.
He said restrictions on such research were an "unintended consequence" of some of the state laws. New Hampshire passed a complete ban on Rx data mining, but the law was struck down in court on constitutional grounds. Oral arguments were concluded Jan. 9 on the appeal of that law, and if the three judges of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston affirm the decision, it would become the third court to rule that such laws violate First Amendment protection of truthful commercial speech.
In Maine a preliminary injunction was granted to prevent enforcement of its law, which is also on appeal, and Vermont is amending its own data mining law, already passed, in order to avoid a similar fate.
After New Hampshire's statute was struck down, many states backed off similar efforts, Frankel explained. IMS, which along with Verispan and Wolters Kluwer Health sued to have the three state laws overturned, used the New Hampshire case as an opportunity to articulate the value of the data and how they are used throughout the healthcare system, as well as how restrictions could potentially compromise patient care.
"States went in other directions to manage cost and quality that had more to do with the mechanics of drug selection, such as preferred drug lists," Frankel said. "Others are experimenting with academic detailing efforts, which by the way are driven by provider-level data."
Minnesota and others are requiring drug companies to report their expenses at the physician level, while California has codified the voluntary marketing guidelines of industry, specifically the PhRMA code. The District of Columbia is taking yet another tack in licensing sales reps.
The growing trend toward data transparency is important to the dissemination of evidence-based information, Frankel said, as well as informing decision-making by providing useful information about quality and cost that's relevant, especially considering the amount of treatment variability.
Whether these state-level efforts will work is anyone's guess, but, like the AMA's PDRP, they seem to offer real alternatives to indirect or blanket restrictions on data mining without impacting quality and safety.


text:
Cutting school arts will harm children
It's tragic to hear that the School District of Philadelphia plans to eliminate art and music enrichment programs because this will have a devastating effect on children's' lives.
Funds that could be used to empower children to express themselves through music and art are going to be used instead to house these same children in American jails later on in their lives. The point is that our children need outlets for their talents and for their creative energy. Music and art give children a creative way to express themselves. If there is no outlet for these expressions of the human spirit, children will find outlets that are destructive rather than constructive.
Everyone, regardless of whether they have children or not, should care about this issue because without access to the arts, children will experience a sense of despair, society will decay, crime will increase, and this will affect every citizen negatively.
Sharon Katz
Musician and Founder
The Peace Train
Students' health at stake in budget
Thank you for highlighting the very important issue of education in the recent Local. Despite many impressions of Chestnut Hill as "tony," the residents represent a diverse base of citizens and many do rely on our public education system.
While Jenks serves the community well, the stories about the upper education system for our residents is not so well regarded. Unfortunately, despite a high tax burden on the area, the finances for the school district continue to struggle, and now, Philadelphia is not only closing a number of schools, but, without some additional money, threatening to cut key services. In addition to the anger and frustration noted in the article, I would like to add my perspective as well.
For several years, the dire states of the Philadelphia school districts presented a number of difficult choices for parents in helping to choose and pay for the right education for their child. As residents of Chestnut Hill and members of the parish of Our Mother of Consolation, we were blessed to have the option of a high quality elementary education for our children. However, when our younger son developed a chronic condition, we needed to explore a new way for him to keep up with his education with more extensive accommodations.
The school district's initial accommodation presented a very narrow view. Rather than struggle with a burdened district, we quickly determined that an online learning experience (which is considered public education) would provide the optimal solution.
Given further pressures on the city's schools, I suspect more parents will need to explore options similar to our choice if the resources not only to educate but to maintain the children's health and safety continue to dwindle. Unfortunately, I fear that if the city continues to starve an already hungry student population, the school system will continue to deteriorate, losing even more students and failing to serve the public.
Janet Point
Chestnut Hill
Fund the schools
I hope we all contact our representatives in City Council and Harrisburg this week to demand the additional funds the district has requested; the bare-bones budget the District would adopt without these new revenues would be devastating for our schools. Mt. Airy is fortunate to have a vibrant business and civic community and I think we have a shared responsibility to support our neighborhood schools however we can. One way the Mt. Airy Schools Committee hopes to help is by using the EITC tax credit that allows businesses to direct their tax dollars to support our neighborhood schools – money that otherwise would have been sent to Harrisburg. Our next step will be a broader planning process to identify how to best leverage the resources in our community to support schools in a strategic, meaningful way.
Abby Thaker
Special Projects Manager
Mt. Airy USA
The constant cull
A representative of Philadelphia's Commission on Parks and Recreation recently balked at a basic biological fact, "compensatory rebound." I would refer the Commission to The Natural History of Deer by Professor Rory Putman, publisher of 12 books and over 100 technical articles on deer. He also acts as a consultant on the various impacts of deer.
This phenomenon is apparent in Fairmount Park given the upward trend in deer population numbers since the now 15-year-long siege began. "Culling" deer is self-perpetuating. Once it starts, it will have to continue, according to respected ecologist Thomas Eveland, Ph.D.
A recent PBS program on Whitetail Deer described them as beautiful animals that we should feel privileged to have among us. As long as we fail to recognize them as unique somebodies with inherent worth, not generic somethings and as long as we pursue our egocentric and destructive practices, this human holocaust against deer will persist.
Deer are but contemporary scapegoats, which only fosters irrational dislike and perpetuates the killing of these innocents.
Bridget Irons
Chestnut Hill


text: Hello, as an answer to recent postings about "mpich distros" and "revamping our beowulf", I would suggest to use the CLIC cluster distribution (http://clic.mandrakesoft.com/index-en.html). It includes the last mpich release and an efficient cloning toolbox (http://ka-tools.sourceforge.net) which is our contribution to the CLIC project. CLIC is managed by a Linux distro maker, Mandrake, and thus aims at gathering the best ideas from HPC developers & users. The first release was introduced last month. It includes software like MPICH, LAM, PVM, OpenPBS, Ganglia, pconsole, ka-run, clusterit, gexec, pcp, blas, scalapack, vrjuggler, netjuggler, ... -- Philippe Augerat Informatique et distribution CNRS INRIA IMAG ZIRST - 51, avenue Jean Kuntzmann 38330 MONTBONNOT SAINT MARTIN Tel: +33 4 76 61 20 51 Fax: +33 4 76 61 20 99


text: On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Greg Lindahl wrote: > On Tue, Aug 28, 2007 at 01:58:19PM -0400, Robert G. Brown wrote: > >> Of course first my novel has to sell a million or so copies so I can >> afford the time. > > rgb, we have faith in your ability to write the longest NaNoWriMo > novel ever! Curiously, I just had an idea for a really great "traditional" mystery novel, and yeah, I think that 50,000 words in a whole month would be no problem -- if I didn't have anything like a life, or teaching...;-) The Book of Lilith has roughly twice that but it took me about three months to get through a complete first draft, and then a year or more to edit, hack, proofread. It would be fun to try this November, though, sure. Isaac Asimov is one of my heroes, though. 500 books, 90,000 letters, and he wrote EVERYTHING -- mystery, SF, fantasy, science... IIRC he wrote a novel a month or thereabouts for years straight and "just did it" -- little to no revision. I'm not there yet:-) Also, Lulu (however true to the do-it-yourself open source spirit) is a bit of an experiment. You learn a LOT from running through the whole publication process on your own, no agent, editor, proofreader (other than yourself). The place where the model gets a bit weak is marketing -- it is HARD to market a book yourself. Getting it "out there" isn't a problem, but getting it reviewed by somebody that would be taken seriously, getting it on brick-and-mortar bookstore shelves, that is. So worst comes to worst I learn from it. And Lulu IS fun -- I commend it to would be authors as a playground if nothing else... But this is slipping off topic, as no, I haven't figured out how to make my wulf 'bots write books. Whenever I hook up the damn parallel pseudorandom number generator driven wulf-monkeys to the typewriter, all that comes out is garbage bashing C++ or Fortran, the umpty-umptieth iteration of "how to build a small/starter cluster", or various snippets of latex equations, some of which I trim out and forward to this list, some of which I put in random places in my lecture notes. I just don't get it! No Shakespeare, no Asimov. And hunt-and-pecking out a novel is hard work! :-) rgb -- Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu


text:
Owls bounce back from bounty-hunting days
"In a comparatively short time in Gloucester 227 men and boys and one woman have killed 983 hawks and 137 big owls, and the good work is still going strong," Allen wrote to the Mathews Journal.
He was a fierce advocate of eradicating the raptors in order to preserve chicken yards and the quail population. And in that distant time when Allen wrote, the Virginia Game Commission was matching each county-paid bounty of 25 cents or more a bird, with 25 cents from state funds.
The bounty lasted for some years but was gone by 1937, when Allen vented his frustration in another letter to the Journal: "The present statewide wail over the disappearance of small game and the reappearance of the scourge of hawks, owls, crows and other vermin shows a … despicable tolerance. The statewide bounty on vermin was a fully proved success. The last year I led this work there were killed in Virginia in the one year 67,276 hawks, 11,693 owls, 58,658 crows and 15,699 weasels."
The great horned owl is on the come-back trail. Now protected along with other raptors, the nocturnal creature is a frequently heard (if not seen) member of the local bird population. Pre-dawn hooting conversations have become familiar in rural areas where the owls make their homes, and sightings of the large owls at dusk, as they search for meals from trees or in fields, are often reported.
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text:
Scouting Report: Havelock, New Zealand
Eleven people lucky enough to travel for a living reveal their favorite recent discoveries—places they happened upon and still can't stop thinking about. Here are their stories.
THE TRAVELER Leon Logothetis, a London broker who jumped ship at the chance to work for the Discovery Channel show Destination Future. The experience inspired his own show, Amazing Adventures of a Nobody, which cataloged his super-frugal adventures from New York to L.A. and from Paris to Moscow.
THE PLACE Logothetis isn't the first man to attract a following by traveling with a daily budget of $5. Arthur Frommer, creator of the Frommer's travel guides and Budget Travel magazine, wrote Europe on $5 a Day back in the late 1950s. But Logothetis has taken on that challenge in the 2000s, when $5 may not even buy you breakfast.
During last year's winter holidays, with no TV crew around, Logothetis and a friend took a road trip in New Zealand, and they wound up in Havelock, amid the wineries and waterways of the South Island's northern tip. "We had just arrived by ferry from the North Island, and headed directly to Havelock to eat some mussels," he says. The town is known for its green-lipped mussels, which are superior in size and, many argue, in flavor to other mussel varieties. Logothetis favors The Mussel Pot, where diners sit around the fireplace on chilly evenings. "It bills itself as the world's premier mussel restaurant and doesn't disappoint," he says.
Havelock, Logothetis discovered, has more going for it than mussels. The village—with less than 500 residents—sits at the head of the wide, startlingly clear Pelorus Sound, and a boat or kayak boarded at the marina leads to winding waterways where dolphins jump from the water and dark-green mountains jut steeply into the air around every turn. First populated by gold miners and timber workers, Havelock's tiny downtown is chockablock with cute two-story colonial buildings that now house galleries and restaurants. "Both the North and South Islands of New Zealand are filled with dreamlike scenery and picturesque little towns," says Logothetis. "But of all of them, Havelock is my favorite. It's just this little slice of heaven, with great food, super-friendly people, and an amazing setting."
To experience the region's natural beauty at its best, Logothetis recommends kayaking or taking a water taxi from Havelock to the Nydia Track, as "beautiful and serene a walking trail that you can find," which leads to blissfully undeveloped beaches, as well as Te Mahoerangi, a remote ecolodge with cabins and dorm accommodations.
THE DETAILS It's a 30-minute drive from Picton (where ferry service connects the North and South Islands) to Havelock or a five-hour drive from Christchurch; car rentals, budget.co.nz, from $40 a day; The Mussel Pot, themusselpot.co.nz, steamed mussels $12; Te Mahoerangi, nydiatrack.org.nz, cabin for two $65.
Your turn! Have you discovered a place like these while traveling? Share your stories by posting a comment at the bottom of page 1: Binn, Switzerland.


text:
Eugenio Montale was born into a family of businessmen in Genoa, Italy, on October 12, 1896. During World War I, he served as an infantry officer on the Austrian front. Orginially Montale had trained to be an opera singer, but when his voice teacher died in 1923, he gave up singing and concentrated his efforts on writing.
After his first book, Ossi di seppia (Cuttlefish Bones), appeared in 1925, Montale was received by critics as a profoundly original and experimental poet. His style mixed archaic words with scientific terms and idioms from the vernacular. He was dismissed from his directorship of the Gabinetto Vieusseux research library in 1938 for refusing to join the Fascist party. He withdrew from public life and began translating English writers such as Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Herman Melville, and Eugene O'Neill. In 1939, Le occasioni (The Occasions) appeared, his most innovative book, followed by La bufera e altro (The Storm and Other Things, 1956). It was this trio of books established him as a founder of the hermetic school of Italian poetry.
In 1948 he moved from Florence to Milan, where he became chief literary critic for Italy's primary newspaper, Corriere della Sera. In addition to writing poems, Montale was also a prolific essayist, writer of stories and travel sketches, distinguished music critic, translator, and amateur painter. He corresponded with Ezra Pound (despite Pound's Fascist sympathies), Italo Svevo, and Salvatore Quasimodo. In 1961, Montale was awarded an honorary degree at the University of Rome and shortly afterwards, at the universities of Milan, Cambridge, and Basel. In recognition of his work, as well as his courageous opposition to fascism, he was made a lifetime member of the Italian Senate in 1967.
After a long break from writing poetry, Montale published four collections during the last ten years of his life: Satura (Miscellany, 1971), Diario del '71 e del '72 (Diary of 1971 and 1972, 1973), Quaderno di quattro anni (Notebook of Four Years, 1977), and Altri versi e poesi disperse (Other and Uncollected Poems, 1981). In 1975 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions." Montale died in Milan in 1981 at the age of 85.
Selected Bibliography
Altri versi e poesi disperse (1981)
Diario 1971-1972 (1973)
Finisterre (1943)
L'opera in versi (1980)
La bufera e altro (1956)
La casa dei doganieri e altre poesie (1932)
Le occasioni (1939)
Ossi di seppia (1925)
Quaderno di quattro anni (1977)
Quaderno di traduzioni (1948)
Satura (1971)
Auto da fé: Cronache in due tempi (1966)
Fuori di casa (1969)
La farfalla di Dinard (1956)
Nel nostro tempo (1976)


text:
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We need a designer who can design a book in Adobe Suit of Products. This book is of 60-70 pages. We will provide page template, most of the images, text, font style, etc. In some pages some illustrations are required to be created (25-25 images in total), which will be simple illustrations. In other cases only formatting is required (text + images). We may need to re-utilize the image by recoloring those. We need this book in inDesign template.
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text:
Why CCM MPs `crucified` government
The Parliamentary move to reject two government motions this week was influenced by what some legislators termed as 'arrogance and disregard' shown by ministers and some top government officials, The Guardian on Sunday has learnt.
Finance and Economic Affairs minister, Mr Mustafa Mkulo
According to some members of Parliament who spoke to the Guardian on Sunday, their displeasure due to the government's disregard of cautionary advice given in advance to ministers and other key officials was the reason for the embarrassment suffered by the executive early this week.
A well placed source in the House said the government would not have suffered such embarrassing experience if it had been considerate to numerous calls from ruling party MPs.
Finance Minister Mustafa Mkulo was the first to be put to the sword last Thursday as his proposed resolution to amend the Excise Management and Tariffs Act aimed at reducing tax charges on bottled and packed water produced in the country from Sh69 to Sh12 hit a snag.
As if that was not enough, later in the evening session Attorney General Frederick Werema also became a victim of the MPs' uncooperative stance as his bill for the Written Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, No 2, 2012 was rejected.
The parliamentarians argued that the two government motions contained numerous faults, a situation that revealed a lack of seriousness in preparation of the documents tabled before the House. It was finally decided that the two motions be re-tabled during the next sitting in April.
" To anyone who was keen in the House it was very clear that the legislators mainly from CCM had decided not to pass the motions but nobody within the government cared about the obvious danger it (government) was facing. The ministers took it for granted – business as usual – and MPs were totally gutted," noted the MP, who opted not to be named.
"On Wednesday, the day before the two motions were tabled, the leadership of the CCM caucus was informed of the looming MPs' decision and thus was advised to convene a meeting so as to clear the air," but nothing was done.
However, this paper has learnt from well placed legislators within CCM that the party caucus meeting was hastily organized on Wednesday after the House business of the day only to be called off upon poor attendance, of less than 60 MPs. The party caucus is made up of the 286 CCM parliamentarians, therefore any number below 60 attending legislators is only about 20 percent of the MPs.
For the first time since the re-introduction of multiparty politics in 1992, a large number of the legislature sounded loudly against government motions.
Deputy Speaker Job Ndugai had tactically ensured that the decision be made through sound voting as to who were in favour of the motion or to the contrary.
Ndugai, MP for Kongwa told this paper afterwards that it was clear that opposing voices were louder than the supporting voices and nothing could be done to rescue the executive from defeat.
Having in mind the usual support to the motions but not sensed the House mood and its eventual clout, Minister Mkulo remained relaxed in a big smile as deputy Speaker Ndugai ruled that voting be done after Mkulo had responded to various matters raised by MPs during the debate.
The caucus meeting held on Thursday saw some MPs even proposing that the minister should resign as they were angered by his admission that the proposed resolution to lower tax charges for bottled and packed water from Sh69 to Sh12 per litre was influenced by businessmen.
The change of tariff would cause a budgetary deficit of Sh7.719 billion for the remaining part of the 2011/2012 financial year.
"MPs were furious because all the key matters were discussed at the parliamentary standing committee for Finance and Economic Affairs but no changes were made. Then the House learned that influence came from businessmen," irate MPs noted.
The minister told the House the Sh7.719 billion deficit would be endured by reducing recurrent expenditure Other Charges (OC) in eight areas: allowances, workshops, purchase of vehicles, purchase of furniture, running of office, training within and outside the country, local and out of the country trips as well as building refurbishments.
CCM MPs were displeased that all these areas were copied from the opposition (Chadema) shadow budget speech for 2011/2012, which if implemented would paralyse government functions in various areas.
Charles Tizeba (Buchosa-CCM) sparked off the eventual bitter decision by the House as he requested minister Mkulo to withdraw the motion since it had a number of faults.
"Honourable Speaker as per Section 58 of the parliamentary standing orders this proposed resolution has to be withdrawn so that all the faults can be amended and be re-tabled later," said the MP, signaling as well the amendment of tariff was influenced by businessmen and not driven by sympathy for ordinary people.
That came after nine MPs including Tizeba had debated strongly against the proposed Resolution, but among those only Zalina Madabida (Special Seats) had not seconded the motion. Deputy Speaker Ndugai decided that minister Mkulo should be allowed to windup by responding to all matters raised by legislators and a conclusion could be reached thereafter.
For Attorney General Werema's bill aimed at amending 16 written laws, the black spot was the bill section relating to the Higher Education Students Loan Board (HESLB) which according to MPs' views the proposed amendments were unacceptable as they would deny loans and higher education to applicants from relatively poor families whilst benefiting the rich ones.
Werema's attempt to have other amendment be made with exclusion of the review of the HESLB Act was strongly rejected by the House on grounds that the motion could not be passed piecemeal.
By FLORIAN KAIJAGE, The Guardian


text:
"Schmidt Steps Back"
Louis Begley
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95
The self-portrait begins with the intention of mimesis. The ego stands outside itself looking in at a now-inert object composed of personal history. Psychoanalysis precludes the possibility of such undertakings. How can the subject relinquish its own agency, turning itself into the object of scrutiny?
Hence the proliferation of such attempts in everyone from Rembrandt and Durer to Joyce, Updike, and Roth, with their famed alter egos — Stephen Dedalus ("Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," "Ulysses"), Rabbit ("Rabbit, Run," "Rabbit Redux," etc.), and Zuckerman ("My Life as a Man," "The Ghost Writer," and "Zuckerman Unbound") — are by definition fictions. Philip Roth does appear as a character in "Operation Shylock," but he's a double. That's what alter egos are created for. They use hyperbole and self-dramatization to tread the fine line between fiction and reality.
From the beginning of his career, Louis Begley has followed the path of writers like Updike and Roth, perhaps with a nod to Louis Auchincloss, another lawyer turned writer, who, like Mr. Begley, recorded the manners and mores of a privileged class. Maciek, the Jewish child who is the lead character of Mr. Begley's "Wartime Lies," is spared the depredations of the Holocaust by an aunt who is able to pass the two of them off as Catholic — a story that closely resembles Mr. Begley's own biography.
And then there are the Schmidt books, "About Schmidt," "Schmidt Delivered," and now "Schmidt Steps Back," in which we are introduced to a character whose story also closely resembles that of the author. The law firm of Wood & King that appears in the latest novels conjures Debevoise & Plimpton, where Mr. Begley was a partner. Schmidt has a house in the Hamptons and attended Harvard, like his creator, who graduated with a summa in '54 (indeed, Harvard, Harvards everywhere, without a drop to spare, but where are all the Yalies?).
However, there's one exception to these comparisons. Schmidt is not only not Jewish like his creator, but he also has a partially deserved reputation as a Jew-baiter in his firm — admittedly an odd turn for Mr. Begley's alter ego to take. Is there a bit of self-reproach in the accusations of anti-Semitism, as if the character Mr. Begley created and by extension Mr. Begley himself were still like young Maciek, forced to hide his Jewishness to survive?
If there were ever any doubts about the strong autobiographical impulse in Mr. Begley's work, they were dispelled by a piece the writer contributed to the Op-Ed page of The Times on the occasion of his latest offering in the Schmidt saga. "I have followed the progress into old age of Albert Schmidt, like me a retired lawyer, in three novels," Mr. Begley wrote. "Schmidt is 60 when we meet him in l991; when we part on New Year's Day in 2009, he is 78, therefore a couple of years older than I was then. Life has not been kind to him, but so far, Schmidt enjoys excellent health, marching up and down the Atlantic beach in Bridgehampton and New York City's avenues, and doing laps in his pool. Although he worries about his performance, his libido is intact. Nevertheless, the reflection of his face in the window of a shop is frightening; he sees a red nose and bloodshot eyes, lips pursed up tight over stained and uneven teeth, an expression so lugubrious and so pained it resists his efforts to smile. My appreciation of my own charms is not very different. Like Schmidt, I see that nothing good awaits me at the end of the road, and that passing years will turn my life into a Via Crucis."
In "Schmidt Steps Back," Mr. Begley's character muses, "Dementia, the illness most likely to cut off the means of escape, held more terror than any other . . . the hollow cheeks or the fold of skin hanging from his neck. Did his age and the ravages of time make it reprehensible to keep overpaying the Hampton mafia of gardeners, handymen, carpenters, and plumbers for the pleasure of having everything at his house just so?"
Later, as Schmidt tortures himself over the younger woman he's in love with, Mr. Begley remarks about his character, "He had been asking her in various formulations to tie her life to his. How could he ignore the disadvantages and risks inherent in that fact: the inevitable diminution of his libido and potency, incapacitating illnesses he might suffer, the near certainty that he would be the first to die?" If we are seeing a "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," to quote the title of a John Ashbery poem, it's "a portrait of the artist as an aging man."
On the other hand, how far can we as readers go? Can we infer that Mr. Begley himself doesn't take Cialis or Viagra when the narrator remarks, "he had not yet tried any of the miracle pills that old geezer-in-chief Bob Dole swore by on television"? Did Mr. Begley, like Schmidt, have an affair with a 20-year-old Puerto Rican waitress? Were a former wife and future girlfriend both editors in publishing houses? Did Mr. Begley, like his alter ego, celebrate making partner by going to 21 and ordering a Pommard?
And while "Schmidt Steps Back" is not a scandal sheet, one can't help speculating about the real identity of Gil Blackman, Schmidt's Harvard roommate, who has become a famous director, or whether the Manhattan club that appears in the novel is the venerable and sometimes controversial old Century, a proper home indeed for Harvard-educated former Debevoise partners who become highly touted novelists. After all, this is the Hamptons, where places and names are the lingua franca of social interaction.
In this regard, reading "Schmidt Steps Back" can become a kind of celebrity sweepstakes, albeit on a refined level. On which former lawyer turned novelist is the character of Joe Canning based? Could it be another mutation of Mr. Begley himself, to the extent that Mr. Begley, like Canning, is a lawyer turned novelist who is married to a biographer? The reticulations of Mr. Begley's art/life leitmotif are often dizzying. On which Hamptons billionaire is the character of the Egyptian Jew, Mike Mansour, parenthetically one of the least realized of the author's creations, based? Is O'Henry's, the clubby Bridgehampton eating establishment, Bobby Van's? Will we find Mr. Begley holding court there?
"Schmidt Steps Back" is a Who's Who a clef. But as the old saw goes, "All autobiography is art and all art autobiography." Proust was the ur-creator of the kind of roman a clef we're talking about, and he wrote an essay titled "Contre Sainte-Beuve" to attack the contemporary critic who insisted on the necessity of going back to an author's biography to understand his work.
If the latest installment of the Schmidt saga raises these questions, it also doesn't prevent it from being a very good tale and at times an old-fashioned page-turner. It begins in the dawn of the Obama era and extends back to l968, when Schmidt and his deceased wife, Mary, were first making their way in the world — he as a lawyer and she in publishing — against a background of revolutionary politics, to l981, when the election of Mitterrand in France sets the stage for a radical change in the path taken by Schmidt's law partner Tim Verplanck, and finally to the l995 Oklahoma City bombing, when Schmidt, retired from his law practice and working for the foundation run by Mansour, journeys to Paris and ignites an affair with the now-deceased Verplanck's wife, Alice.
Mr. Begley's technique is impressionistic. Huge agglomerations of data, ancillary relationships (another affair with a former Solidarity member, Pani Danuta, is a digression from the relationship with Alice), and learned citations (Schmidt's reading includes Trollope's "The Way We Live Now," a satire about financial venality, and Coetzee's "Disgrace," a novel about the legacy of apartheid) all vie for attention. Readers who have ever ventured into the personals columns in The New York Review of Books will enjoy the particularly humorous and ribald episode that results from Schmidt's response to an ad. Words like acedia and vade mecum compete for space with the Anglo-Saxon iterations of the female genitalia.
The section on the relationship between Tim and Alice Verplanck is a kind of novel within a novel that displays Mr. Begley's mastery of the conventions of a certain kind of sophisticated romance fiction. It includes infidelity, ambition, the Holocaust, AIDS, and, a favorite Hamptons subject, admission into prestigious Manhattan private schools like Brearley and St. Bernard's. Schmidt's daughter's miscarriage and the birth of his onetime mistress's baby have the quality of one of those old-fashioned montage sequences in which the train is coming with the hapless femme fatale tied to the tracks.
The novel ends with a horrific and hard-to-swallow Dickensian disaster, which leads to an almost equally indigestible happy ending that even Dickens would have had trouble writing. But it's the soaring prose and the author's polymathic imagination that drive the plot.
Listen to how the beloved Alice's hands are described. They were "almost as large as his but fine, with delicate elongated fingers, they were the hands of a mime, reminding him, as she gesticulated, which she did often when telling a story, of Jean-Louis Barrault in Les enfants du paradis." The pointillism and sense of detail are increased by the use of paraphrasis, all the dialogue between characters being described rather than rendered.
But Mr. Begley's most powerful technique is the juxtaposition of individual and collective experience. "Was there anyone, he wondered, outside of Obama's family, of course, whose affection for the man was as great and as pure as Schmidt's?" Mr. Begley comments about his character at the beginning of the novel. Are we talking about Hegel or Herder? Is Mr. Begley's tale presenting a philosophy of history? The answer is probably no. But the contrast between the micro and macrocosm, between the individual and the larger whole, creates a dialectic that's at the root of the novel's power.
When you see Monet's "Water Lilies" up close, it's impossible to make out the forms. You have to step back to see the shapes of things. "Schmidt Steps Back" is Mr. Begley's title. "It was time for him to step back," the author himself comments. History illuminates the shadows on the wall of Mr. Begley's cave.
Louis Begley has a house in Sagaponack.
Francis Levy, who lives in Manhattan and Wainscott, is the author of the novels "Erotomania: A Romance" and "Seven Days in Rio." He blogs at TheScreamingPope.com.


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City Says Stay Out of Parks
It's not often that residents are asked to stay away from city parks, but that's what'shappening in Sioux Falls. Mayor Mike Huether is asking people to stay away from the parks and bike trails.
Huether says there are hanging limbs everywhere and the strong winds predicted by the National Weather Service over the next 48 hours could create a dangerous situation.
Forecasters say we could get winds gusting up to 40 miles per hour, which can cause storm-damaged, hanging branches to fall.
City officials say the 75 parks and 30 miles of bike paths will be addressed after the immediate needs of neighborhoods are met.


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10 March 2016
More on Gifts
by Miranda Marshall – Director, February 2014Download
Anna French
Chartered Legal ExecutiveRead more
Anna joined the Sheringham office of Hayes + Storr in May 2011 and is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Legal Executives, specialising in Wills and Probate, Powers of Attorney, Elderly Client and Private Client Services.
Anna studied at the University of East Anglia gaining a BA (Hons) in History in 2003 and an MA in Early Modern History in 2004. She then moved down to Devon and undertook her ILEX examinations whilst working for a firm of Solicitors in Torquay. Anna became a Graduate Member of ILEX in August 2010 and won the ILEX Student of the Year Award 2010 for achieving the highest average score in her exams.
Away from the office, Anna enjoys equine sports and has retained an interest in history. She is particularly pleased to be back in Nelson's County.
Donna Butterfield
Private Client Adviser
firstname.lastname@example.com more
Donna joined Hayes + Storr in August 2017 as a private client advisor in the elderly client services department. She has worked in the care industry for over sixteen years, nine of which were spent in management roles. She now advises and offers ongoing support to clients, who perhaps because of age or illness, need help with domestic matters or care. In her spare time, Donna enjoys keeping fit, scuba diving and walking her dogs.
Fiona Elliott
SolicitorRead more
Fiona joined Hayes + Storr in October 2017 and works out of the Kings Lynn and Swaffham offices specialising in Wills and Probate and Powers of Attorney.
She studied at UCLAN on a part time basis whilst working as a para-legal for a firm in Lytham St Annes and qualified as a solicitor in 2001.
Fiona initially specialised in personal injury but did a conversion course, to practice as a Private Client solicitor, at Oxford University. In her spare time, Fiona loves to get out walking with her husband and enjoys keeping fit.
Fiona Hewitt
DirectorRead more
Fiona joined Hayes + Storr in 2002 and became a partner in 2011. She specialises in Wills, Probate and Powers of Attorney. Prior to joining the Wills & Probate department, Fiona worked for several years in Family law and Employment law, and still deals with non-contentious employment matters.
Fiona was brought up in the North East and moved to Norfolk with her family in 2001. She studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge University and then worked in the Diplomatic Service prior to her career change to the law. She completed her training contract with Cole & Cole of Oxford and worked for Hertfordshire County Council in the Department of Law & Administration prior to joining Hayes + Storr.
Outside of work Fiona's interests include reading, music and walking.
Jane Arnup
AssociateRead more
Jane joined Hayes + Storr in 1986 and gained her ILEX qualifications. She specialises in Wills, Probate, Powers of Attorney, Court of Protection Deputyships and Elderly Client. Jane qualified as a member of STEP in 1996 and later as a member of Solicitors for the Elderly.
Jane was born in Buckinghamshire and brought up and educated in North London/Hertfordshire. She came to Norfolk in 1974 after marrying a Norfolk man.
Jane has two rescue dogs, enjoys cooking and vegetable gardening. On Jane's 'wish list' of things to do, she has achieved riding over the Massi Mara in a hot air balloon, has ridden a camel up a mountain, been on safari, been swimming with dolphins and ridden elephants.
Laura Weston
Chartered Legal ExecutiveRead more
Laura joined Hayes + Storr in July 1999 and has worked hard to become a qualified Lawyer. Laura qualified as a F.Inst.LEx in 2009 and is based at our Wells office. She specialises in Wills, Probate, Powers of Attorney, Elderly Client and Private Client Services.
Laura is a local girl having lived in Wells for 21 years, she is married and has recently become a mum. She enjoys her family, socialising with friends and walking her black Labrador.
Lesley Ward
Chartered Legal ExecutiveRead more
Rachel Masters
Affiliate Member of the Institute of Legal Executives
email@example.com more
Rachel joined Hayes + Storr in April 2012, having relocated from Essex. Rachel assists the Directors with larger probate matters as well as responsibility for smaller Estate Administrations, Lasting Power of Attorney, Wills and Elderly Client Affairs.
Rachel brings a warm and personal way of working with clients - ensuring their wishes are known and fulfilled, whilst guiding them when necessary.
During her spare time, Rachel can be found walking her dogs and competing her horse (with varying degrees of success!)
Zuzanna Pogorzelska
Trainee Solicitor
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Zuzanna read Law at undergraduate level at the University of Buckingham and graduated with a Masters degree in European and International Business Law from Universite Jean Moulin, Lyon.
On leaving education she decided to stay on in France to improve her French and work in the equestrian industry. She then returned to law and went on to complete a Legal Practice Course at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.
Zuzanna joined Hayes + Storr in September 2017 and on completion of her training contract, she will qualify as a solicitor in 2020.
Zuzanna likes travelling and cooking and is a keen sportswoman. She can often be found skiing, shooting and playing tennis but above all, she enjoys competing with her horse and walking her dog around the Norfolk countryside.


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Indy5 wrote:Heimer, I actually agree with all your points, except for Mr. and Miss Basketball being open to all classes, I think it should be the overall best career player in the state. Is it hard to compare, yes, but it still can be done.
Second, we don't need 3 classes. Privates don't recruit at all and this year was a big exception to what normally happens. Typically, there aren't 3 privates at state.
GRIDIRON GURU wrote:Since we are talking about a fantacy world how about moving Girls basketball back to the Fall!!!
Then we can have a three class basketball tournement
Parents who have a son and a daughter playing basketball can watch them play.
No fight for gym time for youth through varsity
No fight for fan support, fans and community are going to go watch the team that is better.
I took tickets at a few basketball games this year, 300 dollars for a home girls basketball game, 1600 dollars for a home boys basketball game. If the girls game was in the fall with no conflicts = more revenue
Only have to schedule around one game on friday night in the fall.
Hot cheerleaders for boys Basketball.
No storm outs, for girls basketball in the fall, safer travel, less fuel, don't have to let the bus run all night.
You can play jr high through varsity on the same night, your whole family can be there.
Oh and the most important thing hot cheerleaders for boys basketball.
heimer wrote:The TV networks have held the NDHSAA by the you-know-whats, threatening to not air the small school tourney if they go to three classes. If you dig, you will find this to be true. I have it on the record, using those journalist skills that I do have. They are just exercised sparingly in the name of pi$$ing people off.
ndlionsfan wrote:I agree that girls bball should be moved back to the fall. It has been a disaster to that sport (participation and fan base) by moving it to winter. If not, at least switch the seasons back and make some changes to the vball and fball schedule to make it work for the girls. Switching the seasons will be catastrophic for the girls. I'm a big bball fan, but only watched two games after the boys state B was done. It just felt to me that the bball seasons were over and I forgot all about the girls. Only two games I saw were the Carrington semifinal and championships...the state tourney didn't even peak my interest.
heimer wrote:This will upset many, and I'll be labeled a hundred different things, all of which are false, and I really don't care. If the mods don't like it, they can take it down and censor me. If you don't like it, respond. Whatever floats your boat.
Last things first: The Mr. and Miss Basketball awards are a complete joke. I understand the desire to honor a player's achievements, but the current award structure in ND is a complete mess. First, the award lumps all of the Class A and B players together, when no one voting will ever put the effort into seeing them all in action, television won't allow us to see all of them in action, and they never play each other or similar teams for an accurate comparison. To lump them all together is an impossible task, one that sets the award up for failure.
Next on this topic, the selection criteria is ambiguous at best. To me, there is a difference between Mr. or Miss Basketball, and what we would consider to be a traditional "Player of the Year" award. The title of Mr. or Miss Basketball, IMO, means that everything you do throughout your career exemplifies the best that high school basketball has to offer in our state. That means more than stats. What are you like in the classroom? What other activities are you in? What do you do in your community. To me, all of these should come into play. Yes, basketball performance should be first and foremost in the recipe, but if you're going to take the label of a person that represents basketball in the state, you should truly represent everything we celebrate about the high school game, and many of the things I mentioned are included in our expectations of high-performing student-athletes.
Solution: Award a Mr. and Miss Basketball for all classes, and also award a Player of the Year for all classes. Does it water down the award? Possibly, but I think it would be a heck of a lot better than trying to compare a Dickinson player with a Midway-Minto player or a Standing Rock player with a Grand Forks Central player, when there really is no basis for comparison whatsoever.
Make those in the running for Mr. and Miss Basketball list their accomplishments on and off the floor and have a selection process. Player of the Year is the best player this season on the floor, and it does not have to be a senior. Mr. and Miss Basketball must be a senior, as they will "run" on their record of their entire career.
Okay, moving on.
This was, quite frankly, the worst season of Class B basketball in a long time, perhaps ever in the modern era. Districts with six teams sending four to regionals, three privates in the boys state field, and girls state games that had a hard time surpassing regional qualifiers in quality. The changes the state made landed with a thud.
Meanwhile, Class A continued it's stagnant state tournament. No excitement or atmosphere for just another tournament after basically all the teams played each other a week ago. The boys tournament saw three WDA teams advance to the semi-finals, and the girls saw all east semis and all west consolation. Basically, a true disaster.
I've been accused of being a "glass is empty when it's half-full" guy. I'll own that, because I see trend, not just the present. This is the first year that Class A regionals began to rival B states for attendance. The B boys attendance was off, the B girls was hideous, and the flip of the seasons probably didn't help.
First, put the seasons back the way they were. This idea that girls volleyball players need the extra time to get ready is a joke. Football players play a much more physical game, and those that are Class B players get the least amount of recovery time. The switch of seasons did nothing for attendance at state B girls. If we have to, start volleyball earlier in the fall, and flip the weekends of volleyball and football finals. Yes, I know that runs the risk of one more week of bad weather. If we need to, start both seasons at the same time, and give the football players an extra week off between semis and finals.
Second, I'm sorry, but if there was ever a call for a three-class system, now is the time, and I'll take it even if Valley City stays A and sees no difference in competition. There's no denying that, whether it's recruiting or kids wanting to "take their talent to South Beach", the privates have a considerable advantage over the rest of Class B schools, and they should be in a different class. Some of the bigger Bs should be there as well. For every Grafton, Central Cass, Fargo Oak Grove, Dickinson Trinity, Minot Ryan, and Carrington in a state tournament, there are smaller schools that were defeated in the first round of regionals, the semis, and the finals. There's little to stop these teams from advancing back to where they were this year next year. Sure, a team or two will have to reload, but who will replace them? Likely another of the same team in their region.
If the classes are AA, A, and B, then play a state tournament schedule AA and A girls first together first, AA and A boys together second, and B boys and girls last. Require the TV contract to air the semifinals, third place and final games of all three classes. With the shakup of classes, it's doubtful that the B boys and girls could not be held in one place together. Permanently locate the B girls and boys in Bismarck, as those teams would likely have, in any given year, the highest travel burdens. The other two tournaments become revenue tournaments, and could be rotated as currently takes place. If the B boys went off with all the oil activity in Minot sopping up rooms, then Bismarck has enough rooms for a new-look B boys and girls combined. All three tournaments would make money and be well attended.
One class is nice, but there's one huge flaw. With only one tournament, there's not enough revenue to run what the NDHSAA has to run. That's a problem, and there's not enough teams out there to fix it through additional regional tournaments.
The quality was down, the participation was down, the fan turnout was down, and the media attention was down. Let the nay-sayers start picking it apart, but the trend of quality, participation, fan turnout, and media attention cannot be ignored. If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward, and the status quo won't do.
Run4Fun2009 wrote:I don't disagree with many of your points...just the three class system...Maybe I'm afraid of change; but I don't see it changing any time soon.
I do agree though that we need to determine what Mr./Ms. Basketball is nowadays...we need a clearer definition.
heimer wrote:The quality was down, the participation was down, the fan turnout was down, and the media attention was down. Let the nay-sayers start picking it apart, but the trend of quality, participation, fan turnout, and media attention cannot be ignored. If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward, and the status quo won't do.
Indy5 wrote:Heimer, I actually agree with all your points, except for Mr. and Miss Basketball being open to all classes, I think it should be the overall best career player in the state. Is it hard to compare, yes, but it still can be done.
Second, we don't need 3 classes. Privates don't recruit at all and this year was a big exception to what normally happens. Typically, there aren't 3 privates at state.
Run4Fun2009 wrote:Next year there probably won't be any.
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Please note: You are viewing an archived Bucknell University news story. It is possible that information found on this page has become outdated or inaccurate, and links and images contained within are not guaranteed to function correctly.
At one point, between 4 and 5 billion American chestnut (Castanea dentata) trees populated forests stretching across the Appalachian mountains from Alabama to Maine. The massive tree grew into a pillar of America's 19th-century economy. Its lumber was used in myriad ways — from fencing to furniture, flooring to telephone poles. The seeds it produced was not only an important source of food for wildlife and livestock, but trainloads of chestnuts were hauled to towns and cities to be sold on street corners where vendors often roasted them on an open fire.
"The American chestnut played a central role in the forest ecosystem and really was a significant part of the 19th century way of life," said Professor Mark Spiro, biology. "And then, in a relatively short amount of time, the trees all but disappeared."
In the first years of the 20th century, a fungal disease, Cryphonectria parasitica, more commonly known as the chestnut blight, was introduced to North America by way of Chinese chestnuts brought here from Asia. By the mid-1900s the disease had moved swiftly through the American chestnut population, pushing the tree to the brink of extinction.
"The Chinese chestnut evolved in the presence of this fungus and grew resistant to it." Spiro explained. "Separated by an ocean and thousands of miles, the American chestnut had no immunity to the fungus. Once it arrived, the fungus moved quickly and all but wiped out more than 4 billion trees."
Even today, the fungus remains problematic. In fact, root systems belonging to American chestnuts survived the blight, and you can still find young sprouts throughout the East. But with the fungus lingering, there's been little hope of those shoots maturing.
Now, after decades of work, the American Chestnut Foundation believes it has produced a blight-resistant seed that could help bring the American chestnut back to prominence.
"The American Chestnut Foundation has spent years developing these seeds through what's called backcross breeding," Spiro said. "After decades of breeding for this blight-resistant seed, they think they have a tree with the characteristics of the American chestnut but the disease resistance of the Chinese chestnut. We're one of the arboreta they've asked to grow and assess these trees."
The backcross breeding program began 30 years ago by crossing an American chestnut with a Chinese chestnut tree. The next three generations of trees were bred with American chestnuts in order to restore the tree's original characteristics. Each generation of tree was exposed to the blight along the way, and only those that showed strong resistance were selected for additional breeding. The end result is what's referred to as Restoration Chestnut 1.0 — a tree that is almost entirely American chestnut, but with the fungal resistance of the Chinese chestnut.
"The idea here would be that we can use this as a starting point for reintroducing this tree into the wild," Spiro said. "It's still a work in progress, but it's 94 percent American chestnut, so this restoration chestnut looks very close to an American chestnut in terms of its growth habit, its leaves, its fruit. Within the 6 percent that's Chinese chestnut, there should be all the genes needed to protect it from the blight."
Bucknell recently received four of the Restoration 1.0 seedlings, along with pure American and Chinese chestnuts. With the help of Bucknell's Grounds and Labor Supervisor John Testa and Arborist & Ornamental Plant Specialist William Kuntz, Sprio planted the saplings in the Bucknell University Arboretum. It will be some time before the project can be deemed a success (it takes decades for the trees to reach maturity), but Spiro is optimistic.
"There are really several exciting parts to being a partner in this project. First, we're helping bring back this really important part of our history," Spiro said. "We're also working to increase biodiversity, and restoring the American chestnut would have a ripple effect throughout the ecosystem. This project is also a step toward restoring a healthy native plant community, one of the goals of the Arboretum."
And Bucknell students will benefit from an educational experience few universities can offer.
"We'll be able to bring students to where we've planted these trees and actually show them the differences between the American and the Chinese chestnut. We'll be able to show them the results of generations of backcross breeding. This isn't just reading out of a book; it's history, right here in their own backyard."