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August 11, 2008
Equinix to Join U.S. EPA Energy Star Program and Support Certification Initiative for Data Centers
Foster City, CA — August 11, 2008 — Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the leading global provider of network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services, today announced that it has joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ENERGY STAR® program, and that it has committed to assisting with EPA's initiative to develop a ratings program to measure, track and improve the energy performance of the nation's data centers..
The ENERGY STAR program began in 1992 as a voluntary market-based partnership for businesses in all industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through increased energy efficiency.
Equinix has agreed to participate in EPA's data collection initiative aimed at developing a specific ENERGY STAR ratings program to measure, track and improve the overall energy performance of the nation's data centers. The goal of the program is to assist data center operators in improving energy efficiency by assessing energy performance using standardized metrics that are simple and can be tracked on a continuous basis.
To develop the rating system, EPA is collecting data on energy use and operating characteristics from a large number of existing data center operators, including both stand-alone facilities as well as data centers located in offices and other buildings. Equinix's participation in the program will include the collection of 12 consecutive months of IT and data center energy use data from June 2008 through June 2009 from a sampling of its U.S. Internet Business Exchange (IBX®) centers. Participants in the program currently include 150 data center owners and operators, industry associations, and equipment suppliers and consultants.
While this initiative will focus on the data center infrastructure, such as power and cooling operations, a separate ENERGY STAR specification is being developed to address the energy efficiency of servers typically hosted within a data center and which generally consume as much, or in some cases more, power than the operational infrastructure. �EPA plans to expand the ENERGY STAR program to other data center IT products longer term, including storage and networking equipment.
EPA currently provides an energy performance rating for a wide variety of commercial buildings and plants, allowing operators to compare their performance against a national sample of similar facilities and track changes in energy use over time. The performance rating system is based on a scale of 1-100, with a rating of 50 indicating that the building, from an energy consumption standpoint, performs better than 50% of all similar buildings nationwide. A rating of 75 qualifies the building for the ENERGY STAR designation.
"By joining ENERGY STAR, Equinix has made a fundamental commitment to resource conservation through the continuous improvement of energy performance," said Mike Zatz, manager of EPA's ENERGY STAR Commercial Buildings Program. "We look forward to its participation as we develop the performance metrics for the increasingly important segment of data center facilities and lead the way to greater energy efficiencies."
"Together with EPA and our industry peers, Equinix is pleased to help develop consistent methods for measuring energy performance as well as sharing industry best practices for operators of large data centers," said Dave Pickut, chief technology officer for Equinix. "Equinix has more than 10 years of experience in designing and building some of the most modern data centers in the industry and we believe that we have a lot to offer, as well as a lot to gain, from participating in this initiative."
Equinix is committed to operating the most efficient data centers in the industry. The company's efforts were recently recognized at the Data Centres Europe conference, where Equinix won the "Data Centers Europe Green Award," and by the Bay Area Green Business Program which "green" certified all four of Equinix's Silicon Valley IBX centers. In addition, Equinix has adopted a variety of programs that maximize efficiency of operations, reduce environmental impact and support industry green efforts including:
- Implementing the most advanced data center design that leverages the efficiencies of scale;
- Working with customers to develop equipment deployments and configurations that maximize efficiency and conservation, including hot-aisle, cold-aisle configurations and separation of supply and exhaust air;
- Harnessing external air temperature with the deployment of water-side heat exchangers and air economizers that cool centers by bringing in outside air when conditions are favorable;
- Using green energy sources, such as Equinix's four centers in Switzerland which operate on 100% hydropower;
- Aggressively implementing new designs and technologies which take maximum advantage of conservation; and
- Participation in The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems.
About ENERGY STAR
ENERGY STAR was introduced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 as a voluntary market-based partnership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through increased energy efficiency. Today, ENERGY STAR offers businesses and consumers energy-efficient solutions to save energy, money and help protect the environment for future generations. More than 12,000 organizations are ENERGY STAR partners committed to improving the energy efficiency of products, homes, buildings and businesses. Last year alone, Americans with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved $16 billion on their energy bills and reduced greenhouse gas emissions the equivalent to those of 27 million cars. �For more information, visit www.energystar.gov or call toll-free 1-888-STAR-YES (1-888-782-7937).
About Equinix
Equinix is the leading global provider of network-neutral data center and interconnection services, offering premium colocation, traffic exchange and outsourced IT infrastructure solutions. Global enterprises, content companies, systems integrators and network service providers look to Equinix Internet Business Exchange (IBX®) centers for world-class reliability and network diversity. Equinix IBX centers serve as critical, core hubs for IP networks and Internet operations worldwide. With 40 IBX centers located in 18 strategic markets across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Equinix enables customers to reliably operate their mission-critical infrastructure on a global basis.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix services; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of IXEurope into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenue from customers in recently built out data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; the results of any litigation relating to past stock option grants and practices; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see Equinix's recent quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.
Equinix and IBX are registered trademarks of Equinix, Inc. Internet Business Exchange is a trademark of Equinix, Inc.


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Ys returns with a brand new adventure for the first time in 8 years! Adol awakens shipwrecked and stranded on a cursed island. There, he and the other shipwrecked passengers he rescues form a village to challenge fearsome beasts and mysterious ruins on the isolated island. Amidst this, Adol begins to dream of a mysterious blue-haired maiden living in an unknown world. Join Adol as he unravels the riddle of the cursed isle and the blue-haired maiden Dana in Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA!
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10 Best Wedding Shoes
Here are all kinds of perfect 10 Best Wedding Shoes with delicate design for every consumer. You can browse all of 10 Best Wedding Shoes by different classifications. Moreover, we provide more other chic products in our shop online. Buy 10 Best Wedding Shoes at wholesaler prices from AmorModa, the leading wholesaler in China. All products are of high quality with adorable discount. What' more, we promise you the best service. Check AmorModa and find your beloved products. You are welcomed all the while.
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Meadow Mountain Climber's Log
Mountain Jim - Jul 7, 2006 3:16 am Date Climbed: Jul 22, 1973Standard Route
A gentle mountain with a very nice summit view.
Total ascents = 4.
NanitaD - Apr 13, 2006 4:08 am Date Climbed: Oct 27, 1991From St. Vrain Trailhead
We climbed St. Vrain first then came accoss the saddle to Meadow. I've been back to summit two more times since then.
altitude14er - Mar 17, 2006 4:08 pm Date Climbed: Oct 23, 2004South
This small mountain is worth the short walk to the top. It's also a great early season warm-up climb. I hadn't seen anyone for hours and was heading to Meadow's summit from the St. Vrain saddle. As I neared the summit a lone coyote gave out a few howls. What a great day!
Brian Kalet - Jan 17, 2006 1:38 pmRoute Climbed: St. Vrain Trail Date Climbed: January 16, 2006
Skied ~80 vertical feet from the summit.
rkymtn - Jan 1, 2006 4:00 pmRoute Climbed: South Slopes via St. Vrain TH Date Climbed: December 30, 2005
It was a very windy day. Haliku and I hunched over our ice axes and crawled during the final push to the summit. We stayed just long enough to catch a quick glimpse of Meeker and Longs. We then made our retreat and put the thought of hitting St. Vrain to rest for the day.
Haliku - Dec 30, 2005 11:09 pmRoute Climbed: St. Vrain TH Date Climbed: 30 December 2005
We (rkymtn) started before sunrise. The winds picked up at sunrise and increased in strength. By the time we reached above treeline we could hardly stand. Wind gusts were so strong on the summit that we crawled to the top. I've never climbed in wind where I couldn't at least walk. Snowshoes were a required item today. We passed on trying for St. Vrain Mtn and the UN--another day.
JonBradford - Nov 21, 2005 12:41 pmRoute Climbed: From Saint Vrain Mountain Trailhead Date Climbed: November 20, 2005
A very nice winter hike. I'll be back for Saint Vrain Mountain... I was up on Meadow very late in the day (I would have liked to have stayed for the sunset but chickened out) and there was nary a breeze. No one else around either.
kcmule - Jul 13, 2005 11:25 amRoute Climbed: St Vrain Trailhead Date Climbed: July 12, 2005
Great views of the southern face of the Longs Peak massif and Wild Basin. But overall I think the views are better from St Vrain so I'd recommend doing them both!
birdhead - Jul 11, 2005 1:12 amRoute Climbed: Standard Route Date Climbed: July 2002
Dayhike with a friend's brother and his dog. Also climbed St. Vrain.
umbra alta - Jun 22, 2005 1:46 pmRoute Climbed: South slopes Date Climbed: April 2005
Great views from this summit of Wild Basin in The Park. Check out the seldom seen east face of Mt. Alice! Climbed it as a training outing. Skis would have been ideal. VERY windy.
coloradoiceclimber - May 4, 2005 4:05 pmRoute Climbed: Standard South Slopes Date Climbed: May 1, 2005
This Mountain made a great combo with St. Vrain! Good winter climbing fun!
Colorado Susan - Mar 16, 2005 12:09 amRoute Climbed: standard route Date Climbed: March 6, 2005
A beautiful gusty day!
Chris - Mar 7, 2005 12:00 amRoute Climbed: South Slopes (Standard Route) Date Climbed: March 06, 2005
Very nice day! Beautiful views of Wild Basin, Mount Alice, and the Long's Peak group from the summit. Highly recommended easy climb. Next time I do this one I'm bringing the tele skis for the ride back to the car too... the bowl below the saddle looks like some sweet skiing! :-)
pksander - Dec 20, 2004 7:53 pmRoute Climbed: Standard Date Climbed: December 19, 2004
My first climb in Colorado in reasonable weather. About time! Great people, fun, easy climb.
georgbetsy - Dec 20, 2004 3:20 pmRoute Climbed: Standard Date Climbed: December 19, 2004
Great hike with a larger group of SP members. Perfect weather, great views.
miztflip - Dec 19, 2004 10:52 pmRoute Climbed: Standard Route Date Climbed: March 16, 2004; May 1, 2005
Great climb in the snow. Awesome views of the Long's/Meeker Massif as well as into IPW.
Very windy day. After getting back home we found out that the Niwot Ridge weather station a few miles south of Meadow, measured 85 mph winds during the time we stood on the summit.
CharlesD - Dec 19, 2004 6:57 pmRoute Climbed: Standard south slopes Date Climbed: December 18, 2004
Nice snowshoe on a perfect (though windy) December day. Met up with fellow SPers for a mini-gathering: brenta, Nelson Chenkin, georgbetsy, pksander, and four others. A nice, leisurely climb up to the saddle, ditched the snowshoes, and continued on foot up the summit cone. Great views, moderate temperatures, and fine company.


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Emma Watson Glams Up in Metallic Vera Wang Dress at 2014 Oscars [PHOTOS]
Actress and Ivy League student Emma Watson glammed it up at the 2014 Oscars in a metallic, gunmetal and black Vera Wang dress.
The sparkly, shimmery top was a gunmetal hue, while the bottom half of her belted dress was black, giving off an overall ombre effect. She was young, modern and chic, but then again, when isn't she? Our little Hermione is all grown up.
The messy hair wasn't exactly a hit, but the berry-stained lips? Those were beyond sexy.
Metallics and neutrals were the fashion story of the 2014 ceremony, and Watson went the metallic route. It served the British beauty well.


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Today, President Obama welcomed President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, President Macky Sall of Senegal, President Joyce Banda of Malawi, and Prime Minister Jose Maria Pereira Neves of Cape Verde to the White House. The United States has strong partnerships with these countries based on shared democratic values and shared interests. Each of these leaders has undertaken significant efforts to strengthen democratic institutions, protect and expand human rights and civil liberties, and increase economic opportunities for their people.
President Obama and the visiting leaders discussed how the United States can expand our partnership to support their efforts to strengthen democratic institutions and promote economic opportunity, both in their countries and across sub-Saharan Africa. A particular focus of the conversation was on the importance of transparency and respect for human rights, and President Obama commended each leader for their work in these areas and their commitment to join the Open Government Partnership. President Obama also commended these leaders for their leadership on food security and engaged the leaders in a fruitful conversation about how the United States can help Africa harness the potential of its young people and empower the next generation of African leaders.
While in Washington, each leader is participating in numerous meetings and events to strengthen bilateral cooperation on a range of shared priorities. Joint events include a dinner hosted by the Corporate Council on Africa to discuss trade and investment opportunities with representatives from U.S. businesses; a public discussion on democratization in Africa at the United States Institute for Peace; an economic and development roundtable with U.S. government officials; and a meeting with Secretary of Defense Hagel to discuss cooperation on shared regional security and peacekeeping objectives in Africa.
The visit of these four leaders underscores the President's commitment to substantive engagement and strengthened partnerships with African nations. A link to the President's remarks following the meeting can be found here.
Editor's Note: This entry originally appeared on the White House Blog.
how boama ha
Eric in New Mexico writes:
Watching Johnny Carson's moderated discussion among the African leaders, I was impressed with their commitment to democratic principals and institutions.
In regards to comments regarding Presidential aircraft for sale I think there's possibly another option if they can't find buyers; to put these aircraft to good use for humanitarian purposes hauling cargo and personel as a national contribution to global relief efforts generally.
If for no other reason than as a point of national pride in making a humanitarian contribution as a "donor nation" even while accepting development aid and donor support themselves.
Just a thought...


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text: Verizon Enterprise Solutions creates global connections that generate growth, drive business innovation and move society forward. With industry-specific solutions and a full range of global wholesale offerings provided over the company's secure mobility, cloud, strategic networking and advanced communications platforms, Verizon Enterprise Solutions helps open new opportunities around the world for innovation, investment and business transformation. Visit verizonenterprise.com to learn more


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HEYDAY. It must be the history, the remaining turn-of-the-twentieth century architecture, or the dusty bits and pieces of memories romanticized by great grandparents that led a group of artists into reviving the vibrancy of Escolta, not as the country's premier high street as it was in the 1900s but this time as an accessible and popular cultural and artsy center in good old downtown Manila.
The recent staging of the Escolta Saturday Market where vintage items were sold in what used to be the site of the fashionable Berg's Department Store in the 1930s is an attempt to bring back old world Escolta in its heyday and perhaps the first step in making generations familiar of that forgotten place and time.
NOSTALGIA ESCOLTA. But to say that we have forgotten about Escolta is an understatement. For one thing, our generation is not fortunate enough to live in that era when Escolta became the country's classiest shopping destination. That's why it is not surprising to learn from some people that they do not feel any connection or relevance when passing by this short thoroughfare in Manila today.
However, nostalgia can strike us when looking at old photos of Escolta. Its rows of opulent shops, which were actually traditional bahay-na-bato with sliding panels of capiz windows on the second floor and huge glass display windows at street level where all conceivable caprichos and overpriced imported luxuries were sold.
PHILIPPINE'S FIRSTS. The famous emporium La Estrella del Norte and La Puerta del Sol which marked the east and west entrances of the narrow thoroughfare, introduced the first bicycles, cameras, phonographs and the trendiest and most fashionable home furnishings to the biggest spenders of that time.
A good find in the Saturday market were the mugs with images of vintage cars and bicycles printed on them. This fittingly recalls when La Estrella del Norte brought in the first automobile in the country called a Richard, which was bought by a certain Dr. Miciano –an affluent physician.
PRIMERA CLASSE. La Puerta del Sol is said to have sold the finest European décor and household ware. In 1875, it introduced the term tulipan referring to gas lamps with tulip-shaped glass chimneys. In the 1920s and 1930s, Escolta shops selling all kinds of gas lamps made of glass were generically called tulipan. Just like in the Saturday market, everything for sale has been generically called pre-loved vintage items.
Other high end stores like H.E. Heacocks and Oceanic were known for the exquisite household items. While Fashionable clothes were displayed at Berg's, quality leather and shoes were stocked at Hamilton Brown or Walkover Shoes.
ESCOLTA HERITAGE. It was also in the twenties and the thirties when art nouveau and art deco design elements were incorporated in the architecture of Escolta's landmark buildings like the Crystal Arcade, Capitol and Lyric Theaters, Calvo, Natividad, Burke, Regina, and Perez-Samanillo (First United Building). Some of these buildings are now gone and only be seen in old photos and in miniature models at the Calvo Museum.
DREAMING ESCOLTA. Pre-war Escolta only reigns in the memory of those who were fascinated by its grandeur. With the old glamor gone, the Escolta we know today is just a narrow street in Manila with decrepit art deco and art nouveau structures just waiting to be revitalized for adaptive reuse as cafés, restaurants, wineries, art galleries, art schools, culinary schools, creative workshop venues, exhibition spaces for art fairs and trade shows, boutiques, vintage and antique shops, bookstores, music stores, graphic design studios, photography studios, band rehearsal studios, etc. etc.
EPILOGUE. The successful staging of the Escolta Saturday Market is an inspiration to those who have all of the above in mind. Our generation can now start looking forward to a time and period when an accessible and popular, still old world yet artsy Escolta is thriving and pulsating once again in good old downtown Manila just like during its 'forgotten' heyday.


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Granny Abandons Kids At Police Station In Houston!
"While at a police station in houston turning myself in a granny walked in with 5 kids between the ages of 13 to 6 months. She exchanged words with the HPD officers and then quickly walked out as the kids went crazy crying and chasing her. Police threaten her with felony abandonment." - pg.2dub
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
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Whalen, Wright Lead Lynx Past Fever 69-62
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Lindsay Whalen had 23 points and Monica Wright added 22 points and nine rebounds as the Minnesota Lynx beat the Indiana Fever 69-62 in a rematch of last season's WNBA finals Thursday afternoon.
The Fever (4-8) made runs at the Lynx (10-3), but never managed to catch them. Indiana cut the lead to 46-45 late in the third quarter, but Minnesota answered with a 6-0 run to push the margin back to seven.
"Every time we play Indiana, it's a grind," Wright said. "They're a very disciplined team with a lot of great players. Every single player on the floor is capable of scoring at any time, so they made it difficult for us defensively."
Wright has scored 44 points in the last two games since moving into the starting lineup in place of the injured Seimone Augustus. Wright was aggressive from the start. She scored 10 points on 5-of-7 shooting in the first quarter and finished 9-of-19 from the field.
"We never have to tell Moni to be aggressive. That's just her everyday life, that just what she does," Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. "She's not doing anything different than if she was coming off the bench. That's nice for us. We basically have six starters."
Indiana was playing without star guard Katie Douglas, who missed her 10th consecutive game with a bulging disk in her back. The Fever had won three consecutive games.
Shavonte Zellous led the Fever with 14 points. It was a struggle all around for Indiana offensively against a Minnesota defense that keyed on Zellous and Tamika Catchings.
The Fever shot just 34 percent from the field (21-of-61), and Catchings was held to nine points on 2-of-10 shooting. The Fever star forward was rarely given open lanes to the basket.
"Our defensive effort was outstanding," Reeve said. "It's carried us. It's not very often that you hold Catchings the way that we did."
Added Fever coach Lin Dunn: "We defended well enough, we rebounded well enough, we just didn't knock down the shots we needed to knock down."
Rebekkah Brunson, who defended Catchings most of the game, added 11 points for Minnesota. Maya Moore had nine points.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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EgoTV - www.EgoTV.tv needed a new banner ad design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 12 designs submitted by 6 freelance designers.
Fun, trendy video site Ego TV is launching a new web drama series Malibu U. (see http://www.egotvonline.com/video.ph…33&pid=133 ). We need exciting, high energy, trendy, and sexy ads to promote tune-in of the show on our website. We have many great photos of the stars of the show, and several samples we already created. "Click to watch here", etc.
EgoTV - http://www.EgoTV.tv
WHAT: Design banners to drive traffic to http://www.EgoTV.tv web video series called "Malibu U.".
http://www.egotvonline.com/video.ph…33&pid=133 - promo video that tells you about the videos. You can see a banner next to the video player. I have the photos on an ftp site. Show description:
College never looked so good. Malibu U. is about sorority girls trying to find their places in life while they have some fun! In episode 1, Zeta Chi, Malibu U's hottest and wildest sorority, is throwing its famous rush party to recruit a new pledge class. Kylie, the Zeta Chi President, is working hard to rush a pair of perspective sisters for what promises to be the most out-of-control semester in the history of Malibu U. Little does Zeta Chi know that their rival sorority, Pi Mu Sigma, has other plans in store for Zeta Chi. Check out the sorority girl profiles, blogs, video diaries, a new widget, and pictures starting June 17.
WHY: Drive viewers/ traffic to website
COMPANY: Ego TV. http://www.EgoTV.tv : 45-second promo video about network: http://www.EgoTVonline.com/video.ph…51&pid=176 . About us:
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you've imagined." ~Henry David Thoreau. Ego TV is an "advice" movement and entertainment brand that's all about becoming successful and prosperous. We examine interesting, successful people and the experiences that made them successful through our original, professionally-produced internet TV network. On Ego, you will find fun, entertaining "how to" shows in several categories, including celebrities, pop culture, business, sports, and other highly-identifiable topics. Ego's focus is on being an entertaining "inspirational" network that focuses on "how to" and examines the lives of those that have achieved their dreams. Our celebrities are positive, energetic people who are striving towards success, or have already succeeded - CEO's, athletes, Hollywood stars, Wall Street moguls, and anyone who is successful. Ego TV helps people achieve their dreams. The world now has all the information at their fingertips with the power of the web. What will people do with it? Can anyone become one of these successful people? Ego TV's mission is to highlight successful people, experiences, lifestyles, and the methods to becoming successful. We show you how you can achieve what these successful people have achieved, and have what they have. We also look at those who are working hard, and are "up-and-coming."
- Item 1...3 "main" styles, with the following different sizes:
- Leaderboard (728x90): 3 styles
- Banner (468x60): 3 styles
- Skyscraper (120x600): 3 styles
- Wide skyscraper (160x600): 3 styles
- Medium rectangle (300x250): 3 styles
- Banner 728x60: 3 styles
- 2 types of text on each style and size: "New episodes every Tues / Thurs" and " __" - no days of week
- Text: "Watch Now - Watch Now"
- URL: http://www.EgoTV.tv
- Picture with hot girls (our pics)
- Malibu U. title
- Ego TV corporate logo
- For you to look at our past Malibu U. designs and kick some ass on a better design
- similar colors to corp. logo
- in general, to improve the CTR (click-through-rates) on banners, so a kick ass design!
- Style: young, trendy, hip, entertainment/ TV focus
- Get photos from FTP site:
- Item 1...not above 50kb's (compress please) - keep the file sizes down as much as possible
- Rainbows


text:
FEATURED NEWS STORY: Blunt report finds L.A. isn't keeping up with removing dumped trash - Click here to read the full article.
Economic Journal Article: Public Safety Through Private Action: An Economic Assessment of BIDs - Click here to read the full article (pdf).
FEATURED NEWS STORY: It's Taking a Village to Raise a BID - Los Angeles Business Journal (Westwood Village is getting down to business on reviving its improvement district.) Click here to read the full article.
A Business Improvement District (BID) is a geographically defined area within the City of Los Angeles, in which services, activities and programs are paid for through a special assessment which is charged to all members within the district in order to equitably distribute the benefits received and the costs incurred to provide the agreed-upon services, activities and programs. The assessment money is collected by the City or by the County through a special contractual arrangement with the city. Because the assessment funds collected in a given district cannot legally be spent outside of that BID, the City creates a trust fund for each BID, with funds periodically released to support operations. For more information click here.
Arts District
Byzantine-Latino Quarter Pico Blvd.
Brentwood Village
Century City
Downtown Industrial
Downtown San Pedro
East Hollywood
Encino Commons
Fashion District
Figueroa Corridor
Gateway to LA
Granada Hills
Greater Leimert Park
Highland Park
Historic Downtown LA
Historic Old Town Canoga Park
Hollywood Entertainment District
Hollywood Media District
L.A. Chinatown
Larchmont Village
Lincoln Heights Industrial Park
Little Tokyo
Los Feliz Village
North Hollywood Transit
Old Granada Village
Panorama City
San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID
South Los Angeles Industrial Tract
South Park
Studio City
Sunset & Vine
Tarzana Safari Walk
Toy District
Village at Sherman Oaks
Westchester Town Center
Westwood Village


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Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act
The following report of crime statistics and policies are in compliance with Title II of Public Law 101-542, the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act.
Buena Vista University encourages anyone with knowledge of crimes occurring on campus to report these crimes directly to the Campus Security and/or Storm Lake Police by dialing 911. Buena Vista University maintains an excellent working relationship with the Storm Lake Police and relies on them to provide security for our campus. In addition, crimes occurring on campus should be reported to the Office of Student Affairs either directly or through a Resident Advisor or Residence Director. Crimes reported to the Office of Student Affairs will be investigated and, if appropriate, adjudicated by the Dean of Students, her designee or a campus judicial board.
Buildings on campus, including campus residence halls, are locked regularly throughout the year. Buena Vista University has coverage by a security officer. Resident students are able to use their ID to gain access to their residence hall after the doors have been locked. Any suspicious persons should be reported to the Campus Security or to an RD or RA.
Campus security is a priority at Buena Vista University. We encourage all students and employees of Buena Vista University to be responsible for their own security and the security of others. Being responsible includes reporting crimes to Student Affairs and taking basic safety precautions such as locking rooms and cars. Periodically educational programs on crime prevention and campus security are offered on campus. In addition to these programs, campus security is addressed during new student orientation, residence hall meetings and programs, and through educational material posted in the residence halls.
In the event that a violent crime occurs on campus, the Office of Student Affairs will provide notice to the campus community through such media as campus newsletters, the student newspaper and through the residence hall staff. This notice is intended to warn, educate and aid in the prevention of similar occurrences. The specific action will depend on the particular circumstances of the crime, but the safety of the campus community will be paramount.


text: Robert G. Brown wrote: [...] > Java, octave, matlab, python, perl etc. are MUCH WORSE in this regard. > All require NONTRIVIAL encapsulation of the library into the interactive > environment. I have never done an actual encapsulation into any of Cant speak to Octave/Java/Matlab. Python and Perl make this relatively easy. In Perl you have the Inline:: modules. If you have installed Inline::C, this example #!/usr/bin/perl use Inline C; greet('Joe'); __END__ __C__ void greet(char* name) { printf("Hello %s!\n", name); } does this [landman at balto:~] 105 >./inline.pl Hello Joe! Obviously this is a trivial example, but if you create a reasonable set of API's that you can express as we have indicated, even pass function prototypes in using a header file, and a little config stuff at the front end to give paths to libraries, this is not generally very hard. Only when you have some ... odd ... structures or objects passing back and forth which require a bit more work. Python has similar facilities. Generally speaking the dynamic languanges (Perl, Python, Ruby) are pretty easy to wrap around things and link with other stuff, as long as the API/data structures are pretty clean. > them, but I'll wager that it is really quite difficult because each of > them has their very own internal data types that are REALLY opaque > objects that bear little overt resemblance to the simple "all data > objects can be viewed as a projection onto a block of memory with either > typed or pointer driven offset arithmetic" view of data in C or for that > matter C++ or Fortran (with slighly different projective views in both > cases). Hmmm... methinks you are thinking of strongly typed languages. In non-strongly-typed languages, internal data types are not usually opaque unless they are objects with well formed classes/accessors behind them. Even then, the data stores tend to be quite flexible. In Perl (as an example) you have several types. SV's (scalar variables), AV's (array variables), and HV's (hash variables), as well as pointers to the same. Notice that I didn't talk about ints, floats, etc. Python has a similar view, though it's data types include "lower level" types (ints, floats, ...). In Ruby, everything is an object. > These languages typically permit you to allocate memory by just using a > named variable. This is marvelously convenient for an interactive > environment -- it is marvelously expensive in terms of program > efficiency because the underlying environment has to manage allocating > the memory transparently extensibly (most of the languages permit you to > allocate whole vectors or matrices of variables by just referencing > them), tracking instances of the memory in code, and freeing the memory > when it is no longer referenced or being used. Conservatively, so that Yes. Absolutely. It is easy, but easy things carry a price on them for using them. > they tend to keep things if there is ANY CHANCE of their ever being > referenced, making them typically memory hogs almost as bad as a C > program would be if every memory reference in the program was to static > global memory -- no memory allocation or freeing at all, beyond whatever > goes on stack/heap in the course of subroutine calls or internal > function execution. Complicated hashes or advanced list structures are Well... doesnt keep everything. Once the variables reference count drops to zero, it can be safely reclaimed. True in any dynamic language. And the source for massive amounts of memory leakage in long running programs. Closures are great. Just don't allocate memory in them. > used to keep the execution itself moderately efficient (but highly > INefficient compared to a decent compiler with flat memory outlays). Yup. The price you pay for easy development is inefficient execution. Dynamic languages are quite easy to develop in (generally) for their intended usage. I would not want to write a large scale CG solver in Perl, a large scale nonlinear function solver in Python, or anything remotely computationally intensive in Ruby. That said, these languages make controlling a run using code written in other languages quite easy. My first experience with Perl (my gosh, more than a decade ago) was wrapping a long calculation that we were doing to extract total energies by autogenerating input files and preparing data sets. Took me a few hours to write the code, started it running, and two weeks later, we had our results. The perl code did not do the calculations, that was the fortran code. The perl code drove the fortran, extracted the relevant information and wrote it to a file, and prepared the next input. I would hate to think how long the dynamics would have take had it been written in anything other than fortran/c. > The point being that you have to interface these opaque and not > obviously documented data types to the C library calls. This is surely > possible -- it is how all those perl libraries, matlab toolboxes, java > interfaces come about. It will probably require that you learn WAY more > about how the language itself is implemented at the source level than > you are likely to want to know, and it is probably not going to be > terribly easy... Hmmm. Did speak to Perl and python above. Not sure how to do it with Octave, but the Matlab folks have some good connectivity with external libraries. I dont know if it is easy to extend. Java likes to talk to Java. -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics LLC, email: landman at scalableinformatics.com web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 786 8423 fax : +1 734 786 8452 or +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615


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text:
BGilchrist needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 40 designs submitted by 14 freelance designers.
Year of Affordable Healthcare
The Year of Affordable Healthcare (YAH) campaign is a nationwide call for increased access to affordable healthcare for American citizens. For its second year, YAH will be focusing on quality medicine and prescription drug savings.
For this we would like a logo modified from our current design to reflect the spin-off campaign. We would like to retain a similar feel as the previous design and possibly incorporate the logo in a new way. Please check us out at http://www.yearofaffordablehealth.com to get the current look and feel of our site.
This spin-off campaign will have a new name and logo attached to it. We need something that conveys quality and savings. Below are some of the potential names for the new spin-off campaign. Please use these when creating your new design.
** The Year of Affordable Healthcare's Quality Medicine Initiative
** The Year of Affordable Healthcare: Quality Medicine for America
** The Year of Affordable Healthcare: Sometimes Things are as Good as They Seem
People looking to save money on prescription medicine or looking for more information on health care policy or generic medicines.
Using the logo (the tilted man) is highly recommended when creating a design.
Colors - please use a variation of blues, greens, and white, similar to those found on http://www.yearofaffordablehealth.com
Please be creative and fun!
We'll need this logo for our new Web site and print materials
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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US man pleads guilty for trying to influence Zim sanctions case
A 72-year-old man has pleaded guilty to illegally lobbying lawmakers in the United States to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe's president and other members of his regime for a promise of $3.4-million.
Prince Asiel Ben Israel entered his guilty plea Friday in a federal court in Chicago.
Prosecutors say he sought to persuade unnamed lawmakers to overturn sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and others in the southern African nation. The US imposed the sanctions in 2003 for alleged democratic violations.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports Ben Israel pleaded guilty to failing to register as an agent of Mugabe.
He faces a maximum five-year prison sentence. But under terms of his plea agreement, he can argue for probation at sentencing later this year.
A co-defendant, C.
Gregory Turner, has maintained he did nothing illegal. –Sapa


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Robert Rauschenberg, the protean artist from small-town Texas whose imaginative commitment to hybrid forms of painting and sculpture changed the course of American and European art, died Monday night after a brief illness at his home on Captiva Island, Fla., according to New York's PaceWildenstein Gallery, which represents his work. He was 82 and had been in poor health for several years.
Rauschenberg was widely regarded as a principal bridge between Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s and Pop Art in the 1960s, but he did not subscribe to any narrow doctrine. His work also influenced the emergence of Neo-Dada, Minimal, Conceptual, Post-minimal, Process and performance art. His deep and abiding interest in printmaking facilitated a major revival in the medium, and his achievements in lithography were instrumental in the creation of a contemporary market for prints. In Europe, the humble, everyday objects of the Arte Povera ("poor art") movement expanded on his use of cast-off materials retrieved from the trash bin and the attic.
Rauschenberg's art was instrumental in reintroducing representational imagery into common usage. Until then, avant-garde art on both sides of the Atlantic was most closely identified with pure abstraction, which the public regarded with skepticism. Rauschenberg mixed traditional forms of modern painting and sculpture with photographs, found objects, studio printmaking techniques and mass-produced pictures gathered in postcards, postage stamps and newspapers. In one of the most repeated, yet frequently misquoted, statements in postwar American art, he asserted: "Painting relates to both art and life. . . . (I try to act in that gap between the two)."
Together with painter Jasper Johns, with whom he was romantically linked, Rauschenberg was the most important American artist to emerge into prominence in the 1950s. When he was awarded the grand prize for painting at the 1964 Venice Biennale in Italy -- only the third American to receive the distinguished honor, after James Whistler and Mark Tobey -- the surprise selection ignited a firestorm of controversy in Europe but secured his international reputation. Rauschenberg had been using commercially made silk screens to reproduce photographic images on his canvases, a technique that he picked up from Andy Warhol, and the imagery mingled with energetic brushwork in brilliant colors. The day after the Venice Biennale announcement he had all the silk screens in his New York studio destroyed, to forestall any temptation to repeat himself.
Rauschenberg's voracious appetite for experimentation characterized his working method, which employed new techniques and unusual materials. In 1954, a decade before his Venice triumph, he began to make a new kind of art that combined traditional elements of painting and sculpture, together with collage and printing. He dubbed these works "combine paintings." Two of the most famous are "Bed" (1955) and "Monogram" (1955-59). For "Bed" he scribbled pencil marks and smeared paint on a well-worn pillow, sheets and a quilt, which hang on the wall like a traditional painting. "Monogram" is a floor piece featuring a stuffed Angora goat with a used automobile tire around its middle; the goat is mounted atop a low platform covered with painted and collaged images.
"I often had a house rule," Rauschenberg explained about his working method in the shabby neighborhood in downtown Manhattan where he lived. "If I walked completely around the block and didn't find enough [trash] to work with, I could take one other block and walk around it in any direction -- but that was it. The works [I made] had to be at least as interesting as anything going on outside the window."
The influential critic Clement Greenberg, who championed the Abstract Expressionists, wrote a 1955 essay extolling the rise of those artists and the decline of the School of Paris. Europe had been the home of the avant-garde, but Greenberg unfavorably compared postwar developments in Paris to the distinctive work he described as "American-type painting." Conforming to Greenberg's idea, Johns began to use the American flag and the map of the United States as subjects, while Rauschenberg made his canvas for "Bed" from a pieced quilt -- a unique bit of traditional Americana.
The rumpled combine, with its gestural smears and dribbles of oil paint, also made wry fun of the sometimes-grandiose claims for the Abstract Expressionist paintings of the generation that preceded him. Rauschenberg was friendly with many of those artists, including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and he admired the fusion of liberating gesture, precise control and conceptual complexity embodied in their paintings. But he was equally ready to be sardonic and amusing.
The intimate precinct of a bed is inevitably associated with dreams, sexual activity and the private inner life of its inhabitant -- all subjects that figured prominently in the mythologies of Abstract Expressionist art. The much-romanticized notion of the social alienation of the Modern artist was even reflected in Rauschenberg's choice of a single rather than a double bed as a painting support. His "Bed" is a bed for one.
The goat for "Monogram" was found in the commercial window display of a neighborhood store that sold used typewriters. The animal stands atop a collaged painting that lies flat on the floor. Like Rauschenberg rummaging on the streets of the city, the goat is grazing in a field of ordinary debris, prepared to consume just about anything. The artist later recalled that, as a child in rural Texas, he suffered emotional scars when his father killed his pet goat for food.
The candidly titled "Monogram" is also an unconventional declaration of identity. Western art has used goats as a symbol for priapic sexual energy ever since the Dionysian satyrs of ancient Greece -- half man and half goat, always merrily drinking and dancing. The outrageous interlace formed by the goat and the tire astride a landscape of cast-off debris dates from the conformist social atmosphere of the Eisenhower years, when an anticommunist "Red Scare" was accompanied by an anti-homosexual "Pink Scare." Critic Robert Hughes described the unforgettable "Monogram" as "one of the few great icons of male homosexual love in modern culture" -- the complement to Meret Oppenheim's famous Surrealist sculpture of a phallic spoon in a fur teacup.
Rauschenberg made 162 combines between 1954 and 1964, and they remain the most highly regarded and influential body of work by the unusually prolific artist. (During his career he produced about 6,000 unique paintings and sculptures, along with a sizable number of prints and multiples.) The largest collection of combines -- 11 works -- is housed in Los Angeles at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Chief curator Paul Schimmel organized an exhibition of 70 combines in 2005, which traveled to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and to museums in Paris and Stockholm.
Milton Ernest Rauschenberg was born Oct. 22, 1925, in the Texas oil-refining town of Port Arthur, on the Gulf Coast near Louisiana. His mother, Dora Carolina Matson, and father, Ernest Rauschenberg, who worked at the local power and light company, were of Dutch, Swedish, German and Cherokee descent. Raised in the fundamentalist Church of Christ, which forbade dancing, drinking and card playing, he was encouraged by his deeply religious mother to become a preacher. Instead, after public school he enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin to study pharmacology. But he soon dropped out, unaware that dyslexia was contributing to his difficulties as a student.
With World War II raging in Europe and the Pacific, he was drafted into the U.S. Navy in spring 1944. Given his pacifist commitments, Rauschenberg was assigned as a neuropsychiatric technician in a San Diego hospital, while stationed at nearby Camp Pendleton. "This is where I learned how little difference there is between sanity and madness," Rauschenberg later recalled, "and realized that a combination of both is what everybody needs."
A fateful visit to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino would change the so-far rather aimless direction of his life. At the Huntington, Rauschenberg saw Thomas Gainsborough's celebrated 1770 painting of young Jonathan Buttal, famously known as "The Blue Boy." He knew the illustrious painting from calendar reproductions and playing cards, but like many people from rural and small-town America, he was thunderstruck by an otherwise obvious fact: Pictures are painted by people.
"That just never occurred to me before," he said, recalling the epiphany, even though he had been drawing avidly since the age of 10. Rauschenberg decided on the spot to become an artist.
After the war ended and he was discharged from the Navy, Rauschenberg settled in Los Angeles, where he worked briefly as an illustrator for a Westwood newspaper and as a packing clerk in a bathing suit factory. In 1947, Rauschenberg used the G.I. Bill to enroll at the Kansas City Art Institute. With his identity in flux and creativity his chosen direction, he decided to pick a new name. After carefully considering which one might be the most ordinary in English, he dropped Milton in favor of Bob (subsequently Robert).
Further convinced that real artists studied in Europe, he left Missouri for Paris the following year and enrolled in the Academie Julian. There he was shocked by the lethargy of the old-fashioned program, whose faculty and students produced works that differed markedly from those of Picasso, Matisse and the Surrealist artists that he saw in Parisian galleries. But it wasn't a total loss. He met fellow student Susan Weil, whom he would later marry, and together they spent productive time in the city's museums and galleries.
After reading an article in Time magazine, the two art students decided to return to the United States and enroll in the adventurous program at Black Mountain College near Asheville, N.C., where Rauschenberg continued to study off and on through 1952. German emigre Josef Albers, formerly an instructor at the Bauhaus, ran the avant-garde school when Rauschenberg arrived, and he taught the basic Bauhaus principles of Werklehre -- or working with the inherent properties of materials. Although their relationship was often tense, and sometimes even combative -- Albers loathed the younger artist's work -- Rauschenberg later identified Albers as his most important teacher.
He also learned from Weil, who showed him how to make "drawings" on blueprint paper by exposing it to light, and from the young composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, who courted elements of chance and random accident as central ingredients of their music and dance. Rauschenberg later designed sets and costumes for performances by Cage and Cunningham, as well as for choreographer Paul Taylor, and he collaborated with the Judson Dance Theater, the Trisha Brown Dance Company and other theatrical groups. On occasion he also performed.
Among the more outlandish and memorable performances was "Pelican," which Rauschenberg devised when his name was erroneously listed as a choreographer (rather than a technician) for the Judson Dance Theater at the 1963 Pop Festival, held at a Washington, D.C., skating rink. Taking advantage of the unplanned opportunity and the unusual location, he choreographed a work performed on roller skates and with a 10-foot-diameter circle of parachute silk strapped to his back.
Rauschenberg's first solo exhibition was held in May 1951 at Betty Parsons Gallery, where Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still also showed. It was not well received, but it did include works that anticipated critical features of what later became the combines. He showed "grass paintings," made with bundles of soil and seedlings held onto the surface with chicken wire and in need of regular watering.
Married and with a son on the way, Rauschenberg was supporting his small family (and his studies at the Art Students League) by doing window displays for designer Gene Moore at Bonwit Teller and Tiffany & Co. But strains in the marriage were starting to show. Divorce came in fall 1952. Rauschenberg left with fellow artist Cy Twombly for Rome, Casablanca, Tangier and Spain. Resettling in New York eight months later, the pair moved into an industrial loft on Fulton Street.
Rauschenberg asked his friend De Kooning, one of the most esteemed artists in New York, to give him a drawing for a project he had in mind. He wanted to see whether a work of art could be created by subtracting lines rather than adding them. "Erased de Kooning Drawing" required nearly a month of careful labor to remove every trace of pencil, crayon and ink from the sheet, which Rauschenberg then carefully matted and placed in a gold-leafed frame.
He also enlisted the aid of Cage to make "Automobile Tire Print" in 1953. Laying down 20 sheets of paper on the pavement outside his studio on Fulton Street, Rauschenberg kept applying black ink to the rear tire of his friend's Model A Ford, which Cage drove slowly across the 22-foot length of taped-together sheets. The tire track made a deft industrial parody of his friend Barnett Newman's metaphysical "zip" paintings, in which a stripe of color delineated the space within a canvas.
Rauschenberg was also creating nominally monochrome paintings at the time -- canvases dominated by red, black or gold and incorporating bits of paper collage and swaths of fabric. These directions came together in "Untitled" (circa 1954), which he considered his first true combine and a work that is now in MOCA's collection. "Untitled" moved the collage into three dimensions. The boxy sculpture, taller than a standing person, is covered inside and out with photographs, newspaper clippings, a found painting and small drawings by Twombly and painter Jack Tworkov.
The leg of a table, which makes the construction like a piece of common furniture, holds up part of the work. A mirror on the bottom reflects a large black-and-white photograph of a dapper man dressed in a white suit, suggesting Narcissus at the pool; a pair of empty shoes further alludes to a disembodied person. A stuffed Plymouth Rock hen adds an all-American element. "Untitled" mixed references to personal experiences with functional elements that invited viewers' participation.
Following his international triumph in Venice, Rauschenberg pushed the experimental edges of his work. He founded E.A.T. -- Experiments in Art and Technology -- to collaborate with scientists and engineers from Bell Laboratories and elsewhere, just as he collaborated with master printers at Gemini G.E.L. to produce 1968's "Booster," at 6 feet the largest lithograph printed to date.
For the 1971 "Art and Technology" exhibition at LACMA, he made "Mud Muse," a glass and aluminum vat filled with liquefied clay that, responding to a sound-activated compressed-air system, bubbled like the La Brea tar pits outside the museum. In the early 1970s, at his permanent residence and studio on Captiva Island, he began making large wall-reliefs from dismantled cardboard boxes and ethereal constructions of layered, printed silks. The gauzy fabrics, titled the "Hoarfrost Series," proved to be the final body of Rauschenberg's work to receive general acclaim.
Although political issues were almost never an obvious subject for his art, Rauschenberg expressed concern over the devastating uses of military technology arising from the Vietnam War. He preferred rockets to the moon over rocket-propelled missiles. Scientific energies should instead produce "the joy of art," as a Time magazine cover story about him described his artistic pursuit. He launched ROCI -- the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange -- in 1985, spending five years traveling the world to collaborate with artists and non-artists alike. The ROCI agenda was well received by more than 2 million participants in China, the Soviet Union and elsewhere, although few projects resulted in significant art.
In 2004, an illness left him partially paralyzed, severely impairing his ability to use his right arm and hand. Rauschenberg also struggled with the debilitating effects of alcohol, which almost certainly had an effect on his art in the last decades of his life. He enjoyed numerous museum retrospectives during the last 30 years, the most recent an enormous show of more than 300 works that traveled the United States and Europe in 1997 and 1998. His art is in the collection of virtually every important museum that surveys contemporary culture.
Rauschenberg is survived by his son, Christopher; a sister, Janet Begneaud; and his companion and frequent collaborator, artist Darryl Pottorf.
christopher.knight @latimes.com
On latimes.com
For more details on artist Robert Rauschenberg's life and work, go to latimes.com/rauschenberg.


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Fly High on Your Special Day
Host the most talked-about birthday party of the year at iFLY. We specialize in custom events for groups of any size, with exciting flight enhancements, catering options, and unique event spaces to take your next event to new heights.
STEM Field Trips
Our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) program uses our state-of-the-art vertical wind tunnel to inspire and educate students. We actively follow and update our program to make sure we align with Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core. Our STEM educators will guide your students through an interactive presentation, demonstrations in the wind tunnel and grade-appropriate lab activities.
The hands-on, fully immersive STEM Field Trip Program provided by iFLY Baltimore proudly supports and serves our immediate and surrounding school districts:
Baltimore ISD, Howard ISD, Arundel ISD
Not Your Average Team Event
Teams that fly together, stay together. iFLY has everything your company needs for team bonding activities, off-site conferences and meetings, or other events celebrating business milestones….PLUS you get to fly!
Flight School
Adventure awaits! Flight school is the most rewarding way for kids ages 4-16 to experience the power of flight. Through one-on-one coaching, each Flight School student learns a progression of flying skills in a fun group setting. Every session is taught by an experienced flight instructor who is highly trained in safety standards and certified by the International Bodyflight Association (IBA).
All Abilities
All Abilities Night at iFLY is a unique event that makes the dream of flight a reality for those in the special needs community. This program has been custom designed for those with physical and cognitive challenges to create an environment of support and inclusion, while focusing on making what seems impossible, possible.


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This is the website of the Woodworkers Guild of the Kingdom of Lochac, part of the SCA. This site is for pictures of members' projects, articles, construction plans and anything else helpful for supporting woodworkers in Lochac in their quest to make stuff out of wood.
If you're in Lochac making things out of wood, please let us know and we can add your photos, plans or links to this website.
Website maintained by Crispin Sexi. Last updated 08/10/2016 with some new photos.


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text:
Stuntman Vic Armstrong checks a rope bridge before film rolls during the making of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Dressed as Indy, Vic Armstrong lands on a precarious rope bridge. This image adorns the cover of Armstrong's book,The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman.
Harrison Ford and stuntman Vic Armstrong show off their strikingly similar handsome mugs. Ford thanks Armstrong for his hard work later.
Vic Armstrong delivers a sweet jump-kick to the chest of a movie villain.
Vic Armstrong readies for the Man of Steel's next daring deed.
Stuntman Vic Armstrong finds himself crashing through a truck in another heroic scene as Superman.
As Superman, Vic Armstrong saves Lois Lane from a long fall.
Trusting in his steed, Vic Armstrong rides into the sea in Never Say Never Again, a James Bond flick from 1983.
Vic Armstrong and his stunt horse fall into the sea in Never Say Never Again.
Vic Armstrong, one of Hollywood's most seasoned stuntmen, has jumped on a Nazi tank as Indiana Jones and soared through the sky as Superman.
He's also had an up-close look at the changes CGI and other modern technology have brought to Hollywood and how it's affected the rough-and-tumble role of the daredevils who crash cars, leap from tall buildings and get set on fire, all for the sake of cinematic thrills.
"With budgets the way they are, and technology, we can have less people doing much more," Armstrong told Wired.com. "And we can have the actors being far more involved, like Pierce Brosnan driving a boat down a crowded river or Tom Cruise jumping off the building. We can just be more nimble these days."
Armstrong, dubbed the "world's most prolific stuntman" by the Guinness Book of World Records, rewinds an incredible career in his new memoir, The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman: My Life as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Superman and Other Movie Heroes. It details his 40-plus years performing and directing stunt work. The stories and images (sampled in the gallery above) are pretty amazing.
In addition to his work as a stuntman on those action classics, Armstrong has directed stunts on modern flicks like Mission: Impossible 3, The Green Hornet, The Amazing Spider-Man and Thor.
Wired.com caught up with Armstrong by phone from his Southern California home to talk down-and-dirty Hollywood history and the future of stunts in the CGI era.
Wired.com: Looking back on all the stunts over your career, were there stunts where you thought you might not make it out of the shoot?
Vic Armstrong: [laughs] Oh, not really. Everyone likes to look at the dramatic side of stunts, but everything's worked out and calculated. You're more worried about screwing up and having to do it all over.
Wired.com: The famous stunt in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where you jump off a ledge from a galloping horse onto a moving tank : I read how you set up that jump — the preparation, how you set up the rocks to guide the horse. You say you're not worried at all, but when it comes down to it, you're jumping off a cliff onto a moving tank. It's just clockwork?
Armstrong: I mean you've got nerves and everything else, but it's seriously just the worry of failure. There is pressure with 200 people and a schedule to keep up. You do dry runs, but you can't really rehearse. Eventually it's, "OK, let's go for it." You just pray you don't screw up, which I nearly did on the first take, but that's just the way it goes.
Wired.com: And if you do screw up? Just do it again?
Armstrong: Absolutely. I screwed up a few of those stunts in Indiana Jones and ended up looking like Wile E. Coyote running through the air. But you just land, say, "I know what went wrong. Let's set up and do it again."
Wired.com: In the book, you and Harrison Ford had an interchange where you pull him aside and say more or less, "Quit doing all your stunts, man. We're paid per stunt. So you're taking food out of my mouth each time you do your own," and he's shocked and apologizes because he didn't know. But in today's day and age, all that must be worked out beforehand, right?
Armstrong: Oh yeah. Putting on my other hat as stunt coordinator, you have to look and say, "No way do we want Harrison or whoever risking his neck here or here." You sort all that out beforehand.
Wired.com: You've had an impressive career trajectory, from jumping off horses in the desert to now doing the stunt direction in Thor. With so much of today's stunts being done in green rooms, is that old game of stunts a fading art?
Armstrong: I think it's still very much alive — even making a resurgence. I've just finished Spider-Man in New York and the advent of CGI has certainly made our life more bearable. But for Thor and Spider-Man, we were doing big snapbacks [when a person gets jerked by a cable simulating the effects of a gunshot or explosion] and a lot of the flying for real.
'Modern technology has allowed us to do more stunts while putting the actors in.'
The beauty of CGI is that you can use cables as thick as your little finger. When we made Superman, we were hanging on little piano wires and they had to be painted to match the sky or whatever.
Modern technology has allowed us to do more stunts while putting the actors in, too. I think Chris Hemsworth in Thor ended up doing 99 percent of his stunts.
Wired.com: And that remaining 1 percent?
Armstrong: Honestly, the rest is when we needed to do a shot and he was out of town, shooting in New Mexico. The only dangerous one I can think of is when Thor gets thrown, and he bangs and bounces around on the ground. There isn't a way to fake that, so no need to risk Chris.
Wired.com: Are there still stuntman-training programs and courses in Hollywood?
Armstrong: Oh yeah. But stuntmen are usually hired for a specific skill, whether a high diver, a horseman or a swordsman. You hire them for those abilities.
Wired.com: Can you tell us who, of the popular actors, are the best at doing their own stunts?
Armstrong: I think Chris Hemsworth and Tom Cruise are up there. Andrew Garfield is another. Of course, Harrison Ford was great, too. For years these guys have always wanted to do it, but now with modern technology, we can let them do it.
Audiences are ever more demanding. But also, they're now competing with videogames that have incredible action, but no one is actually doing it. I think there's a whole generation of kids thinking that kind of action is the norm.
Wired.com: Technological movements have a tendency to gain steam, and then an undercurrent pulls them back to the old ways — they go "retro." Do you ever see a renaissance back to the days of no CGI and people are really jumping out of planes rather than being in a green room?
Armstrong: I think there may be that movement already. There's been so much CGI that many are already a little sick of it. But it always comes down to how realistic the stunt ends up looking.
If done correctly, the audience shouldn't know there was CGI involved at all. But I do think there's a request to have things done more realistically. If the whole shot is done in a computer, it starts to become a cartoon, really.
Wired.com: Yeah, there were parts of Transformers where I didn't feel like I was watching a movie anymore.
Armstrong: It could just be a fantastic videogame. Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head. When you watch a movie you expect to stretch reality a little bit and get more from your heroes, but not necessarily say "Whoa. OK." There is a certain line to be drawn.
I go to meetings now, and people are again saying, "We want this to be real, organic. To feel as real as possible." And of course I'm thinking, "That's what we've always liked doing." [laughs]
Wired.com: And what about the cost argument, of stunt versus CGI?
Armstrong: We always joke that it's "cheaper to use a real person," but CGI costs are still coming down. But they are a hidden charge, if you like. In the end, a stunt may get lost in the budget of a $10 or $12 million scene, and you never really get to compare it against what you could have done.
There was some talk of having a stunt library when CGI was coming around four or five years ago, so people can go select whether they want this type of stunt or that. But moviemakers want something original. They don't want something out of a library.
It's the same reason directors don't leave up their sets. People always wonder why they tear down expensive sets. "They could use it for another movie," they say. But directors want it for their film and don't want others to use.
Wired.com: A piece of art, really.
Armstrong: Exactly. They want their films to be individual. And same with a stunt library. They don't want to pick-and-choose a shot of a guy falling off a parking garage. They want their own.
Wired.com: So after 40 years, what does the future hold for you?
Armstrong: I'm actually planning a couple shoots for Bollywood movies. It keeps me fresh going over there.
Wired.com: Must be quite a procedure to close a city block.
Armstrong: [laughs] People moan and think it's hard in New York or L.A. — I always say try doing it in Mumbai. You have to keep thinking laterally in this business if you want to survive.
All photos courtesy Vic Armstrong.


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I replied to a message from a client.
In the headers of the message as stored in the Sent box, I find a reference to the URL www.pocosystems.com.
How can I see the format of the message that my client will see? Is this URL displayed to my client, and if so, how and where in the message?
Is this URL automatically included in outgoing messages? Can it be disabled, or are we stuck with mandatory advertising?


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JERSEY CITY, N.J. — A rookie police officer slain in an ambush over the weekend had dreamed of being a cop as a kid and was an eager learner who had recently gotten a tip from his uncle, a retired officer, and put it into action, the uncle said at his funeral Friday.
"He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his Uncle Frank," Frank DeFazio said during the services for Jersey City Officer Melvin Santiago at St. Aloysius Catholic Church.
"It was my honor," he said, addressing the flag-draped casket, "to work alongside you, Officer Santiago."
Hundreds of mourners filled the church and more than a thousand more uniformed officers lined the surrounding streets as the hearse slowly made its way past. Among the mourners were Gov. Chris Christie and former Gov. Jim McGreevey.
The 23-year-old Santiago was killed early Sunday in what authorities have described as an ambush by an armed man who grabbed a security guard's gun at a 24-hour Walgreen's and then waited for police to arrive before he started shooting.
Suspect Lawrence Campbell, who had been wanted by police in a separate murder investigation, was slain in the shootout, after telling a witness to watch the evening news because he was "going to be famous."
DeFazio recalled Friday how, even when Santiago was working at a Target store and didn't own a car, he never missed a birthday party of a relative's baby girl even though it was a two-hour trip each way.
It was at the toddler's birthday party last Saturday, the day before he died, that Santiago told DeFazio he had taken his tip on positioning during a traffic stop and used it on the street.
"He told me, 'Uncle Frank, I did the car stop just like you told me and it blew my partner's mind,'" DeFazio said. DeFazio added that Santiago had scheduled an appointment for Monday morning at a BMW dealer to buy the car he'd always coveted.
The service's other public speaker, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, noted that Santiago had requested to work in the city's western section, where much of Jersey City's violent crime is concentrated, so he could watch, learn and "bring pride to the west."
"Melvin understood that being a police officer was dangerous, but that it was the highest calling of service possible," Fulop said.
Santiago was promoted posthumously this week to the rank of detective and awarded the police department's medal of honor.
"He walked quietly through life as a polite, respectful, compassionate man," DeFazio said. "The bullet that stuck Officer Melvin Santiago in the head also struck my heart."
Santiago was one of two New Jersey police officers to die in the line of duty this week. On Thursday, Waldwick Officer Christopher Goodell was killed when a tractor-trailer slammed into the back of his unmarked car as he was monitoring speeders on Route 17.


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SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Kings have started talks with the NBA and officials in India about playing an exhibition game in the native country of new owner Vivek Ranadive as soon as next season, Ranadive said.
The connection between the league's desire to generate a larger presence in the second-most populous nation in the world and the emotional link for Ranadive comes as the Kings announce that the Oct. 30 season opener against the Nuggets will be televised live in India, with plans for a viewing party in Bombay.
"In India, there's a billion people," Ranadive said. "When they have a cricket match, there's 600 million people watching. If we got a small fraction of that, that would still be a very big number."
Having NBA teams play there, though, is far more problematic because of the lack of arenas at NBA standards. That would be the biggest obstacle for the Kings in India in October 2014.
"We have to find the right facility," Ranadive said. "Right now they don't have one. But we have a year and the NBA is very, very supportive about building the brand in India."
Even though a year is extremely fast for this sort of project?
"I think it's realistic," Ranadive said. "We're building a new arena (in Sacramento) and that will be done in three years. We're very aggressive and ambitious."


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By Cody Willard
We have thousands of Top 5 Apps Lists for all kinds of interests, hobbies and professions at AppConsumer.com. You can search for the best five apps for your own interest, hobby or profession (ie, real estate, stocks, calculator, medical, music, etc) using the search box below and click through to AppConsumer:
Is Apple in a bubble, as most permabears and gold-bugs tell me every time they get the chance? Is Google bubblicious too?
Or will I turn out to be correct when I wrote this in my Worst case scenario for apps is still a better bet than anything else you can invest in column earlier this week: "Google will still have grown its cash flow and earnings over the next decade and that means the stock will likely be higher in 2020 than it is in 2010. Same goes for Apple."
Or is it possible that even if Google and Apple are to grow their cash flow and earnings over the net decade that the stocks won't move or that they'll even go down over that same time period. That outcome is certainly possible, as commenter DavyJ wrote to me on that same blog post:
"Look at how CSCO has grown its cash flow and earnings over the last decade and how the stock has performed. It didn't mean a thing."
He's right that Cisco has grown their earnings and revenues over the last ten years. Here's Cisco's numbers in 1999, straight from their annual report:
Cisco's own ability to harness the power of the Internet and use change as a competitive advantage has resulted in exceptional value and returns for our shareholders this past year. For the fiscal year ending July 31, 1999, Cisco reported revenue of $12.15 billion, a 43 percent increase compared with revenue of $8.49 billion in fiscal 1998. Net income for the year was $2.10 billion or $0.62 per common share, compared with fiscal 1998 net income of $1.35 billion or $0.42 per common share.
Compare that to their 2009 report:
Revenue in fiscal 2009 was $36.1 billion, a decrease of 9% year over year from our highest annual revenue ever. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, we experienced our only quarterly sequential increase in revenue during fiscal 2009. While the stabilization of fourth quarter results was encouraging, we are unable to determine whether or not this possible improvement in the global macroeconomic environment is sustainable. From an operational standpoint, we pursued a relentless focus on organizational efficiency and expense management to enable these investments. We clearly exceeded even our stretch goal for reduced operating expenses. Earnings per share on a fully diluted basis for fiscal 2009 were $1.05.
Sales were up more than triple over the last decade for Cisco and earnings up more than 150%. And the stock?
Ten years ago today, Cisco was at $55 a share. Today it stands at $23. Down more than 50% over the last ten years.
How can this be? How is it possible that a company could triple sales and cash flows over decade and the stock drop in half anyway? The answer to that, of course, is that Cisco was just starting to live through the popping of the great dot com bubble. Think about how crazily expensive Cisco's stock was back in 1999? It peaked at $80 (with a half-trillion dollar market cap, baby!), but let's use our $55 price from exactly ten years ago, because it was still outrageously expensive (and on its way to $8 per share two years later).
With Cisco at $55 a share, with 42 cents per share in earnings, that gives you a P/E multiple of 130. It's price to sales ratio was more than 30x. That's the kind of bubble that would make Ben Bernanke proud.
Speaking of Ben Bernanke and bubbles, let's get back to the question at hand — is Apple in a bubble? With Apple at $300 a share, with earnings of $15 per share over the last twelve months, that gives you a P/E multiple of about 20. Not 130 like Cisco was at ten years ago. And the price to sales ratio for Apple is about 8x. Not the 30x that Cisco was at ten years ago.
Google's at a P/E of 25 looking at the last four quarters of earnings and has a price to sales ratio of also about 8 with Google's quote at $600 or so.
Guess what — Google and Apple are NOT IN A BUBBLE. They're not as cheap as they were when we were pounding the table on these two names and detailing what call options investors should be using, but they're still pretty darn cheap compared to Cisco back ten years ago, eh?
Hell, even if Google were already today at my $2000 price target for 2020, the stock would still be cheaper than Cisco was when it was at $55 ten years ago today. At Goog $2000, we'd be looking at a backwards P/E of about 80 and a price to sales ratio of about 25. I'd be a seller of Google at those levels, don't get me wrong, but we're not there (yet?) are we?
So there you have it, Google and Apple are NOT in a bubble. If you'd like to know exactly how I'd be trading these two stocks along with several other exclusive app-revolution stock picks, please take a free trial for Revolution Investing. I invite you to check it out and hopefully I can make it worth much more than the very cheap fees of $99 for the first year and $199 per year thereafter.
And finally, here are some very cool Top 5 Apps Lists from this week on my site AppConsumer.com:
Android –
Top 4 Best Android Apps for Outdoors and Camping
Top 5 Best Golfer Apps for Android
Top 5 Best Apps for HTC Incredible
Top 5 Best SEO Apps for Android
Top 5 Best Blogger Apps for Android
Top 5 Best Toddler Apps for Android
iPhone –


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A question for anyone who would know the answer. I am hoping to climb Tacaná, which is the second highest volcano in Guatemala (and in Central America) this weekend. The volcano is right on the border of Guatemala (San Marcos department) and Mexico (Chiapas state). I would like to climb from Guatemala and descend into Mexico to get a nice round trip (since I don't have a car and there's busses everywhere in this part of the world it's very easy logistically.) Does anyone know if I would have trouble getting back into Guatemala, as the first time I would cross the border away from a legal border crossing? I know if necessary I could cross "illegally" again (the Guate-Mexico border does not compare, in any way, to the Mexico-USA border), but it would take longer and/or cost more.
Thanks for the help! P.S. If anyone who reads this has summitted Tacaná please message me as I have a couple questions.


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Sargento Lowers Sodium in Six Cheeses
Consumers, regulators and health groups are increasingly watching sodium intake as many refer to high-sodium diets as the single greatest problem with American nutrition. The average daily sodium intake is now 4,000mg, about twice the government's recommended amount for the average consumer. Health experts claim that if consumers reduced sodium by 1g per day, it would equate to 25 percent less sodium in the American diet.
Plymouth, Wis.-based Sargento Foods Inc. launches a line of six Sargento Reduced Sodium cheeses which offer great flavor for health-conscious consumers looking to indulge their passion for cheese without having to sacrifice taste. With 25 percent less sodium, the new cheeses are worthy substitutes for regular natural cheese in both cooking and snacking.
"With almost 50 percent of consumers reading food labels for sodium content, we're responding to consumers' interest in lowering their daily intake," says Chris Groom, core marketing director. "However, we only wanted to launch the line if we could still provide the great tasting natural cheese that consumers love, which this line does successfully."
Varieties include: Shredded Reduced Sodium Mild Cheddar ($3.09); Sliced Reduced Sodium Colby-Jack Cheese $3.49); Reduced Sodium String Cheese (12 pack for $4.39); Reduced Sodium Colby-Jack Snack Sticks (12 pack for $4.39); Shredded Reduced Sodium Mozzarella ($3.09) and Sliced Reduced Sodium Provolone Cheese (10 thin slices for $3.49).


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· Inner core: Medical grade conductive PVC· Meets conductivity requirement of NFPA 99· DEHP-Free· Braid reinforced polyester· Outer cover: Colored PVC - see charts· Working pressure: 200 psi max. @ 70° F· Min. bend radius: 3 inches· Working Temperature: 25° F to 150° F
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