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|Where No One Speaks English (April 2011 by M.A. Reilly)
I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country...to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as out own.
As I shall be using the term--and I'm not really too interested in terminological adjustments--"imperialism" means the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center that rules a distant territory. "Colonialism," which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory. As the historian Michael Doyle puts it, "Empire is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, economic, social or cultural dependence. Imperialism is simply the process or policy of establishing or maintaining an empire."
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
"When you can act like a third grader you will be allowed to sit with the other children," Mrs. Carls, a teacher tells Jae. It is early October.
Jae, who is shy, easily embarrassed and desirous to not stand out in social settings gets up from the table where he normally sits and moves across the classroom and sits by himself at the one desk located away from the other children. He has been caught talking loudly to a friend seated across the room, again.
This "event" is the last one in a long series of challenges that have happened only a few scant weeks into a new school year where Jae has been seen by his teacher as being a problem. One might wonder if other children in this classroom call out? Or fidget? Is it truly possible that only this one child does both? Is it so unexpected that an 8-year-old will do such things?
Earlier that day, Jae had yelled, "Yes!" out loud apparently disrupting his class after hearing an announcement calling for the boys and girls to try out for the school patrol.
"Aaron didn't hear the announcement," Jae would later tell his mother. "He had to know. We were waiting for this. I didn't mean to yell. I just got excited and wanted him to know we could try out. I didn't want him to miss it."
Being able to be part of the school patrol is a privilege reserved for third graders. Jae and his friends had been waiting until they were in the requisite grade. It would be an opportunity Jae would not come to know at this public school; a school situated in a largely white suburb. Because he blurted out, "Yes" and called across the classroom to a friend to tell him the announcement, he was left behind when his teacher and all of the other children went to the tryouts. This was his punishment for talking out of turn.
Jae's mother didn't hear this story until later that night well after she had picked her son up from school, but said that she had noticed that he was extremely quiet and withdrawn throughout dinner. Hours later, in tears, he finally told her the story. She would learn that it was not only being left behind that injured Jae, but also his belief that his teacher did not like him as he is 'different' from the other children. The other boys, Jae would explain, can call out.
"What did you do in the classroom by yourself?" Jae's mother asked him."I wasn't allowed to do anything. I just had to sit there with Mrs. Nomba (an aide) and wait until my class came back."
It would be an hour later when the white teacher and the 18 white children came back to the classroom—their voices raised in the excitement that marks such occasions. Here they would find Jae, embarrassed by his misdeed, sitting alone.


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Symbol of the Acorn
The acorn has long been considered a symbol of good luck in Germany where oak trees are considered sacred.
The rebirth of life in the coming of the Christ child is also represented in the acorn. Bearing a tiny seed that will produce a mighty oak, the acorn reminds us that great results can be born of humble beginnings.
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Ackman: Icahn Wanted To Be My Friend But I Said No
The activists are going at one another.
Bill Ackman, unsurprisingly, has a bit of a different spin on his past with Carl Icahn and has responded with a blistering press release to comments Icahn made on Bloomberg Television Thursday.
Ackman, in fact, seems to remember that it wasn't always true that Icahn didn't like him. He says after the two fought a court battle over a payment, which Ackman won, Icahn tried to be his friend.
"After Carl paid my investors, he called me up, congratulated me on winning, and said that he wanted to be my friend," Ackman says in the release. "I told him that I had no interest in being his friend."
Icahn earlier Thursday said he had "no respect" for Ackman, which is what Ackman had said about Icahn last year.
The two are bickering now over Ackman's short position in Herbalife, a nutrition company WSJ reported Icahn has taken a long position on.
Icahn and Ackman's past starts over a sum of $4.5 million.


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Dolphins generate £4m a year to Scots economy
Dolphin spotters contribute an estimated £4m to Scotland's economy, new figures have suggested.
Aberdeen University researchers examined what impact bottlenose dolphins off the country's east coast had on the tourism sector.
They found dolphin-watching was a major reason behind 52,200 overnight trips to the area.
A total of 17,100 people said that seeing the creatures was the main reason for their trip.
The study, by researchers based at the Aberdeen centre for environmental sustainability, also found that more than 200 jobs in the tourism industry were generated by overnight trips to see the dolphins.
Rural Affairs and Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead described the marine mammals as "much-loved inhabitants of Scotland's eastern waters".
He said it was "little wonder that many thousands of people plan especially to see them".
'Delightful symbol'
Mr Lochhead said the Marine Scotland Act had been designed to help protect wild species, such as dolphins, while also aiming to ensure the country could benefit from "the riches contained within our waters".
He added: "While dolphins directly add to our tourist income, they are also a delightful symbol of this unique and special environment which we protect, develop and enjoy."
During the summer months most dolphin tourists come from outside Scotland but Scots travel more frequently for shorter trips at other times of the year.
The research was based on a survey of 529 visitors during 2009.
It comes after a Scottish government report put the net economic impact of all wildlife tourism to Scotland at about £65m, supporting about 2,760 jobs.


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This week in Worth A Look, a Stanford alumna breaks up with her major label, hops on the Warped Tour and releases a fantastic DIY full length album; the San Francisco Mime Troupe is taking on gentrification caused by the tech bubble; and a Portola Valley man finds beauty in an unexpected place: a rotting onion.
Music: Startup hip-hop
"Palo Alto is so lovely; I wish I were there right now." Kristine Flaherty is sitting on a tour bus, in a parking lot full of other similar coaches, in an expansive parking lot, on a dreary Oregon day. The hip-hop producer, emcee and singer is looking back fondly on the time she spent at Stanford University in the mid-2000s.
Flaherty, better known by her hip-hop nom de plume, K.Flay, has recently broken up with her former record label, RCA, and despite her penchant for gloomy lyrics about drugs, doubt and depression, things are looking up. Earlier this week, she self-released her latest full-length record, "Life as a Dog," and she has a prominent slot on the Vans Warped Tour, a country-crossing alternative and punk festival, which has helped launch the careers of many artists.
Back in 2004, when Flaherty was just a freshman at The Farm, she got into an argument with a resident assistant in her dorm, Otero. "I was talking shit about mainstream hip-hop at the time," she recalls. "It was a time when 'Get Low' (the raucous Lil' John hit) was popular. It wasn't a great time for radio rap."
The argument ended with a challenge from her R.A. If it were so easy to make a good rap song, then she should be able to turn one out herself. Before she knew it, Flaherty was working with a fellow student in her dorm with music production software, cooking up a beat and fleshing out some lyrics. And although she entered into the endeavor as a "joke," she quickly discovered she enjoyed rapping.
"That summer I bought a midi keyboard and microphone," she says. "I basically taught myself how to make beats." The rest is history.
After graduating from Stanford, K.Flay hung around the Bay Area for a spell before moving to Brooklyn. The current location listed on her Facebook page is "San Francisco," although she also notes in her profile that she doesn't have an apartment -- a nod to her current nomadic state on the Warped Tour.
For a time she was signed to RCA Records, but said she asked to be released from her contract after the label wanted her to curate a set of tracks that represented one clear-cut genre -- either "dance" or "alternative." Ultimately, she says, she wants to be able to remain "a little bit of everything," even though its a formula that doesn't work well in the radio-oriented major label universe.
She self-released her excellent new LP, "Life as a Dog," on June 24 through iTunes, which is entirely appropriate, considering Flaherty's ties to Stanford -- a university so commonly associated with the DIY ethos of startup culture.
"I like to think of Stanford as a garage," she says, choosing as her metaphor the space where many great bands -- and many great tech companies -- have launched. In a way, Flaherty muses, "startup culture and music are actually quite similar. The major steps in the process of development as both an artist, and, let's say, the CEO of some new startup, I think they very similar."
K.Flay's new album, "Life as a Dog," can be downloaded on iTunes and Amazon. For more information and to stream some of her music, including tracks from "Life as a Dog," go to kflay.com.
Stage: A 'Ripple Effect'
As rents continue to rise in the wake of the burgeoning tech sector, those working for companies that don't make apps or come up with "integrated solutions" aimed at "making the world a better place" are finding that they are being priced out of the places they've called home.
Call it gentrification, call it a tech bubble, or call it downright class warfare, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, now in its 55th season, is calling it "Ripple Effect," the name of the troupe's latest production, which is being billed as "a musical comedic tale of intersecting lives and cultures that reflect the familiar neighborhood tensions that are polarizing San Franciscans today," and it is coming to Palo Alto on July 10.
It's the latest in a string of reactionary works from San Francisco artists. Recently, singer, songwriter and cabaret performer, Candace Roberts, released a music video on YouTube called "Not My City Anymore"; and musician Hannah Lew released a compilation album, titled "San Francisco is Doomed," featuring scathing rebuffs from local indie bands, such as Thee Oh Sees and Mikal Cronin.
Velina Brown, an actor in the SF Mime Troupe, plays "The Fiery Activist" in this year's production. In addition to noting that mimes actually speak and sing on stage -- as well as performing exaggerated motions and pantomimes -- Brown explains her connection to the underlying themes of "Ripple Effect."
"For artists, typically an area that other folks might say, 'Oh that's a rough area' -- artists will move into that area, because it would typically be cheaper to live in an area where more mainstream people are afraid to move into," Brown says. "When artists move in, they clean it up, they change the vibe, they make it someplace interesting and colorful to be from a creative standpoint, they tend to really uplift where they are. Then, all of a sudden, it becomes a mainstream place."
When this happens, wealthier individuals start to move in, and, in the process artists end up getting evicted and rents get raised. Brown says this is what has happened in San Francisco. "It's really an obnoxious process," she says. "It's particularly annoying to people who rolled up their sleeves and put the sweat equity in and took a warehouse and made it a cool place."
"Ripple Effect" comes to the south field of Mitchell Park on July 10. It begins with music at 6:30 p.m. and the main show starts at 7 p.m. The event is free, but the troupe requests that you RSVP online beforehand at Brown Paper Tickets. Donations will be accepted at the performance.
Photography: A portrait of the onion
Alan McGee says he has always looked at the world a bit differently. The longtime Portola Valley resident says where others see a landscape, he looks for aesthetic shapes and movement; in rocks and gnarled tree trunks he looks for faces and figures.
"It's analogous to children seeing things in the clouds," McGee explains. The shapes and figures he sees are "metaphors for feelings that I have about nature." When McGee picked up photography as a younger man, he gravitated toward images that some saw as abstract, but which he feels are animated with life.
And so, when McGee forgot about a half of an onion, which he had set aside while preparing pasta sauce, only to rediscover it after it had begun to wilt, he did what he always does. He pulled out his camera and documented the odd curves of the decaying bulb.
"These half onions simply presented against a black background seem, to me, informed with animism -- a primitive worldview that non-human entities possess a spiritual or supernatural essence," McGee says explaining his latest photography project, "Onions Observed -- An Animistic Perspective," which is currently on display at the Portola Art Gallery in Menlo Park. "These onions, over time, took on qualities that catalyzed my imagination. I invite the viewer to join me in this imaginative exploration."
The exhibit runs through July 31 at the Portola Art Gallery, located at 75 Arbor Road, in Menlo Park. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. McGee will attend a reception on July 12, from 1 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 650-321-0220, or go to portolaartgallery.com.


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Ten Apples Up On Top
Author/illustrator: Dr. Seuss/Roy McKie
Ten Apples Up On Top is about animals who try to make the apples fall off the animals' heads. I liked it because they had 10 apples up on their heads. My favorite part was when they hop with four apples. I would recommend this book to kids who like The Cat in the Hat.
Johnny Boo & the Happy Apples
Author/illustrator: James Kochalka
Johnny Boo & the Happy Apples is about a ghost who eats a sad apple and gets a super floopy noodle arm. I liked it because the ghosts are so cute. My favorite part was when the apple fell on the Ice Cream Monster's head. It's sad because Johnny Boo and Squiggle go into the Ice Cream Monster's tummy. It's happy when Johnny Boo super-booed. I would recommend this book to kids who like monsters and ghosts.
More Johnny Boo
- Johnny Boo: The Best Little Ghost in the World
- Johnny Boo: Twinkle Power
- Johnny Boo & the Mean Little Boy (August 31, 2010)
Johnny Boo and Tintin's self-portraits with apple prints:


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When 12-year-old Charles "Dale" Ostrander began to drown in a riptide off the coast of Washington state, the first person to come to his rescue was Nicole Kissel, only twelve years old herself.
According to CBS, Kissel heard Ostrander cry for help and turned her boogie board around to reach him, over her father's objections that it was too dangerous. She was able to help Ostrander onto the board, but they remained caught in the tide. Kissel says Ostrander already looked in dire straits: "His skin was a lot lighter. It looked like there was no life in his body at all."
Eventually, Ostrander was knocked off the boogie board. Rescue workers recovered his body, which appeared dead. But after CPR, he revived, and although he's still in the hospital, he's now able to speak. Ostrander was deprived of oxygen for a long time, and may not make a complete recovery. But every second that he was on the boogie board with Kissel was a second when he could draw breath, and hopefully reduce his chances of permanent brain damage. Kissel has visited Ostrander in the hospital, where he reportedly told her, "Thank you." I'd like to add my thanks to Kissel for giving us a piece of good news in an awful week, and being a brave, awesome kid.


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Pakistan looks set to become a major investor in Tajikistan's cement industry, with plans to build a large cement plant in the Central Asian country. On June 10, Tajik ambassador to Islamabad, Zabaydullo Zubaydov, discussed the details of the deal with the head of the Pakistani investments board, Saleem Mandviwalla. According to the Tajik foreign ministry, Mandviwalla informed the Tajik ambassador that Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari and prime-minister Yousuf Raza Gilani instructed the investments board to provide a loan to Dushanbe for building a joint cement plant in Tajikistan. A group of Pakistani experts will soon arrive in Tajikistan to discuss the location of the facility and its production capacity with their Tajik colleagues.
The principal agreement on building a joint cement plant was reached during the first business forum of Tajik and Pakistani entrepreneurs in Karachi in March 2011. The forum was attended by Tajik president Emomali Rahmon who was on a state visit to Pakistan. Pakistani experts have suggested that the joint plant might have a production capacity of 1 million metric tons of cement a year. Islamabad hopes that the joint production facility will help Pakistani cement producers to get a better access to markets in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
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Monday, March 27, 2017 at Gaylord Palms, Orlando, FL
Starts at 3:00 PM · Ends on Mar 29, 2017 at 4:00 PM, EDT (America/New_York)
Plan for Your Next Communications & Collaboration Systems Migration!
Enterprise Communications has become more business-critical—and complex—than ever before. Your job is to implement and manage reliable, robust, secure, cost-effective communications across the entire enterprise—while also providing the most flexible, feature-rich, diverse, and up-to-date capabilities that can enhance and transform the business. And there's only one event that provides you with the in-depth, objective, vendor-neutral expertise you need to get this job done: Enterprise Connect Orlando.
For more than 26 years, Enterprise Connect has brought the top subject matter experts together with the enterprise decision-makers who build the communications that power and, increasingly, transform our businesses.
Whether you need to upgrade a legacy system to a more modern, cost-efficient platform; or you're looking to more fully integrate next-gen communications with business processes--everything at Enterprise Connect Orlando 2017 is focused on one overriding goal: To help you maximize your investments in communications and collaboration systems, services, apps and networks.
NEW this year:
* Conference Track on Next-Gen Messaging and Team Collaboration applications
* Expanded Conference Track on Communications APIs, focusing on Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) and other key trends
* Special Breakout Session with results from TADHack Hackathon
* Enterprise Communications & Collaboration 2020 | Conference-within-a-Conference: Building Your Enterprise's Strategic Plan
* Special Wednesday afternoon Summit on the Lawn General Session, followed by Appreciation Party (Open to All Attendees)
* More to be announced!
Conference Tracks
• Next-Gen Messaging & Team Collaboration NEW TRACK!
• Unified Communications & Collaboration
• Contact Center/Customer Experience
• Video
• Cloud Communications
• Mobility
• SIP/SIP Trunking
• Communications APIs
• Systems Management & Network Design
Why You Should Attend
1. Objective, actionable information for every stage of your communications strategy. Whether you need to upgrade legacy infrastructure or are looking for the communications technologies that will truly transform your business, you will find the insights and actionable information you need at Enterprise Connect Orlando 2017. You'll hear from independent analysts and consultants and pioneering enterprise executives, as well as a range of leaders from all the major equipment, software and services providers, and pioneering enterprise executives.
2. The Impact on Your Enterprise. You won't just get deep technical information (though you'll get plenty of that). Enterprise Connect's sessions are designed to provide you with the practical information you need to make the right decisions for your enterprise's business. Whether your choices center around CPE vs. cloud vs. hybrid; or how best to roll out video; or update your contact center strategy—Enterprise Connect has the experts on hand and the content prepared to guide you through the decision-making process.
3. The industry comes together at Enterprise Connect. The Enterprise Connect Exhibition Hall is the ONLY place where you can see 180+ major system and software vendors and their products and services in one location, and where you can engage the best experts in both formal and informal formats, to learn from your peers and from the thought leaders you won't find anywhere else.
Gaylord Palms, Orlando, FL


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It's very easy to get into a routine with a credit card. Perhaps you signed up for one in college or took the first offer that comes along when you need a card and that's the one you stick with for your primary use.
In my own case, I stuck with a card that earned rewards that went to a charity for a very long time. It made me feel good in the sense that my spending was actually contributing to that charity, though it was only earning about 0.5% of my purchases for the charity.
Eventually, I wised up and replaced the card with a Mastercard that offered rewards for a particular book store chain, thinking I'd earn some free books through using it. This time, I found that most of my purchases weren't earning me much at all in terms of rewards.
Now, I use three credit cards for all of my purchases. One is associated with the gas station that I use exclusively, another is associated with my primary online retailer, and the other earns solid rewards as a generic grocery store card. Together, they earn me almost exactly a 3% return on my spending.
How does this work? It's really pretty straightforward.
For starters, don't carry a balance on any of your credit cards. Carrying a balance trumps any rewards that you might be earning. If you are planning on making a big purchase on credit and consider scooping up some rewards to be a "perk," it's not. Unless you're on a special 0% interest introductory program, you'll never earn as much in rewards as you'll lose carrying a balance on the card.
It's important to keep in mind that if you're not carrying a balance on your card, the interest rate on the card really donesn't matter much at all. If you never carry a balance, a 7.9% interest rate means the same thing as a 31.9% interest rate. In both cases, you'll never pay a dime in interest.
The key is to only sign up for cards that line up with the purchases you're already making. If you don't, you'll either find yourself buying things you don't need to get rewards or not earning solid rewards on the purchases you make.
My suggestion is to look at the credit card offerings at the retailers you already use. What card is offered by your regular gas station? What card is offered by the grocery store you regularly use? What card is offered by your preferred online retailer?
Most of the time, these cards will offer very strong rewards for using the card at the retailer in question, with very moderate rewards for spending at other places. For example, the Target Visa gives you 5% off all of your purchases at Target, but nothing at all for purchases elsewhere.
Because of this, I have a default card I use for purchases outside of those places (one that gives me a moderate reward for all purchases), but when I'm shopping at my preferred grocery store or at my preferred gas station, I use the card associated with those places (because those cards earn me virtually nothing at places outside of those retailers). Since the vast majority of my normal purchases are covered here, I have no reason to sign up for other cards.
The goal here is to make sure that the healthy financial choices you already make are earning you as much as possible. If you're in a situation where you use a credit card safely and without carrying a balance, it can be a useful tool, and you should choose the tool that earns you the best return. For that search, the best route is to start with the retailers you already use.
This post is part of a yearlong series called "365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited)," in which I'm revisiting the entries from my book "365 Ways to Live Cheap," which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my "photography intern" for this project.


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The John Murray Show Tuesday 5 February 2013
A lively mix of topical stories, human interest and lifestyle features with John Murray
Last week we we featured Sean, a man with a cat conundrum! Sean had two cats at home, the missus wanted a third, but he didn't. This week we sent our own John Bela Reilly out into the street to find another conundrum for you.
An inheritance is not always as welcome as it should be when you're faced with a massive tax bill, or you've already found yourself in negative equity! Joining John in studio is Tax and probate solicitor Cathal Lawlor who is concerned that the generations are not talking to each other about the financial impact of bequests
In studio with John is Helen Seymour, who decided to publish her book herself, as she was confident in her own edits & with her marketing background knew exactly where she wanted the book placed!
Call: 01-2083257, 01-2083971, 01-2082339
Text: 51551
Presenter: Dave Fanning


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Science Friday® is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Science Friday® and SciFri® are registered service marks of Science Friday, Inc. Site design by Pentagram; engineering by Mediapolis.
|Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins, the FBI's prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, died before his trial in an apparent suicide, and the case is now closed. John Dankosky and guests discuss new investigations that question whether scientific evidence against Ivins was conclusive enough to hold up in court.


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Chris Redd from Netflix's "Disjointed!", Popstar, ABC's "Family Fortune" & Fox's "Empire"
Purchase Tickets
Chris Redd from Netflix's "Disjointed!", Popstar, ABC's "Family Fortune" & Fox's "Empire"
Thursday, March 23, 2017 7:00 PM
Drafthouse Comedy, Washington, DC
Show Details
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- Door Time: 6:15 PM
- Show Type: Stand Up
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Chris Redd is a stand up comedian, actor and writer, born in St. Louis, Missouri and moved to Chicago, IL at the age of 8. Considering himself a Chicago Native, Chris embraced his musical roots and sought to become Chicago's next great Hip Hop artist. However it was Chicago's vibrant comedy scene that influenced Chris and called him into comedy.
While performing stand up around the city, Chris began training with the historic Second City Chicago and iO Theater Chicago. It was with that training that Chris created and produced his own stage production at the well-known Southside Chicago comedy club Jokes & Notes. Chris refined his character and sketch writing while touring with the illustrious Second City and had a brief stint on their E.T.C stage before venturing on to work at NBC on an Untitled Sketch Comedy Pilot.
Chris has worked on projects including the Tina Fey produced ABC Comedy 'Family Fortune' as well as a small recurring role on FOX'S show EMPIRE. The biggest role to date, however, is playing Hunter the Hungry in the Lonely Island movie entitled Popstar: Never stop Never Stopping produced by Judd Apatow. Chris was deemed a New Face in the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal last year and can be seen traveling all over the world with his stand up comedy.
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Go through this forum to clear all your doubts about studying in Australia. Here, you can discuss about the top colleges and universities in Australia, courses offered, by posting new threads. You can clarify others queries as well, by replying to the existing threads.


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What's inside? Here are the questions answered in today's reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Saving for future dream home
2. Setting a budget
3. Forgiving loans to stimulate economy
4. Should we buy a house?
5. Best book of 2011
6. Repaying an old debt
7. Baby life insurance
8. Paying off no-interest loan
9. Mortgage payoff paperwork
10. Vegan to vegetarian
I've learned some things and gained some new insights from the Occupy Wall Street movement. They encouraged me to learn more about the issues they're protesting about and made me reconsider some of my political ideas.
The thing is, I could make the same exact statement about the Tea Party movement.
You can always learn something and grow from anyone, particularly when people congregate under the same banner. Something is making them do this. Why? What makes them so passionate about the idea that they take action? There's usually something valuable there if you take the time to learn about it instead of just discarding it.
Q1: Saving for future dream home
I was just wondering how you and your family save for your future dream home? Do you put it in a Index fund? If so, at what point would you move it out from that and into a cash account? I remember reading unless my goal is greater than 10 years away, to just keep it as cash. Does that mean 10 years out from your goal you would move it into a savings?
– Fred
For us, we sat down and asked ourselves what needed to be in place for us to move forward with our plans for a dream home. We decided that we needed to be able to pay cash for the land and have our current house completely paid for before we decided to move forward with the plan. Mostly, this is because we're pretty debt-averse. Ideally, we would like to buy the land with cash, then use the future sale of our house as collateral to build, then put our house onto the market as soon as (or just before) we're able to move.
Once we had that set in mind, we asked ourselves what financial moves would get us to our goal as quickly as possible. After playing around with several investment and debt calculators, we came to the conclusion that the approach that would lead to success most effectively was a split approach, where we made larger-than-average payments on our mortgage while also contributing a small amount each month to some sort of investment.
Since our timeline for this is a little more than a decade off, we elected to use an index fund for this savings. We are placing half of our savings into Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, which basically indexes most domestic stocks, and half in Vanguard Total International Stock Index, which indexes a wide variety of international stocks.
We re-evaluate these choices every year, watching how the investment grows and adjusting our splitting of our "savings" on an annual basis. As we get closer to the date where we're able to do this (a date that's inching earlier and earlier, actually), we'll move the stock investments into something more conservative that won't lose value.
Q2: Setting a budget
A friend of mine (she's 23 and single, part time student with a good paying job and benefits) asked me about budgeting. She said she looks up to my frugal ways and wanted to know if her budget was good percentage wise. I was embarrassed to tell her that other than making sure that housing is no more that 25% of your gross and saving AT LEAST 10% per month, I didn't know what the "rules" were for percentage of income in the other areas (needs, wants, debt repayment, etc). My personal method is to list my fixed expenses first (of which I include tithe, retirement and regular savings as fixed expenses) and then I try to keep all my other stuff (gas, groceries, entertainment, etc) as low as humanly possible, and then either save the remainder at the end of the month for short term stuff or other things we are working towards (home improvement, vacation). Can you tell me the rule of thumb for budgets? What percentage should be housing, savings, transportation, needs, wants, etc?
– Jill
The problem with sticking to someone else's recipe for percentages is that they vary widely. The proportion of housing costs, for example, depends heavily on where you live, your housing requirements, and your total salary. For example, a single person making $30,000 a year in New York City is going to have a lot higher percentage of their annual income devoted to housing than a married couple making $120,000 a year in rural Iowa.
The best way to budget is to simply track all of your expenses for a few months, then use that data to calculate the percentages of what you're actually spending. Then, spend some time thinking about that data. What can you actually cut? What percentages would you like to see elsewhere?
You can categorize all of your spending however you'd like. Just make sure that it's grouped in ways that make easy sense to you.
Q3: Forgiving loans to stimulate economy
I keep seeing posts on Facebook about asking the government to forgive student loan debts. I'm no economist, but I cannot understand how not repaying the government could prove to be a good idea (though it would benefit me). I'd be interested to read your thoughts on the matter.
– Andy
The idea is that if the government forgave student loan debt, a lot of people under the age of 40 would suddenly have a lot more discretionary income. They would of course then spend that discretionary income, thus stimulating the economy.
Think of it in terms of your situation. If your student loans vanished, you'd probably use that money in other ways. You might buy some things you've wanted. You might make a down payment on a house much sooner rather than later.
All of those things would help out the economic recovery. It would be a huge economic boon at the sake of some significant government income over the next few decades. It would increase personal income tax a bit and also increase business revenue a bit too so the government would get to recoup some of it in the form of tax revenues.
Q4: Should we buy a house?
My husband and I are in our early 30's. We are both from India and have been working in the United States (Texas) for 6 years now. We have no debts and are pretty disciplined about savings. We are on H1b (work) visas and hope to get our Green Card in the next 2 or 3 years.
We have been renting and would like to know if its a good idea to buy a house in the current market? Does it make sense to buy if there is chance that for some reason our GC is not approved and we have to move back to India? Our concern is that we would most probably end up staying and might be wasting money paying rent when we could already be investing in our house. What additional expenses are we looking at and is there anything we need to keep in mind if there is a need to sell in the next 1, 2 or 3 yrs?
– Claire
The best time to buy a house is when you can afford one and it meets your housing needs. If you're buying a home as a residence, that's the primary consideration.
Market timing on a home purchase is only a good idea if you're able to move it easily as an investment. That's much harder to do if it's your primary residence. Besides, the future is notoriously difficult to predict. I wouldn't make a house-buying decision based on the arcane art of market timing.
One point of advice, though. Without a green card, you may find that some lending institutions are hesitant to offer you a mortgage, even if you have a full down payment and good credit, as you might be a risk of just disappearing back into your home country. Don't let it get you down and shop around.
Q5: Best book of 2011
Your list of your favorite authors was a bit overwhelming. How about just sharing your favorite book so far this year?
– Leslie
I'll name two books. No, three.
The most enjoyable book I've read this year so far, at least in terms of keeping me entertained and keeping me turning the pages, was The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It's a fantasy novel that centers around a small handful of really compelling characters, plus Sanderson has a particular gift for making it all come to life.
The most thought-provoking book I've read this year so far, in terms of making me reflect on it and altering my way of thinking, was Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, which focuses on the neuroscience of memory and how to improve one's own memory. I've also got to give a nod to Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, the best book on running I've ever read.
Q6: Repaying an old debt
I have about $6000 in debt on my credit report, most of it over 5 years old. I started saving in order to pay it off but someone mentioned to me and I think you wrote that making a payment will bring the debt current. If in fact the debt falls off after 7 years, is it worth it to may payments on it and in essence bring the debt current or just let it fade away?
– Ryan
In terms of honesty and repaying money you borrowed from someone, of course it's not the right thing to do.
In terms of strictly looking at your credit report, the debt is probably best left unpaid.
To me, this is really backwards. The current credit score system in this country encourages people to do the dishonest thing if debts have gone unpaid for more than a year or two. I am not a fan of the current way in which credit is evaluated in the United States.
Q7: Baby life insurance
My husband and I just had our first child. We are young newlyweds and are looking for advice on what type of life insurance to buy for our baby and also the easiest way to create a will. Thank you!
– Jill
The easiest way to create a legal will is a service like LegalZoom. They're perfect for a relatively simple process like creating a basic legal will.
As for buying life insurance for a baby, I generally don't think it's a good idea. The purpose of having a life insurance policy is to protect the family in the event of the demise of a breadwinner. The passing of a child doesn't fall under this category. If it does happen, it's an expense that you can easily manage and keep moving forward.
If you're worried about a situation where your child is uninsurable in their twenties or thirties because of a medical condition, these situations are quite rare. Virtually everyone in their twenties or thirties is insurable to at least some level, and most everyone is insurable at a pretty reasonable cost.
Take the money you would have put into life insurance for your baby and apply it to something else, like a college savings plan.
Q8: Paying off no interest loan
I've been reading your blog along with several others and all have the same ideas about debt (bad) and savings (good) and how debt can inhibit your ability to save; I'm totally into it. I have no high interest credit card debt as of this month (woot!) and now only have three sources of debt, my mortgage, my wife's student loan, and a no-interest loan from my parents. They sold me a Toyota Highlander for $9,000 and asked for a monthly payment of $200 until the loan is paid off. I'm about $3,000 into paying it off at this rate. Is there any conceivable benefit to paying it off earlier? To me it seems like free money. Thanks.
– Carl
If you're looking at it strictly as a debt, there's no benefit in paying it off early. If you have a zero-interest loan, you're always better off paying it as slowly as you can.
The catch here is that it's a loan between family members. A loan between family members is one that's often made possible because of the strength of a pre-existing relationship. In essence, that relationship is extra collateral on the loan. If you don't pay that loan off, you can damage the relationship. On the other hand, if you pay that loan off with expedience, you often can strengthen that relationship.
I'm pretty strongly opposed to loans between family members. If I were in your shoes, I'd probably debt snowball this family loan just like the rest of my loans.
Q9: Mortgage payoff paperwork
I'd love to get your advice on a mortgage issue. After much aggressive prepayment of principal, I'll be sending in my last mortgage check next month. It's a birthday present to me to pay a 30-year mortgage off in 13 years. Many might call it crazy, but I'm thrilled. So here's the question:
What papers does the mortgage company need to send me to prove I've paid off the mortgage? Are there any documents they (or I) should file with the county where I live in Virginia? I seem to recall my mortgage company sending some notice that you must PAY them to get the payoff papers. That would be outrageous. They've made a handsome profit on me, and I'll fight any additional fees. I thought I'd try the high road first, by calling for the exact payout, sending the check, and then writing them a nice letter asking them to register and send the paid documents to me as soon as possible. Problem is, I'm not sure what to ask for. Please let me know what I must get from them and add info on any optional things it would be nice to get.
You know the saying: a happy customer tells 3-5 friends, and a unhappy customer tells a dozen. Don't recall the numbers in the saying, but I'm ready to rain a boatload of bad publicity down on them if a responsible customer is ripped off by a bogus money-grubbing policy. Sorry I'm so vehement, but I really want to do this right. I'll start with a positive letter and ratchet up as needed.
– Alan
The process for this varies from state to state. The usual procedure is that when you pay off a loan in full, the mortgage company then contacts the state, releasing their lien from your home mortgage, at which point the county clerk mails you a copy of your lien-free house title.
If I were you, I'd contact both the mortgage company and the county recorder of deeds to find out what's next. If you've paid off your mortgage, your county's recorder of deeds should be aware of this and should be able to help you with the next step.
Usually, what will happen is that you'll have to get a notarized copy of your lien-free deed from the county recorder. That's legal proof that you own the house free and clear.
Q10: Vegan to vegetarian
I've noticed lately that you seem to have switched from being vegan to being vegetarian. What gives?
– Chloe
Last October, I started a vegan diet due to the suggestions of a dietitian who was advising me on some minor medical concerns. This lasted for about nine months, at which point my health was in a better place.
The biggest reason I switched back to vegetarianism is that being vegan – meaning that I eat no meat nor any foods containing animal protein like eggs and cheese – is an incredibly difficult diet with three young children. For a long time, we simply followed their pediatrician's recommendation that we feed them normally by essentially preparing two different meals each day or by serving them a vegan meal with a heavy protein component to it. This meant lots and lots and lots of beans.
Vegetarianism is simply more flexible, while retaining most of the health-oriented reasons for my original dietary switch. I'm pretty happy with how things are going with it.
Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I'll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.


text: WFP has delivered about 100 metric tonnes of food to villagers from Oriny in Upper Nile State of southern Sudan. It is the third week of airdrops in different southern Sudan states. Food is expected to be delivered to some 45,000 people who have been cut off by rain, and whose crop has also failed due to recent flooding.


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Men's Linen Shirts, Linen Pants and Linen Shorts for Any Tropical Occasion
Are you heading out on a cruise? Maybe a beach wedding? You're probably going to need some fashionable linen clothes for those hot days ahead. The Cubavera Linen Shop is your one-stop shop for men's linen shirts, pants, and shorts that'll keep you looking your best from day to night. Our lightweight, breathable men's linen styles are perfect for your next trip to paradise.


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Hi Queenies
can anyone out there help me ?
i've been looking on the Queen online U.K. website over the last number of weeks at merchandise, specifically a Queen crest white hoodie. i recently went to order this item and cannot find any merchandise on the Queen online website.
does anyone know what's happened or where i can buy this item ?


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TV Has Probably Already Ruined Your Kids
Is your child younger than two years old? Has your child ever caught a glimpse of your household television set in the "on" mode? Congratulations: you're raising a loser.
THAT is a highly sensationalized version of what the American Academy of Pediatrics now says, which is that kids under two should not be watching TV, period. What part of "period" do you not understand, Al Bundy? It's right here on the internet's leading parenting advice site, Gawker.com: no TV for your babies.
However, the recommendations run counter to what most parents actually do. About 90 percent of parents say their kids younger than 2 watch some type of media, according to a 2007 study. By the age of 3, nearly one-third of kids have a TV in their bedrooms.
Let's see, all American parents are awful failures wiling to sacrifice their children's well being at the altar of "shut up so I can relax for five damn minutes." Got it. Fortunately, you're all so ambitious for your children that you'll ruin them in a totally different way by the time they reach high school. Ah, well. They couldn't have afforded college anyhow.


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Giffords Appeals for Gun Control
WASHINGTON (AP) - The first congressional hearing on gun control since the Connecticut school shooting massacre has included a dramatic appeal for tougher gun laws from wounded former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Speaking haltingly from a prepared statement, Giffords told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "The time is now. You must act. Be bold, be courageous."
Her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, spoke as well, describing the effect on his wife from the shooting in Tucson two years ago. He said her "gift for speech is a distant memory," and that she struggles to walk, and is partially blind.
The hearing also included testimony from the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre, who rejected bans on some assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that have been advocated by President Barack Obama.
Under questioning, LaPierre also conceded that his organization no longer supports universal background checks for gun purchasers. He said criminals wouldn't subject themselves to a background check, and that potential violators aren't aggressively prosecuted.
Republicans pledged to listen carefully to today's testimony, but didn't go beyond that. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said the shootings in Arizona and Connecticut were terrible tragedies, but that they "should not be used to put forward every gun control measure that has been floating around for years." He said any serious discussion of the issue has to also focus on mental health.


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|Posted: March 21, 2008
Countering an approaching water crisis
|(Nanowerk News) As growing demand for clean water stretches even the resources of the world's largest industrialized nations, scientists and engineers are turning to new technology and novel ideas to find solutions.
|Mark Shannon of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joined a slate of world leaders in water resource research to address this crisis in a review paper in the March 20, 2008, issue of Nature.
|"As dire as the growing problems are with a lack of enough clean water in the world, I have a great deal of hope that many of these problems can be solved by increasing research into the science and technology of water purification," said Shannon, who also serves as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems (WaterCAMPWS).
|With an emphasis on environmentally friendly tools for killing microbes, membrane bioreactors, nanoscale filtration, and a host of other advanced technologies, the review paper addresses how these systems can be used for disinfection, decontamination, reuse and reclamation, and desalination of water supplies across the globe.
|"Clearly, a coordinated, multi-faceted approach is needed to deal with complex water issues," said Geoffrey Prentice, the NSF program director supporting the WaterCAMPWS center and currently on detail to the U.S. Mission to UNESCO in Paris.
|"Ours is one of several agencies working to address the water crisis before it grows worse. Working with the U.S. Mission to UNESCO, we are highlighting the international dimensions of inadequate water supplies, which lead to millions of deaths each year, primarily in the developing world," Prentice added.
|One example is a June 27 international water forum at the Department of State at which NSF, UNESCO and a number of agencies and international organizations will be joining Shannon and other technical experts to confront some of the most pressing global water needs.
|Shannon will lead the Congress for Water Purification Science and Technologies in the 21st Century in New Orleans on April 6-10, 2008, an event that coincides with an NSF public webcast on April 10 called Water in 2025, co-hosted by Popular Mechanics. Part of the larger Bridges to the Future forum (www.nsf.gov/bridges), the event is an opportunity for the public to call-in and ask questions of some of the top water researchers in the United States.
|Source: National Science Foundation
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It was ten days ago we brought you news on the first version of Tile Me!, an idea started by David Kimball on Reddit to help people show support for Windows Phone on various social networks. The idea was then turned into an app by developer InfiniteLoop and brought to all Windows Phone devices.
The concept behind the app is simple: create a Me Tile image of yourself that can be used on other social networks and not just your Windows Phone. The resultant image is bold, eye catching and says to the world, "Hey, I use a Windows Phone".
Since the release, the developer has been listening to your requests and now version 2.0 is the realization of that feedback.
We should mention that there are now two versions of Tile Me!: Free and Paid. The free version lacks some of the advanced features of the paid one, with the latter costing $0.99. So what's new? There have actually been a few updates spanning up to 2.0, but we'll just lump them together for convenience:
- High resolution output (1000x1000 pixels)
- Added PNG format support
- Save to SkyDrive
- Custom Titles (available in free version too)
One of those features was requested by us, namely the PNG support. PNGs have better image quality than JPEGs (less artifacts) with the tradeoff of also being larger in file size. Now with the paid version of Tile Me!, users can save a their creation knowing that they are getting a high quality image. The image gets uploaded to SkyDrive, which is fitting for safe keeping and sharing. Likewise with the 1000x1000 pixel feature, helping to ensure a better quality photo even when saved locally to the phone in JPEG format.
The other big feature is the ability to create custom text. This option was requested by many, though some were saying it goes against the grain of Windows Phone (which only says 'Me'). Regardless, the choice is now yours as you can put your name, your website or whatever you want in that area. It's an extra bonus and makes the app that much better. This feature is in both the free and paid versions.
What can we say? If you're a fan of Windows Phone and want to show support for the platform, you can grab this excellent app to create a unique profile image for your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram networks. It's a little touch that can go a long way.
Pick up Tile Me! Free here in the Store or opt for the high resolution JPEG and PNG support with the $0.99 and ad free option here. Windows Phone 7.x and 8 supported.


text: Since its inception in July of 1981 Los Ranchos Steakhouse continues to provide quality food and service in a warm, family style ambiance. Los Ranchos is recognized as the first to introduce Miami to its internationally renown signature dishes such as the chimichurri-marinated center-cut tenderloin "Churrasco", the "Gallo Pinto" a traditional mixture of red beans and white rice, and the luscious signature "Tres Leches" dessert. Winner of the Golden Fork Award and known for the Best Steak in Town, by The Miami Herald, Los Ranchos Steakhouse offers four great locations to serve you.


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Occasionally I get the issue that sometimes terrain cells disappear meaning they are not being rendered anymore, this issue depends on the location where I stand and on rotation where I look.
There are certain spots on the terrain where it happens, it seems to change when you change the terrain geometry.
Here is an example how it looks normally:
Now I rotate the view a bit and some terrain cells disappear from being rendered:
So far I just changed the terrain geometry of the terrain so long until those spots did not occur anymore, but this cannot be a long term solution, so maybe someone here got an idea what the issue is.


text:
This is a sample registry
Felicia & Juan
Felicia Wilson and Juan Roman's Honeymoon Registry
California Coast
|This is a sample registry
"Well Wishes" From Our Family & Friends
|"Best Wishes and Many Years of Happiness!!"
- Eric
|"I am so sorry that I was unable to attend the wedding...I know that it was spectacular. Best wishes in the future and hopefully I will be able to join you guys in Bermuda in January!"
- Melanie Gardner
|"Hi Guys,
Congratulations !!! We wish you the best and hope you have a blast on your honeymoon !!!"
- Carlos Maduena &Rubie Garcia
|"Congratulations on your wedding day!"
- Camille
|"Congratulations on your special day. We wish you the best of luck on your new life together"
- Ruben Gonzalez and Rebecca Render
|"We went wine tasting on our honeymoon. We hope your experience is just as memorable as ours was!"
- Jimmy and Joslyn Pascascio
|"Congratulations on your marriage! It has been a blessing to have you both as friends... May your life together be magical..."
- Jorge &Victoria
|"Congrats! We are so excited for you two! Hope you have an amazing honeymoon and wonderful life together! We wish you the best!"
- Love, Ivy Jean and Bobby
|"Words cannot express how happy and excited I am for both of you. This is a little something to help make your honeymoon special. We thank you for letting us be part of your celebration. Happiness and Love Always!"
- Gabriela &Hector Castro
|"Wishing you the best in this new journey of your lives. WIth the presence of God and your LOVE you two will conquer the world... Hope you enjoy your meal. I know Juan does so all the time... Congrats Mi quebrabanger...."
- Sandra (aka Banuelos) and Luis Moreno
|"Kevin and I hope you both have a great huneymoon. Enjoy a dinner on us:)."
- Kevin Shaughnessy and Veronica Diaz
|"Congratualtions you two! May your marriage bring you two closer each and every day."
- Joseph Quicho
|"Congratulations! Wish you the best!"
- David Medina
|"Enjoy your dinner on us!! Love you guys, and congratulations!!"
- Angel Garcia and Eileen Lopez
|"Hi dear friends!
It is really touching that you guys think of a gift like this for a child in need during such a special time as your wedding.
We wish you a wonderful day and endless years to come full of love and happiness!"
- Gisela and Pete
|"Hope you two enjoy Alcatraz!! COngrats on your wedding and I am so happy for you two!!"
- Trisha Duran
|"Congratulations to both of you, hope you guys have lots of fun on you're honeymoon."
- Miguel Lomeli and Esmeralda
|"How unselfish of you to think of providing something special for needy students on your special day.
God Blessings,
- Mary Evelyn Mathieu
|"Best Wishes!"
- Donté
|"Wishing you a wonderful partnership, with many happy years together!
I also hope you have good fall weather (sunny and warm) when you visit my corner of Northern California during your epic trip:)
- Katherine
|""The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return." -Cole
Wishing you eternal happiness as you begin your lives as one."
- Maribel Aguilera and Noe Hernandez
|"With lots of Love. Best wishes for a loving marriage. Que dios se lo page con muchos hijos."
- Erikita Garcia
|"Wish you both a lifetime of happiness. God bless"
- Mike and Laura
|"CONGRATULATIONS on your wedding.
Showers of blessings and riches upon you and your future together.
- Bill and Bird Ramirez
|"Congrats on finding each other!! May your marriage be full of blessings and happiness."
- Alex Thomas
|"Congratulations on your wedding. May the Lord bless your marriage and bring you many, many years of happiness."
- Ruben &Elena Diaz
|"Love you guys! Enjoy your gifts... you both deserve them."
- Sister Kimmy
|"May God continue His blessings on you and yours. Enjoy each day you have breath. We love you. Your other parents."
- Mannie &Robbie Thomas
Thank You for visiting our honeymoon bridal registry and wedding website. We decided to use this honeymoon bridal registry to allow us to pre plan all the wonderful things we want to do on our dream honeymoon. If you have any questions about how our honeymoon bridal registry works, please contact a honeymoon registry specialist at 858-433-1506 and they can help with our wedding registry list. Again, Thank You so much for using our honeymoon bridal registry and wedding website. Most of all, thank you for being part of our wedding and helping us have the romantic honeymoon and wedding we've always imagined.
This is a sample registry
Items cannot be purchased from a sample registry.
If you're looking for a specific couple please search for them here.


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After what my family and I have been through this year Beag we are just happy to see this Christmas together as a family.
Gordon Brown, our Prime Minister, is about the same level as Nixon, certain that he's right and that we are all wrong for thinking that he is like Nixon.
Our bid for the Olympics was based on the idea that the whole show would cost about 3 Billion pounds. Then they added the cost of security, then compulsary purchase of properties on site, oh then they remembered that people might actually want to travel to the games, so added a rail link, then they called in 'experts' to make up for their own lack of brains and then hired someone else to do the maths for them at a total of about 6 billion, now we are upto 10 billion and counting.
The design of the main stadium was only finalised a few weeks ago! Most of it is reinforced concrete and I'm waiting for the penny to drop that you don't get fancy shaped concrete beams off the shelf at Walmart.
All this aginst a backdrop of the Police, Prison Officers, and Probation Officers threatening strike action because Brown says he can't afford a 2.5% pay rise whilst Parliament awards itself 10%.
My country is not a happy one this time.


text:
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Relive the summer fun in this scorching hot photoset featuring Kevin Crows & Rick McCoy from DominicFord.com. Have a glass of chilled drinks with you coz this is gonna be HOT!
Hottest Gay SitesSneaky Peek
Broke Straight Boys
All Australian Boys
Hollywood Exposed
The Casting Room
Clothed Male Nude Male
Clothed Female Nude Male
Fraternity X
Island Studs
Eric Deman
English Lads
Spunk Worthy
Boy Spy Cam
New York Straight Men
Straight Fraternity
Men at Play
College Dudes
Breeder Fuckers
Suck Off Guys
Bait Buddies
Like Them Straight
Sketchy Sex
Active Duty
Brutal Tops
Bentley Race
Military Classified
Naked Papis
Beefcake Hunter
College GuysBroke Straight Boys
All Australian Boys
Fraternity X
English Lads
Spunk Worthy
Straight Fraternity
College Dudes
Sketchy Sex
Active Duty
Bentley Race
Military Classified
Next Door Buddies
Authentic Footballers
Rate These Guys
Sean Cody
College Boy Physicals
Naked Athletes
Real Naked Guys
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Rodula Gaitano's production of Haydn's little-known L'isola disabitata (The Uninhabited Island) will be broadcast on ABC Classic FM in Australia on Sunday 21 July at 7pm (10am GMT+ 1). You can also listen online in the UK.
The performance features three former Jette Parker Young Artists, sopranos Madeleine Pierard and Anna Devin, and baritone Changhan Lim, performing with tenor Ed Lyon and conductor Oliver Gooch. The production was nominated for a Helpmann Award (the winner will be announced on 29 July).
The production, which received rapturous acclaim on its premiere in the Linbury Studio Theatre as part of Meet the Young Artists Week in 2010, was recorded in April as part of the inaugural Hobart Baroque Festival.
View images of the Jette Parker Young Artists in rehearsal:
The festival, directed by Leo Schofield, celebrated the music of the 17th and 18th centuries with nine days of performance by international and local musicians.
Read soprano Madeleine Pierard's preview of the festival.
The Jette Parker Young Artists Programme is supported by the Oak Foundation. Find out more about the programme in our News & Features section.


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Effortless Extendibility
Most enterprise builds are not alike, nor do they solve the same problems. Once you're past the initial phase of setting up your basic scripts, you'll want to implement custom logic. Gradle is not opinionated about the way you implement that code. Instead, it gives you various choices to pick from, depending on your specific use case. The easiest way to implement custom logic is by writing a task. Tasks can be defined directly in your build script without special ceremony. If you feel like complexity takes over, you may want to explore the option of a custom task that allows for writing your logic within a class definition, making structuring your code easy and maintainable. If you want to share reusable code among builds and projects, plugins are your best friend. Representing Gradle's most powerful extension mechanism, plugins give you full access to Gradle's API and can be written, tested, and distributed like any other piece of software. Writing a plugin is surprisingly easy and doesn't require a lot of additional descriptors.
Integration with Other Build Tools
Gradle plays well with its predecessors Ant, Maven, and Ivy, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Gradle provides deep integration with other build tools and opens the door to gradually migrate your existing Ant or Maven build.
If you're coming from Ant, Gradle doesn't force you to migrate your full build infrastructure. Instead, it allows you to import existing build logic and reuse standard Ant tasks. Gradle builds are 100% compatible with Maven and Ivy repositories. You can retrieve dependencies and publish your own artifacts. Gradle provides a converter for existing Maven builds that can translate the build logic into a Gradle build script.
Existing Ant scripts can be imported into a Gradle build seamlessly and used as you'd use any other external Gradle script. Ant targets directly map to Gradle tasks at runtime. Gradle ships with the Ant libraries and exposes a helper class to your scripts called AntBuilder, which fully blends into Gradle's DSL. It still looks and feels like Ant's XML, but without the pointy brackets. Ant users will feel right at home, because they don't have to transition to Gradle syntax right away. Migrating from Ant to Gradle is also a no-brainer. You can take baby steps by reusing your existing Ant logic while using Gradle's benefits at the same time.
Gradle aims to reach a similar depth of integration with Maven. At the time of writing, this hasn't been realized yet. In the long run, Maven POMs and plugins will be treated as Gradle natives. Maven and Ivy repositories have become an important part of today's build infrastructure. Imagine a world without Maven Central to help access specific versions of your favorite project dependencies. Retrieving dependencies from a repository is only one part of the story; publishing to them is just as important. With a little configuration, Gradle can upload your project's artifact for company-wide or public consumption.
Community-driven and Company-backed
Gradle is free to use and ships with the Apache License 2.0. After its first release in April 2008, a vibrant community quickly started to form around it. Over the past five years, open source developers have made major contributions to Gradle's core code base. Being hosted on GitHub turned out to be very beneficial to Gradle. Code changes can be submitted as pull requests and undergo a close review process by the core committers before making it into the code base. If you're coming from other build tools like Maven, you may be used to a wide range of reusable plugins. Apart from the standard plugins shipped with the runtime, the Gradle community releases new functionality frequently. Every community-driven software project needs a forum to get immediate questions answered. Gradle connects with the community through the Gradle forum. In addition, there's a commercial company, Gradeleware, that supports the product.
Additional Useful Features
Gradle is equipped with a rich command-line interface. Using command-line options, you can control everything from specifying
the log level, to excluding tests, to displaying help messages. This is nothing special; other tools provide that, too. Some
of the features stand out, though. Gradle allows for running commands in an abbreviated, camel-cased form. In practice, a
command named
runMyAwesomeTask would be callable with the abbreviation
rMAT. Even
though I present most of next week's examples by them running commands in a shell, bear in mind that Gradle
provides an out-of-the-box graphical user interface.
The Bigger Picture: Continuous Delivery
Being able to build your source code is only one aspect of the software delivery process. More importantly, you want to release your product to a production environment to deliver business value. Along the way, you want to run tests, build the distribution, analyze the code for quality-control purposes, potentially provision a target environment, and deploy to it.
There are many benefits to automating the whole process. First and foremost, delivering software manually is slow, error-prone, and nerve-wracking. I'm sure every one of us hates the long nights due to a deployment gone wrong. With the rise of agile methodologies, development teams are able to deliver software faster. Release cycles of two or three weeks have become the norm. Many organizations now even ship code to production several times a day! Optimally, you want to be able to release software by selecting the target environment simply by pressing a button. Practices like automated testing, CI, and deployment feed into the general concept of continuous delivery.
Let's look at how Gradle can help get your project from build to deployment. It can enable you to automate many of the tasks required to implement continuous delivery, be they compiling your source code, deploying a deliverable, or calling external tools that help you with implementing the process. For a deep dive on continuous delivery and all of its aspects, I recommend the Jolt Award-winning Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and David Farley.
Automating Your Project from Build to Deployment
Continuous delivery introduces the concept of a deployment pipeline, also referred to as the build pipeline. A deployment pipeline represents the technical implementation of the process for getting software from version control into your production environment. The process consists of multiple stages, as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Stages of a deployment pipeline.
- Commit stage: Reports on the technical health level of your project. The main stakeholder of this phase is the development team as it provides feedback about broken code and finds "code smells." The job of this stage is to compile the code, run tests, perform code analysis, and prepare the distribution.
- Automated acceptance test stage: Asserts that functional and nonfunctional requirements are met by running automated tests.
- Manual test stage: Verifies that the system is actually usable in a test environment. Usually, this stage involves QA personnel to verify requirements on the level of user stories or use cases.
- Release stage: Either delivers the software to the end user as a packaged distribution or deploys it to the production environment.
Let's see what stages of the deployment pipeline can benefit from project automation. It's obvious that the manual test stage can be excluded from further discussion, because it only involves manual tasks. The concrete tasks we're interested in are:
- Compiling the code
- Running unit and integration tests
- Performing static code analysis and generating test coverage
- Creating the distribution
- Provisioning the target environment
- Deploying the deliverable
- Performing smoke and automated functional tests
Figure 8 shows the order of tasks within each of the stages. While there are no hard rules that prevent you from skipping specific tasks, it's recommended that you follow the order. For example, you could decide to compile your code, create the distribution, and deploy it to your target environment without running any tests or static code analysis. However, doing so increases the risk of undetected code defects and poor code quality.
Figure 8: Tasks performed in stages of build pipeline.
Topics such as infrastructure provisioning, automated deployment, and smoke testing can also be applied to the release stage. In practice, applying these techniques to a production environment is more complex than in a controlled test environment. In a production environment, you may have to deal with clustered and distributed server infrastructures, zero-downtime release rollouts, and automated rollbacks to the previous release.
Covering these advanced topics would go beyond the scope of this series. However, there are some great examples of deployment management tools in the wild that you may want to check out, such as Asgard, a Web-based cloud management and deployment tool built and used by Netflix. But enough pure theory in the follow-up article next week, I'll discuss installing Gradle on your machine and building your first project.
Benjamin Muschko is the author of Gradle in Action, published by Manning, from which this article is excerpted and both abridged and adapted with permission.


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Most who know something about ocean acidification learn about its effects on coral reefs. It is a leading contributor to coral bleaching. It is important to understand that the effects of ocean acidification extend to well beyond the tropics, to the Southern Ocean.
What is ocean acidification? Many people speak of the ocean as an immense carbon sink, absorbing much of the increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Ocean acidification is the price of that sink. Ocean acidification is a chemical process triggered by having a great influx of carbon dioxide into a marine ecosystem. Naturally the ocean has a balance of bicarbonate (HCO3-), and carbonate (CO3-) ions. When there is an increased flux of carbon dioxide into a marine system there is an upset to the balance of bicarbonate and carbonate where bicarbonate becomes dominant. Zooplankton use the carbonate ions to help form their shells. With less carbonate available, zooplankton lack the necessary elements to form their shells, which are imperative to their survival. With fewer zooplankton, the bottom of the food chain is depleted, and there is a domino effect directly to the top of the food chain.
Additionally, relatively larger organisms like mollusks also rely on this balance of carbonate and bicarbonate in the ocean. When there is less carbonate available, mollusks create weaker shells and their chances of survival are severely diminished. This may one day have severe effects on people who subsist on mollusks for food or income.
Back to the southern ocean…there is a champagne effect with a marine system's ability to hold CO2. That is to say, just as Champagne stays fizzier longer when refrigerated, oceans hold more CO2 when they are colder. This makes the frigid Southern Ocean a primary target for ocean acidification observation.
Dr. Donna Roberts and Team Acid, a group of scientists from Australia, disembarked a few weeks ago to study the effects of ocean acidification on the Southern Ocean. They are collecting samples of plankton across the waters of the Southern Ocean, from Australia to the Antarctic. This will help establish a baseline for other similar future studies so that scientists may see the effects of ocean acidification over time.
As said earlier, acidification affects the marine food chain from the bottom, up. An impact on polar food chains can have global ramifications, especially for the fishing industry. With the majority of US fishery landings deriving from high latitude seas, it is important to be able to predict and compensate for our impact on these systems.
As Dr. Roberts put it, "Team Acid is focusing on the little things to illuminate some of the biggest issues facing the planet, particularly the increasingly worrying picture of impacts on Southern Ocean plankton in a high CO2 world."
You can read more about Dr. Roberts and Team Acid here…


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The offer relates to a Mirage 3 manual with solid paint and requires a minimum 34% deposit. 0% APR Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) only available on a new Mirage 3 manual with solid paint registered between 27th September and 27th December 2018. Retail sales only. 0% APR PCP offer shown is for a Mirage 3 manual with solid paint (OTR price £11,075) and requires a £3,766 Customer Deposit and a £3,876 Optional Final Payment based on a 37 month agreement. With PCP you have the option at the end of the agreement to: (a) return the vehicle and not pay the Optional Final Payment. If the vehicle has exceeded the maximum agreed mileage a charge per excess mile will apply. In this example, 4p plus VAT per excess mile above the maximum agreed mileage. If the vehicle is in good condition (fair wear and tear accepted) and has not exceeded the maximum agreed mileage you will have nothing further to pay; (b) pay the Optional Final Payment to own the vehicle or (c) part exchange the vehicle subject to settlement of your existing credit agreement; new credit agreements are subject to status. The example is based upon an annual mileage of 10,000 miles. Credit is subject to status and only available to UK residents (excluding Northern Ireland dealers) aged 18 and over. This credit offer is only available through Shogun Finance Ltd, 116 Cockfosters Rd, Barnet, EN4 0DY. Shogun Finance Ltd is part of Lloyds Banking Group. Offer not available in conjunction with any other offer, subject to availability, whilst stocks last and may be amended or withdrawn at any time.
With low running costs, tonnes of features and a stylish modern exterior, the Mirage sets the bar for a dynamic city car.Explore Mirage