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Red White & BOOM! is a Chamber of Commerce of Cape Coral event no more.
Unable to secure a sponsor willing to commit $50,000 per year for the next three years to absorb the infrastructure costs necessary to make the July 4th street party possible, the chamber's board has been forced to strike the city's largest single-day event from its business plan for 2014.
It's a sad day for Cape Coral, indeed.
We thank the Chamber and its army of volunteers for a 20-plus year effort that has been nothing short of a smash success. Its efforts spearheaded a volunteer/business community/city partnership that built BOOM! into the biggest and best Independence Day event in Southwest Florida, drawing in excess of 20,000 people each year to the foot of the Cape Coral Bridge.
We thank, as well, the donors and sponsors who have not only made the event possible, but kept it free. That, of course, absolutely includes the "title" sponsors over the years. Without the generous contributions of business such as Re/Max Realty Team, LCEC, the Lee Memorial Health System and Century 21 Sunbelt, this celebration would have stumbled years ago, a victim of its own success, which has added substantially to costs for things like fencing, tents, restroom facilities and other required "infrastructure" that underpins large public events.
The Chamber notified the city Wednesday and, according to Chamber President Mike Quaintance, staff within the city's Parks and Recreation Department will look to prepare a numbers-driven business plan for possible council consideration.
This is both good news and a good plan.
Although the clock is ticking and planning time is decidedly short, the city's current involvement - providing security, public safety assistance and funding the fireworks - and event-planning expertise provides a foundation upon which to consider adding Red White & BOOM! to the Cape's impressive queue of city-organized events.
At minimum, it's worth careful consideration and we urge council to vet the possibility ASAP.
- Breeze editorial


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Heady bouquet: Confusion reigns in vineyard victory
When local fans of television's The Bachelor wanted to toast Andrew Firestone's choice of Jen with a bottle from the now famous Firestone Vineyard in California, they were dismayed to learn that it's illegal for the Santa Barbara winery to ship directly to customers in Virginia.
In theory, that should change on July 1, when Virginia's direct shipment law goes into effect. Passed earlier this year by the General Assembly, it allows Virginians to order wine from their favorite out-of-state winery and Virginia wineries to ship two cases a month to out-of-state customers.
But don't count on being able to order that bottle of Firestone wine on July 1 unless the family Firestone has applied for a Virginia shipper's license.
And less than two weeks before the law takes effect, some Virginia winery owners still aren't sure exactly what they can do under the new law. Even Tim Gorman, president of the Virginia Vineyards Association, who lobbied for the legislation, is slightly befuddled.
"I'm still not sure where I can ship," admits Gorman, the owner of Cardinal Point Vineyard in Afton. "The Fed Ex guy says it's not clear."
Alcoholic Beverage Control Board spokesperson Becky Gettings is trying to sort it all out.
"These licenses are for sale and shipment into or within the Commonwealth," says Gettings. Virginia wineries shipping, say, to California, don't need the Virginia shipper's license, according to Gettings. Instead, they must abide by California state law.
And there have been "very, very few" applications, says Gettings. At press time, two in-state wineries and five from out of state had applied for the license, and the ABC's goal is to turn the applications around within 30 days. Even Gorman hasn't applied for the $50 shipper's license yet.
UVA law professor Dan Ortiz set the wheels in motion for opening up Virginia for wine lovers. He filed the lawsuit that led a judge last year to declare Virginia's prohibition against out-of-state shipping unconstitutional.
He's taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the new legislation. "It's a step in the right direction," says Ortiz. "Final regulations haven't been issued. We're going to wait to see how burdensome they are."
For example, he wonders about the criminal background checks required for those who apply for a license, and how difficult that will be, particularly for out-of-state shippers.
Criminal histories will be checked only through the Virginia State Police, says Gettings.
"At the end of the year, we'll see how it works for the wineries," Ortiz says.
Bill Moses, CEO of Kluge Estate Vineyard and Winery, is very satisfied with the new law. "It started with the lawsuit," he says. "That highlighted a number of issues."
In particular was the "love-hate relationship" between wineries and wholesalers, says Moses, whom Governor Mark Warner appointed to the Virginia Winegrowers Advisory Board. Wholesale distributors had opposed direct shipping, while small wineries complained that they didn't sell enough wine for distributors to carry.
"The wineries and distributors sat down and talked," says Moses. To make a direct shipment law palatable to distributors, licensed wineries can ship no more than two cases a month to consumers in the as-yet-unidentified reciprocal states. The wine has to be shipped on a common carrier so that the shipments are traceable, and it has to be signed for by someone over 21 years old.
"The economic impact is huge," says Moses of Virginia's $95 million wine industry. "Wine is the only growing agricultural segment in the state."
And shipping wine outside the state is essential for the fledgling industry. Otherwise, he says, "We're not gaining any reputation outside our borders."
His understanding is that Virginia winemakers will be able to ship to the 13 states identified as reciprocity states by the Wine Institute. Other states allow limited shipments or require permits, while some states like North Carolina consider it a felony to ship wine into the state.
Wine laws throughout the country remain in flux. The South Carolina legislature just approved a law similar to Virginia's. However, "North Carolina took a step back," says Tim Gorman. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it was unconstitutional for the state to bar out-of-state shipments while allowing North Carolina wineries to direct ship within the state. The state can either allow all shipments– or none.
Gorman is eagerly awaiting a New York court decision in a case similar to the one Ortiz filed in Virginia. "If we can break New York, the attitude is that the rest of the northeast will follow," he says.
In anticipation of July 1, Gorman's Cardinal Point Winery has ordered shipping boxes and has orders waiting from out-state-customers.
And once Virginia wineries figure out which states they can ship to, sales are destined to increase. "As a winery," says Gorman, "40 percent of our customers are from out of state, and we couldn't follow up before."

subset: commoncrawl


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Home / Student Testing and Accountability / Accountability / State Accountability / Performance Reporting
On September 30, 2013, the Texas Education Agency secured a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education for specific provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), commonly known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. One of the key changes in the NCLB waiver is the elimination of the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) designation. This change is not necessarily permanent. All aspects of the waiver are subject to revision or revocation.
Although the original accountability provisions are not currently enforced in Texas, under NCLB all public school campuses, school districts, and the state are evaluated for Adequate Yearly Progress. Districts, campuses, and the state are required to meet AYP criteria on three measures: reading/language arts, mathematics, and either graduation rate (for high schools and districts) or attendance rate (for elementary and middle/junior high schools).
A campus, district, or state that receives Title I, Part A funds and fails to meet AYP for two consecutive years is subject to certain requirements such as offering supplemental education services, offering school choice, or taking corrective actions.
2012 AYP Final Results2012 AYP Frequently Asked Questions2012 AYP GuideAYP Results for Previous YearsWhat's New for AYP?Frequently Asked Questions2012 State Summary Tables Performance2012 District and Campus Listings2012 State Data Table2012 District Data Tables2012 Campus Data Tables2012 Data Download2012 NCLB Report CardCompletion, Graduation, and Dropouts ResourcesDivision of Accountability ResearchPerformance Reporting DivisionPerformance-Based MonitoringSpecial Education in TexasSTAAR ResourcesStudent Assessment Division
For questions regarding accessibility of AYP products for the visually impaired, contact AYP Accessibility.
Performance Reporting DivisionPhone: (512) 463-9704Fax: (512) firstname.lastname@example.com


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Trees — A different shade of green
Cities look to urban forests as a natural utility
During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan famously blamed trees for emitting 93 percent of the nation's nitrogen oxide pollution. Trees were worse for the environment than automobiles, he said, a statement that fueled decades of "killer tree" jokes.
Twenty-six years later, cities in Reagan's home state of California are trying to live down his dendrophobic reputation. In October, Los Angeles kicked off an effort to plant 1 million trees, part of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's election campaign promise to become "the biggest, greenest city" in America. Civic leaders in the Sacramento area are considering an even more ambitious effort: planting 4 million trees over the next 40 years.
While tree-planting in cities is nothing new, the scale and intent of the efforts in L.A., Sacramento and a handful of other Western cities mark a significant shift in the way urban forests are perceived. Once seen merely as a way to beautify the concrete jungle, mass tree-plantings have become major components of efforts to combat global warming by sucking up carbon dioxide from the air. And where roots and canopies were once viewed as hindrances to sewer lines, sidewalks and power lines, trees are now being treated as part of the civic infrastructure, on par with other public utilities.
"Trees in cities have long been undervalued," says Greg McPherson, a research forester at the Center for Urban Forest Research in Davis, Calif. "Cities have done easy things to be green and conserve energy. And it's not working. So almost out of desperation they are looking at trees as green or bio technology."
In Denver, Colo., the mayor wants to plant 1 million trees over the next 20 years. Seattle, Wash., plans to add 695,000 trees over the next 30 years. And Albuquerque, N.M., is adding 10,000 over the next five years.
Benefits of bark
This trend began in the '90s, when the Forest Service came out of the rural woods to study the value that cities can get from their trees. The agency's Urban and Community Forestry Program puts its research into terms politicians can understand — money. Trees aren't cheap: They need care to get established, they use water, and they can crumple sidewalks and knock out power lines. Cities budget for tree-related expenses such as picking up leaf litter, but rarely look at what the trees provide in return, McPherson says. According to the Center, every dollar spent in Los Angeles on a tree yields $2.80 worth of benefits.
"A tree in an urban setting is more valuable than one in a rural forest," says Hashem Akbari, staff scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Both can help with carbon sequestration. But an urban tree can do much more. It helps save energy because it shades buildings and decreases air temperatures, thus reducing the amount of air conditioning needed and the amount of fuel that is burned."
Properly positioned around a house in a city like Los Angeles, trees can cut air conditioning costs by 30 percent. Sacramento neighborhoods with high canopy cover are typically 5 to 8 degrees cooler than neighborhoods with low cover, according to the Sacramento Tree Foundation. And the Department of Energy says that just three trees planted around a house can save between $100 and $250 annually in cooling and heating costs. "Our utility gives away 30,000 trees a year," says Rob Kerth, executive project leader for the Sacramento Tree Foundation. "They say it is the cheapest power plant they'll ever build."
Trees also help reduce stormwater runoff by slowing down rainfall and absorbing water that would otherwise flow quickly over impervious pavement. Los Angeles officials predict that 1 million trees will save $5 million each year in stormwater runoff costs. "It costs so much money to build the infrastructure for a city to deal with storm water. It's so much cheaper to just use the tree canopy," says Deborah Gangloff, executive director of American Forests.
Money talks
All this, however, takes time — most trees don't provide full benefits until they are 25 to 30 years old — and it takes upfront capital, which many cities lack. "It is damned expensive," says Ray Tretheway, executive director of the Sacramento Tree Foundation, noting that the Sacramento Municipal Utility District pays $2 million a year for its tree program.
Los Angeles plans to spend $70 million on its tree program. The city has partnered with five nonprofits that pledged to plant 875,000 trees, with the city planting the remainder. About half the trees will be planted on private land. The mayor promised to focus on low-income communities, which tend to have fewer trees; one neighborhood, for example, has only a 5 percent canopy cover, compared to the national average of 27 percent.
The Forest Service's Urban and Community Forestry Program is picking up some of the expenses through grants to cities. But even as more cities embrace trees, the federal program's budget is shrinking, dropping by 25 percent in just the past four years.
McPherson hopes his research inspires more communities to jump on the bandwagon. In fact, his group is part of a Sacramento-area study examining how an urban forest affects the amount of local smog; the results may put to rest any lingering belief in Reagan's "killer trees." Future research will focus on psychological benefits, including stress reduction and workplace productivity. "By trying to monetize everything and put it in dollars and cents for policy makers, one could argue we are really minimizing trees," McPherson says. "But money talks."
The author is an HCN intern.


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YORK, Pa. – The York College track & field squad hosted the Green & White Intersquad Alumni Challenge on Saturday prior to officially kicking off their 2012 outdoor campaign next weekend. Featuring current and former York College men's and women's track & field athletes, the meet provided a solid yet relaxed tune-up for the Spartans. On the day, the women's "green" team picked up the victory with 96 points while the men's "white" team proved triumphant with 68 points.
On the women's side, freshman Jasmine Smith put on a strong performance as she won both the 100- and 200-meter events. Smith notched a 13.06 in the 100 and a 27.86 in the 200.
Mandy Parshall turned in a 5:38.40 in the one mile.
Sophomore Laura Rowlands posted a 1.60-meter (5' 3") height in the high jump while recording 10.60 meters (34' 9.5") in the triple jump.
Three different throwers won the shot put, discus, and hammer, respectively. Meaghan Jackson tossed the shot put 10.51 meters (34' 5.75") while Ashley Menniti threw the discus 26.83 meters (88' 0"). The hammer throw saw Katie Shinn register a 34.18-meter (112' 2") result.
The pole vault went to Ashley Razzano with a height of 2.89 meters (9' 5.75"). Spartan alumnae and current record-holder Caitlin Rizzardo also finished with a 2.89-meter result. Fellow Spartan alum Allyson Montello also competed at the Intersquad Alumni Challenge.
On the men's side, freshman Joquan Jamison won both the 200 and 400 events in times of 23.43 and 51.90, respectively. Le Von White finished in second in the 400 with a 52.20.
Sophomore standout Tim Hartung nabbed first in the 3,000 meters with a time of 9:39.62 while Aaron Robertson's 4:51.78 allotted him the win in the one-mile run.
The pole vault saw Drew Chowan post a 3.96-meter height (12' 11.75") to snag the victory.
Phillip Cavaluchi and Zach Rogers combined to win the long jump and triple jump, respectively. Cavaluchi posted a 6.25-meter (20' 6.25") long jump while Rogers came in with a trio of bounds amassing to a mark of 12.17 meters (39' 11.25"). Cavaluchi also tossed the javelin 49.43 meters (162' 2").
Marcus Bailey tossed the discus 42.01 meters (137' 10") while Alex Palescandolo hurled the shot put 13.01 meters (42' 8.25").
York's men's track & field alumni performed in several events. Program-record holder and current Spartan assistant coach Nate Krotzer won the high jump with a mark of 1.40 meters (6' 2.75") while the The hammer throw saw the top three slots go to former Spartans. Zack Raywood (39.61 meters, 129' 11"), Jake Lape (37.81 meters, 124' 0"), and Gary Rynier (37.38 meters, 122' 8") went 1-2-3 in the event.
Lape also competed in the shot put (12.33 meters, 40' 5.5") and discus (33.02 meters, 108' 4") events.
Rich Eperthener threw the javelin 49.0 meters (160' 9") as he was the top Spartan alum in the event. Blair Walborn posted a 33.76-meter (110' 9") toss in the javelin.
Gabe Henise completed the 200 with a 25.69 while Jason Kane put together a 10.52-meter (34' 6.25") result in the triple jump. Steve Kinnear posted a height of 3.0 meters (9' 10") in the pole vault.
The Spartans officially open up their 2012 outdoor slate when they travel to West Chester, Pa. on Saturday, March 24. The Golden Ram Invitational hosted by West Chester University is slated for a 10:00 am start.
Team photos (green at top, white below) consisting of the current men's and women's squads courtesy of Theresa Dark. York College (Pa.) Athletic Communications Student Photographer.


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Gamers will fight their way through war, turmoil and a conspiracy so vast it threatens the entire world. When one man is not enough, it's going to take an army of two to save us.


text: When you entrust your hard-earned money to a mutual fund, stock broker, securities dealer, financial advisor, brokerage firm or other financial expert, you do so with the understanding that the company will manage your money professionally and offer advice that is appropriate given your risk-tolerance level. But when things go wrong, you may need the assistance of an investment attorney who has experience resolving issues related to investment fraud, as well as broker misconduct and negligence. If you've lost all or part of your life savings as a result of an investment scam, hire an investment lawyer immediately. The law firm can help you take civil action against the investment professional while also working to encourage government enforcement authorities to take criminal action against the company, if appropriate.


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SILVER SPRING, MD -- The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA) has created the Association of Fitness Industry Retailers & Manufacturers (AFIRM), a new trade association dedicated to developing benefits, products and services specifically for fitness industry manufacturers and retailers.
The new association will address fitness industry issues, help raise revenue and reduce expenses on behalf of its members, lobby Congress for pro-fitness legislation and develop research. AFIRM will disseminate information through educational events, publish a bi-weekly newsletter for its constituents and plans to launch its Web site on Feb. 1, 2010.
The main purpose of AFIRM, however, is to give manufacturers and retailers a voice in the industry.
"Virtually all segments of the fitness industry—except manufacturers and retailers—have their own associations for representation, unity and recognition," SGMA President and CEO Tom Cove said in a press release. "AFIRM will enhance the business climate for manufacturers and retailers by bringing them together and working on their behalf."
AFIRM's executive director is Chuck Leve, who spent 27 years with the International Health, Racquet and Sportclub Association (IHRSA) before leaving in 2008.
"I'm thrilled to again be working with industry manufacturers, and I'm humbled by the confidence SGMA has shown in me. There's much work to do, and I'm up for the challenge," Leve said in the release. As IHRSA's vice president of business development, Leve worked closely with suppliers in areas of membership, trade shows, publications and sponsorship.
"Fitness has always been a manufacturer-driven business on the institutional side, and a retailer-driven business on the consumer side," he said. "The more these segments are able to work together, the better it will be for the entire industry."
AFIRM's membership base will go beyond manufacturers and retailers. Industry associations, publications and organizations will be invited to join, as will companies doing business with manufacturers and retailers.
"Manufacturers are the common denominator linking all sides of the fitness industry," Cove said. "We intend to complement the groups that are already out there. A strong, viable, healthy manufacturing and retailing side of our business can only mean good things for all segments of the industry."
Fitness-specific products and services will be the cornerstone of AFIRM's membership offering, with the value-added ability to tap into SGMA's world-renowned advocacy and research capabilities.


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Part Used: Rhizome of Rheum palmatum and other species, not the garden rhubarb.
Actions: Bitter, laxative, astringent.
Indications: Rhubarb Root has a purgative action for use in the treatment of constipation, but also has an astringent effect following this. It therefore has a truly cleansing action upon the gut, removing debris and then astringing with antiseptic properties as well. Note: Rhubarb Root may color the urine yellow or red. Priest & Priest tell us that it is a "mild stimulating tonic to alimentary mucous membrane, liver and gall ducts -removes viscid mucus. Small doses - tonic hepatic. Large doses - cathartic."They give the following specific indications: diarrhoea and dysentary, summer diarrhoea, functional dyspepsia.
Ellingwood recommends it for the following patholgies: atonicconditions of the bowels, with debility or general relaxation, wether diarrhoea, dysentary, choleramorbus, cholera infantum.
King's Dispensatory gives it specific indications and uses as "gastricirritation, nausea, vomiting, elongated tongue reddened at tip and edges; irritative diarrhoea with tenderness on pressure; sour smelling discharges imparting to a child a sour odour; gastro-intestinal irritation with nervous irritability, restlessness, screaming and convulsive muscular contractions; constipation, with a sense of intestinal constriction and abdominal contraction; light-coloured fecal discharge
Preparations & Dosage: Decoction: put l/2 - l teaspoonful of the root in a cup of water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for l0 minutes.This should be drunk morning and evening. Tincture: take l-2ml of the tincture three times a day.


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Irreversible is a tough word, especially when applied to the effects of global warming.
But physics alone suggests that even now, the changes that humans are imposing on Earths' climate system will last for at least 1,000 years and likely far longer. That's the gist of a new study by an international team of researchers led by Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo.
Dr. Solomon, who has enjoyed a long, scientifically productive career, isn't known for hyperbole. So when she and colleagues use the word "irreversible" over time spans measured in millenniums, it's clear a great deal of thought and data lay behind it.
In some respects, the conclusions are not new. But the emphasis is. In his new book "The Long Thaw," for instance, University of Chicago climate scientist David Archer lays out a case that at least 10 percent of the CO2 that human industrial activity is pumping into the air will affect climate 100,000 years from now.
Why the lock-in? Unlike other compounds humans have added to their environment, newly added CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries. It's a bit like a bank account: The balance grows as long as the owner keeps making deposits and never takes anything out, never mind earning interest. In the atmosphere's case, withdrawals -- at least non-technological ones -- take place over geologic time scales.
"The same thing that is holding back climate change today will keep it going in the very long term, and that is the oceans," she says. The oceans are the ultimate "sink" for carbon and they absorb most of the heat. So even after atmospheric concentrations peak and very slowly start to decline (more slowly than you would think, she says), oceans will sustain the warming as it slowly re-releases heat back into the atmosphere.
One rationale for the study, she says, is to underscore the long-term nature of the changes humans are imposing on the climate system. Too often, research and policy is geared to what can or should be done by the end of this century. Among policymakers and the public, this can often look as though once that date is reached, problem solved.
Rather than a call to throw up one's hands in discouragement, she adds, the results show the importance of acting quickly to reduce emissions and so limit the very long-lived effects.
A focus on the big three
Solomon's group looked at three climate features: warming itself; changes in rain and snowfall patterns; and sea-level rise, absent any contribution from Greenland or Antarctic ice caps. (For a tidy summary, colleague Eoin O'Carroll has a tight post here.)
These three, the team says, involve aspects of climate where scientists have already identified some level of contribution from the effects of rising greenhouse-gas levels, where an understanding of the physical mechanisms driving the changes are well in hand, and where model projections are consistent despite other differences in the models.
They based their work on a range of possible targets for stabilizing carbon-dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, but focused on a particular range: 450 molecules for every million in the atmosphere parts per million by volume (ppm) to 600 ppm. Concentrations as of 2007 stand at about 383 ppm, according to the Global Carbon Project, compared with 280 ppm at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
The 450-600 range is of special interest, since 450 by the year 2100 represents a target widely cited in negotiations for a new global climate treaty, which its architects hope will be ready to take over when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol's first five-year "commitment period" expires in 2012. The 600 is a business-as-usual emissions path.
In short, if CO2 concentrations peak at 450-600 ppm, declines in rainfall during the dry season in regions such as the US Southwest or the Mediterranean are comparable to the Dust Bowl drought in the US during the 1930s and those seasonal declines persist for millenniums. Sea level from heat expansion alone rises by an average of up to three feet through the year 3000.
For simplicity's sake, they didn't take a large number of secondary effects into account. And projections of melting of Greenland's and Antarctica's ice caps are still too uncertain to include. The levels Solomon's team projected are a minimum, based on better-understood physical processes. The results appear in the issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of Jan. 26, 2009.
Records of past climate regimes over tens of millions of years or more and the geophysical processes involved, such as those Dr. Archer explores in his book, certainly add weight to the way Solomon and her colleagues have framing the global warming issue in terms of irreversibility.
Long-term change v. public perceptions
But as calls to action, some analysts wonder if that's enough to galvanize the public.
When pollsters ask about global warming as a stand-alone issue, in some surveys people tend to say it's serious and requires action. Some have even responded that they'd even pay higher energy costs if that helped underwrite the move to more climate-friendly ways to meet energy needs.
But ask people to stack global warming against other issues, and it falls to the bottom of a long list. It remains a concern. But it does not enjoy a level of urgency that many environmental groups and scientists see.
In a poll published Jan. 22 and conducted by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, out of 1,503 respondents, 85 percent pointed to the economy as a top priority; 30 percent said global warming was a top priority.
To some extent, this isn't surprising. One can find similar patterns in responses when people are asked about space exploration and the US space program.
Over at Framing Science, American University communications professor Matt Nesbit has this to say about what the Pew survey results imply for using charismatic animals, or geographically and temporally remote effects to build a case for action on global warming:
It's ... time to stop focusing narrowly on remote polar impacts, looming environmental disaster, or symbols such as polar bears. These exemplars are either not personally relevant enough to most audiences, are dismissed as remote and far off in the future, or easily re-framed as "alarmism" sending interpretations back into the mental box of lingering scientific uncertainty.
Stand by for a forthcoming paper that details some of the possible alternatives, he adds.
Whatever its role may or may not be as yet another in a long list of calls to arms on climate change, the paper could have some immediate implications for policy, the team suggests.
Some the economic analysts have posited that it's better to back off of quick action and wait for the technology to come along that will scrub the air of excess CO2 in short order and at a time when economic growth will ensure that more countries can afford the technologies needed. But as the team points out, excess CO2 is not a short-lived air pollutant such as ozone or sulfur-dioxide. Once it's in the air, there's no going back -- short of so-far unproven approaches for scrubbing CO2 from the air, especially at the scale needed.
In addition, the Kyoto Protocol approach of throwing all human-generated greenhouse gases into a pot and allowing countries to pick the easiest ones to deal with to meet their emissions targets may help slow temperature increases in the short to medium term. But controls on these shorter-lived gases do nothing to ease the millennial-scale effects.
To which one might add one more policy implication: A need to put the pedal to the metal on increasing adaptation planning efforts in developed countries as well as increasing adaptation help for developing countries. Adaptation is no substitute for emissions reductions. But if the somber song of Solomon et al is correct, the need for some degree of adaptation measures is as inevitable as the changes she and her colleagues see humans imposing on climate.


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I'd wager that 7 out of 10 of us couldn't even name the fifth borough, not mentioned above. Nor could they tell us much about it, even though close to half a million people live there. That puts this mystery borough ahead of entire big cities such as Cleveland, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; and Miami, Florida, in population.
One hint: To a visitor it seems as if as many seagulls as people live in this place. More later.
In 1898, when Manhattan Island seemed full to capacity before cities knew how to grow up as well as outward, New York City planners simply annexed their neighbors and created five boroughs, instantly doubling the population and tripling the city's size.
After all, at that point Brooklyn was the nation's fourth-largest city, behind only Philadelphia, Chicago, and the leaner New York. Even Emma Lazarus's fabled poem, "The Colossus" — "Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" — chiseled on a tablet at the Statue of Liberty, speaks of "twin cities," of which Brooklyn was one.
But to Brooklyn's dismay, it was Manhattan where money and power would concentrate. Brooklyn receded into a mostly residential, and resentful, satellite of "The City."
Queens's westernmost villages, just past Brooklyn on Long Island, were already Manhattan's vegetable garden. Foreseeing improved roads and city services, they agreed to annexation.
But the villages in the middle of the island declined the invitation to unite with the big brute of a city. In 1899 they formed their own county, Nassau, and went their own way. Ritzy Suffolk County, even farther east on the island, never had to deal with all this citifying.
North of Manhattan on the mainland, much of the Bronx had already been gobbled up by New York City. When the remainder was asked whether it, too, wanted to join in the fun of building a super city, its residents said no.
But the whole of the Bronx was annexed anyway. Not sure how that got done.
The folks on Staten Island — aha! the mystery fifth borough is revealed — succumbed quietly to annexation.
Let's take New York City's four add-on boroughs one by one:
Flatbush is one of many colorfully titled Brooklyn neighborhoods. Gravesend, Bath Beach, and DUMBO — an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" — are others. How'd you like to live in DUMBO?
Like the other boroughs, Breuckelen was chartered in 1646 as a place for the Dutch to build country manor homes and vegetable farms. Ferry service to Manhattan was spotty until Robert Fulton demonstrated his new steamboat in 1807. Brooklyn's own city center grew on high ground, surrounded by stately brownstone row houses and apartment buildings.
Brooklyn was inundated by immigrants, beginning with Irish and Germans in the 1830s. It was poor Irish — already speaking English with a brogue and trying to cope with American idioms mixed with remnants of Dutch — who first developed the much-mocked "Brooklyn accent." Hollywood characters like the "Bowery Boys" shamelessly exaggerated it: "Youse meet me at Toity-toid and Toid Av'nue."
So fiercely did Brooklyn trumpet its self-sufficiency, even after it lost its independence, that other New Yorkers grumbled about the bristling "Brooklyn attitude." For decades, its docks and marine terminals were more than a match for Manhattan's. The historic U.S. Civil War ironclad warship Monitor had been built and launched there in 1862. And if not a landmark, Floyd Bennett Field, the modest airfield that juts out into Jamaica Bay, should be on any trivia-lover's tour. It was there in 1938 that Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan took off on a westward flight for California and ended up, 28 days later, in Ireland.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is the oldest continuously active performing-arts center in the nation.
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has an unusual, if not unique, Garden of Fragrance especially for the visually impaired. And an abandoned subway station in Brooklyn was chosen as the city's transit museum.
I've spent many days in Brooklyn — vicariously — at Coney Island. Along with Atlantic City in New Jersey, Coney Island (actually a peninsula) provided the setting for hundreds of idyllic picture postcards in the early 20th Century, when family fun at the shore was considered exotic.
And despite the common tale that the Statue of Liberty was the first sight beheld by New York-bound immigrants to the New World, it was actually a huge elephant. Not a real one or a big model. The Elephant Hotel (and brothel) at Coney Island was built in the shape of a pachyderm.
The Bronx got its unusual name from the area's first settler, Danish immigrant Jonas Bronck, or more particularly, the Broncks' family farm. With the building of King's Bridge over the Harlem River around 1700, the Bronx became New York's mainland connection. Farm-fresh Bronx produce soon found its way onto Manhattan Island, as did fresh water, piped in from clear springs. Until the 20th Century, the Bronx remained a land of farms, manor homes, and modest factories — including a giant snuff mill.
The Bronx was one of the first parts of New York to succumb to rampant subdivision and apartment construction that would lead to an oversaturation of low-income housing. The sad cycle of decay and abandonment followed, and wealthy landowners sold off their Bronx estates in favor of places in the "real" country, farther from the city in Westchester County.
But the mighty New York Yankees' baseball team — the "Bronx Bombers" — remained and triumphed. They have played in the "world" championship series 40 times since 1927, winning 27 titles, including last season's.
Borrowing Jerome Kern's song lyrics from "New York, New York" that "the Bronx is up and the Battery's down," the Bronx is "up" again, and not just geographically. Much of the blight is gone, and new city and private colleges have created a steady employment base. The Grand Concourse, a string of 1930s Art Deco residential buildings, has been renovated. And two New York cultural fixtures — the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden — are thriving.
Flushing, by the way, did not get its name from some Duke of Flushing or a primitive commode. It's a rough English translation of the Dutch word for "flowing waters," presumably from a pretty Long Island stream.
One of the most fascinating Queens neighborhoods is Steinway — once a company town built by German immigrant Wilhelm Steinweg, who Americanized his name after his brilliance at building pianos was affirmed. Some of Steinway's row houses are still in use, and the company continues to craft pianos at a factory in another part of Queens.
Many Queens neighborhoods are 20th-Century creations, their modest homes built to satisfy the demands of returning veterans of world wars I and II. Even after the last farmers departed for Nassau and Suffolk counties, farther out Long Island, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation retained a 19-hectare (47-acre) vegetable farm. Its barnyard and fields are open to visitors, including amazed inner-city schoolchildren.
The centerpiece of the '64 fair was the "Unisphere," a 43-meter-high structure that represented "Peace Through Understanding." It still stands, as does a wave-shaped pavilion that today houses the New York Hall of Science, a hands-on science and technology museum.
Not really Queens tourist attractions, but receiving plenty of visitors each year, are New York City's two airports — John F. Kennedy International and the much older La Guardia. I'm not counting the mammoth, newer Newark International Airport over in "Jersey." LaGuardia dates to 1939. "JFK," which opened gradually to minimal air traffic in the 1940s, is noted for its futuristic terminals, including the Trans World Airlines hub, designed by Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American who also designed the towering Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri; and "Black Rock," the headquarters building of CBS TV and radio in downtown Manhattan.
Nowhere in New York City has the impact of a new tunnel, bridge, or expressway been as dramatic as in Staten Island. Through most of its history, hilly Staten Island, a mere 22 kilometers long and 13 kilometers wide, had been almost an afterthought. It was 37 years after the Dutch settled New Netherland — before they got a foothold on Staaten Eylandt in 1661 following repeated bloody battles with indigenous Lenape Indians.
The English who soon supplanted them called the place "Richmond" after a duke of the time. The name was changed back to Staten Island in 1976 because, or so the story goes, Borough President Bob Connon got tired of hearing the other borough presidents ask him, "How are things down South" — a not-especially-clever reference to Richmond, Virginia.
Then, in 1964, the city completed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, named for an Italian explorer who first sailed into New York Bay in 1524. The bridge connected the island to Brooklyn on Long Island, changing Staten Island forever. In the classic pattern of moving out and up, tens of thousands of Brooklynites (and others) moved in, seeking a piece of tranquilty. Over the next 20 years, the island's population doubled, and resort-like Staten Island was soon awash in strip shopping malls and fast-food restaurants. Its winding roads were overwhelmed by traffic.
But the city has begun converting the big dump into a public park and wildlife sanctuary, Freshkills Park — destined to be three times the size of Central Park.
In every New York City borough, change has brought stresses and challenges. South Asian, Vietnamese, African-American, and Russian neighborhoods have sprung up where Greeks, Italians, European and Syrian Jews, and Anglo-Saxons once carved out enclaves. "We're a social laboratory," one Bronx resident told American Way magazine. Old-time New Yorkers worry still about immigrants taking away jobs, eating away at the tax base, abusing welfare. But by now they're pretty much used to strange foods from multiple cultures, and sidewalks that are a babel of confusion.
For all the complaining, the brashness, the cynicism and gruffness, hard-driving, self-absorbed New York eventually accepted them all.
(These are a few of the words from this posting that you may not know. Each time, I'll tell you a little about them and also place them into a cumulative archive of "Ted's Wild Words" in the right-hand column of the home page. Just click on it there, and if there's another word in today's blog that you'd like me to explain, just ask!)
(These are a few of the words from this posting that you may not know. Each time, I'll tell you a little about them and also place them into a cumulative archive of "Ted's Wild Words" in the right-hand column of the home page. Just click on it there, and if there's another word in today's blog that you'd like me to explain, just ask!)
Babel. A gathering or scene of noise or confusion. The name comes from the biblical Tower of Babel, which was built with the idea of reaching heaven. God foiled this plan by garbling the builders' language so that they could not understand each other.
Myopic. Nearsighted, and often shortsighted, too. One who has a myopic view of things focuses only on what's in front of him and does not consider the bigger picture.
Pachyderm. Not just an elephant, but one of several kinds of large, hoofed animals that include rhinoceroses and hippopotami.
Scow. A flat-bottomed boat or barge used to haul garbage or bulk freight.
Snuff. A kind of smokeless tobacco made from ground tobacco leaves. It is "snuffed," or snorted, through the nose.
Vicarious. Indirect or second-hand. One can enjoy an exciting sports event vicariously on television or through a friend's description, for instance, rather than in person.


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As far back as I can remember a pregnant woman was a priority but this wasn't so one brisk Autumn afternoon in 1955.
There I was, in full bloom, an expectant mother entering the local shoe store.
Arthur's Shoe Tree, was and is, a highly respected establishment in our home town of Bay Village, Ohio.
When I crossed the threshold and entered the shop Arthur greeted me as usual. Then he ushered me to a soft leather chair and immediately asked what type of shoe I had in mind. Considering my delicate condition I replied, "I'd like a pair of comfortable walking shoes."
He smiled a gracious smile, and said, "Your wish is my command," but before he could get up from measuring my feet the bell above the front door started chiming and a young woman rushed into the store. Trust me, all eyes were upon her!
At the time there were several customers in the shop. Some were browsing while a smooth talking salesman was charming the others still everyone turned to see who was in such a big hurry.
After the woman got her bearings she looked directly at Arthur and spoke, "I need to be waited on now! George is in the car. You know how he hates to be kept waiting."
As soon as I heard her mention George I knew she must be Joan Steinbrenner. What other George could it be?
In a split second Arthur was attending George's poor wife. As for me, the abandoned pregnant lady, I sat in the soft leather chair and observed the fascinating scene unfolding before me.
It wasn't long until a pleased Mrs. Steinbrenner left the shop with a box under her arm and an apologetic Arthur was back taking care of me.
At this point I should tell the reader what I learned from my, out the blue experience in the shoe store, but I prefer not to.
That day as I strolled out of Arthur's wearing my new walking shoes I realized it was still a brisk Autumn afternoon and, indeed, all was right with my world.
In January I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Oh yes, all was right with my world.
Mary Jane Schriner
© All Rights Reserved


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I picked this slick little unit up because I hate…
I picked this slick little unit up because I hate the taste of iodine and I didn't feel like hauling around a water filter. This unit is very small, light, and easy to use once you know how (figure it out at home first).
My complaint with the unit is that I was assuming I would be getting taste-free water treatment. This is not the case. It makes the water taste like rather heavily chlorinated city water, and smell faintly like a swimming pool. It's nowhere near as bad as iodine, but it was still an unfortunate and unexpected surprise. You could probably hide the taste with flavour crystals, but I like my water pure, especially in the outdoors.
Personally, I think I'll probably end up going with a standard water filter instead.
I purchased a Miox a few years ago. I am planning…
Price Paid: $139
I purchased a Miox a few years ago. I am planning a week long trip on the river with my son, so I took the Miox out of storage and decided to test it before I took it to the river.
I'm glad I did because it doesn't work anymore. I have put new batteries and salt in it and it keeps giving me a low salt warning light. I guess it's back to the filter and the bleach.
Although this seems wonderful product, it is of no…
Although this seems wonderful product, it is of no use without any safety indicator strips. And if you live in the Netherlands it is impossible to find those in any shop (no reordering there), and if there is some found at the back of à shelf, it is grossly expired and does not work.
Ordering any by internet does not work also as all MSR products are not sent from US. So we are very disappointed with this product.
Purchased this unit for two uses. Primarily for traveling…
Price Paid: $79
Purchased this unit for two uses. Primarily for traveling out of the USA and use on backpacking/camping trips where the water source will be relatively clear.
For traveling over the last two years I've taken along a Sweetwater filter and the MSR MIOX. The water sources have been not clear, little funky smelling and potential viral contaminate. Clear and clean tap water to drink. I found that by letting the water sit for a day the pool smell and flavor is reduced or disappears. For camping I still prefer the Sweetwater.
Positives are: Compact, relatively light, simple to use and effective against bacteria, protozoa and virus. A water purifier.
Negatives are: It's not a filter. So sediment, color, odor, chemical in your water can be a problem. The lithium A123 batteries do not last for a long trip (3-4L/day x 30days). Bring spares for an extended vacation.
4 Stars, not 5 because of its limitation of maybe having to drink unclear water and residual chlorine taste.
Really like this unit. I use it as a backup and for…
Price Paid: $96
Really like this unit. I use it as a backup and for purifying large amounts of water at a single time. I found that you must practice with this unit to get it right to avoid the "swimming pool" smell that most mention. It's small, highly portable, quick and efficient...what more can I say?
Bought this for hiking and emergency situations. It…
Bought this for hiking and emergency situations. It will purify large amounts (liters) of water. Highly recommend practicing with this unit repeatedly until its use is 2nd nature. In an emergency situation, this will be time well spent. It's a great design, light and capable. Find some water and this thing will clean it up.
Upsides: It works and is lightweight, and kills some…
Price Paid: $99
Upsides: It works and is lightweight, and kills some nasties that iodine tablets don't kill. When I'm hiking anywhere that there's good-tasting water available (e.g. the Sierra Nevada), this is what I take to handle purification duties. The chlorine taste is similar to many cities' water and is far less annoying than iodine taste. Consumables are cheap. There's no moving parts to break or wear out.
Downsides: It's not a filter, so doesn't improve the taste of the water (aside from removing tannins, that icky "dead leaf" taste, which however does use a lot of chlorine so overchlorinate) and doesn't remove floaties from the water. If you're hiking somewhere that the majority of water is scummy cow tank water, carry the extra pound of scrubbable ceramic-based filter with you (with a coffee filter prefilter), your taste buds will thank you.
A bit fussy with the residual chlorine strips (though you'll mostly use them for less-than-prestine water where you want to know how much to overchlorinate). Too expensive if you only go hiking a few times a year, you can get chlorine dioxide tablets that do the same thing. Does use batteries, and the batteries do need to be kept warm in cold weather for this thing to work right.
I agree with some others: Yes, it does smell and taste…
I agree with some others: Yes, it does smell and taste like a swimming pool. MSR was not honest about that. I've used it hundreds of times over a year, in four continents. Besides the taste, the thing is amazing in every way. I tried to make as many travellers as possible feel bad about buying bottled water (it's a huge waste problem overseas) by showing them this thing.
I picked up the MIOX unit before going on a Mt. Rainier…
Price Paid: $129
I picked up the MIOX unit before going on a Mt. Rainier climb. It's easy to use and as long as you follow the directions and wait times it will give you safe water (from virus, bacteria, etc.).
It does leave a slight taste and as my friend found out the solution it creates will act like bleach to your clothing if you spill it on yourself. The only issue I've found it that the test strips indicate a "too low" for the standard treatment. I solved this by treating for one step higher than the standard. It may just be the water sources I'm using. I don't consider a fault of the unit as it does its job.
Excellent water purifier, small, light, compact, and…
Price Paid: $110
Excellent water purifier, small, light, compact, and reliable. It produces chlorine dioxide, the same effective chemical used in Aquamira and Micropur tabs, which means that it will kill crypto, unlike iodine or plain chlorine treatments.
I have found that the Miox Pen produces odorless, clean-tasting water with no chlorine taste, when properly used on backcountry water sources according to directions with proper dosages and wait times. Some people have poured the Miox Pen oxidants into already-chlorinated city water sources and decry the 'swimming pool' taste, not realizing that such a procedure will only intensify the taste of already-present residual chlorine. Read the directions and you should have no problems.
I have owned and used the Miox for one ice climbing…
Price Paid: $120 CDN
I have owned and used the Miox for one ice climbing season and one summer backpacking season. While I would probably prefer a traditional water filter in the summer, in the dead of winter this isn't an option.
I find the Miox indispensible in the winter. The unit is small enough to store in your belay parka (to keep the batteries warm), easy to use with liner gloves, and the reactive chemicals work fast enough with warmed water (melted snow) to be drinkable within 15 minutes. In my opinion it's better than Aquamira unless you're an ultralight hiker counting the grams.
The unit is easy to use and the indicator lights make it virtually idiot-proof. Also, the option of double or triple dosing is a lot easier than using bottled chemicals. If you can get the water lukewarm, this little unit can do the rest. Use with a bandana "pre-filter" for great results.
The MSR Miox pen is a small compact water treatment…
Price Paid: $120
The MSR Miox pen is a small compact water treatment unit. The original Miox Pen (identical in operation to the MSR commercial unit) was first issued to our soldiers in Afghanistan. It is lightweight and stores easily. It is also economical over time. I got many backpacking trips and water treatments out of a single salt tablet and the original set of batteries.
There is a big misconception among those who aren't familiar with the Miox and its chemical treatment engineering, and who rather simplistically dismiss the Miox Pen as only a 'chlorine maker'. The Miox Pen does NOT produce simple sodium hypochlorite (otherwise known as commercial bottled chlorine). Instead the unit uses salt, water and electrolysis to produce a complex compound of mixed oxidant chlorides that is effective against all bacteria, viruses and parasites, including crypto, which ordinary bottled commercial chlorine WILL NOT kill.
Another misconception is health effects. What some critics don't realize is that Miox has used the exact same technology to produce water treatment for third world and military applications for years with no ill effects. If it's safe enough for the U.N. and U.S. special forces, it's safe enough for me. I love my Miox!
This is a cute little compact chlorine maker. If you…
Price Paid: $160 CA
This is a cute little compact chlorine maker. If you want chlorinated water why not just bring a small bottle of bleach along? I'm returning mine because chlorine is bad for us.
Where to Buy
The MSR Miox is not available from the stores we monitor. It was last seen November 5, 2013 at CampSaver.com.


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Since religion is so much a part of human life at every level, studying religion is a way of getting broad perspective on many aspects of human society and culture.
As lovers of wisdom philosophers have always asked questions about such things as the good life, the nature of beauty, political justice, what is involved in knowing something, and language.
Classics is the study of the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Both cultures have had a profound influence on life in the western world.


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Items where SHU Author is "Thompson, Mark"
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Jump to: Book Section | Conference or Workshop Item
Number of items: 3.
Book Section
BEVINS, S.C, BRODIE, E. and THOMPSON, M. (2008). Current perceptions of the impact of SES on science participation and attainment: a focus group investigation of pupils, teachers and parents. In: Exploring the relationship between socioeconomic status and participation and attainment in science education. SES and Science Education report. London, The Royal Society, 30-41.
TEKINER, F., GHASSEMLOOY, Z., AL-KHAYATT, S. and THOMPSON, M. (2004). Implementation and evaluation of Shufflenet, Gemnet and De Bruijn graph logical network topologies. In: HAMZA, M. H., (ed.) Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference Parallel and Distributed Computing and Networks. Acta Press.
Conference or Workshop Item
BEVINS, S., THOMPSON, M. and WILLIAMS, C. (2007). A climate for change. In: Researching Children conference, Hermann Gmeiner Academy, Innsbruck, December 10-12, 2007.


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Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS)
U.S. Department of Labor
Employment Standards Administration
Office of Labor-Management Standards
St. Louis District Office
1222 Spruce Street
Room 9 109 E
St. Louis, MO 63103
(314)539-2667 Fax: (314)539-2626
January 31, 2007
Ms. Carolyn McElvaine,Treasurer
AFGE Local 104
9700 Page
Room 2515
Overland, MO 63132-1547
Re: Case Number
Dear Ms. McElvaine:
This office has recently completed an audit of AFGE Local 104 under the Compliance Audit Program (CAP) to determine your organization's compliance with the provisions of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA). As discussed during the exit interview with you on January 19, 2007, the following problems were disclosed during the CAP. The matters listed below are not an exhaustive list of all possible problem areas since the audit conducted was limited in scope.
The CAP disclosed a violation of LMRDA Sec organizations to file annual financial reports a condition and operations. The Labor Organization filed by AFGE Local 104 for fiscal year ending in the following areas:
- Item 24 - All Officers and Disbursements - The names of some officers were not reported in Item 24. All persons who held office during the year must be reported in Item 24 regardless of whether or not they received any payments from the union.
- Item 25 (a)(b) - Beginning and Ending cash were not accurate.
- Item 38 - Dues Receipts total did not appear accurate. Lunch & Learn refunds from AFGE National should not be included in Dues Receipts, but rather in Item 44 - Other Receipts.
I am not requiring that AFGE Local 104 file an amended LM report for 2005 to correct the deficient items, but as agreed, AFGE Local 104 will properly report the deficient items on all future reports file with this agency.
The CAP disclosed a violation of LMRDA Section 206, which require, among other things, that adequate records be maintained for at least 5 years by which each receipt and disbursement of funds, as well as all account balances, can be verified, explained, and clarified. The audit of AFGE Local 104 record revealed the following recordkeeping violations:
- Minutes for membership and executive board meetings were not retained. These records are required to be maintained for at least 5 years for verification of authorized expenditures.
- No receipts for the individual member payer who does not pay dues by dues by automatic deduction.
- No Receipts/ Disbursements Ledger for disbursements.
- Stubs for dues checks received from AFGE National were not retained for the entire audit year period.
- Back-up documentation was not maintained for all disbursements during the audit year period. In total, 16 disbursements did not have accurate or sufficient back-up documentation.
As agreed, provided that AFGE Local 104 maintains adequate documentation as discussed above in the future, no additional enforcement action will be taken regarding this violation.
Finally, the CAP revealed a violation of LMRDA Section 502, which requires that union officers and employees be bonded for no less than 10 percent of the total funds handled by those in by those individuals or their predecessors during the preceding fiscal year. AFGE Local 104 officers and employees are currently bond for at least $9,691.
Please obtain sufficient bonding coverage and bonding coverage to my attention.
I want to extend my personal appreciation to extended during this compliance audit. I strongly recommend that you make sure this letter and the compliance assistance materials provided to you are passed on to future officers. If we can provide any additional assistance, please do not hesitate to call.


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By John Goralski
Sports Writer
On Wednesday, Dec. 12, Travis Daly was tossing around his opponent like a cat with a ball of string, but that wasn't enough. The defending state champion had to score a pin late in the meet if his team had a chance to win.
Bristol Eastern was consistently out-wrestling the Knights on their home floor, so Daly had to push for something that wasn't there. His opponent capitalized on a mistake and pinned the defending state champ.
Dion was clear about one thing. There's no need for alarm after the 37-28 loss.
"He could have just sat on his lead when he was up 10-0 or 12-0, but he tried to force it knowing that he had to do it for the team," said the coach. "He made just a little mistake, and he got caught. I'm not worried about that. He's still got to get in shape after the extended football season. He'll get there. He'll still dominate. He's just got to get in shape and finish."
It wasn't the start that fans might have liked, but Dion said that his wrestlers are focusing on the big picture—the postseason. His team had to scramble for opening day because of an extended football season, so it was just bad luck to draw a team like Bristol Eastern.
"They're a good team, and they just wrestled a little harder than we did," said Dion. "We intentionally start the season not in our best shape because we don't want to peak early. When you get a good team right off the hop, you're going to pay. Today, we got out-toughed in the third period. We have a lot of work to do. We still have to get some of our kids down into the right weight classes, but we'll get there."
Some of the matches fell the way they were predicted. Nate Solomon (132), Ryan DuPuis (160), and Zach Maxwell (195) rallied for pins. Tyler Hyde (170) manhandled his opponent with a 15-1 decision. Zach Bylykbashi (120) and Austin Sullivan (182) battled for decisions, but the Lancers ran out to a 25-9 lead which gave Southington a slim margin for error.
"We blew a couple big leads in some matches, and we've got some work to do," said Dion. "They were in a little better shape than we were today, and they really wrestled tough. My hat's off to them. They came out here and they really wrestled well. They set the tone on us. They got physical on us, and they finished their matches better than we did."
There were some bright spots for the Knigths, even in some of their losses. Freshmen wrestlers Trevor Godston (220) and Zach Murillo (106) lost tight decisions to experienced wrestlers late in the match.
"Trevor held his own against a junior with a lot of experience and really wrestled tough. He stayed in great positions and wrestled hard," said Dion. "So did Murillo against a much bigger kid. The kids that we needed to tough it out and play off their backs did a really good job."
A better measure for the Knights was Saturday's Lancer Tournament in Waterford. Dion expects his team to be a good tournament team, and this was a chance to measure themselves against some of the better wrestlers in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Windham scored 180 points to take the team title, but Southington battled for 171.5 points to claim second place, two champions, and a top four finish in nine of the 14 divisions.
"It started off slow, but we built some momentum at the end," said Dion. "I think that this was our day to wake up. We were kind of sleeping against Bristol, and we were still sleeping in the morning. But as the day went on, we kept getting better."
Jacob Leahy (145) shrugged off an early loss to finish 2-2. Gino Camputaro (113) battled back from an opening round loss to place third overall with three straight pins. Sullivan (182) fought off a loss in the opener to capture a third place medal. Daly fought back from a mid-day loss to capture third place in the heavyweight division. Every Blue Knight earned at least one victory.
"We had three brand new guys in the lineup, and they all got pins," Dion said. "Trevor Godston had a pin. Allesio Diana had a pin, and Jacob Leahy had a pin. None of them ended up placing, but they all got pins, and that was good."
Southington wrestlers rallied for four championship finals and came away with two titles. Solomon went 2-1 to finish second in the 132 pound class, and Alex Martin matched his performance in the 152 pound division. Ryan Dupuis (160) and Maxwell (220) capped undefeated days with tournament championships.
Dion said that he hopes that this will be a turning point as the Knights build toward the postseason, and a second place finish to Windham was a good start.
"I have Windham as a top three team in the state on my voting, and we still have two kids that should be in our lineup but aren't yet," said Dion. "If and when they get into the lineup, either one of them could be the difference. We only lost by seven points, and we aren't even hitting our stride yet. I'm optimistic."


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A guest speaker for the October meeting and a workshop in November were announced at the September 17 business meeting and kick-off dinner for the Wood County (Texas) Genealogical Society.
Quitman Attorney James Wheeler will visit with members about history of families and history of the Pine Mills community in eastern Wood County at the October 15 meeting.
Plans were announced for a November evening workshop which will be held on a different night than the regular November meeting. Details will be shared here on the Bulletin when exact dates are determined. The emphasis will be on using local and online resources to help people with their family research.
Fourteen people attended the covered-dish dinner including four guests who shared their research and family history with those present. Also, minutes for meetings in April, May, and June as well as an up-to-date financial report were presented by Secretary Shirley Patrick and Treasurer Wayne McCluney. The meeting was conducted by President Ronnie Vance. All of these documents are available for viewing on the member only page which one can access from the link at the top right of this page.
New books to the society's research room at the Quitman Public Library featuring early Wood County Probate proceedings and survey notes were presented. Planning is also underway for training for using research room resources to help researchers and for a scanning workshop.
Filed under: Meetings, Programs, Society Business, Workshops | Tagged: McCluney, Patrick, Vance, Wheeler | 1 Comment »


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Listed Price
This magnificent luxury villa of Majorcan style is situated in a privileged area of Camp de Mar on a plot of 210.000 m² above the golf course of Andratx and providing panoramic views of the mar and the mountains.
The property consists of five bedrooms with own en suite bathroom each, two bathrooms, central aspiration system and an intelligent domotic system. A light-flooded living-/dining area of manor house style and an open fireplace, completely fitted and Kitchen, independent apartment for Guest or Staff. The villa is equipped with underfloor heating and air conditioning providing various terraces (some of which covered), Mediterranean gardens, a pool area and a garage for 2-4 cars. Another two properties of the same building promoter, each with 21 hectares of land as well, share the private road that leads to the house, being the residence of three fortunate owners. Furthermore, the hill boasts plenty of park area (three large villas on 65 hectares) being situated next to a protected green area.
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Mallorca Sotheby's International RealtyCan Serra de Marina, 4
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Z Nation Season 5
Warren recovers from the drone crash with handsome, mysterious Cooper; Doc and the others finally arrive in Newmerica, where they meet George, who is helping form the new country.
Genres: Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Actor: Kellita Smith, Keith Allan, Russell Hodgkinson, Gracie Gillam
Director: Abram Cox
Country: USA


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Find out about Andy's interview for a position at the Museum.More about Andy Currant
Interviews and first-days can be both nerve-wracking and exciting, but all are memorable for our Museum's staff. From difficult interview questions to discovering their own way through the Museum's labyrinthine corridors, each has their own particular (and sometimes peculiar!) memories of starting work at the Museum.
And yet not all routes to museum work are necessarily alike. Many of our scientists and curators have relevant qualifications, but some have taken less traditional routes. Entering the Museum as a 16-year-old school leaver or as a well-established researcher, first experiences of the Museum are long-remembered. Listen to these clips to see the many routes which an individual may take into museum work and how these pathways have changed over the past 60 years.
Find out about Andy's interview for a position at the Museum.
Discover how Angela got her job at the Museum.
Listen as Angela describes her first job in the Palaeontology Department.
Listen to Barry recall how he became a carpenter at the Museum.
Listen to Brian's first impressions of the Palaeontology Department.
Listen to Brian describe the interview for his first post at the Museum.
Hear how Dick's interview made him eager to start work.
Find out about Graham's first job in the Setting Room.
Find out about how Louise first got her foot in the door.
Find out how Louise became a volunteer at the Museum.
Find out what questions Miranda was asked at her interview.
Listen to Neil recall his appointment as Director.
Listen as Neil descibes his explorations behind the scenes at the Museum.
Find out how Neil applied to work at the Museum.
Hear why Paul never expected to work at the Museum.
Hear Richard describe his first day at the Museum.
Listen to Richard explaining the challenges of his interview.
Hear Robin explain how the variety of staff and specimens shape working at the Museum.
Listen to Sandy recall starting at the Museum as a NATO post-doctoral fellow.
Hear how working life at the Museum has changed.
Listen to Sara describe her job interview.


text: I just discovered the cmp power run caches in the liberty area and want to load just those caches into my gps. I ran a pq and put it into gsak. How do I now get just those caches onto my gps? recently, when I've been transfering to my gps, it will load some and leave some off. If I'm going to head up that way, I want to make sure all of them are in so I don't leave any unfound. Do I have to do it individually? Thanks. So so so needed that class......:rolleyes:


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It is at this point that the wealth of irony inherent in the work comes to the fore. Each of the more than a dozen officers on each side is a recognizable portrait of a famous artist, critic, or writer, including on the French side, the Surrealist Andre Breton and Pablo Picasso (dressed in fur), and on the American side such painters as Jackson Pollock and the highly influential New York art critic, Clement Greenberg. In the background is a war-torn landscape dotted by the smouldering fires of recent artistic conflicts over which the New York School has unconditionally triumphed. Two or three French officers are mounted on anachronistic horses while the American "cavalry" is a modern armored half-track.
Aside from providing interesting intellectual delights for art historians, the painting's purpose is to shake up conventional ideas about history and truth. The soldiers of WW I surrendering to those WW II is as absurd the comparison of art and war. In addition, the documentary photographic realism of such an impossible historic scene challenges our notions regarding the reliability of photography itself. Today, with many off-the-shelf computers coming bundled with scanners, printers, and photo-editing software, this element of the painting may seem academic. But it serves to underline the gradual disappearance of the line between the painted image and the photographic image. With the photo, merely another tool of the artist, and artistic computer editing merely another tool of the photographer, all images are merely that--images.
Contributed by Lane, Jim26 April 1998


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TORONTO - Some of the most active companies traded Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange:
Toronto Stock Exchange (14,227.66 down 17.48 points):
Fortis Inc. (TSX:FTS.IR). Utilities. Up 35 cents, or 1.07 per cent, to $33.00 on 31.7 million shares.
Carpathian Gold Inc. (TSX:CPN). Miner. Down 0.5 cents, or 14.29 per cent, to three cents on 7.4 million shares.
B2Gold Corp. (TSX:BTO). Miner. Down 12 cents, or 3.38 per cent, to $3.43 on 6.5 million shares.
Eastern Platinum Ltd. (TSX:ELR). Miner. Unchanged at 7.5 cents on 5.7 million shares.
Bombardier Inc. (TSX:BBD.B). Aerospace. Up five cents, or 1.29 per cent, to $3.92 on 5.5 million shares.
Trican Well Service Ltd. (TSX:TCW). Oil and gas. Down 55 cents, or 4.27 per cent, to $12.33 on 5.4 million shares.
Toronto Venture Exchange (1,033.64 up 1.53 points):
Panoro Minerals Ltd. (TSXV:PML). Miner. Unchanged at 28 cents on 10.1 million shares.
Africa Hydrocarbons Inc. (TSXV:NFK). Oil and gas. Down 2.5 cents, or 16.13 per cent, to 13 cents on 6.3 million shares.
Companies reporting major news:
Athabasca Oil Corp. (TSX:ATH). Oil and gas. Down five cents, or 0.60 per cent, to $8.34 on 1.1 million shares. William Gallacher, founder and chairman of the company, announced he was stepping down a day after its Dover oilsands project received a long-awaited green light from the Alberta government. Once all approvals are in hand, PetroChina, currently with a 60 per cent stake in the project, has 30 days to exercise its option to buy out Athabasca's 40 per cent interest for $1.3 billion — which would be a much-needed cash infusion for Athabasca.
Stella-Jones Inc. (TSX:SJ). Forest products. Up 56 cents, or 2.07 per cent, to $27.60 on 79,021 shares. The stock went up even though the company missed analyst estimates on both earnings per share and revenue as it raise the quarterly dividend 40 per cent amid expectations that demand for its core products will remain healthy.


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Battleground Poll: Race still tight
The presidential race is tight enough nationally that a strong performance in Wednesday's debate by Mitt Romney could put him in the lead.
A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll of likely voters shows President Barack Obama ahead 49 percent to 47 percent, a point closer than a week ago and still within the margin of error. A tracking poll will be performed each week, and the results released each Monday, through Election Day.
Story Continued Below
Romney now leads by 4 points among independents, up slightly from a week ago. The Republican must overperform with that group to make up for the near monolithic support of African-Americans for Obama, as well as the huge Democratic advantage among Latinos and women.
The head-to-head numbers mostly held steady through the past two weeks.
( See also: POLITICO's poll tracker)
"The basic underpinnings of this race are just not changing, and that's what's going to keep this a very close race," said Republican pollster Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group, who helped conduct the bipartisan poll.
A solid 46 percent say they will vote to reelect Obama and 42 percent say firmly they'll vote to replace him. Just 9 percent say they'll consider someone else.
"We've never had a debate where the electorate was this polarized," said Celinda Lake, the Democratic pollster who helped conduct the poll. "There's a real question about how many voters are left to move in the debate."
Obama's overall job approval stands at 49 percent, with an identical number of respondents disapproving. The president's personal favorability slipped to 50 percent, with 47 percent viewing him unfavorably.
Romney remains slightly underwater on likability, with 46 percent viewing him favorably and 48 percent viewing him unfavorably. He has a problem with women, among whom Obama leads by 12 points, 54 percent to 42 percent. Asked about Romney as a person, 51 percent of women say they don't have a good impression.
"For Romney, it's a double goal that he has: He's got to get that likability up, particularly among women," said Lake. "And he's got to draw a sharp contrast on what he'd do on the economy. That's very difficult to do simultaneously. … It's hard to maintain likability when you're being an attack dog."
Romney has not benefited from revelations about the Obama administration bungling its initial response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Obama actually expanded his lead over Romney last week on who is better able to handle foreign policy, from 9 points to 12 points.
Democratic intensity has slipped slightly to 75 percent. A week before last, still in the afterglow of their convention, 81 percent of Democrats called themselves "extremely likely" to vote. Republican enthusiasm, meanwhile, held steady around 80 percent.
Regardless of whom they're supporting, twice as many voters (61 percent) expect the president to prevail in November as expect him to lose.
"Democrats should be careful not to take this for granted," said Lake. "Inevitability cannot diminish our focus on getting our voters out because the Republicans will be focused on getting their voters out."
Pocketbook issues remain overwhelmingly the top concern of voters, and half of Wednesday's 90-minute debate will focus on the economy.
Romney has reopened a slight advantage on which of the two candidates is bestequipped to handle the economy — 49 percent to 47 percent — and to create jobs – 48 percent to 47 percent. A slight majority, 52 percent, disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.


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Air Force F-35 takes first night flight | Community Spirit
Title (Max 100 Characters)
Air Force Times
Pilots in the Air Force's newest and most expensive fighter can now fly at night.
An F-35A training pilot took off Monday at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., for the Joint Strike Fighter's first night training sortie. Previously, the service's training syllabus explicitly prohibited the advanced stealthy fighter from flying at night or during adverse weather.
But this delay wasn't due to a technical problem, it was due to different air worthiness standards in the various services flying the plane.
The Joint Strike Fighter is designed as a common fighter for all services. However, an issue arose with the symbols that the system's pilot interface uses.
RELATED: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel proposes using F-35, retiring A-10
The Air Force believed it "didn't have enough data to ensure the pilot-vehicle interface for night flying was good enough," Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the joint F-35 program office executive officer, said Wednesday in response to questions from Air Force Times. "What I mean by that, is back in (training) the displays the pilots were looking at were confusing to Air Force pilots but not confusing to Navy and Marine Corps pilots because a lot of the symbology was of Navy origin."
The confusion arose because the Air Force has a different air worthiness authority than the other services. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, handles the air worthiness standards for the service, while the Navy and Marine Corps use standards from Naval Air Systems Command.
Because the NAVAIR standards are used on the F-35's night systems, the Air Force trained 15 pilots through simulators at Eglin and the F-35 plant in Fort Worth, Texas, until it was confident its pilots were ready to begin night flying at Eglin, Bogdan said.
The F-35 program as a whole was cleared for night flying in December, with Navy and Marine Corps pilots beginning sorties in January. It took until Monday for the Air Force to be ready to fly at night.
Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh, on Wednesday, told the House Appropriations Committee that, despite continuing software issues with the jet, he is "more confident than I've ever been" the F-35A will reach its initial operating capability by the end of 2016. However, he expects that some issues remain and will need to be addressed while the jet is flying operationally.
His comments came the day after the Government Accountability Office released a report on the technological issues plaguing the jet, including continuing issues with the complex software in the jet.
"Delays in developmental flight testing of the F-35's critical software may hinder delivery of expected warfighting capabilities to the military services," the GAO wrote.
The Pentagon's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation has said that delivery of operational capabilities could ultimately be delayed by as long as 13 months due to delays in software delivery, limited capability in delivered software, and the need to address problems and retest additional software versions.
"[I]f software testing continues to be delayed, if funding falls short of expectations or if unit cost targets cannot be met, DoD may have to make decisions about whether to proceed with production as planned with less capable aircraft or to alter the production rate," the GAO wrote.
The Defense Department agrees that software problems are the largest problem facing the F-35 program as a whole but is more confident in the jet's future.
"My biggest technical concern in development is still software," Bogdan said in Wednesday testimony to the House Armed Services tactical air forces subcommittee. "Over the past two years, the program has implemented significant changes in how system software is developed, lab tested, flight tested, measured and controlled. These changes are showing positive effects, and I am moderately confident that the program will successfully release the (software upgrades) Block 2B and 3I capability as planned in 2015 and 2016, respectively."
Earlier this month, the first F-35A arrived for pilot training at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. The base will accept 16 jets this year and eventually house 144 jets for training. Instructor pilots are still in training at Eglin, which is expected to graduate its 100th pilot and 1,000th maintainer this week.


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Mutated H7N9 strain is drug resistant, spreadable
Courtesy of WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Japan
A mutated strain of the H7N9 influenza virus that infects humans is resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Becoming drug resistant does not appear to affect the ability of the virus to infect cells.
In contrast, when the seasonal flu virus becomes drug resistant, its ability to move among hosts and grow within them is reduced. The mutated, drug resistant H7N9 virus, however, was still able to infect cultured human cells and spread between laboratory animals as efficiently as nonmutated strains, researchers report December 10 in Nature Communications.
H7N9 is still better adapted to infect birds and, so far, has not had sustained transmission among humans.


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If the idea of icy roads, frigid temperatures, and chapped lips doesn't appeal to you for the holiday season, take heart. Along with our Mediterranean Highlights by the Sea cruise, we're also christening an Iberian Coasts Cruise this upcoming holiday season!
On the Iberian Coasts Cruise, travelers will visit fascinating ports of call in France, Gibraltar, Morocco, Spain, and Italy, while enjoying superior accommodations aboard the cruise ship M/V Louis Majesty.
Let's get the nitty gritties out of the way first, shall we? The package includes roundtrip flights from New York, an eight-night Iberian Coast cruise, a two-night bonus stay in Rome, all meals aboard the cruise, and daily breakfast in Rome. Vacationers can explore the ports-of-call on their own, or take inexpensive optional shore excursions. For all of this? $1,399.
Now for some of the juicy details. After arriving in Genoa, Italy from New York, travelers board the M/V Louis Majesty and head for Marseilles, France. Vacationers can enjoy all the splendor of Marseilles by visiting independently its must-see sites, including the Old Port, the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, Phare de Sainte Marie lighthouse, the Centre Bourse, and the adjacent rue St Ferreol district (the main shopping district in central Marseilles), just to name a few.
After a day at sea, the M/V Louis Majesty will then dock at the British colony, Gibraltar, and then continue on to Tangier, Morocco. Outside Tangier's bustling port, vacationers can take in the city's stunning environs: hills surrounding a broad bay with a long stretch of beach.
For travelers interested in learning more about Morocco's diverse cultural heritage as the closest major African city to Europe, a visit to Tangier's Museum of Moroccan Arts and Antiquities would be a fascinating stop. Another not-to-be-missed experience is a visit to the Grand Souk, where bargaining skills are put to the test while shopping for treasures such as brass, leather, rugs, and silver.
The next morning, the ship docks at Casablanca, Morocco, the largest city and main port of Morocco. And a city that I have a feeling travelers might feel to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 😉
After Casablanca, it's back to the European side of things with Málaga, Spain. Málaga is one of the liveliest cities on the Costa del Sol, a 100-mile stretch of gorgeous Mediterranean coastline which boasts some of the best beaches in Spain.
Málaga is also the birthplace of Pablo Picasso and home to the renowned Picasso Museum. There's time to explore independently, as well as an array of optional shore excursions. But of course, travelers must be sure to sample some of Málaga's sweet wine and tasty tapas.
The cruise continues along Spain's coast with two more stops at ports of call at Alicante and Barcelona, before finally arriving back in Genoa on the tenth day of the journey. From there, vacationers will be treated to two more bonus nights in Rome at absolutely no cost to them.
The season's first Iberian Coasts cruise takes place Dec. 25 to Jan. 5, and promises to be a culturally rich, historically fascinating, and scenically beautiful holiday trip. There are four other departure dates throughout 2010, running from February to December.


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Coming Soon…
Here at Eliza London we are family run business that produce great fitting clothes to celebrate the female form in all shapes and sizes.
We have carefully selected and designed dresses inspired from the LA beach babes to help our customers have confidence in their curves.
Our dresses are of the highest quality. They are snug fitting, suck you in and have bust and waist enhancing material to give you poise and empowerment. You will feel truly amazing!
© 2019 Eliza London.


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Workplace Flexibility 2010 is a campaign to support the development of a comprehensive national policy on workplace flexibility. Through our work, we have helped set the stage for a robust national debate on how to restructure the workplace to meet the needs of today's workforce.
Flexible Workplace Solutions for Low-Wage Hourly Workers
Workplace Flexibility 2010 and the Institute for Workplace Innovation (iwin) are delighted to announce the release of "Flexible Workplace Solutions for Low-Wage Hourly Workers: A Framework for a National Conversation," an innovative report with new key findings on the scheduling challenges facing low-wage hourly workers.
This report provides a fresh perspective on this issue by examining the similarities and differences between scheduling challenges for low-wage hourly workers on standard 9 to 5 schedules and those workers on nonstandard schedules (including nights, weekends, rotating, and variable schedules), and the implications for employer practice and public policy. It answers questions about the types of scheduling challenges that low-wage hourly workers face, provides a framework for thinking through next steps, and links the issue to the broader national dialogue on workplace flexibility.
This report provides a useful framework to employers, employees, and unions who are thinking about how to provide greater flexibility to low-wage hourly workers, and advocates and policymakers who want to better understand the contours of this issue and policy solutions, and for all who are working to make flexibility a regular feature of low-wage hourly jobs.
Click here for the full report, here for the executive summary, and here for the press release.