text:
I am experimenting a bit with setting up Job Alerts of Science Careers, and with wildcards. I found it is abolutely necessary to use wildcards, because the search engine is very stringent (just searching for "postdoc" f.e. will not find jobs that contain the string "postdocs" but not "postdoc" - there's at least one real world example in the current database).
I have a question regarding the search functionality of the ScienceCareers website and what experiences others made with this. I post in the forum because I think it can be interesting to others who are also using Job Alerts, and I have no idea how to contact the team behind the search engine of ScienceCareers directly anyway.
I was trying out different queries containing phrases and wildcards. In particular, I tried to construct a query that let's me find jobs for postdocs. Considering how strict the search is, I want to find all job offers that satisfy the given discipline and location criteria, and also target postdocs, so it's necessary to account for many different spellings:
post doc
post docs
As the search engine supports wildcards (http://scjobs.sciencemag.org/help/jobse ... ywords.asp), I thought a good phrase is "post*doc*".
However the results are confusing. Restricting to the Discipline "Genomics" and location "North America", I get 22 jobs for "post*doc*", but 44 (!) jobs or "postdoc*".
I.e. "postdoc*" finds more than "post*doc*".
Similarly, "postdoc" finds 6 jobs but "post*doc" only 1 job.
Is this a bug? Or, am I doing something wrong and should use wildcards differently?


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The Mets reached agreement with Gary Sheffield on a one-year deal, with the player's agent, Rufus Williams, saying he wants to play beyond this year: "You don't show much when you're sitting on the bench. Gary is going to play beyond this year. It's important for him to get an opportunity to play. What we're trying to ensure, wherever he's going, is that he has an opportunity to participate and perform."
At first glance, the player who figures to get his at-bats cut most is right fielder Ryan Church. Next would be Daniel Murphy. I don't see the Mets bringing in a high-profile player such as Sheffield without the intent of playing him.
Sheffield has 499 career homers.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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Pursuant to 119.12 (2), F.S., the custodian of public records is Hampton Peterson, 561.355.2996.
Checks & Balances: Your Guide to County Finances, also called the Popular Annual Financial Report or PAFR, is a user-friendly tool that helps residents understand how their tax dollars are managed and spent. The easy-to-read guide, produced annually by the Clerk & Comptroller's office, highlights important financial information and issues affecting the County's financial health. It contains condensed and simplified information mostly from the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, which is compiled at the end of each fiscal year.
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text:
6 oz semisweet chips
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, at room temperature
1 vanilla bean
Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Split the vanilla bean in two down the seam. Scrape the seeds into a large bowl, then add the butter, vanilla and sugar. Cream together. Add the egg, beat until fluffy. Add the flour, baking powder, salt, and oatmeal. Mix until well combined. Fold in the nuts and chips. Place tablespoon sized blobs of dough on the lined cookie sheet about 1/2 inch apart and bake for 12-14 minutes or until they look "set" and the bottoms are just golden. Carefully remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Yield: about 2 dozen cookies


text:
I couldnt quite figure out where to ask this question, since there isint a Newbie Programming area, so I figured here was the safest place.
I'm writing a program in c which determines the volume of cylinders made from PVC. I have three large arrays that store the Inside Diameter of Schedule 40,80, and 120 pipe. Is there an easier way than having such large arrays, perhaps reading the values from a file? I'm still very new to C so any help is greatly appreciated


text:
First introduced for the 2007 model year, the Hyundai Veracruz is a midsize crossover SUV that's capable of handling up to seven passengers and 87 cubic feet of cargo. Far more luxurious than its modest price tag might suggest, the Hyundai Veracruz was oft compared to more upscale model SUVs when it was first introduced. Like most models produced by Hyundai in recent years, the Veracruz offers an extensive warranty and a generous list of standard features that also contradict its fairly moderate price tag. Still in its first generation of production, the Veracruz has yet to be significantly modified or redesigned in any way.
The Hyundai Veracruz is a seven-passenger mid-size SUV with a family-friendly price tag and all the trappings of a luxury model. Well-built, relatively quiet when driven and with a generous array of standard features, the Veracruz is easy to compare with many crossover SUV models produced by luxury brand automakers. While it would be hard to say that the Veracruz outclasses the competition in any one area, it earns generally high marks across the board. This makes it a worthwhile prospect, in spite of the fact that it's known for a lack of interior space and low-end torque.
The 2012 Hyundai Veracruz is a mid-size SUV available in two trim levels: GLS and Limited. The GLS edition rolls on 17-inch alloy wheels and includes features such as heated mirrors, foglamps, automatic headlamps, rear parking sensors, cruise control, eight-way power drivers seat, heated front seats, tilt-and-telescoping steering columns, rear seat climate controls, and six-speaker audio systems equipped with satellite radio, auxiliary audio jacks, and iPod/USB interfaces. A Premium package sees the addition of a sunroof, auto dimming mirrors, windshield de-icer, power liftgate, and front seat heating.
The Limited edition boasts all of the features included in the Premium package along with 18-inch alloy wheels, driver memory functions, dual-zone automatic climate control, leather upholstery, power tilt-and-telescoping steering wheels, four-way power passenger seat, second row seat heating, a 115-volt power outlet, a sound system by Infinity that boasts eight speakers and a six-CD changer. Additional options for the Veracruz Limited include an Alpine navigation system, a rearview camera, Bluetooth connectivity, and a ten-speaker surround-sound audio system by Infinity that's equipped with a six-CD changer.
A 3.8-liter V-6 engine that outputs 260 horsepower and 257 lb-ft of torque powers both versions of the 2012 Hyundai Veracruz. The vehicle is available in either front or all-wheel drive and a six-speed automatic transmission is standard for all models. EPA estimated fuel economy is 17/22 mpg city/highway for the front-wheel drive version and 16/21 mpg for the AWD version.
The 2012 Veracruz earns high marks for frontal and side impact crash tests. Standard safety features on the mid-size SUV include antilock disc brakes, stability control, traction control, front-seat side airbags, side curtain airbags, and active front head restraints.
On the inside, the 2012 Veracruz is handsomely appointed and made from quality materials. With wood and faux-aluminum trim and accents, the Veracruz is arguably better looking on the inside than it is on the out. Controls and gauges are laid out in a minimalist, user-friendly manner. Seating is comfortable and space is part ample, despite a third row of seating that's a bit cramped when compared to models produced by the competition. In addition to being able to accommodate seven passengers, the 2012 Veracruz is also capable of carrying some 87 cubic feet of cargo.
Reviews indicate that the 2012 Veracruz is quiet and smooth when driven on well-paved roads. However, the vehicle is reported not to handle rougher roads as well. While its V-6 engine is generally adequate for most situations, the transmission has been known to sometimes lag in dropping a gear for passing or climbing steep hills.
Introduced for the 2007 model year, the Hyundai Veracruz is currently still in its first generation and has yet to undergo a major redesign. When this midsize SUV was first unveiled it was made available in GLS, SE, and Limited trim levels. Throughout its production, engine output and standard features have remained fairly consistent. Features such as the navigation system and power tailgate were introduced for the 2008 model year. The last year that the SE trim level was made available was in 2009. The SE trim level was replaced by the two optional packages that are available on the current GLS model. At one time, a rear-seat DVD entertainment system was available as an option but was discontinued in 2011. Engine, powertrains, safety features, and interior designs for past models of the Hyundai Veracruz remain mostly in line with what you'll find on the 2012 model.
2012 Hyundai Veracruz
SUV, Utility/Offroad
A European-market grille and 18-inch Hypersilver wheels are new for the 2012 model year.
2011 Hyundai Veracruz
Little has changed for the company's biggest crossover SUV. Minor packaging changes are the only updates for 2011: for the GLS model, the Premium package no longer includes the LG navigation system, but now comes with an auto-dimming mirror with HomeLink. Aside from that change, the model is essentially carryover: one engine, one transmission, and three-row seating standard.
2010 Hyundai Veracruz
2009 Hyundai Veracruz
The 2009 Hyundai Veracruz provides a perfect example of how Hyundai brings luxury vehicles to the masses with a much cheaper price tag.
2008 Hyundai Veracruz
Relatively new to the American automobile marketplace, Hyundai made a brake through in 1986 with the release of its hugely successful subcompact Excel.
2007 Hyundai Veracruz
The 2007 Veracruz represents a new midsize crossover SUV produced by Hyundai.


text:
To avoid your own "fiscal cliff" in 2013, I suggest you stop arguing with yourself and take 10 -- and by that, I mean 10 positive steps for a better, more prosperous new year.
Continue Reading Below
Tip 1: Develop a spending plan
If you don't have a plan for your money, you will end up following someone else's plan. That's no fun! A plan puts you in control of how much you spend and on what. Trust me, plan for spending, and you will have a much richer financial life.
Tip 2: Save for emergencies
If you don't have savings, you will fail. End of story. Life can't be totally predicted, so to avoid being in a hole every time a surprise happens, you must have savings. Your goal is to save six to 12 months' worth of living expenses. Not what you earn each month, but what you spend each month. They should be different, and what you earn should be more.
Tip 3: Study up before taking on student loan debt
Starting a working career with six figures of student loan debt drastically reduces your spending options once you graduate -- that is, if you graduate and if you get a job. Be smart. Limit your student debt to what your take-home pay in your chosen career can afford. Crunch the numbers before you sign on the dotted line. Remember, it is a bill you will have to pay no matter what. If you don't have a career field in mind, don't take on any debt until you do.
Tip 4: Don't try to borrow your way out of debt
Consolidating debts into one lower payment sounds like a perfect financial move. It may not be, however. The main reason is because many people continue to add to their debt burden after the consolidation and end up with more debt than they can manage. Restructure your spending instead of your debt, and make a concerted effort to pay down what you owe as quickly as possible.
Tip 5: Never co-sign on a loan -- never, ever
You have ample opportunity to mess up your finances. Never share that opportunity with someone else. There is a reason why a professional lender won't approve this loan. So, why should you? Lend your support and encouragement, but not access to your credit.
Tip 6: Payday loans: No, no and no
You need money that you don't have, so you borrow what you need for a very large fee and a promise to pay when you are next paid. The problem, and it's a big one, is you won't have the extra money to pay back the loan when you get paid next time, either. This begins a vicious cycle of ever-increasing fees. Do without, pay something late, borrow from a friend, work part time, but don't take out a payday loan.
Tip 7: Avoid an upside-down car loan
If you need to sell your car, you need to make enough from the sale to pay off your car loan. Because vehicles depreciate so much, a large down payment will give you the freedom to sell when you want or need to sell.
Tip 8: Pay off no-interest offers as soon as you can
Having 48 months to pay means having 48 chances to let a mistake happen. One late payment, and the retroactive interest payment will make your head spin!
Tip 9: Never turn your back on a debt
As much as we would like to believe an ignored problem will go away, it doesn't. Ignoring a debt means high interest rates, large fees, a summons to appear in court, years of bad credit and a possible wage garnishment. Look that debt in the eye, and get help if you don't know what to do now, not later.
Tip 10: File bankruptcy only as a last resort
Bankruptcy is a viable choice only after all other reasonable options have been exhausted. It may not get rid of all your debts, but it will ruin your credit and job prospects, and you'll have to wait from three to seven years before you are eligible to file again. Think of bankruptcy like a financial nuclear weapon. You may be worse off from the fallout than you were before.
Copyright 2012, Bankrate Inc.


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Transform your photos into one-of-a-kind, hand painted masterpieces!
Click and drag to re-position the image, if desired.
Our kids t-shirts are made from 100% pre-shrunk cotton and are available in five different sizes. All kids t-shirts are machine washable.
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Thank you Veikko!
Really lovely painting Shannon!
Thank you so much Al and Nandika!
Fantastic artwork.......................L
this is so beautiful, you have great talent :)
Hey thanks Anthony. Your kind comments on my my art and music made my day!
this painting is cool Shannon, love the color and composition - you are very talented - like all your art including your album 'Hot Coffee Red Lipstick'........
fantastic color and composition....but the color palate.....wow, wow, wow.
I like to be a guest on that party ! greetings from cologne
Shannon: Fantastic colors and composition. Love the moment. Enjoyed your video, even though I can't paint. :)
Truly beautiful! Bravo!!
So much casual and natural Shannon. I really like it. GP
Shannon - Your work is wonderful! Love the colors!
I love this one.. Very shining . Thank you Shannon
Very nice. I totally agree with Barbara. It is a daily life scene, but you capture it so beautifully.
Wonderfully candid painting.. you captured the moment perfectly!!
Average Rating (4.63 Stars):
Sarah Fitzpatrick
January 16th, 2019
Connie Johnson
January 16th, 2019
Connie Johnson
January 16th, 2019
Connie Johnson
January 16th, 2019
Two women drinking wine on a vibrant backgound. Artwork selected for San Benito County 2007 Passport Weekend Poster.
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. Forrest Gump I'm kind of a late bloomer. I didn't discover painting until I was 33! But I was hooked. Inspired and driven, I'd get up early each day to paint for a few hours before the start of my workday. This demanding schedule was worth the effort. By 1999, I was able to leave my day job, and began to do my art as a full-time business. And thus began the amazing ride... � At 44 I began production of the television series, Give Your Walls Some Soul. It grew from an audience of one station to over 50 stations across the country and over 10 million households, winning numerous awards. � At 46 I published my children's book Monkey Made of Sockies. From...
Our return policy is very simple:
If you're not happy with a purchase that you made on Pixels.com, for any reason, you can return it to us within 30 days of the order date. As soon as it arrives, we'll issue a full refund for the entire purchase price. Please note - Pixels does not reimburse the outgoing or return shipping charges unless the return is due to a defect in quality.
Pixels sells thousands of pieces of artwork each month - all with a 100% money-back guarantee. We take great pride in the fact that hundreds of thousands of artists have chosen Pixels to fulfill their orders, and we look forward to helping you select your next piece!
All kids t-shirts ship from our production facility within 1 - 2 business days of your order.


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Home > Five Drawer Lateral File in Cloud Finish - 42"W
Hirsh Industries
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(1-2) $859; (3-5) $839; (6+) $829
The HL10000 five drawer lateral file is a quality filing solution for documents that need secure and efficient organization. Proper storage and easy access to files is essential in the operation of any well-run business, so use this lateral file to easily enhance your file storage options in an attractive way. All drawers lock for security, and accommodate the most common sizes of files and documents.
This five drawer lateral file is constructed with a baked enamel finish over steel. The double-wall base is designed for strength and longevity, and each drawer comes with precision ball-bearing suspension for smooth operation. The interlock system prevents multiple drawers from being opened simultaneously, and dual lock bars easily secure your files and documents. The lock is core-removable, and interior hanging rails accommodate letter, legal and A4-sized folders on the bottom three file drawers. The two top drawers have a fliptop and a rollout shelf for binder storage. Front to back file rods are available. (Sold separately). Magnetic label holders assist in identifying each drawer, and this file cabinet meets or exceed ANSI/BIFMA performance and safety standards.
This product is Greenguard Gold certified to support better indoor air quality for offices, homes, schools and healthcare facilities. Products that are Greenguard certified are regularly tested to ensure that their chemical and particle emissions meet acceptable pollutant standards.
Fully assembled.
This item is a GSA Schedule Contract item. National Business Furniture's GSA contract number is: GS-27F-0024V.
For more information, please call one of our government specialists at 800-558-1010, or visit this page to learn about all our government contracts including Navy BPA, Air Force BPA, TXMAS and CMAS.
For a limited time, take an additional 15% OFF the price of this item by entering promo code HARVEST during checkout! Your discounted price will be reflected at checkout. Promotion valid for 15% off all qualifying products (excluding tax and shipping) using promo code HARVEST only. Qualifying products will be marked with a 15% Off tag. Promo code cannot be used with any other promotions or discounts and is limited to one use per customer. Promo code applies to merchandise only. Enter promo code on payment page in check out to see discount before submitting order. Promo code valid November 1, 2018 to November 30, 2018 11:59 p.m. CST.
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text:
By Lisa Capobianco
Staff Writer
The Giving Back Girls kicked off another backpack drive as part of the Southington Smart Start Program, providing at least 400 backpacks to students in need throughout the community.
Created in 2010 by high school freshman Erin Gibney, the Giving Back Girls spent hours filling each backpack with school supplies, gift cards to Walmart and gift certificates for a hair cut. With the help of the Southington Fire Department, The Giving Back Girls loaded each backpack onto the fire truck before bringing them to Derynoski Elementary School. Between Jansport backpacks and Barbie backpacks, the girls offered a variety of them to students of all grades. They also displayed a table full of children's books and other school supplies, like rulers and lunchboxes. As parents entered with their children, they had a number of options to choose from, since each backpack had its own style.
"We like to give them a fun experience," Erin said.
About 50 families in need walk turn to Southington Community Services on a daily basis to receive bags of food and other donations, according to Assistant Mark Fasarrelli. Erin said helping these families brings her a sense of joy and accomplishment.
"Helping gives me a sense of fulfillment," she said. "It's nice to help people in your own town."
Erin's friend, Marissa Matarazzo, has been an active member of The Giving Back Girls since the community involvement group began. The drive has also brought her a sense of fulfillment.
"I want to make kids smile, to get them excited about going back to school," Marissa said.
Tricia Gibney, Erin's mother, helped coordinate and distribute the backpacks. Tricia said she is proud of the hard work that all 22 girls accomplished in order to make a difference in the community.
"It was just an amazing process to see all these girls organize the backpacks," she said.
Both Tricia and Erin hope to inspire younger children to get involved with The Giving Back Girls. They plan to recruit more girls to carry on the group's mission, especially after its current members move on to high school and college.
"When you start at a young age, you are helping people your whole life," Erin said.
Giving Back Girls help hand out backpacks
By Lisa Capobianco


text: Meticulously designed, this unique tri-color toned style is a phenomenal addition to your wardrobe. 100% micro polyester ottoman polo is specially treated with hi cool technology that will keep you dry and comfortable for the life of the garment. Carefully crafted workmanship allows for the arched color block design on the back, down the sides and front to run parallel with flat piping for added detail and mesh inserts under arm. Self-fabric collar lays flat with collar stays, finished with crystal buttons.


text:
grown needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 101 designs submitted by 28 freelance designers.
A stylish logo for a web-site which should display the meaning of the word "iTalent", which is about IT talents, everyone of you as well.
The logo must be simple, using technology style and awesome.
We need a logo for a web-site which is called iTalent. This will be a web 2.0 resource for people, involved in the IT industry in some particular country. The mission of the company – to promote people and their professional expertise. Another words – to promote IT talents. So, logically the word iTalent consists of several parts:
- "i" means a person, a user of the web-site.
- "IT" means an IT industry.
- "Talent" means that every our user is a talent, which we want to promote.
Another words, iTalent is about everyone of us.
The Goal
Text, that has to be displayed: iTalent
The goal is to create a simple and clear logo in web 2.0/IT style, reflecting the main idea, which is described above. The logo shouldn't contain any elements, which aren't easy to understand or don't reflect any idea, but exist just because they look nice. On the other hand, the picture must emphasize/highlight all three mentioned parts of the word "iTalent" and nothing else.
The following approaches can be used to meet the goal:
- The symbol "i" can be displayed as a human icon. This element should be clear and not complicated, but it must be easy understand what exactly is displayed. It may also be filled by a different color (orange for example).
The symbol "IT" can be highlighted by some slight curve, which can surround it somehow and group these two letters into the logical unit (like in http://www.go2web20.net/data/upload…canvas.gif or http://www.ecolect.net/images/logo.gif ). It may be something like a gold medal, surrounding "iT", where "i" is in the middle of it (a person like number one "1" on the medal, I tried to display it at http://grown.krovatka.su/test/logo_medal.png ), or whatever else.
- The word "Talent" is the simplest to display. It can be displayed as a simple word, by using the same font and color (blue for example).
("IT" part may be missed, if nothing cool comes up, but it's highly expected to be present there).
Any other ideas are welcome, if they describe the essence of the "iTalent" in appropriate way.
Please try to close your eyes for a second and think on how would you express yourself and your talent in a simple wording "iTalent".
The logo may use two main colors: blue and orange. The third, complementary grey may be also used for shadowing etc. The background is white. Definitely, other themes may be used as well, but these are suggested to start with.
The logo will be used on the web-site. It also may be printed (business cards etc). So, a raster and vector output formats would be nice to have.
The logo must be easily adapted to the following style/need:
since it will be used for the same reasons as the above-mentioned picture.
There is a sample of the existing preliminary web-design. There is a draft of the logo as well. Whereas the colors of the logo are nice, the picture overall doesn't reflect any idea at all, it's just a simple nice word "iTalent" painted (close to http://www.geni.com logo). The current web-design may be reached at: http://grown.krovatka.su/test/italent-site.PNG for the reference. The logo should be in a harmony with the existing web-design.
The samples below are several logotypes which look pretty nice.
Performance & style
This group contains a set of logos with nice ideas. Colors may not be exactly as expected, but they do have some interesting ideas, expressing some meaning.
These pictures contain the preferred colors.
http://www.logoworks.com/images/gal…/hig_4.jpg (nice colors and font, that may be used for the reference).
Simply nice logos
These are simply nice logotypes.
- We need the result to be provided in a raster format (GIF/PNG and PSD would be the best option) and vector (if possible).
- We need the logo to be adapted to http://www.linkedin.com/img/webprom…_80x15.gif format as well.
- ...
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
Monday, November 08, 2010
Michigan Fans Discuss Rich Rodriguez
ED. NOTE: If you're watching this at work (not that you would ever surf the Internet on company time), you might want to keep the speakers turned down as the language is a little salty.
14 comments:
- Catie said...
I think I am offended that it is a female who is playing the dumb part....LOL
- November 08, 2010 5:44 AM
- phil said...
Catie, I never pictured you as a HATER :)
I'm putting my crush with Wilma Flintstone aside. Does anyone have that girl's phone number? She's convinced me. GO RR!!
- November 08, 2010 7:35 AM
- Yost said...
Blame Xtranormal, Catie. I wanted two guys but you have to pay for different characters.
- November 08, 2010 10:13 AM
- mtzlblk said...
They guy's shirt makes it look like he has breasts ;)
All in good time, the defense is on the way.
- November 08, 2010 10:55 AM
- Jim said...
Well, gender issues aside, on the larger question of should he stay or should her go...at this point, I'd rather see what RR can do with a different (assume: better) D coordinator than start all over again. Maybe Brandon can exert some influence over this next hire.
The offense IS good. We're at least happy about that, right? It's almost like we're vilifying the offense just because it's associated with RR.
Grant you, if we're looking at another year of RR/Robinson, I don't think our prospects are good.
- November 08, 2010 10:59 AM
- Mikoyan said...
I'm of the camp that if they are going to fire the GERG they have to fire Rich Rod too. This is GERG's second season as well and it is my understanding that alot of what he's calling is based on Rich Rod, plus his underlings are Rich Rod's picks. I hate sacrificial lamb firings and that's what the cashiering of GERG would seem like to me.
I like the progress that Michigan has made on offense but I still have to ask myself if its because of Rich Rod or because they found one of those once in a lifetime players (that probably wont play QB on Sundays).
Anyways, back to the defense....I mean how many freshmen are they playing? 6-7? That's alot....So I still have to wonder how much they can hang on Robinson (the older one...not Dilithium).
- November 08, 2010 11:12 AM
- Feelin' Blue said...
There are how many freshmen defensive starters? RR found a way to win this week with what little experience there is on defense and people are still bitching. Meanwhile, the offense will only get better. Like I said, barring misconduct any issues, you fire a coach when it becomes clear that the program is going nowhere under him. Punitively firing a coach when his teams are improving year-to-year despite a lot of youth and no experience is just incredibly stupid.
"Sacrificial lamb"?? Are you kidding me? Get rid of Gerg because he is a bad DC. The general bitchiness of Michigan fans now is more embarrassing than the defense.
- November 08, 2010 11:27 AM
- Mikoyan said...
My point with GERG is that he will be the 2nd DC in 3 years. It sounds like he has even less say in how the defense is run than the previous guy. So how much of the poor defense do you hang on him and how much do you hang on Rich Rod? I think he may up doing the honorable thing and saving folks alot of trouble but that will still mean looking for a new guy. Although I will admit, that will cause less strife than getting rid of Rich Rod. I still like Rich Rod though but I'm not sure he's the right guy but that's not my decision to make.
- November 08, 2010 11:52 AM
- surrounded in columbus said...
on a more qualitative note- R2 could have played Denard in the 4th quarter on Saturday, ala Brian Kelly & Dayne Crist. and when Tate took the 1st snap & fumbled it into a TD for Illinois, he probably wished he had.
but he didn't. he sat his star, took his chances w/ his (albeit, very good) back up, and let the game play out.
that took some nerve.
i'm glad i'm not the AD and that i didn't fire him after the PSU game.
on to Purdue.
- November 08, 2010 12:01 PM
- Andy said...
Very funny.
Re: man-boobs. I was creeped out by the same thing.
Also, I think her left breast is slightly lower than her right one.
- November 08, 2010 12:16 PM
- phil said...
Hey Andy, damn, that's my new girlfriend you're talking about.
Her and I are going out tonight for koolaid.
- November 08, 2010 12:25 PM
- Yost said...
LOL, Andy! I noticed the droopage, too. But I just thought that was b/c I was staring at the screen too long while I was making the damn thing.
Oh, and Feelin' Blue, all due respect, but nothing is more embarrassing than our defense right now.
- November 08, 2010 12:25 PM
- whetstonebuck said...
Unbelievably funny and yet wrong on so many levels. Does that make me a "hater?"
As far as cartoon women go, that gal is no Jessica Rabbit.
wv = "snizar." I don't know what that means, but I'm sure Snoopdog has something to do with it.
- November 08, 2010 1:46 PM
- Catie said...
LOL, Phil, I normally am not a hater, this has been a difficult time. I seem to waiver greatly on the subject. I am inclined to keep moving forward. I do think offensively RR has done some great things. Defensively with a young secondary, it may not be solely a coaching issue AND I did like the changes that GERG made in Saturday's game that seemed to show improvement. I don't think that we want to be frustrated and fear a ND like abyss........thus the reactions that we see from the fan base. Holding steady may be the way to go.....I think the fear is if that doesn't work, how much longer will the next round take to get us back on top? I will always say it is a great to be a Michigan Wolverine! :)
SIC: I was impressed with keeping Denard off as well, especially after Tate's fumble. My reaction at the time didn't show it though! I jumped off the sofa and used a few words a sailor would use at the TV and wondered what the heck was going on!
Yost, I understand! A few things that she said in the beginning were just so dumb I had to say something about it!
- November 09, 2010 6:22 AM


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Frank Dileo, a music industry promoter who spent five years as Michael Jackson's manager after the release of his "Thriller" album then briefly rejoined him before the pop star's death in 2009, has died. He was 63.
Dileo died Wednesday at a hospital in Boardman, Ohio, of complications from heart surgery that he underwent six months ago, publicist Karen Sundell said.
Often described as a colorful, cigar-smoking character, Dileo was vice president of promotion for Epic Records when he became Jackson's manager in 1984.
"Thriller" was released in late 1982, and Dileo is credited with helping drive sales of the album past 29 million. He pushed for the concurrent release of the singles "Billie Jean" and "Beat It," both of which reached No. 1 on the pop charts. As Jackson's manager, Dileo oversaw two concert tours, executive-produced the singer's 1988 "Moonwalker" film and produced his soft-drink commercials.
Jackson fired Dileo in 1989 after an apparent falling-out, then rehired him in 2009 when Jackson was preparing for his "This Is It" tour. Dileo was at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center when doctors declared the pop star dead at age 50 on June 25, 2009.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1947, Dileo got his start in the music business as a salesman for CBS Records in the late 1960s. He switched to working in promotion at Epic, a CBS subsidiary, then went to RCA and Arista before returning to Epic in 1979.
During the 1990s he ran a management and consulting firm and had bit acting parts in movies, including "Goodfellas" and the "Wayne's World" films.
Dileo is survived by his wife, Linda; a daughter, Belinda; a son, Dominic, and a grandson, Frank.


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Vigo Chicken Base is a blending of select spices created to enhance the flavor of a wide variety of foods. Use in soups, sauces, gravies or any other culinary use where the basis of hearty chicken flavor is desired. Suggested usage: Mix one tablespoon of Vigo Chicken Base in 16 oz. of warm water. Additional soup base can be added if a more intense flavor is desired.
Product Specifications
Product Info
- Country of Origin: USA
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- Best By Date/Location: DDMMMYYYY; On the side of the tub. Above the label
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JILA makes major contributions to three vibrant research areas in the field of atomic and molecular physics: ultracold atoms, dense atomic vapors, and ultracold molecules. Ultracold atoms and synthetic potassium-rubidium (KRb) molecules comprise novel forms of matter that exist at temperatures below a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero (-459.67 °F). Many of JILA's atomic and molecular physicists investigate the properties, behavior, and interactions of cold (~1 K) and ultracold matter. In the process, they learn first hand about a strange and hidden world where the laws of quantum mechanics predominate. Their research has helped to redefine atomic and molecular physics, fields that have enjoyed explosive growth because of the ability of theory to accurately describe observed phenomena and give predictive support to experiments.
JILA's atomic and molecular physics research is supported by the institute's program in precision measurement. Armed with this powerful tool, JILA's atomic and molecular physicists are looking for answers to some of today's most important scientific questions.
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- Can we create additional novel states of matter in the laboratory?
- What can we learn about crystals found in nature by studying crystals of light?
- Can we make ultracold atom analogs of electronic devices?


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Theater Owner Begs Hollywood Not To Give Consumers What They Want
from the can't-compete,-huh? dept
RickMan points us to the latest such example, written for the Hollywood Reporter by Gregory Marcus, the CEO of Marcus Theatres, where he runs through a whole series of fallacies in trying to convince Hollywood not to keep shortening film windows. Let's pick through a few:
I just saw Johnny Depp at the grocery store.First of all, it's not devalued. Price and value are not the same thing, and it's economically wrong to claim they are the same. Furthermore, it's not "devaluing" something if the market is pricing it more efficiently and accurately. Just because one part of the market artificially inflated the price through exclusionary and anti-competitive practices, don't blame the market for more accurately pricing things.
Dressed as the Mad Hatter, he was in the Redbox machine available for $1. All I could think was what a shame it was that this wonderful movie was being so terribly devalued.
Windowed release patterns are brilliant. Release a movie to different outlets over time so it can be sold to the same person multiple times. First see it in the theater, then buy or rent it, then catch it on cable or TV. Shorten the window and risk losing the ability to sell the product multiple times.When trying to convince the world that your system is better, it helps not to flat out admit that the system you like is the one that forces people to pay multiple times for the same thing. The reason windows are collapsing is because more and more people realize such windows are ridiculous and make little sense. And when that happens, they start routing around the legal ways of getting the content, and get it through unauthorized channels.
The real problem here, of course, is that Marcus is either too afraid or too confused to know how to compete. Even if all movies were released -- in an authorized fashion -- for free, I would bet that a smart theater owner could thrive. That's because a smart theater owner would recognize that people go out to the movies for the overall social experience. The better the experience, the better you can do. Everyone can always eat dinner for less money at home, but they go out to eat at restaurants for the experience and the ambiance and the fact that others do the work and take care of the details. The same is true for movies as well. But Marcus, here, is suggesting that his theaters are run so poorly that no one would want to come. That seems to be a problem for the board of directors of Marcus Theaters in reviewing the guy who is in charge of their strategy. It's got nothing to do with release windows.
Please don't say, "We need to give the consumer what he wants," because the historical implication was, "or your competitor will provide it," not "or the customer will steal it." The proper response cannot be to cede to the thieves' demands and earn less along the way.If you don't realize that file sharing sites are competitors, you're never going to be able to adapt.
If I were the studio execs, I would focus on catching and punishing thieves and look for less destructive opportunities to grow my business.Yeah, because so far, that's only served to draw more attention to file sharing and increase the rate at which it's done.
I'm sure it sucks to be in Marcus' position, where the old artificial scarcity he milked for profits is shrinking ever so slightly. I'm sure it must be tough to have to adapt and give people more reasons to actually come out to the theater. But his arguments make no sense for anyone other than himself. Shortening windows (or getting rid of them completely) provides more benefits to the consumers, and it's a move that the studios should have done long ago. It gives them more bang for the buck in terms of their marketing efforts, and it better segments the market. That theaters are unwilling to adapt to compete in a changing market is a problem for those theater owners alone.


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Thank-you to Ellen who writes to explain some of what Mr. Myrt can expect when his HP laptop dies and he gets the iMac he is dreaming about.
"That was a fantastic Mondays with Myrt webinar this week. I like the problem solving part. I also enjoyed exploring the different websites.
Regarding iMac. For Mac genealogy software, I like the Reunion. It has more features than some. I'm using Parallels to run Legacy and have the Legacy database in Dropbox. I can use either my Win 7 laptop or the IMAC to access my data.
I like taking advantage of the stability of the Mac OS. When you download the Parallels software, you can also download Windows operating system, too. With Parallels, you can use the Filefinder features to manage the files, and only need to install the Dropbox in the Mac OS. I would suggest maxing the memory on the Mac to speed things up.
I love my iMac. I've had fewer problems with it than my Windows laptop. I know Russ uses the Boot Camp to run Windows programs.
|Visit the website to learn more:
Oh, a good gift for Mr. Myrt would be AA batteries. The mouse uses 2 and the keyboard uses 3. The batteries last longer than with my PC mouse.
I'm not a whiz with the IMAC but it is easy to learn. If Mr. Myrt gets the intellimouse instead of the pad, he can modify the settings to allow for a right click. Otherwise he would need to hold the control key down and click.
Keyboard shortcuts use the command key instead of ctrl. For example, command plus the "P" brings up the print function.,
Mr Myrt may want to get a sample data base and try Mac Family Tree. It is supposed to work with FamilySearch.org."
Thank-you DearELLEN for taking the time to share your experiences migrating from a Windows computer to a Mac. We all get by with a little help from our GeneaFriends.
Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt :)
Your friend in genealogy.
Blog: http://blog.DearMYRTLE.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DearMYRTLE
Twitter: @DearMYRTLE
G+: +Pat Richley-Erickson
Second Life: Clarise Beaumont


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FORALL i IN 1 .. l_tab.COUNT UPDATE plch_employees SET salary = l_tab (i).salary * 1.1 WHERE employee_id = l_tab (i).employee_id;Notice that the same collection (l_tab) is referenced in both the SET and WHERE clauses.
A player who pays close attention to the Oracle documentation wrote as follows:
For both 11.1 and 11.2, the "PL/SQL Language Reference" documentations (as PDF, for 11.1 page 13-59, for 11.2 page 13-79) states the following: "If dml_statement is an UPDATE statement, its SET and WHERE clauses cannot reference the same collection."
Well, I must admit, this was news to me. I'd never noticed that restriction and, it turns out, for a fairly good reason: neither the PL/SQL compiler nor run-time engine complains about this scenario at all.
So is the documentation correct or is the functionality of PL/SQL correct? I asked Bryn Llewellyn, PL/SQL Product Manager. Here is his reply:
"I agree that it [my demonstration code] does seem to be at odds with the claim from the docs that you quote. 'll have to ask about this and get back to you."
Bryn also provided a script (see below) that he is using to reproduce the issue.
Needless to say, I do not plan to change the scoring of the question!
CLEAR SCREEN CONNECT Sys/Sys AS SYSDBA declare procedure Create_User(Who in varchar2) is User_Does_Not_Exist exception; pragma Exception_Init(User_Does_Not_Exist, -01918); begin begin execute immediate 'drop user Usr cascade'; exception when User_Does_Not_Exist then null; end; execute immediate ' grant Unlimited Tablespace, Create Session, Create Table, Create Trigger to Usr identified by p'; end Create_User; begin Create_User('Usr'); end; / CONNECT Usr/p create table t(ID integer primary key, c1 varchar2(10), c2 number) / begin insert into t values(1, 'a', 10); insert into t values(2, 'b', 10); insert into t values(3, 'c', 30); commit; end; / select ID, c1, c2 from t / declare type x is table of number; v x; begin select c2 bulk collect into v from t for update; forall i in 1..v.Count() update t set c2 = v(i)*2 where c2 = v(i); end; / select ID, c1, c2 from t /


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Ah, for some reason that completely slipped my mind. If I used a sauvingnon blanc or pinot grigio juice, for example instead of the clover honey. Then the yeast should have something to munch on? I am glad I haven't started the brew yet. It was a dream I had one night, then I purchased everything the next day. I didn't even think about it, I believe I have learned from these impulses. What malt bill would you go with for a typical grand cru? Like I said, it was all impulse, and I am trying to teach myself via reading but also through just trying stuff out to see what I come up with. I am glad I have people like you to keep me on the right path.
I have used Champagne yeast at bottling for some of the bigger Belgian beers (over 1.080 OG) that have bulk aged in the carboy for a while with good success.


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82 Percent
Technisource's latest 2010 IT HIRE Intelligence Survey, conducted by Monster.com, has found that the majority of HR managers and recruiters responsible for recruiting technology staff are planning to hire IT workers in the next six months. "Economic conditions that led to hiring freezes, technology cuts and migration delays across the last 18 months are now starting to reverse and companies are beginning to increase spending to remain competitive or regain a lost competitive advantage," says Technisource president Michael Winwood. "The most important factor in doing this still and will always remain a company's internal staff. While it is difficult to make any definitive forecasts from a single survey, the data in this report seem to suggest that we can anticipate increased technology hiring and perceived strength in corporations - which bodes well for a strong and much anticipated rebound." The Technisource IT HIRE Intelligence survey was conducted online within the United States by Monster Worldwide on Technisource's behalf between September 27, 2010 and October 11, 2010, among a U.S. sample of 435 HR managers or recruiters who indicated they have specific responsibility to recruit for technology positions, either for their company or as an agent on behalf of another company. Of the 435 respondents, 41 percent work at organizations with fewer than 100 employees, 28 percent work at organizations with 101 to 500 employees, and 31 percent work at organizations with more than 501 employees.
82 percent of respondents are "very" or "somewhat" confident that their company's performance will improve in the next six months. That's an increase of six percentage points since the June 2010 report.
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Mabel is just another member of the fruit-loving resistance. A 54-year-old snowbird who long ago moved south from Greendale, New York, to Allapattah, she has a big smile and, like many of her neighbors, a steely distrust of anyone entering her property. Her small leafy yard is adorned with three junked cars and shaded by orange and grapefruit trees. On this steamy day in June, she walks alongside her old one-story wooden house and shows a rather unconventional welcome mat to two unexpected visitors, Florida agriculture department employees Miladis Marichal and Pedro Buzzi, who glance at each other nervously. Her bienvenidos consists of a two-by-three-foot square of plywood with dozens of protruding nails. Were Mabel not home, the inspectors might have injured themselves on their way to look at the sour orange tree in the back yard.
When Marichal and Buzzi amble toward the front, they meet another obstacle: Mabel's boyfriend. A bearded man in shorts, T-shirt, and black Keds, he says he is an antique dealer, but declines to reveal his age or name. People were coming into the yard to take the fruit, he recalls, snickering. One night I looked out and saw a woman walk out of the yard and down the street. She was limping.
Then the conversation turns to the state's war on citrus canker, Florida's most extensive agricultural emergency in decades. Officials insist the eradication program is necessary to protect the state's $8.5 billion citrus industry, but Mabel's beau views it as just another governmental intrusion: Every day we lose rights by the second, he snorts. He says he has two handguns in the house, then adds wryly that their use would not be warranted on unsuspecting agriculture inspectors. When you shoot, you have to shoot to kill, he explains. And that's right between the eyes. Then, leaning back on a long wooden bench against one of Mabel's two bombed-out Audis, he quotes from a Metallica song: Halls of justice painted green/Money talking/Power wolves beset your door/Hear them stalking/Soon you'll please their appetite/They devour/Hammer of justice crushes you/Over power.
With a hot, humid day ahead, this is not what Marichal and Buzzi want to hear. But it could be worse. Some of their fellow grunts in the state's 1500-member anti-canker infantry have confronted more dangerous circumstances. Back on March 28, 95-year-old Nelson Edwards refused to let a crew cut down a grapefruit tree in his yard in Tamarac. When a Broward County cop arrived, Edwards disappeared inside his house and emerged with a rifle. As he pointed it at the officer, an agriculture inspector sneaked up and snatched the firearm. Nelson was charged with aggravated assault and released on $5000 bail. He pleaded guilty in May and received one year of probation. Then there was the incident on June 1 at a house on SW Seventh Street near 120th Avenue in Miami-Dade, in which two inspectors were confronted by a middle-age man holding a .45 automatic. Four Miami-Dade cops convinced the man to allow the inspection. No charges were filed. Finally on June 20, just a few miles south, 57-year-old Jesus Lopez was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice after he threatened to shoot two inspectors. He is awaiting trial.
Mabel may be less militant than Edwards or Lopez, but she is nonetheless prickly. She stretches out an arm and leans her hand against the trunk of an orange tree. What I disagree with is not the fact that the government wants to cut my trees down, she complains. It's the fact that the government can come on to my property without my permission. She also wants just compensation. They should replace every citrus tree with a mango tree or a flowering tree. To preserve the shade.
Buzzi shakes a can of yellow spray paint and leaves an X on the trunk of the sour orange. Although none of her four trees shows symptoms of canker -- little brownish burnlike spots on the leaves -- Marichal tells Mabel a cutting crew will return soon to chop them all down and haul them away.
What Mabel and thousands like her don't know is the demise of millions of citrus trees might have been avoided. Back in 1995 a state pathologist discovered a tree infected with canker in a yard in west Miami-Dade. The disease was not very widespread. But while bureaucrats dithered, legislators ignored the problem, and angry residents sued, several summers of hurricanes, thunderstorms, and at least one tornado blew the bacteria across much of Miami-Dade and Broward counties. On top of it all, landscaping companies, clueless about the need to disinfect workers and equipment with antibacterial spray, also helped spread the canker. Late last year the U.S. Congress came to the rescue.
Had state authorities acted swiftly and extensively four and a half years ago, scientists say, they could have averted the daunting epidemic now confronting them and saved much of the projected $175-million-dollar cost of eradication. Now they are scrambling to manage an increasingly cumbersome force comprising inexperienced recruits who labor under complicated work rules and excessive layers of management. Skeptical residents, already upset about losing their beloved fruit trees, scoff at a compensation program that funnels millions of public dollars to Wal-Mart.
With hurricane season once again upon us, Mother Nature could conspire to quickly defeat the entire endeavor. The alternative -- letting the disease run its course and become endemic -- is not pretty. And so, onward march the canker soldiers.
Like the plants it attacks, the disease has origins far from South Florida. Commonly known as Asiatic citrus canker, Xanthomonas axonopodis does not kill trees (nor is it harmful to the human body), but it causes rough brown splotches on leaves and fruit. Canker-infected lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits with lesions are edible, but so ugly they are difficult to market. A severe case can also cause a citrus tree to lose leaves and prematurely drop its fruit. Florida is a welcome haunt for these bacteria, which multiply rapidly, especially in hot, humid weather. They're just waiting for water, says Lou Lodyga, a pathologist for the Florida Department of Agriculture's division of plant industry. You get driving rains and that spreads them like wildfire. Scientists call trees with symptoms infected. Nearby trees are termed exposed.
This scourge, this shade-sucking, fruit-snatching curse, has wreaked havoc in Florida twice before. Beginning about 1910 the state spent six and a half million dollars to root out the first canker epidemic by slashing and burning infected trees. Workers also pruned leaves on exposed trees within 50 feet of a canker outbreak. Back then citrus groves generally were much smaller and more scattered. They took really drastic action, says Lavern Timmer of the University of Florida's Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred. They burned everything, nurseries and groves. And they basically had people running around with flame throwers, dousing the trees with gasoline and burning them on the spot. And they disinfected everybody with mercuric chloride. I'm amazed some of the people lived through that. These early terminators wiped out most of the canker by the Twenties and managed to subdue various flareups in the later Twenties and Thirties.
Xanthomonas axonopodis did not pop up again until the mid-Eighties. This time it posed a more substantial threat. The Sunshine State's population had swelled, and along with it, the likelihood that people and machines would inadvertently spread the bacteria. Moreover harvesting orange and grapefruit trees had bloomed into a multibillion-dollar industry that was concentrated in large central Florida groves. Plant pathologists stumbled on to the pathogen in the Sebring area northwest of Lake Okeechobee while looking for another, far less virulent strain. They traced the origin of the outbreak to a citrus inspector's home. Apparently he had been doing some kind of experiments in his yard or something, Timmer recounts. And it spread to a grove. Grove owner Ed Smoak promptly destroyed 400 acres of trees. He just burned the whole thing, Timmer adds. The inspector had passed away before they ever found the canker there. So he was off the hook.
For several years in the Eighties, Timmer studied citrus canker in northeastern Argentina, where the disease has been endemic for about 25 years. Citrus growers there and in southern Brazil must routinely spray their groves with copper compounds that suppress the disease. They also have difficulty exporting the fruit to nations with tight agricultural inspections.
The Floridian outbreaks of the mid-Eighties were confined to a few groves in rural areas in the central part of the state. Authorities took swift action. Basing its decision on South American research, the state defined all citrus trees within 125 feet of an infected specimen as exposed and promptly burned them. Disaster was again averted.
But the canker returned in the fall of 1995. Unfortunately this time it was detected in a yard near Galloway Road and West Flagler Street, where the chances of it spreading were high. That was the start of this nightmare, recalls Lodyga. Scientists suspect the infected plant arrived from Brazil or Argentina. With a $2.2-million budget and 120 employees, the state revived its citrus canker eradication program and imposed a quarantine on a fourteen-square-mile area encompassing Westchester and Sweetwater. Several dozen inspectors began to search for more canker in Miami-Dade and Broward. In 1996 officials informed legislators of the danger, but they only appropriated a million dollars for the effort. The following year they approved another three million.
That was not enough to finance the widespread inspections and removal required to stop the spread. Many legislators remained either ignorant of the impending catastrophe or unconcerned; some argued over who should foot the bill. In 1997 agriculture commissioner Bob Crawford tangled with Lawton Chiles when the former governor proposed forcing the citrus industry to tap into an emergency fund held by growers. That year the decision-makers were preoccupied with a more obvious problem: Mediterranean fruit flies, which burrow into fruit and vegetables and deposit larvae. In 1997 and 1998 the state spent $32 million dropping insecticides from airplanes onto farms and groves from Tampa to Orlando. The program saved millions of dollars in crops. Meanwhile rains and high winds were propelling airborne bacteria throughout South Florida. Beginning in 1997 growers in Collier, Hendry, Hillsborough, and Manatee counties reported outbreaks. Workers quickly destroyed hundreds of acres of trees.
Litigious citizens also hampered the effort. Miami lawyer John Ruiz filed a class-action lawsuit in October 1997 on behalf of a group of homeowners who wanted compensation for their hacked-up trees. A state judge agreed and barred the agriculture department from cutting down exposed trees (although workers could still chop infected trees). It wasn't until April 1999 that a Third District Court of Appeal panel overturned the ruling, saying trees exposed to the bacteria had no value. But by then the canker forces had lost eighteen months. Another summer of thunderstorms and hurricanes had spread the disease even more.
In fact the bacteria were circulating more rapidly than most scientists expected. Last fall a U.S. Department of Agriculture pathologist, Tim Gottwald, discovered that in Florida's hot, humid, and windy conditions Xanthomonas axonopodis sometimes travels several thousand feet by air. The state threw out the 125-foot rule and established a new distance. Trees within 1900 feet, or roughly one square block, would be considered exposed.
While Mother Nature took major action, legislative bodies did not. There wasn't enough money to get the thing under control, laments Carlos Balerdi, a tropical-fruit-crops specialist at the Miami-Dade Cooperative Extension Service in Homestead. Balerdi, who relays research and regulations to growers in South Florida, blames legislators in Tallahassee and Washington for not responding swiftly and broadly. Now it's about four and a half years after the initial infection and you [finally] see the funding coming, Balerdi chides. It's too late for this county. Lavern Timmer concludes that society's penchant for reacting to disasters rather than preventing them also was at work. When the problem doesn't look very big, it's hard to stir up enough interest to generate money, he ruminates. When it looks like you have impending disaster, it's a lot easier to do that. It's more human nature than anything.
Balerdi also thinks owners of central Florida's large groves, whom the current eradication is aimed at protecting, should have pressured public officials sooner. They did not realize it was a very serious problem for them, Balerdi observes. By the time they reacted, it was getting very close to them. In late May pathologists discovered new canker infections in a Palm Beach County lime operation, the closest outbreak yet to the Indian River groves, which are among the world's biggest suppliers of grapefruit.
The canker police action has not gone well. With the epidemic swirling out of control more than four and a half years after the initial detection, authorities finally intensified the operation in February when Gov. Jeb Bush declared Miami-Dade and Broward state disaster areas. U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman added the word federal to that designation a month later. And in April Glickman's Sunshine State counterpart Bob Crawford widened the quarantine to include an area from Florida City to the Palm Beach County line and from the Naples area to north of Tampa. Then directors of the state's canker eradication program finally chucked an antiquated method they had used to map exposed and infected trees. (It was an administrative nightmare, according to one USDA official.) They began instituting the Incident Command System (ICS), a strategy the U.S. Forest Service uses to battle catastrophic wildfires. Under ICS planners assign supervisors to a six-square-mile area (known as a range on land survey maps). One supervisor manages several strike team leaders, each of whom in turn oversees about a dozen inspectors. In all about a thousand of these surveyors are on the streets.
Had the bacterial outbreaks been fires, Miami-Dade County would probably be burned to a crisp. Yet eradication workers, most of whom receive about ten dollars per hour and come from diverse backgrounds, press on. We must be able to adapt and overcome whatever obstacles that we face, writes incident commander David Utley in his employee newsletter titled Canker Anchor, to accomplish the mission of removing approximately 750,000 to a million citrus trees over the next year.
Utley's chief spokesman, Richard Miranda, who spent most of the Nineties serving with U.S. Army special operations forces, says only an act of God will prevent completion of the task. We are in a state of emergency down here, he says.
And so, on a sweltering morning in May, division supervisor Andres Piñero, age 23, drives a state-owned white pickup truck from Plantation headquarters to his staging area, a Winn-Dixie supermarket parking lot in Hialeah. Leaders of his eight anti-canker inspection units arrive in white vans. They all wear white polo shirts, the citrus canker army uniform. After a fifteen-minute session to identify their areas of deployment, they are back in their vehicles, fanning out across a residential section of northwest Hialeah. Over the past two weeks they have located dozens of citrus trees and spray-painted X's on them (yellow for exposed and red for infected); all will have to be cut down. Their only weapon: a state law that allows them to enter yards without permission and makes impeding their work a misdemeanor. Their only olive branch: a $100 voucher that residents who lose trees can use at Wal-Mart.
By midmorning Miladis Marichal and her thirteen inspectors are in the vicinity of West 70th Street and 31st Avenue. Joshua Delirus, a 24-year-old former supermarket stockman, is paired with Isis Travieso, a 32-year-old ex-medical clerk. Both have been on the frontlines for six months. Already this morning they have documented two instances of what is known in official nomenclature as owner refusal. Complying with a time-consuming protocol they notified their supervisor, Marichal, who contacted Piñero, who called Miami-Dade police. After the cops arrived, the residents quickly acquiesced.
Some citizens pretend they are not home, while others offer far-fetched excuses to keep the inspectors away. Sometimes people say, I can't let you in because I'm not the owner,' but they are the owner, Travieso reports. Or they'll say they can't open the gate because they lost the key. One resident tried to thwart an inspection by insisting it would disturb her dog, who was recovering from surgery.
Other people don't mind losing their trees. Down the street they find an orange tree in Enrique Gonzalez's back yard. Gonzalez is familiar with the situation; inspectors first came about a year ago. A copyeditor at a Christian publishing house, he's prepared to sacrifice his foliage for the greater good but hopes he'll be compensated. If they pay me, it's all the same to me, he says.
Delirus and Travieso trudge up the walkway of a small house on West 70th Terrace. Delirus has his cell phone clipped to a cloth hoop on his baggy blue jeans. Travieso sports off-white slacks and running shoes. Buenos días, Departamento de Agricultura, she sings out languidly in the 95-degree heat. Good morning, Florida Department of Agriculture. No one responds to several knocks on the door. Delirus walks over to a gate in a chainlink fence. It is locked. He whistles to make sure a dog isn't waiting in the back yard. None barks, so he nimbly jumps over the barrier. He quickly returns and reports the property has no citrus trees.
After lunch at a nearby McDonald's, Marichal's team is back on the streets for a tense afternoon. A series of knocks and shouts at a house on NW 30th Avenue goes unanswered, so Delirus shoves aside a bag of cement that is holding a wooden gate shut and follows Travieso to a section of yard running along one side of the home. Suddenly a window slides open.
What are you doing! screams an irate woman in Spanish. Who said you could come in here? Travieso tries to explain, but the tirade continues. You don't have the right to enter a property. You have to inform someone first.
Yes, ma'am, that's why we knocked several times, Travieso responds calmly.
I was in the bathroom! I didn't hear anything!
Travieso apologizes and offers her a form that outlines how to file a complaint.
I don't want any form, the woman replies and slams the window shut. Meanwhile Delirus has discovered a citrus seedling along the wood plank fence. He gives it a blast of yellow spray paint.
Nearby an elderly woman tells two other inspectors they cannot walk into her back yard. The inspectors call Marichal and soon two cops show up. They persuade the cantankerous senior to accept.
Homeowner obstinacy is not the only problem multiplied by the ever-expanding area of infection. So are the chances that inspectors will not spot signs of infection. If symptoms occur in the tops of trees, it's easy to miss them, notes Lavern Timmer of the University of Florida's Citrus Research and Education Center. It's kind of a needle in a haystack thing. It is also difficult to catch low levels of disease, he adds. The [problem] is trying to detect it with so many trees scattered around and so many residences and citrus groves affected, he continues. This year they got a lot more funding, so they've got a lot more people than they've had in the past. If they could have done several years ago what they are doing now, this thing never would have gotten to the point it's gotten to. It's just hard to have enough people.
Another problem is that U.S. Department of Agriculture enforcement officer Maria Amaya and her comrades in the agency's plant protection and quarantine division are having trouble getting through to landscaping companies and governments. As of mid-June authorities in Hialeah, the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County, and others had yet to sign an agreement to cooperate with federal and state agriculture officers and follow quarantine rules.
The quarantine is aimed at prohibiting people from taking citrus trees or parts of them, including fruit, out of the area. Landscapers, gardeners, and anyone else who comes in contact with the trees are supposed to disinfect themselves and their equipment afterward. But many remain ignorant or are pretending the rules don't exist in order to save money. One of Miami's biggest landscaping companies is flagrantly violating the quarantine, Amaya says, but she declines to identify the firm. She recalls that authorities escorted one of the company's crews out of a Broward municipality for refusing to comply with the regulations. Violators are subject to a wide range of fines. She declined to comment further.
Even the offices of Miami-Dade's agricultural extension service may have been infected. We have had people bring us samples of citrus to see, not necessarily with canker, crops specialist Carlos Balerdi reports. We tell them the quarantine says they're not supposed to remove citrus from their property. And they say, Oh, well, I think my problem is different.' This is what is very hard to get through to people.
Many researchers are not optimistic about the possibility of enforcing a quarantine in Miami-Dade. People say, I pay taxes. I'll do what I want,' observes Lodyga, the state pathologist. Effective or not the quarantine is likely to be a fact of Miami-Dade life for several years. Even after crews finish destroying all the citrus trees in the county, probably several months from now at the current rate, inspections must continue. If inspectors find just one tree or seedling with canker, warns state citrus canker eradication program spokesman Mark Fagan, then the quarantine has to remain in place for another two years.
More canker could arrive any day. A USDA investigation report released in May found lax inspection practices at seaports and airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, likely passages for whoever introduced the current strain of the pathogen in the early Nineties.
Another complaint common among the effort's detractors is the state's decision to compensate affected homeowners with $100 credit vouchers that can be used only at Wal-Mart nursery departments. So far the state has mailed 42,000 of them to homeowners, which will send $4.2 million of business to the Arkansas-based retailer. Half of the credits went to homeowners who qualified last year but did not receive the aid because funding dried up. The state has a total of seven million dollars in federal funds for the voucher program, dubbed Shade Florida.
Critics argue money should be channeled to small local nurseries that have endured losses in citrus tree sales owing to the quarantine. First, [the legislators] should have tried to help local people, because we are the ones who are suffering, fumes one local horticulturist who asked to remain anonymous. The state could easily issue coupons redeemable at a variety of stores, he adds. Second, at Wal-Mart people have to pay twice the amount of money for a tree. And the selection at Wal-Mart is sometimes extremely poor in ornamental trees or in tropical fruits, compared to temperate zone fruits like peaches and pears.
Like any emergency operation run by a government agency that relies on hundreds of new employees, the anti-canker effort is rife with inefficiency. On the morning of Thursday, June 8, Ricardo Polanco is orchestrating a series of chain-saw massacres in Carol City. Polanco, a former Target store manager, oversees four state employees, each of whom coordinates a team of four workers from Asplundh, a national firm that calls itself the tree expert company. He insists he has had no hostile encounters with enraged tree owners. It's just like how we handled customer service at my store, he explains. It's all about the way you talk to them. They agree with you if you talk the right way.
Polanco says his crews hit an average of 30 properties per day, cutting anywhere from 30 to 200 trees. In all about 350 cutting crews are now making the rounds, up from 60 a month ago. To date workers have jettisoned about 210,000 trees in Miami-Dade, most of them in the past few months, and another 34,000 in Broward. Yet Polanco acknowledges that, because of the sheer volume of work, trees that may be spreading the disease often remain standing for months after they are identified.
At a house on NW 186th Street, one of Polanco's underlings, 40-year-old Olive Taylor, is administering last rites to all eight of Maudlin Cummings's citrus trees, including a 25-year-old orange and a 40-year-old grapefruit. In a few minutes the Asplundh team renders her back yard shadeless. Cummings, a 61-year-old teacher at a nearby private elementary school, takes her loss in stride. But she has a few questions for Taylor, who joined the state citrus canker eradication program in January, after working as a medical assistant at a psychiatric hospital. What they going to do with the roots? Cummings asks in her Jamaican accent. Taylor says another crew will come with a machine to grind them up. What do we get for the eight trees cut? Cummings continues. Taylor gives her a telephone number for inquiries about the Wal-Mart voucher.
As Taylor heads toward the street, Cummings asks her why an orange tree in her neighbors' yard isn't being cut. A large white dog is chained to the trunk. It hasn't been inspected yet, Taylor admits. We have to follow the list. She gives the Asplundh crew the next address on a list drawn up by planners in the Plantation office. She hops in her white pickup truck and follows the Asplundh workers, who rides in two vehicles. When the cutters reach the property they find the trees have already been cut. They groan because this happens a lot. It's embarrassing, says Jorge Portillo, one of the Asplundh employees. Taylor suspects the residents disposed of the trees, which is a no-no under the quarantine. Or another cutting crew was already there.
When they encounter the same thing at the next two addresses on Taylor's list, the crew grows restless. Portillo thinks the operation would be far more effective if the cutters moved from yard to yard, removing citrus trees as soon as they are found. Some scientists also favor this approach, but so far agricultural officials prefer the current, more gradual method. They are trying to maintain the public's favor, says Bob McMillan, a University of Florida pathologist. In our day and age we're caught between a rock and a hard place. In addition a state law requires a five-day notification period before cutting can begin on someone's property.
Indeed state officials have made a priority of teaching their troops to be sensitive to the public. Most residents are very attached to their trees and extremely upset about having to lose them, writes public information director Richard Miranda in the Canker Anchor. Some planted those trees ten, fifteen, even twenty years ago, and consider those trees part of the family. Taking these emotions into consideration in our daily dealings with the public makes our jobs a lot easier. State workers offer examples of how the anti-canker incursions slice into tree owners' psyches. One employee observed a widow videotaping the dismemberment of a tree planted by her dearly departed husband. Another owner wrapped herself around the trunk of her tree when the cutting crew arrived. She moved when the chain saws were started up.
Finally, at another property, Taylor and her Asplundh team find some action. A heavy-set woman watches from a window as the workers dispatch with two trees at opposite sides of her back yard. They drag the spoils out to the edge of the street and pile them next to an old blue Buick sedan. Where it get sick? asks a young man with a Caribbean lilt. You say it has cancer or something?
Canker, Taylor corrects and shows him an infected leaf.
All right, thanks, he replies sadly.
Other residents who have yet to hear the sickening roar of the chain saws in their back yards have a false illusion that their trees are immune. On a recent day in Coral Gables inspectors Grisel Babea and Montel Howard found Emilio Rives at home. The energetic 80-year-old retired doctor was happy to give the inspectors a tour of the ten citrus trees in his yard. Several tangerine and orange trees, which he planted ten years ago, shade the lawn. There also is a small fountain pool there, which features a statue of a dolphin spitting a stream of water into it. More citrus trees lined the yard along one side of his house. I don't think they are infected, Rives says, noting agriculture employees visited about a year ago. Ten minutes later the inspectors bid the talkative Rives farewell. Out on the street Babea opens her hand and shows a small leaf. It has canker spots. I couldn't tell him, she confesses. Most likely all ten of them will have to go.
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Increasingly the workers are heading north into Broward. One of them arrived at Maria and Lawrence Austin's small canalside house in North Lauderdale a month after an inspection crew identified their four citrus trees as exposed. When Maria, age 70, stepped out a side door and saw a group of nine men and women walking about her yard, she threw a fit. She yelled, paced back and forth on the lawn, grabbed garments from her clothesline, cried, and then repeated it all. As she did, an Asplundh crew member sliced the trunk of a four-foot-tall lemon tree with a flick of a chain saw and the plant tumbled over. He and his three accomplices then began to circle a huge 30-foot-tall grapefruit tree, eyeing its hefty branches.
I have this tree for 24 years, Maria exclaimed. It's a beautiful tree. It no have no disease. Four female agriculture inspectors stood nervously nearby. Maria continued: It's my baby. I fertilized it.
Also on hand was Mark Fagan, the public information officer. He tried to explain. The tree may not look sick to you right now, but in a few months it will start losing its canopy and the fruit won't mature any more. It will drop to the ground, Fagan says sternly. And then the disease will spread another 1900 feet to other trees.
That is bullshit, fumes Maria, barely stopping to listen. I'm so mad I could scream. They just want us to buy the citrus from the groves!


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The United Arab Emirates embraces a stunning variety of natural habitats, supporting a vast array of species, each superbly adapted to its particular environment.
The Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD) is supporting ARKive to audio-visually profile the great diversity of UAE wildlife, as well as the world's most endangered species.
View our Top 12 Jewels of the UAE, or explore the hundreds of other UAE species by habitat or species group below.


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For the Turkish artist Hasan Kale, the tiniest morsel of food inspires visions of sweeping landscapes. Using his finger as a palate, he adorns almonds, M&Ms, and the most translucent layers of an onion with astonishing renderings of his native Istanbul. Where most landscapes take up entire museum walls, commanding attention with their sheer immensity, Kale's work does the opposite. In these miraculous works of macro painting, the infinite nature of the earth, sea, and sky collides with the impossibly minuscule, heightening the preciousness of the Turkish terrain.
Here, snack foods become as wondrous as great feats of nature and man. On thin slice of banana, a storm rages, its brushstrokes transforming the very texture of the fruit into that of a saturated canvas. On the inner flesh of an almond, he imagines the legendary baroque architecture of the Nusretiye Mosque. The iconic building becomes vertically stretched as in a romantic masterpiece, extending upwards to conform to the natural shape of the almond. On these tiny surfaces, the grandiosity of the city's architecture is expressed through the vibrancy of color and the dreamy, sweeping whims of the artist's brush.
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of Kale's work is its impermanence. Unlike the great canvases entombed in museums, these paintings will decay, perish, or be lost. The banana will rot into mush; the fragile quail egg might crumble. A stunning mosque might accidentally be eaten. But in the meantime, these imagined landmarks exist for the sake of our wonderment. Take a look. (via Colossal)


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Sofia enters Hogwarts in Harry Potter's fourth year,...
Sofia's Story- Order of the Phoenix
- by Rebeccap03
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- Published: 21 Dec 2013
- Updated: 2 Jan 2014
- Status: In Progress
It is Sofia's second year at Hogwarts and Voldemort has returned. Things are about to change at Hogwarts, and Sofia must prepare to face her fate.
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S Sudan attacks: US ups pressure; general arrested
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — U.S. political leaders are increasing pressure on South Sudan's young government to prevent ethnically motivated attacks by members of its military, pressure that may have led to the arrest Wednesday of an army general accused of human rights violations.
A medical aid group, meanwhile, said Wednesday that around 90,000 people are still missing and likely hiding in fear after ethnic violence last month.
South Sudan peacefully broke away from Sudan in 2011 after a brutal civil war and years of effort by U.S. leaders, but since then the country has seen multiple bouts of ethnic violence in rural Jonglei state. Attacks against the minority Murle ethnic group last month caused the deaths of 328 people, according to a Murle leader, and sent tens of thousands of Murle fleeing into the bush.
Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday it is concerned that that its doctors have seen very few cases of Murle men wounded in the fighting. The group said that patients tell them that wounded men fear potential attacks from government soldiers or an enemy ethnic group, the Lou Nuer, attacks that have brought new U.S. pressure.
Responding to that pressure, South Sudan's military on Wednesday said it has arrested Gen. James Otong, who was in charge of a disarmament campaign launched in Pibor Country of Jonglei last year, as well as a counter insurgency campaign against rebels who follow David Yau Yau. In both operations soldiers were accused of raping, killing, looting and destroying civilian property.
Two soldiers accused of killing two women outside Pibor town last month were also arrested. "They have been investigated and are already being court-martialed," military spokesman Col. Philip Aguer said. Aguer said the army is also investigating the killing by government forces of another wildlife officer with the rank of brigadier general from the Murle ethnic group.
The arrests come shortly after the U.S. greatly increased diplomatic pressure to prevent further ethnic clashes. Secretary of State John Kerry last month phoned South Sudan President Salva Kiir, and U.S. Senate and House leaders last week expressed concern over ethnically motivated violence in a letter to Kiir that suggested members of his military are assisting in the attacks against the Murle.
"Multiple reports indicate that factions of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) have engaged in or provided support for gross human rights violations against civilian populations and have incited ethnic violence," the letter said, adding: "Reports of ethnically-motivated violence directed against the Murle ethnic group are particularly disturbing."
The U.S. leaders reminded Kiir that South Sudan — a country of predominantly black Africans — fought against "a regime that sought to destroy populations based upon their ethnic identity," a reference to the mostly Arab Sudan. The letter added: "To engage in such practices now betrays the spirit in which the country of South Sudan was born and the historical basis for the United States' support."
Kerry urged Kiir to protect civilians and take steps to halt ethnically motivated violence in Jonglei. He said members of the SPLA must be held accountable.
The U.N. military mission in South Sudan said this week it has increased its patrols in Jonglei's Pibor Country to allow civilians to safely return to their towns and have access food distribution points. Doctors Without Borders, though, said it is concerned that people are arriving in villages "and sit all day waiting for food."
The rush of U.S. attention to South Sudan's human rights record reflects a series of human rights abuses in the country, said a congressional aide in Washington, D.C. who attended a classified briefing by the State Department on South Sudan. The aide insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about a classified briefing.
The government of South Sudan is fighting rebels in Jonglei associated with Yau Yau, a member of the Murle community. That rebellion — and the effort to quash it — appears to have made all members of the Murle community potential targets for attacks.
The attacks on the Murle have sparked a debate about whether South Sudan is providing state support for genocide, but for now the U.S. is "skirting around the edges" of such language, the aide said.
A second Congressional aide briefed on the issue said South Sudan's military is not distinguishing between civilians and Yau Yau's fighters. "Even women and children are being targeted," said the aide, who also insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Associated Press reporter Bradley Klapper in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report. Straziuso reported from Nairobi, Kenya.


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Will paparazzo death have any impact?
A paparazzo dies on the job, some celebs quietly cheer and call for more anti-paparazzi laws, even though they already exist.
In all the years that media paparazzi have relentlessly pursued celebrities, even in the most frenzied recent years, no one has died in such interactions in the USA. Until now.
But will that change anything about the fraught relationship between the photographers and the rich-and-famous they cover? Better not count on it, say both sides.
Ironically, given the complaining by celebs that they are endangered by the celebrity media, it was a paparazzo who was killed in California over the weekend, not his celebrity target, Canadian singer Justin Bieber, who wasn't even there.
In celebrity land, there is some absence of sympathy for the dead man.
"Let's just say there's a lot of people who aren't feeling great sadness over this," says veteran publicist Howard Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com, who has represented numerous celebrities fed up with what they call the "stalkerazzi."
Frank Griffin, one of the principals in the Bauer-Griffin photo agency, is even more blunt.
"Because the paparazzo is considered subhuman, I'm quite sure there are plenty of people rubbing their hands with glee and saying, 'I'm glad the pap got killed,' " Griffin says bitterly. "It's an absolute tragedy, and yet there will be people who say, 'Yes, he deserved to die.' "
The tragedy occurred Sunday night in West Los Angeles, when photographer Chris Guerra, 29, one of an army of paparazzi who roam Hollywood on any given day, was hit by a car after he darted into a busy street while attempting to snap pictures of Bieber's white Ferrari. Guerra, who specialized in Bieber and freelanced for a photo agency called GSI Media, died later at a hospital.
"He didn't look both ways," Griffin says. "What law would prevent that?"
Bragman says there's too much money in celebrity photos for anything to fundamentally change. "This guy risked his life, he didn't pay attention and, sadly, this is the outcome."
Bieber wasn't in the Ferarri; it was his assistant who was driving and was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol for speeding on a nearby freeway.
The death cast more harsh light on the pap-celeb relationship, ever more toxic since Princess Diana was killed in Paris in 1997 in a drunken-driving crash while being pursued by photographers. Initially they were blamed but later were cleared. Still, scores of celebrities in recent years have complained about how they and their children have been tormented by paparazzi cornering them at school or chasing them in cars.
Now some celebs — namely Bieber and Miley Cyrus — are once again demanding new laws against the paparazzi. Cyrus took to Twitter to rant about how "dangerous" they are.
Bieber issued a statement, saying he hoped the "tragedy" would lead to laws "to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders, and the photographers themselves."
But California already has such a law, signed by celebrity Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010, which enhances the penalty for driving dangerously in pursuit of photos for commercial gain. That law was recently overturned by a judge as overly broad and a violation of the First Amendment. The case involved a paparazzo who was charged for a high-speed pursuit of Bieber, 18, who has been catnip for paps since he was a preteen.
Prosecutors have promised to appeal, but First Amendment advocates say the paparazzi are entitled to its protections, too. Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center in Nashville (and former editor of USA TODAY), says it's against the law to speed but California tried to make the punishment worse for journalists.
"Most mainstream news organizations are horrified by the sometimes predatory paparazzi, but the press gets very nervous when journalism is a target," Paulson says. "There's no way a law could be written (under the Constitution) that legally targets the tabloid press."