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Minecraft. Quite possibly the biggest addiction for any gamer that has tried it, and the biggest enigma for those who've never laid their hands on it. Often described as the digital form of Lego, Minecraft lets players unleash their creative side. But honestly it's so much more than that. It's also a game about survival. Though if there is anything that we've learned from Minecraft from letting everyone in the office try their hand at it, it's that the game is completely different to each one. Often imitated, you could find tons of Minecraft clones on the Xbox Live Indie channel, and while they tried to capture the essence of Minecraft, they ultimately never had what Minecraft has.
The basic gist of Minecraft is simple in theory. You start out alone, on a giant piece of land, with nothing but your bare hands. After you punch down some trees and collect wood, you can create your first workbench. After that, a whole world of creations is available to you. From various tools such as axes to chop down trees faster, to swords for defending yourself from the horrific beasts that come out at night, to various baked goods to sustain yourself, the world is completely open to build, craft and do pretty much whatever your heart desires.
The 360 version doesn't include the Creative mode which gives players unlimited amounts of blocks to unleash their creativity, but instead just focuses on the Adventure or Survival mode.
What really matters is, how does Minecraft play with an Xbox 360 controller. Fantastic actually. It's definitely something that you have to get used to initially, but give yourself a good 30 minutes of gameplay time, and you'll be building and crafting in no time at all. The Left and Right Trigger are relegated to both placing and destroying blocks respectively. The Y button gives you instant access to your inventory and the X button opens up your crafting menu.
So how does crafting work exactly? In the PC version, you either had to have an amazing memory, or have the Minecraft Wiki page open at all times. This was because crafting involved placing specific blocks and items in a given pattern, which resulted in an item. A stick with two stones above it made a stone sword, while sticks with stone on the side made an ax.
Thankfully this feature was completely streamlined on the 360. Instead of having to remember various recipes for crafting, you're instead given them all right away from the get go. Having a crafting table out will easily grant you access to a complete list of everything that's craftable, without the need to ever remember the insane amounts of recipes off the top of your head.
Minecraft is infinitely more fun with friends, and thankfully the 360 version lets you and three other friends play together on one screen, or up to eight people online. This is really where Minecraft shines. It's also much easier to connect to your friends than it is on the PC/Mac version, since you can simply connect to any friend currently playing, or invite other players to join your game.
This isn't the same Minecraft that's available to PC owners however. The 360 version is currently running the Beta 1.6.6 patch, whereas the PC version is currently running the 1.8.1 patch. That means if you were excited to go toe to toe with an Enderman, be able to block with your weapon, or enchant various items, you're out of luck, at least for now. Though it's not a 100% sure whether the game will be patched up to match where the PC version (with Microsoft's weird way of patching games), if the team over at 4J hopes to continue the game's popularity, they'll hopefully think of a way to bring it up to speed.
If you're a fan of Minecraft, or you were craving to play the game on a console, this purchase is an absolute no brainer. The transition to console and controller based gameplay is seamless. It is one of the most expensive XBLA games to date. At 1600 MSP, it could be a tough sell for those that have absolutely no idea what Minecraft is (is that even possible?), or have complete disregard for the game, but the rest are already readying their wallets, and their 360's for the block building craze.
Source: gamezone.com


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Wyatt is broke - and angry. The Mesics took his money a year ago. It's time to get it back.
The Outfit has other plans. They want Wyatt dead. $40,000 is a small price to pay to make it happen.
For Wyatt the street has become an extremely dangerous place - too dangerous to move in on the Mesics yet. He needs a different break. A bargain the Outfit can't refuse.
But Wyatt must also manoeuvre cops on the take - and an Outfit lieutenant with a gun in her hand and revenge on her mind.
CROSSKILL is another of my Wyatt series rereads - just because I want to.
This book, in particular, really takes on the bad guys. Wyatt may not immediately seem to have much of a moral conscience when it comes to taking other people's money - but he does think honour amongst thieves is important. Especially where his money is concerned.
As with all the Wyatt series, Wyatt plays a lone hand, with just a little help (and hindrance) from his friends. But when trouble arrives it hits him from all sides. Wyatt will, of course triumph in the end. There will be a bit of collateral damage, and some people just don't seem to realise that there are some enemies for life that you just don't want to make.
This series is just so good. Tight, clever and suspenseful writing combined with believable plotlines make for a very involving storyline. The slow reveal of small background points about Wyatt make him a very elusive character - for the reader as well as those in the story. It's actually a clever idea that - there's always some little pearl about Wyatt that drops in each book - giving the reader just a little bit more about the lonest of lone Australian fictional crime characters.

subset: commoncrawl


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This time of year, I wish I could be cloned so there could be at least three of me. For some of you, the thought of one Randy Dickson is frightening enough, but let's face it, if we could split my molecular structure � allowing me to be multiple places at once � I could cover a lot more games and do a lot more stories.
This time of year, I wish I could be cloned so there could be at least three of me.
For some of you, the thought of one Randy Dickson is frightening enough, but let's face it, if we could split my molecular structure � allowing me to be multiple places at once � I could cover a lot more games and do a lot more stories.
Last Friday night was a perfect example of when I really needed � and wanted � to be in two places at once.
Baker School�s football team opened District 1-1A play at Freeport in a big game for the Gators. At the same time, Crestview High School�s football team hosted Leon for the Homecoming game.
Covering the Baker-Freeport game was a no-brainer: It was a district game, and Baker was looking to improve to 5-0 on the season. Additionally, Freeport is considered somewhat of a local team and is probably the Gators� second biggest rival behind Jay.
I understand that many parents and students look at Homecoming as a big game, but it's more of an event. The game itself between the Bulldogs and Leon only mattered in the win and loss column. There were no district implications in the game, so it was an easy pass.
Deciding to cover Crestview's football game at Pine Forest this week was even easier. I know the drive to Pensacola and Pine Forest; I'd need my GPS to find North Bay Haven Charter, where Baker plays Friday.
Next week I'll cover the Tate at Crestview game when the school honors the 2013 inductees into the Crestview High School Sports Hall of Fame. The game is one of two District 1-7A games for the Bulldogs, and the only home district game.
Even with all of that working in Crestview's favor, it wasn't easy to pass on the Baker game. The Gators are hosting District 1-1A rival Jay. On top of that, the state championship teams from 1983 and 1993 will be honored.
I know Baker fans will be upset that I'll be at Crestview. And, if I had decided to go to Baker, I would have upset Crestview supporters.
Sometimes coaches and fans joke with me that I never cover their team or that I don't cover their team enough. And they are correct that I'm not at all of their games or matches � but I until they come up with a way to clone me, I'll continue to weigh each game and the importance it has for the team as opposed to other games being played at the same night.
And the thing is football seasons the easy one as I only have to deal with two high school teams. Things get tougher as basketball and soccer seasons arrive next month, and I have three girls basketball teams, three boys basketball teams and two boys and girls soccer teams. On any given night, there's a possibility of five teams having home games at the same time.
Now if only we could get that clone machine working.
Randy Dickson is the Crestview News Bulletin�s sports editor. Email him at email@example.com, tweet him @BigRandle, or call 682-6524.


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Every day, 17 Americans die of organ failure. In Israel, the average wait for a kidney transplant is four years. In response, a global gray market has bloomed. In India, for example, poor sellers are quickly matched with sick buyers from Taiwan. Critics call it "transplant tourism." Proponents say the market is meeting a need.
The Monitor follows three men: an unemployed Brazilian and an ailing Israeli, as well as a South African investigator who helped bust an organ-trafficking ring.
The case raises anew hard legal and ethical questions, such as: Who owns our bodies? Should it be illegal to sell an organ if it could save someone's life? What is the government's role in protecting two vulnerable groups - the poor, who are willingly exploited, and the sick, who are desperate for healing?
On a warm afternoon in Recife, a city on Brazil's northeastern coast, Hernani Gomes da Silva sits alone in the Bar Egipcio, quietly nursing a drink, ruminating about his predicament. He is 32 years old and still lives in his mother's two-room house. Rain comes in through the roof, and cockroaches and rats scuttle across the cement floor. He has three kids, a wife who loathes him, and a mistress 20 years his senior. He is unemployed with no money, no skills, and a criminal record. The future is bleak.
Suddenly the words "we pay people $6,000" leap out at him from behind. His radar clicks on.
"I don't mean to eavesdrop," he says, turning to the bald man sitting at a nearby table. "Were you talking about earning money from transplants?" He has heard of others in Recife who have sold their organs and can't believe his good fortune.
"Yes," says the man.
"Which organ?" Hernani asks.
"The kidney. Why, are you interested?"
"Of course I'm interested."
"What blood type are you?" the man asks.
"O-positive," says Hernani.
The man nods - it's the most compatible blood type. It's 2002 and Hernani has passed the first test for selling a kidney to an organization that will stretch across three continents; make hundreds of thousands of dollars for the people behind it; and rouse the interest of police, politicians, ethicists, and doctors around the world.
Soon Hernani is walking home, dreaming of a motorbike and a roof that doesn't leak.
* * *
More than 5,000 miles away across an ocean, Arie Pach, a stout Israeli lawyer in failing health, sees his future flash before him. It makes him shudder.
As he heads to an appointment on the sixth floor of Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, he walks past the dialysis ward. Below the glare of fluorescent lights, the thin, feeble-looking patients sit in special armchairs hooked up to oven-sized machines that click and whir and simulate the job of the human kidney: They clean the patient's blood. It's a life-preserving process for people whose kidneys have failed, but they have to be connected roughly three hours at a time, three days a week.
In February 2002, Arie's doctors told him his kidneys were beginning to falter. By early 2003, he's had minor surgery to prepare for dialysis, but he is already formulating plans to avoid the ward. "I don't want to be one of those people with big needles in my arm, getting my blood changed in and out of the machine like a car going for an oil change," he thinks.
Then there's the expense of dialysis to the healthcare system - about $45,000 to $50,000 per year. And only some 10 percent of dialysis patients live more than 10 years, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics. Arie has too many things left to do in life. He loves to travel abroad with his wife. One of his two sons will marry this summer. To see any grandchildren, he's got to stick around. But the doctors warn him that his blood could soon start to become toxic. They give him two choices: dialysis or a kidney transplant.
* * *
In the seaside resort city of Durban, South Africa, private investigator Johan Wessels is working in his home office, plinking away at the computer keyboard. The phone rings. It's a woman from the health department. She wants to know if he'd be willing to work on a case under something called the Human Tissue Act.
In 24 years as a police detective and private investigator, Johan has tackled all kinds of cases - smuggling, embezzlement, bribery. He's achieved a 98 percent conviction rate. But he's never heard about this act and has little idea what he's getting into as he says yes.
Hanging up, he yells to his wife, Carol, in the kitchen. "That was the health department. They want me to investigate some case about human tissues."
His partner of 29 years is pleased. "I've been praying all morning about you getting more work," she says. Both are "reborn Christians." They read the Bible daily and sit up front at church on Sundays.
His curiosity piqued, Johan is faxed a copy of South Africa's Human Tissue Act and scans it.
Sect. 1: "[T]issue means ... any flesh, bone, organ, gland, or body fluid...." Sect. 28: "No person ... may receive any payment in ... the ... acquisition ... of any tissue...." Section 33: Violators "shall be ... liable ... to a fine not exceeding 2,000 Rand or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year...."
One year in jail or a fine of about $300. This thing has "no teeth," Johan thinks. Maybe that's why they're buying and selling organs in South Africa.
It's June 2003, and Johan is embarking on what will become one of the toughest cases of his career - not only a test of his detective skills, but also of the ethical and religious values he holds dear.
Hernani has big dreams for the $6,000 he's expecting to get for one of his kidneys. But he also has doubts. One day as he's walking home - wondering if the South Africans will take a lung or cornea, too, or just abandon him in a country where he can't speak the language - he bumps into a friend who's driving a shiny white Volkswagen. He's heard through the grapevine that this friend is one of dozens from Recife who went to South Africa and came back alive. The early ones got $10,000 for their kidneys, a fortune in a neighborhood where many earn the minimum wage - about $1,000 a year.
Hernani gets in the car. He is not normally the inquisitive type, but today he pelts his friend with questions.
"How much did you get paid?" he asks.
"Do they pay in advance?"
"How were you treated?"
"What is the operation like?"
"Do they take care of you?"
"Will I be OK?"
The friend says all the right things. Ten minutes later, Hernani gets out of the car, his mind at rest. He is going to South Africa to sell his kidney.
* * *
In the months since they met in Egipcio's, Hernani and the little bald man - he calls him Captain Ivan - have become fast friends. Ivan Bonifacio da Silva, a retired police officer, has taken Hernani under his wing, patiently explaining how the kidney switch works, and assuaging his lingering concerns.
He's also been shepherding him into a whole new world. He tells Hernani where to get the tests to prove he's healthy enough for the operation. He's with Hernani when he gets the passport that will allow him to leave Brazil for the first time in his life. And in October 2002, on the eve of Hernani's trip to Durban, Captain Ivan hands him $500 - and assures him there is another $5,500 waiting for him when he gets home.
Six thousand dollars. It's somewhere near the average going rate for kidneys in today's global organ trade. Palestinian men who sold their kidneys in Saddam Hussein's Iraq after the first Gulf War got just $500 to $1,000. They helped make Iraq the organ-trading hub of the Arab world until the latest war broke out. In the slums of Manila, where corneas, livers, and lungs are also offered for sale, kidneys fetch about $2,000, according to Nancy Scheper-Hughes, cofounder of Organs Watch, a group at the University of California, Berkeley, that tracks the trade. Some Israeli organ donors have gotten $20,000, she says. And a few American sellers have gotten $30,000 to $50,000 for their kidneys.
But $500 is more than Hernani has ever held in his hands. Captain Ivan tells him to make sure Daisy, Hernani's wife, has enough for when he's gone, and to buy some new clothes.
Hernani hardly has to be told twice. Within an hour, he's walking through the sliding doors of the Shopping Recife mall and into a new life. The lights are bright and the giant windows are filled with personal beer kegs, colorful shirts, and tiny cameras that seem to seduce him, whispering: You've got money now, you can afford it, come in, buy me.
Hernani quickly succumbs to the mall's sirens. He buys five or six polo shirts. He buys a new pair of lace-up shoes. He buys two pairs of jeans, tripling the number of long pants in his wardrobe. He goes to the food court and fulfills a lifelong dream of buying a cappuccino. At the supermarket he fills his cart with rice, beans, bread, milk, eggs, and the ultimate luxury food - meat. For about $2 he buys enough beef to feed his family for a month.
This is just the beginning, he thinks, as he sits down later that night at a fancy restaurant. Things are different now. I am somebody. I'm a consumer.
* * *
But when he opens the metal door to his house just after midnight, he realizes money can't change everything. Daisy is lying on the carpet they call their bed. She's angry. She knows he's been to see his mistress, Antonia. And she knows he has spent most of the money on himself, even though it was supposed to be the down payment on their new life. Yet no matter how much she has come to detest him over the past few years, she can't stop herself from worrying.
"Don't go," she tells him as he lies down beside her. "You don't know what might happen. They could do anything, take anything. You don't know who they are or what they want."
"Shut up," Hernani barks. "Let me go to sleep."
"It could be a trap, Hernani," she persists. "You might not get out alive."
Actually, in this brave new world of kidney selling, donors rarely die. But Daisy's fears aren't totally unfounded. In India, about 2,000 people sell a kidney each year. One study there in 2002 found 86 percent of organ sellers saying they had significant declines in their health in the three years after surgery. In the eastern European nation of Moldova, some 300 peasants sold their kidneys between 1999 and 2002. A study by Organs Watch found 79 percent of Moldovan donors with health problems in the months and years after the procedure.
But in the darkness of their house that night, with the promise of a payday to beat all paydays, Hernani ignores his wife's anxious pleading. "Daisy, I'm doing this," he says, cursing her. More harsh words are exchanged, and she flees to the next room to sleep with her son.
The next morning he pecks her on the cheek, slips quietly out the door, and heads to the airport.
* * *
Hernani lands in the lush, hilly city of Durban, which sits on the Indian Ocean. How different and luxurious things are here, he thinks. The house where his hosts keep him and several other Brazilian kidney donors is enormous. The living room alone is bigger than his whole house back home. There's even a hot tub. An interpreter stays with them all day, and a facilitator buys them a CD player so they can dance around the living room to Brazilian songs that remind them of home. Sometimes the hosts take them out to dinner. Hernani, who rarely has enough money to buy even pork, tries ostrich meat.
October 2002 blends into November. Mostly, they spend their days lying about the house, waiting for the call. When it finally comes, Hernani is whisked off to St. Augustine's Hospital, a sprawling modern complex set high on a green hillside overlooking the ocean. He and the others are, after all, here for business.
They are several of the roughly 300 Brazilian and Israeli sellers that police say were brought to South Africa between 2001 and 2003. The syndicate was run, police say, by an Israeli named Ilan Perry. He and the other organizers were making hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. They probably picked South Africa because it has top-notch medical facilities and one of the world's best transplant-success rates. It also has weak laws regulating the sale of human organs.
Hernani has signed lots of forms, including one that says he's "related" to the man to whom he's about to give his kidney. Finally he meets this man - an Israeli named Amiram Aharoni - for the first time. Walking into the room, it's then that Hernani understands the magnitude of what he's about to do. Mr. Aharoni is all swollen and pale. He cries when he sees Hernani. He's too weak to lift himself up. But his wife passes along their message with a tender hug. "You are part of our family now," she says. "From this moment on, you are our flesh and blood."
The operation takes place on Nov. 26, 2002, and lasts several hours. Lying in two nearby operating rooms, Hernani and Aharoni undergo surgery at the same time. Hernani has three surgeons operating on him because of the complexity of the procedure, which sometimes involves removing a rib.
When Aharoni wakes up, he has a fresh kidney and a new lease on life. When Hernani comes to, he feels a tightness where the wound has been stitched shut. But three days later, when he finally boards the plane back to Brazil, he is a happy man. He is going to be rich.
* * *
That joy fades fast as he arrives back at his mother's house in Recife. It's been almost 24 hours since his plane landed, and Daisy is scowling at him. She suspects he's been to see Antonia. She's both relieved and depressed to see him alive and back in her life. She's tired of their sad marriage. She's sure he doesn't really care about the three children jumping around the street - or about Daisy herself, who dropped out of school at 14 to set up a home with him. Even after weeks on the other side of the world, the man taking a red bicycle out of the taxi doesn't even look at her.
"Luiza,go and get yourself ready. We're going into town to get you a bicycle," he shouts to his 9-year-old daughter as he hands the new bike to his son, Hernandes. Then he turns his back and walks toward the local plaza.
He's determined to have some fun. After all, he has money in his pocket - $5,500 in crisp new $100 bills handed to him by Captain Ivan under the table at a fast-food restaurant near a local branch of Citibank.
For someone who has been poor all his life, money is to be spent, not saved or budgeted. And spend it he does. In the first few months of 2003, Hernani pays $1,700 to replace the roof, the floor, the walls, the windows, and the wiring in his mother's house. He uses $1,600 to pay off her credit cards. Another $1,200 buys him a brand new Honda CG 125 motorcycle, which he insists the dealer deliver to his house so his neighbors can see. On New Year's Eve, he buys Daisy a new blouse and skirt. He figures that leaves him somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 to spend on drink and other women. Life is good.
While Hernani is busy blowing through his money, in Israel Arie Pach is hoping to avoid a life tied to a dialysis machine. But he's running out of options. He's been ruminating over them since 1995 when doctors first detected a problem with his kidneys. He knows that patients who get kidneys tend to live longer than those on dialysis. So he considers turning to his wife or sons for a kidney. Since they come in pairs, a healthy person can live on just one. But his wife and oldest son have the wrong blood type. His youngest son is a match, but he has health problems similar to Arie's. So getting a kidney from a related donor is out.
Another possibility: Signing up for Israel's national waiting list, which already has more than 500 people on it. But the wait time can be as long as four years for someone of Arie's age - those under 18 get priority - which means most go onto dialysis. For religious reasons, Israel's cadaver donation rate is relatively low, although its rate of donation among living relatives is above average. And anyway, organs from live donors are more effective than cadaveric ones.
So Arie and Mary, his wife of 36 years, feel they have no other alternative. They're left to consider paying a healthy stranger for a kidney. Mary has been an operating-room nurse for more than 25 years. She encourages Arie to find a living donor. "If you go for a transplant at the very end, after years of dialysis, your body is all worn out," she says. "If you do it before you get to dialysis, you have a much better chance of the surgery being successful."
Buying a kidney in Israel is against Health Ministry regulations, but there's no penalty associated with the rule - yet. As in many countries, the legal ground is soft. Going abroad for a kidney operation is perfectly legitimate, and in such cases questions are rarely asked about how the organ was obtained. Even under a new proposal that would punish brokers, recipients would not be prosecuted because they're victims of failing health and opportunistic organ brokers, says Meir Broder, legal adviser to the Health Ministry.
For Arie, who has spent a lifetime practicing law, the ethics of a kidney purchase are still complicated. He doesn't want, for instance, to exploit a poor person who's just trying to feed a family. Yet he's torn.
"Everyone is the boss of his own body, and if someone healthy wants to give away one of his own kidneys, I can't see why it shouldn't be done," he says. "There has to be informed consent."
Then there's the religious element. Arie and Mary aren't particularly devout, but they discuss the guidance Judaism offers. Arie finally concludes, "There really is nothing holy except for God and human life," and since "donating an organ is saving a life," it's entirely ethical.
Religious beliefs often figure in decisions about organ trading. They're invoked both to encourage and discourage it. The Old Testament story of Hagar bearing a child for Abraham (because his wife, Sarah, is "barren"), is often cited as the first case of surrogate motherhood. Some people use this scripture to justify paying someone to be a surrogate for an organ, says Dr. Scheper-Hughes of Organs Watch. Or as one Israeli doctor said to her, "God performed the first transplant" when he took a rib out of Adam and created Eve. In many Christian circles, too, there's the belief that "your body is a gift from God," says Scheper-Hughes, "or that you have use-rights over your body, but that it belongs to God."
Yet one reason Israelis rarely donate organs after death is that many Jews believe the body is sacred, and should be whole at the time of burial. Orthodox Jews believe that the deceased should be intact for the Resurrection they believe will follow the coming of the Messiah. But views are shifting.
"If someone needs to save his life and the only way to motivate someone to help him do that is by financial incentive, then I don't think they should prevent people from doing that in order to save lives," says Robert Berman, the founder of the New York-based Halachic Organ Donor Society, which has enlisted prominent rabbis to encourage donation.
"The fact is that people are dying and that there are not enough organs going around to save their lives," he says. "There's a widespread misperception that organ donation is categorically prohibited by Jewish law. It is not. Jewish law supports saving lives."
Meanwhile, after many conversations, Arie and Mary agree they're making the right choice. "This decision," says Mary, "completely changes the course of your life."
* * *
Arie soon discovers buying a kidney is a pretty easy path to take in Israel. In dialysis units, in doctors' offices, even in newspaper classified ads, the names of organ brokers - people who arrange kidney trades - are an open secret. For $60,000 to $150,000, a new kidney can be purchased.
Arie starts surfing the Web, looking at clinics in the United States that do transplant surgery. A friend suggests a medical-advice hotline run by an aide to an influential rabbi. "People call him and say, 'I need an operation' and 'Who's good?' " says Arie. He tries it and gets the name of a doctor in Tel Aviv. Soon, he's put in touch with a broker who tells him a transplant, done in South Africa, will cost $100,000, with 10 percent paid up front.
It's a lot of money, but Arie figures he can at least manage the down payment from his retirement fund.
Many Israelis, even those without great wealth or savings, find ways to cover the cost. Israel's health-insurance funds reimburse patients as much as $70,000 for any medical procedure done abroad. Technically they're not supposed to pay for illegal operations, but if it's done outside Israel, it's off their radar screen. Critics say the health-care companies are turning a blind eye to an international racket. Government and health officials say there's no way to control what a patient does outside Israeli territory.
There is an attractive economic component to this setup. Paying $70,000 for one kidney transplant is far cheaper than $50,000 a year for life in dialysis bills. But it's more than money. The transplant recipient is healthier, and has a better quality of life than a dialysis patient.
Some argue that since the trade is already flourishing, and is difficult to stop, the best way to protect sellers is to decriminalize it and create a regulated market. Michael Friedlaender is one of Arie's doctors after the operation and heads the kidney-transplant follow-up unit at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. He once opposed organ sales. Now he advocates a legal market.
Under the current system, he says, if something goes wrong during surgery, or if the financial transaction turns out to be a scam, neither the donor nor the recipient has any legal recourse. A regulated system, he says, would change that, and allow for things like malpractice suits, which help safeguard the process.
In a free market, Dr. Friedlaender argues, it's unethical not to pay for an organ.
"Someone's saving your life," he says, "and you're not going to reward him? We pay for every other service in the world." Donating an organ is one of the most valuable services, "because it saves a life."
* * *
Only a few weeks after making contact with the broker, Arie gets the call. "We have a donor for you in South Africa," the broker says. Then things move fast. Plane tickets are delivered. He gives the broker a $10,000 downpayment, with the rest payable when he's admitted to the hospital for surgery. Suddenly he and Mary are on their way to South Africa.
On April 8, 2003, they arrive at St. Augustine's. With its warm yellow walls, highly polished floors, and views of the ocean, the transplant ward is one of the most luxurious in the country. They're struck by the professionalism of the staff.
But they hit a snag.
It turns out that Arie's donor has high blood pressure and is rejected by the syndicate. This comforts Arie and Mary, and persuades them that the doctors and brokers aren't just trying to scam them or the Brazilians. But the first donor isn't the only Brazilian there. Arie and Mary often hear Brazilian music wafting through the hospital hall, and the TVs are tuned to soccer. After several days of more tests, a suitable donor is found.
Arie soon meets the young man (Arie won't reveal his name) who's going to change his life. He's tall, thin, and youthful. He grins constantly. Through a translator he says he doesn't smoke or drink. He just wants to improve his life by getting married and going to college to become an architect.
As they talk, Arie keeps trying to remember how to say "thank you" in Portuguese.
"Ob..., Ob...," he stutters.
"Obrigado," Mary chimes in.
Through his interpreter, he asks the Brazilianif he really consents wholehearteldy to giving his kidney. The young man smiles, and says, "Yes." He offers his hand to Arie, and the two men shake as they are wheeled into the operating room.
Surgery falls on the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the Children of Israel's passage from slavery into the freedom of the Promised Land. As he's lying on the gurney, being wheeled into the operating room, he whispers, "Shma Yisrael," a Jewish prayer that affirms God's oneness and the commandment to love God with all one's heart, soul, and mind.
That evening, back at the hotel, Mary feels lonely and apprehensive. Some local Jewish families have invited her to celebrate Passover with them, but she doesn't feel like being cheery and social. In her room, she lights some candles and reads the Passover story. Perhaps the surgery will finally let her husband find a new freedom of his own.
The next day she sees him, and he doesn't look well. He's pale gray and connected to machines she's seen all her professional life, but it's different when it's her husband. To her relief, the doctors say the surgery was a success.
In the following days, Arie meets his donor again. They pose for photographs. The Brazilian wraps an arm around Arie, flashes a thumbs up sign, and beams. In his bright red shirt, he looks like a fan whose team has just won the championship.
Unknown to him, under South Africa's 1983 Human Tissue Act, Arie and his donor have broken the law. But the organ brokers and doctors are the ones making the biggest profits - and are the real targets of the police. Buying and selling kidneys across three continents is, in some ways, the perfect 21st-century crime. That's what South African investigator Johan Wessels realizes as he gets further and further into his new case. For one thing, it occurs in several jurisdictions, all of which are thousands of miles apart. And it's hard to determine where exactly the crime - handing over the money - takes place. And if one country starts cracking down, the syndicate can hop to another.
In working the case, Johan has teamed up with a group from the elite Commercial Branch, South Africa's equivalent of the FBI's white-collar-crime unit. The team is headed by Capt. Louis Helberg, a reserved man.
By the middle of 2003, the team has a firm idea of what's going on. Donors are getting $6,000 to $18,000 for their kidneys. They're coming from Israel, Brazil, and maybe Russia and Romania, given the Eastern European-sounding names on the hospital records. Two doctors at St. Augustine's appear to be heavily involved. It looks as if some of the South Africans have pocketed as much as $450,000 doing more than 107 operations.
Police say the organizers meet 11 of the 12 criteria for a "syndicate" - a criminal enterprise akin to the mafia. There's only one criterion the group hasn't met: no one has been killed, say the investigators.
* * *
After one long day working on the investigation, Johan, Captain Helberg, and another detective head to a burger joint. They get some weak coffee and fall into conversation about the case.
"How far would you go if one of your kids needed a kidney?" asks one detective. The question opens a debate on the validity and ethics of the very law they've sworn to uphold.
For most people, the initial response to buying or selling a body part is revulsion. It's what bioethicists call "the yuck factor." But the moral underpinning of that feeling - which in turn becomes codified as law - is often hard to articulate, says Walter Robinson, a pediatrician and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Mass. "It's a violation of 'naturalness,' " he says. "But 'naturalness' is difficult to describe." It can emanate from people's moral or religious values, subtle prejudices, or tradition.
Personal or societal definitions of "naturalness" can change, Dr. Robinson observes. They have shifted in the US for instance, regarding interracial marriage and homosexuality.
Revulsion aside, "If one of mine was sick, I'd do anything," even though it's illegal, Johan says, thinking of his two children. "I'd borrow lots of money. I'd even sell the farm," he says, referring to one of his favorite places in the world, a 700-acre spread that's been in his family for four generations.
It's a typical parental response - doing anything for a child. In fact, growing numbers of doctors and ethicists agree that people like Johan or Arie should be able to buy kidneys, and that people like Hernani should be able to sell them. They argue, for instance, that banning organ sales robs sellers, who are often poor, of a rare option to escape poverty. They also argue that high-minded efforts to shield the poor from themselves can be paternalistic or hypocritical. "If the rich are free to engage in dangerous sports for pleasure ... it is difficult to see why the poor, who take the lesser risk of kidney selling ... should be thought so misguided as to need saving from themselves," says Dr. Friedlaender in Israel.
But as the detectives' coffee cools, they weigh the other side, too. They wonder if rumors about "organjacking" - people being killed for their organs - might be true. Critics say the current system has already jump-started a dangerous commodification of the human body, which could turn the world's slums into reservoirs of body parts for the rich. Today, in Manila's slums, the selling of kidneys has led to sales of lungs and corneas.
As the detectives talk it through, Johan's views develop. "Life is already really cheap in our society," he says later. "People will kill each other for a firearm and a little cash." And if you start giving people money for their kidneys, "you're going to start finding a lot of dead bodies with no organs."
These kinds of gruesome scenarios are what seal Johan's opinion. The detectives get up from the table, strengthened in their resolve to break open the case.
* * *
A few weeks later, Johan adds another plank to his position. As he's eating breakfast, he tunes into an American TV news show. A reporter is interviewing a mother whose 17-year-old son, as Johan recalls, was killed in a car crash. With the mother's consent, doctors salvaged 47 organs and tissues from the boy's body - corneas, kidneys, liver, lungs, heart. "I didn't know they could get that many organs from one body," Johan thinks to himself.
The reporter asks if the mother thinks she should be paid for all the organs her son gave away freely. How could I take money for them? Johan remembers her saying. God gave each of us the body we use when we're alive. He gave it to us for free. How could we charge someone else for part of it? He calls his wife right away.
"This makes more sense to me as a Christian than anything else I've heard," he says to her.
* * *
The detectives have been toiling for months now, slowly piecing the trafficking puzzle together. But in late November they get a major break. The police team gets a call, out of the blue, from an officer at a nearby police station. The cop has two Israelis with him. One is accusing the other of stealing $18,000, and there's something about a kidney. When the detectives later question the two men, they can't believe their ears.
One man, known as S. Zohr, admits he received $18,000 for agreeing to sell his kidney. He'd actually been lying on the operating table at St. Augustine's, just moments away from surrendering his organ to an ailing Israeli man named Agania Robel, when he got spooked. Zohr jumped off the table, grabbed his clothes, and bee-lined for the airport, trying to take the $18,000 with him.
But then, a man named Shushan Meir, who later is charged with being part of the syndicate, called the police and told them Mr. Zohr was stealing the money. Mr. Meir apparently hoped, strangely enough, that the cops would help prevent this illegal deal from going sour. It was the final confirmation the police needed to bust up the ring.
On the morning of Nov. 27, 2003 - a year and a day after Hernani went under the knife - Johan, Helberg, and a police team that includes a photographer and several plainclothes detectives converge on the back parking lot at St. Augustine's. They walk quickly up the hill into the facility's transplant division.
Helberg, the team leader, announces that they have a search warrant and will be seizing files. Johan adds that he's an independent investigator looking into crimes committed under the Human Tissue Act. He doesn't need a search warrant and can look at any of the clinic's files at any time. He steps into a side office where a whiteboard hangs on the wall. Scrawled on it are two names - "A. Robel" and "Rogerio Bezzera" - and today's date.
"What are those?" he asks Lindy Dickson, a staff member who would later be arrested and charged with complicity in the scheme. She tells him the two men are, at this moment, on operating tables upstairs.
Robel. That's the guy who was left stranded when Zohr jumped off the table last week, Johan realizes. And he's already been paired up with another donor, a Brazilian named Rogerio Bezzera da Silva. With this, Johan gets a glimpse of the efficiency and sophistication of the syndicate. Only days after one donor gets cold feet, the group has another one on the operating table. This one, he will learn, is getting only $6,000 for his kidney. Robel, the recipient, is paying $45,000 for a new organ.
Police decide against arresting the two men while they're on operating tables, but several days later, they make three arrests. Robel, the recipient, pleads guilty. He's fined about $770 and returns to Israel. Two apparently low-level syndicate operatives, including Meir, are charged. One makes a plea bargain, while Meir will be tried beginning July 13. Mr. Bezzera da Silva isn't charged, but he forfeits his $6,000.
That same week, Brazilian police also arrest two Israelis and nine Brazilians.
Nearly a year after his South African trip, every last bit of Hernani's $6,000 is gone. Daisy sells popsicles to pay the bills. Hernani sold his motorbike after sliding off the road one rainy night and running into the back of a truck. He now walks with a limp.
Hernani continues to see Antonia. There is no dialogue between Hernani and Daisy, only the occasional monotone orders for her to get the phone, go shopping, mind the children. He will not hold 9-year-old Luiza's hand when they walk around the neighborhood together, and he cannot, or will not, pay for her to play organized soccer, even though she controls the ball better than half the boys during their games in the street.
Hernani's plight is common among kidney sellers. According to the study in India, organ selling actually increased poverty. Some 54 percent of sellers were extremely poor before losing a kidney. A year later, 74 percent were still in debt, and the average family income had declined by about 30 percent.
For Hernani, things could hardly get worse.
But they do.
On Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2003, Hernani, like 40 million other Brazilians, is watching the nightly news on TV Globo. He's had a tough day. He's heard that the friend with the white VW, who was instrumental in convincing Hernani to sell his kidney, was arrested in a surprise raid that morning. No one knows why the Brazilian FBI would be after him.
Sitting on the couch that night with another friend, Hernani discovers why. Police in South Africa have broken up an international organ-trafficking ring, he hears the announcer say. Authorities have detained 11 people in the last 24 hours and expect to make more arrests. The words "organ trafficking" and "arrests" jump out at him, just like that day when he heard a man behind him say: "We pay people $6,000."
But this time he's full of dread.
"Man, you've got to get out of here," his friend warns.
One word that keeps coming into his head: "Why?" I have done nothing wrong, harmed no one. I crossed the world to give life to a dying man. I sold only what was mine. Why are they doing this? Why me? I am going to jail, Hernani thinks to himself. Within minutes, he has changed his clothes and slips out into the night. Soon he's banging on the metal door of a local hot-sheet hotel, where rooms are rented by the hour. The receptionist is surprised to see a single man looking for a room, but he accepts Hernani's credit card and hands him a key.
Afraid and agitated, Hernani lies on the grotty hotel bed staring at himself in the mirror overhead. He's not reviewing his decision to sell his kidney. He's not worrying about the police finding him. He's worrying about whether he has enough money in the bank to pay the hotel bill - about $7 per night.
* * *
As the investigation continues into 2004, Johan is still unsettled about his religious perspective on organ sales. As he drives home one night, he realizes he's had a change of heart from his first inclination to "do anything" to save himself or one of his family members, including buying a kidney. Knowing what he knows now, he'd try to figure out something legal. For instance, he, his brother, and his best friend all have O-negative blood. And they've got an understanding: If one of them ever needs blood - or maybe an organ - the others would step up. He knows people who have done so. A couple of years ago, a woman at his church donated her kidney to a fellow church member. "It was such a huge sacrifice," he thinks.
He realizes he's become pretty passionate about this stuff. But he still hasn't found biblical guidance.
That night at home he goes to his bedroom and picks up his Bible. He sits down on the bed and speaks into the silence. "Lord, there has to be something in this book of yours about this," he says.
He opens to a verse he hadn't considered before. Romans 12:1. He reads these words from Paul's letter: "Give your bodies a living sacrifice."
Paul may have meant something else when he wrote it, but to Johan it now feels important to donate his organs after death. "Jesus sacrificed himself for everyone - gave his whole body for all mankind." The least we can do, he thinks, is give part of our body to someone else in need. Finally he has what he's been looking for.
* * *
Today, 14 months after his surgery, Arie Pach, now 57 years old, is living a new life of freedom - sort of. His youngest son is getting married this summer, and Arie will be there under the wedding canopy.
But he's told he'll have to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of his life. And he's photosensitive; he can't go out in the midday sun much and finds himself missing a day at the beach. He used to like to swim, but now, on doctors' orders, he has to beware of contracting an illness by going to public pools.
"I'm more philosophical and more resigned about my own fate," he says on a cool afternoon at home, where pastel flowers are in bloom in the tiny backyard garden. "There are so many things in life that could have been worse, but thank God I'm fine now," he says. And even though he has a new kidney from across the world, he's still searching for a better solution. "I haven't become religious," he says, "but I guess you could say I pray more, to ask for a refuah shlema - a full healing."
As far as investigators know, the syndicate that orchestrated kidney swaps for at least two yearsin Durban between Brazilians and Israelis is dismantled. But the global trade - and the debate about it - rolls on.
In South Africa, four alleged syndicate members have been charged and await trial. Johan Wessels and Captain Helberg and his team have expanded the investigation to hospitals in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
In Brazil, Captain Ivan is one of 28 ringleaders who have been indicted. In all, some 50 cases are being investigated by a parliamentary committee, which is expected to submit its findings in September. Hernani has been helping, despite receiving death threats. When he testified before Parliament in January, he wore sunglasses and a shirt up over most of his face to hide his identity.
Daisy, meanwhile, has made up her mind to leave him - as soon as she can raise the money to support herself and their children. At one point, she considered selling a cornea. She's heard the going rate is nearly $30,000.
Around the world, meanwhile, organ-sale laws are shifting. In Israel, for instance, one proposed law by the Ministry of Health aims to halt the country's involvement in the trade by targeting organ brokers - including penalties of up to three years in prison. Another proposal would allow voluntary organ donors to have all of their related healthcare costs picked up, as well as compensation for lost time at work when recuperating from the surgery. Others in Israel, such as Friedlaender, argue that the government should set up a fund to give substantial compensation to those who volunteer to be living donors.
In the US, Wisconsin recently became the first state to give living donors a tax deduction of up to $10,000, to write off lost salary, and medical and travel costs. At least 14 other states are considering similar measures. And in April, President Bush signed the Organ Donation and Recovery Improvement Act, which reimburses living donors for expenses incurred during the process and funds research projects aimed at increasing donations.
But laws may not keep pace with a global market moving at the speed of commerce. There is, for instance, skyrocketing demand for pieces of livers, which can grow into a fully functioning organ in a recipient. Now a website - liver4you.org - promises "transplant surgery in as short as 10 days" in the Philippines.
Sitting in his office in Jerusalem, Friedlaender points to a small trinket hanging from one of his bookshelves. One of his patients brought it to him a couple of months ago after going abroad to get a new kidney. It's from a country that may already have replaced South Africa as a hot spot for body-part trading.
It's a red paper lantern from China.
This report was written as a nonfiction narrative. Specific scenes and dialogue are based largely on recollections of those who participated in the kidney-transplant trade, but did not know then it was illegal in South Africa. The reporting was done over five months in four countries.
Correspondent Andrew Downie flew to Recife, Brazil, and met with Hernani Gomes da Silva and his wife, Daisy, four times over four days, reconstructing what happened. Later, he confirmed more facts and details by phone with the da Silvas, their attorney, and Brazilian police.
The Monitor paid Mr. Gomes da Silva its standard photo fee for use of a picture of him with his Israeli kidney recipient in South Africa. Normally, the Monitor does not pay interview subjects for information to avoid conflicts of interest. In this instance, that risk seemed marginal.
Staff writer Abraham McLaughlin went twice to Durban, South Africa. He spent four days meeting with police and investigators and visiting St. Augustine's Hospital. From South African court documents, and a photo provided by Hernani, the Monitor tracked down the Israeli recipient of Hernani's kidney. But the recipient declined to be interviewed by staff writer Nicole Gaouette. In Jerusalem, staff writer Ilene R. Prusher met twice with Arie Pach and his wife, Mary, who were willing to relate their experience. They also spoke nearly a dozen times on the phone.
David Clark Scott
World editor


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This page contains the exact location of the offices of BfS Rendsburg with map and directions
The monitoring network station of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection is about a ten minute walk from Rendsburg station.
Arriving by car
Rendsburg autobahn intersection
- A 7 to the Rendsburg intersection,
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- B 77 in the direction of Rendsburg/Tunnel,
- after the tunnel turn left towards Rendsburg, turn left at the first lights (Berliner Straße),
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Head left across the railway square (Am Bahnhof) to the fire station on the corner of Herrenstraße.
Then go left past the Kreisberufsschule to the corner of Kaiserstraße (in front of the Kreishaus), turn left into Kaiserstraße and continue to the Uhrenblock (a large building before you reach the lights), turn right in front of the Uhrenblock, follow the path along the Uhrenblock into Graf-von-Stauffenberg-Straße.
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Federal Office for Radiation Protection ( BfS)
Graf-von-Stauffenberg-Straße 13
24768 Rendsburg
24768 Rendsburg
Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS)
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Rendsburg Monitoring Network Station
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homepage: Federal Office for Radiation Protection
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Loretta Syverson, age 70, of St. James died at her home on Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012.
Loretta Syverson, age 70, of St. James died at her home on Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012. Funeral services will be 10:30 a.m., Monday, Oct. 22, 2012 at First Lutheran Church in St. James with Rev.'s Ken Bowman and K. Christian Johnson officiating. Visitation will be Sunday at Sturm Funeral Home in St. James from 4 to 8 p.m. and will continue at the church one hour before services on Monday. Burial will be held at 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012 at Inhered Lutheran Cemetery in Starbuck. You may send the family condolences online at www.sturmfh.com. Arrangements are with the Sturm Funeral Home in St. James.
Lorette Annette Hustad was born September 8, 1942 in Starbuck, Minn., the daughter of Tegner and Victoria (Hogy) Hustad. Lorette grew up in the Starbuck area and attended Country School District #3 through the eighth grade and Starbuck Public School where she graduated third in her class. She then attended Concordia College where she received her Bachelor of Science degree in teaching. She began her teaching career at the Jackson Public School in Jackson. She married her high school sweet heart Roger Tollefson. She taught school in Morris from 1964 until 1969. In 1989, she moved to Pleasonton, Texas, where she taught first grade. In 1989, she moved to Dunnell where she married Gordon Syverson. In 2005, she moved to St. James and worked in the therapy department at Mayo Clinic Health System in St. James. She also tutored reading and did substitute teaching at Northside Elementary. She enjoyed reading, collecting dolls and little dogs. She was a member of First Lutheran Church and the Christian Herald Family Bookshelf for 26 years.
Loretta is survived by her daughters; Cheryl Stewart of Rockford, Ill. and Lynn Hermes of Plano, Texas; also surviving are her siblings, Joyce Hustad of Burnsville, Sandra (Gordon) Raup of Roseville, Kenneth (Jodie) Hustand of Morro Bay, Calif., Helen Davis of Becker; and her companion dog Lily.
She is preceded in death by her parents and a nephew David Raup.


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Abortion isn't the only issue: the argument for moral equivalence
By Phil Lawler (bio - articles - email) | Oct 13, 2012
In an America magazine commentary—with the curious title, "Don't Vote for the 'Better Catholic'"—Father James Martin, SJ, comments on the Biden-Ryan debate. His argument is a familiar one: that abortion is not the only moral issue for Catholic voters. But he makes the argument in a way that exposes its weakness.
Let me quote the key paragraph in full. This is, again, a reaction to the vice-presidential debate:
Their commentary last night (and beforehand) also points out that no one party fully embraces the entirety of Catholic teaching. And for those of you who would say that abortion is the only "intrinsic evil" that is at issue in this campaign, I would point you to Blessed John Paul II's great encyclical Veritatis Splendor, in which he speaks of a great many intrinsic evils, many of them often overlooked today, including "whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit."
Perfectly true. Subhuman living conditions, slavery, prostitution, etc. are intrinsically evil. If you find a politician who openly advocates subhuman living conditions, who calls for arbitrary imprisonments, who attends fundraisers for the human-trafficking industry, who endorses government subsidies for prostitution, who demands legal protection for slavery, you cannot in good conscience vote for him. That would be as bad as voting for a politician who supports legal, government-funded abortion.
So there's a valid argument for moral equivalence. The politicians who favor unrestricted abortion are no worse than the politicians who favor slavery and human trafficking. Except in this one respect: the latter don't pose much of a threat to contemporary America, because they don't exist.
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Posted by: mdepietro -
Oct. 18, 2012 11:22 AM ET USA
Excellent point Mr. Lawler. I would only add that it would be refreshing if those who throw the unborn under the bus in order to support liberal democrats, actually looked at the results of the liberal economic and social programs that "help the poor". I see very little evidence that the Catholic left does this. There is all kinds of evidence that many of these programs are either ineffective or harmful. Does the social just crowd ever address this argument?
Posted by: richardols3892 -
Oct. 17, 2012 1:29 PM ET USA
I disagree with Bishop McElroy's saying that abortion is the first among many issues for Catholics. It appears to be the ONLY issue for Catholics; not the economy, not jobs, not poverty, not the prospect of being dragged into another Middle East War. Our faith has, I'm afraid, become, in the United States anyway, a one-note Johnny, that single note being abortion. If anyone doubts that, let them ask any cleric what issues might be as important to the Church.
Posted by: Jim.K -
Oct. 17, 2012 12:43 AM ET USA
Does anyone still read America magazine? They have been printing trash like this for at least fifty years! When will it stop Oh Lord?
Posted by: sparch -
Oct. 15, 2012 2:14 PM ET USA
It is not just using the litmus test of abortion as a political sign post. It is an indication of general moral degredation and an inability to see that life must be the priority of any government. It is not a one issue approach it is an indication of character.
Posted by: dfp3234574 -
Oct. 15, 2012 10:43 AM ET USA
EXCELLENT rebuttal, Phil. This one should be passed along.
Posted by: spledant7672 -
Oct. 14, 2012 9:00 PM ET USA
It's clear that Fr. Martin is just bending over backwards to make it OK to vote Democrat.
Posted by: Gil125 -
Oct. 14, 2012 3:22 PM ET USA
Good one. I wish I had seen it yesterday before I got dragooned into going to a meeting with Auxiliary Bishop Robert McElroy at my parish, on telling Catholics to vote their consciences. Abortion, for him, is the first issue among many. Underline among many.
Posted by: bkmajer3729 -
Oct. 14, 2012 1:26 PM ET USA
Agreed! The general societal view of Life & personhood is well skewed. Fr. Spitzer does an execllent job defining the problem & offering a solution in, "Ten Moral Principles". However, problems cited by JPII do pose a real & significant threat to our society! All result from degredation of personhood & life within our culture. Support must go to the candidate with the best chance for freedom, recognition of a person, and our right to life. That chance is clearly better with one of the two.
Posted by: fwhermann3492 -
Oct. 13, 2012 8:24 PM ET USA
Well put. I think this point needs to be hammered home repeatedly until people like Fr. Martin get it. Unfortunately, the logic of the argument is not easily reducible to a sound bite, so a lot of people may never get it.


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International Drive, Orlando Travel Guide
International Drive Summary
- Short, 15-minute drive from Orlando's airport
- Plentiful restaurant and nightlife options
- Fun water parks
- Lots of outlet and mall shopping
- Great selection of quality hotels
- Home to SeaWorld and the Orange County Convention Center
- Short drive to the Universal Studios theme parks
- Traffic backups and gridlock are common.
- Renting a car is a necessity.
- 15-minute drive to Disney, assuming you beat the traffic
- Proximity to convention center can wreak havoc on room rates.
What It's Like
Running roughly parallel to Orlando's Interstate 4, the four-lane International Drive connects SeaWorld, the Universal Orlando Resort, the enormous Orange County Convention Center, and a huge collection of hotels. Other draws on I-Drive include outlet shopping malls, water parks and swimming with dolphins at Discovery Cove, and dining and nightlife options to suit just about any budget and taste.
While there are some buses that trawl I-Drive, this area, like most of Central Florida, is built for cars; there are dozens of rental agencies at the airport, a 15-minute trip from the southern end of International Drive. Traffic can grind to a crawl during busy times but the good news is that parking is plentiful both in the area and at Disney. If you stay closer to the parks, though, shuttles, ferries, and even a monorail will spare you anguish behind the wheel.
Where to Stay
In general, name brand is the name of the game. Crowne Plaza, Wyndham, Residence Inn, and more all appear along International Drive. These places are, for the most part, clean and affordable, though they certainly lack the elaborate cartoony themes and extended hours to access the theme parks that you'll find at the Disney properties.
But there are some standout hotels. The Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott golf resorts at Grande Lakes, just off International Drive, are some of the most luxurious hotels in all of Orlando. Or, to be closer to the Convention Center, try the elegant Peabody Hotel just across the street.


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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Deceased Mormon President Thomas S. Monson will be remembered for helping church membership grow exponentially over a half-century and for his devotion to the poor and needy, faith leaders said at a funeral Friday.
About 11,000 people attended the service that rounded out two days of mourning and memorials for Monson, who died Jan. 2 at age 90 after nearly a decade leading The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About 31,500 Mormons came to a public viewing a day earlier.
"We are all better because of him," said Russell M. Nelson, a member of the church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who is expected to become the next president. "And the church is better because of him."
Monson was a well-known figure to multiple generations of Mormons after more than five decades in top leadership councils. He served as a counselor to three church presidents before assuming the role in 2008.
Monson's presidency was marked by his noticeably low profile during a time of intense publicity for the church, including the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of Mormon Mitt Romney. Monson's most public acts were appearances at church conferences and dedications of church temples.
"President Monson never sought the limelight. In a world saturated with 'selfies,' he modeled selflessness," Nelson said.
He noted that church membership exploded from 2.1 million in 1963 when Monson joined the Quorum to nearly 16 million today. During that same period, the number of missionaries increased from 5,700 to 70,000 and temples went from 12 to 159, Nelson said.
Like all church presidents, Monson was considered a prophet who led through revelation from God.
Monson's legacy will be tied to the church's efforts to hold tight to its opposition of same-sex marriage, while encouraging members to be more open and compassionate to gay people.
The focus of speeches delivered by three high-ranking leaders and one of Monson's daughters steered away from controversy and focused on what they called a legacy of love and service.
Daughter Ann Dibb urged members to carry on Monson's efforts to help others.
"We do not need to be the president of the church to notice another's need and 'paint a bright spot on our souls,'" said Dibb, using a favorite expression of her father's.
Dieter Uchtdorf called him "a spiritual giant" and told the story of Monson insisting on visiting an ailing church member in Germany. Despite recent foot surgery, Monson climbed five flights of stairs to give the man a blessing and cheer him up, said Uchtdorf, one of Monson's two top counselors and a member of the Quorum.
"He abounded in knowledge, faith, love, vision, testimony, courage, and compassion — leading and serving never from a pedestal, but always eye to eye," he said.


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To the Editor:
I have been traveling through the Historic Apponaug section of Warwick at least 16 times a week for the last 20 years. Over the last couple of years, there has been a proliferation of "road fringe" in the area. Road fringe are those distracting, unnecessary and illegal signs along the road that do not make the area look historical nor beautiful.
During summer 2013, we have had to deal with signage for shingle shots, flu shots, antiques, power washing, art camp, buy your house, day camp, "A Signs" for the deck open, propane tank refills, directional signs on telephone poles and sidewalks, banners hanging on fences, polls and buildings.
One business really needs to relocate to Post Road rather than just put their signs all over Post Road. The Greek Festival was weeks ago but signs are still up.
The Historical Commission and Warwick Zoning are responsible to enforce the laws that are in place to regulate these "foad fringe" signs, but instead the roads look like they are decorated with cheap jewelry. It is apparent that those that actually enforce the signage laws travel by them since City Hall is located in Apponaug, but they have chosen not to.
Tom Willis


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Hampshire Family History Centre - update on resources available at Research Centre in Cosham.
|Author: Lynn Eaton
|Published: 25th March 2012 18:59
Material available at Family History Centre Research Centre in Cosham
Since my last article, there has been an update to the resources available at the Family History Research Centre of The Hampshire Genealogical Society.
Click here to read my previous article about The Hampshire Genealogical Society
Material presently available for research at Cosham HGS Research Cente includes:
Baptism Index 1752-1741 Complete C of E for the County
Baptism Index 1538-1751, 1842-1874 Incomplete, ongoing project
Marriage Index 1538-1837 Complete
Burial Index 1400-1841 Complete
Parish registers on microfiche Incomplete
Census returns 1841-1901 on CD
Monumental Inscriptions
Wills Beneficiary Index
Settlement/Removal Index
Land Tax Indexes
Hampshire Family Historian Journal with Surname Index
Hampshire Militia Muster Rolls
Hampshire Directories mainly Kelly's
Find My Past access online
FFHS Burial Index 3rd Edition
INTERNET ACCESS with volunteers on hand to assist and advise.
Other printed material includes articles and information on Hampshire parishes as well as general reference and guidance books produced by The Society of Genealogists, The Federation of Family History Societies, and others.
The Hampshire Genealogical Society
The Hampshire Genealogical Society was founded in 1973 with the aim of encouraging family history research. The HGS is affiliated to the Federation of Family History Societies and has nearly 4,000 members worldwide. A quarterly journal, The Hampshire Family Historian, is published by the Society in June, September, December and March, which all members receive.
In September 2011 HGS office relocated to premises in Cosham. The Research centre room was made available to the public in October 2011.
The research centre is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays: 09:30 - 12:30 and 13:30 - 16:30 Please call first to make an appointment 023 92 7000
HGS publishes a variety of family history publications click here for details
Contact Details:
(please supply a self addressed stamped envelope)
Telephone (023) 92 87000
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
The Hampshire Genealogical Society is registered as a UK Charity No. 284744
Map of New Premises in Cosham
Report this article as inappropriate
You need to log in before you can do that! It's only a quick registration process to join the AMA network and completely free.


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Thursday, November 25, 2010
Absolut Fashion Hunter
32 comments:
These are some great streetstyle photographs. Amazing job!!ReplyDelete
i love all of these images. so cool! :)ReplyDelete
I love the last pic!Layering and the pastel colors so great!very inspiring for this month outfit :)ReplyDelete
Love that maxi dress!ReplyDelete
lovely shots.ReplyDelete
is this event a way to promote fashion/wine in zurich?
hey, sind alles hammer Outfits! ;)ReplyDelete
am beste gfallt mer das vo de Lisa... wänn bechunt meh die neue Kostumebags jetzt dänn ändlich?
liebe Gruess Jakob
The Swiss are always so fashion-forward, but in a unique kind of way. I love it!ReplyDelete
Horizontal chanel-esque stripes + bicycle is definitely a winner
is it so warm in here???ReplyDelete
- LarssynNovember 25, 2010 at 8:41 PM
...da spazierst du durch die Strassen verschiedener Städte und da huschen dir zufällig Lisa und Thom vor die Linse. Zufälle gibt's, die gibt's gar nicht.ReplyDelete
das zweite outfit ist super schön! sieht so gemütlich aus!ReplyDelete
you take the most beautiful photos. the lights in these are amazing!ReplyDelete
Really, really great :n )ReplyDelete
these shots are great and the lighting a little more unique than normal. i really enjoyed these.ReplyDelete
adore the second shot. xReplyDelete
all photos looks so charm as you Pascal! great...ReplyDelete
Beny Ricardo Sadewo
Beautiful photographs!ReplyDelete
i'm jealous that you can find many stylish people in your area. great styles! :)ReplyDelete
Oh i love this!!ReplyDelete
Love the first style.ReplyDelete
beutiful blog!
wow such amazing photographs!ReplyDelete
Wow! you captures some amazing fashion here! Awesome!ReplyDelete
Kristina J.
Great looks. and lovely light.ReplyDelete
love the last pic!ReplyDelete
Love the combination of colour and light in the fourth photograph!ReplyDelete
I'm so in love with the 2nd top pic <3ReplyDelete
great shoots! thats why i like this blog ;-DReplyDelete
MMMM that road bike is so glorious. The shots are amazing. I like how they happen to showcase different parts of Zurich.ReplyDelete
das ist nicht thom :)ReplyDelete
beautiful photos, the first girl is extremely chic yet casual.ReplyDelete
Wow, great! Like the last picture on the right.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 2, 2010 at 11:49 PM
ich mag am liebsten die rechts unten und rechts in der mitte...ReplyDelete
Absolutely LOVED all those photograph! I like the 2nd photo on the left especially the necklace. I know a cool label with a really nice necklace. Check this out http://vvdo.de/ReplyDelete


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[size=4]Go Heavy[/size=4]
Few topics are as misunderstood as ballistic science. Not only are we shoveled misleading marketing from ammunition manufacturers but we are also inundated with internet misinformation that comes not from first hand testing but from a web page that your wife's brother's wife's third cousin found while searching ebay for tacti-cool gear. Ammunition manufacturers feed on and contribute to widespread ignorance by purposefully complicating ballistic science to convince you that you need their particular brand of ammunition for an adequate defense. As complex as some try to make this issue, defensive handgun ballistic science can be simplified in two words. Go heavy*.
Some believe in lighter, faster bullets due to their superior simple energy numbers. This is a flawed understanding of ballistic performance. A lighter bullet with comparable charge will always have higher velocity generating higher simple energy numbers which on paper makes the ligher bullet appear superior. The gelatin on the other hand, shows the opposite to be true. The heavier bullet of comparable design and diameter (165 grain Federal HST .40 compared to 180 grain Federal HST .40) will always penetrate deeper than the lighter, faster bullet despite its lower simple energy. Simple energy is only a factor worth considering when comparing two bullets of the same caliber and weight. Don't over-complicate this, it doesn't have to be difficult! Assuming adequate caliber (.38 special +P and up), all you need is a quality (Federal, Winchester, Corbon, and other comparable premium manufacturers) jacketed hollow point in the heaviest popular weight available for your caliber.
- .38 Special +P - 158 grain JHP
- 9mm - 147 grain JHP
- 357 Sig - 147 grain JHP (although the 125 grain loads are certainly impressive when loaded to potential of 125 grains @ 1450 fps)
- .357 Magnum - 158 grain JHP
- .40 - 180 grain JHP
- .45 acp - 230 grain JHP
- When John Browning (arguably the greatest firearms designer in history) designed the .45acp in 1904 he chose a 200 grain bullet that travelled 900fps. When the army adopted the .45acp as their issued side arm caliber they insisted on a heavier 230 grain bullet that travelled 850fps. The army (knowing more about stopping enemy soldiers much in the same way that Browning knew more about designing firearms) knew the heavier bullet would be more effective despite the deficit in velocity.
- After the lighter 9mm loads failed to penetrate adequately during the infamous [url="http://media.concealedcarryforum.com/86miami.wmv"]1986 MIAMI SHOOT-OUT[/url] it was determined (by the FBI) to be inadequate and therefore unfit for duty without significant improvement. The solution to making the 9mm more effective (thus fit for duty) was to make it heavier which is the reason why the 147 grain load was developed.
- One of the most versatile handgun calibers of all time is the .357 Magnum. Although the 125 grain load is an excellent performer, the 158 grain load makes it even more effective. If you purchase .357 Magnum hunting loads however, they start at 180 grains with many exceeding 200 grains. Why? If you want to kill black bear with the same duty weapon that you carry every day, you go heavy. The same can be said of the .44 Magnum, with defensive loads weighing 240 grains or lighter and the hunting loads exceeding 300 grains. This is not to suggest that you should use hunting loads for defensive purposes as they would tend to over-penetrate. It does however, demonstrate that heavier bullets have more stopping power potential than lighter bullets of comparable design.
In today's modern age of access to information you can find an "expert" to substantiate dang near any position you want to take. With many of these self and otherwise proclaimed "experts" directly contradicting one another, it is critical that you base your decisions on first hand experience and not this or any other page you read on the internet. I encourage you to test my recommendations for yourself as I have done so that you will know first hand the difference the weight of the bullet will make. It will only take two boxes of ammunition from the same manufacturer of the same design with the only difference being bullet weight for you to reach your own conclusions. So long as you are using comparable loads (for example, 230 grain Corbon .45 acp compared to 200 grain Corbon 45 acp) I am confident that without regard to your test medium you will find that the heavier load always penetrates deeper while providing equal if not superior expansion. Regardless of what caliber you test with what brand of ammunition, you will find that my statement remains consistant. Despite simple energy numbers that make the lighter load appear superior on paper, the heavier load simply hits harder and penetrates deeper. Every time.
All that is necessary is a pork shoulder (a whole hog, a side of beef, etc. any of which are available at any butchers shop) and fire both loads (one light, one heavy) into it. the results will speak for themselves. If everybody who debates this would simply try it we would never have these discussions again because the differences are significant and the results are obvious, consistant, and easily conclusive.
- Handgun and ammunition performance, not shooter performance.
- Assumes the shooter is using a quality handgun that will cycle the ammunition reliably
- Assumes typical handgun combat ranges of 7 - 21 feet


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Each month in this column, I get to pick a topic and share my thoughts with you. Many times, I choose to share my views on the theme of that month's issue or a topic discussed in the cover story or special report. Sometimes, the focus of a particular feature article serves as the springboard for my viewpoint as well. Whatever the inspiration may be, my goal each month is not only to try and educate you about a particular issue, but also to prompt thought-provoking dialog between us.
During one of our recent editorial strategy meetings, the staff and I agreed that I shouldn't be the only one afforded this unique opportunity. We decided it would enhance the quality of the magazine if some of you joined in. So starting with this issue, we're introducing a new department called "Speaking Out."
Featured on the last editorial page of each issue, this one-page column will showcase the opinion of industry experts (like you) on hot topics in the industry. However, this department is not meant to serve as a pulpit for furthering one's own agenda. Instead, it's designed to serve as a forum to offer opinions, predictions, and potential solutions to the most pressing issues facing our industry today. Much like some of my own viewpoints, we're sure "Speaking Out" columns may strike an emotional chord with many of you. Whether you wholeheartedly agree with the commentary and want to add your own two cents on the subject or fire off a rebuttal, our goal is to generate a healthy and constructive dialog on each column via the commenting tool at the bottom of each article page on the EC&M website.
So what kind of topics are we going to cover? Well, that's really up to you. But here are a few ideas to help spark your imagination. What effect are counterfeit electrical products having on your business and the industry as a whole? Is the manufacturing sector in this country dying a slow death or making a comeback? Have wind and solar technology advancements finally reached a tipping point, or will these markets wither away like they have in the past? You might also have passionate thoughts on the technology front and want to focus on lighting technology, arc flash, grounding and bonding, or electrical safety requirements. I'm confident many of you would also like to "speak out" on topics related to NEC requirements as well.
Are you a thought leader representing an electrical trade organization, electrical contractor, engineering firm, training group, research or testing organization, or do you work in a plant/facility? If so, and you're interested in submitting an opinion piece for this new department — or would simply like to suggest a topic — then send a note to Managing Editor Ellen Parson at [email protected] to get more information.
This month, Ron Gilcrease of Atlanta-based Rogers Electric helps us kick off this new column right with his call to action on the lighting front. He urges each and every one of you to help him reduce our dependence on rare earth metals and foreign markets, which will mitigate significant lamp cost increases going forward.
Let's see what other hard-hitting topics we can come up with in the months ahead. I'm excited to see what this new year and new department bring for all of us.


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April 14, 2007
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Six goals by MIT in the fourth quarter helped seal its 15-7 victory over Pilgrim Lacrosse League foe Norwich University on Saturday afternoon. Tyler Sorba posted a game-high eight points on five goals and three assists while Brennan Sherry contributed seven goals for the Engineers (3-5, 1-3 Pilgrim). Cody Hardenburgh paced the Cadets (1-6, 0-5 Pilgrim) with four goals.
Hardenburgh opened the scoring less than two minutes into the contest, but Sorba registered the equalizer at the 7:43 mark. MIT took the lead for good less than a minute later when Ryan Ballentine set up Sherry. Ballentine earned his second assist of the day when Jonathan Stolmeier found the back of the net with 1:49 on the clock. Norwich narrowed its deficit to one (3-2) on Drew Caplin's unassisted strike with 23 seconds remaining.
The Engineers extended their advantage with a goal by Stolmeier and an extra-man score by Sherry that was set up by Ballentine. On their next possession, the Cadets' Kyle Marzeoti found the back of the net. Stolmeier set up Sherry for his third goal of the day, which raised MIT's margin to 6-3 before the intermission.
Dylan Roden continued the Engineers' scoring and Sorba earned the assists on a pair of extra-man goals by Sherry in the third quarter. Norwich stayed within striking distance as it responded with three goals as well. Hardenburgh connected on a feed from Nick Talcott and then collected a pass from Marzeoti that resulted in a man-down goal. Sam Glanders converted a pass from John Guarnieri with 18 seconds remaining in the frame that made the score 9-6.
Sorba single-handedly ended the Cadets' rally as he rattled off three consecutive goals during the first three minutes of the last quarter. Roden found Sherry for his sixth goal of day before Hardenburgh notched Norwich's lone goal of the frame. Sorba was factor in MIT's final goals as he posted an unassisted score and then set up Sherry with 1:24 left to play.
Patrick Shannon paced the Engineers with five groundballs as Zach Brewer collected 14 saves. For the Cadets, Marzeoti picked up a game-high seven groundballs while Joe Phelan finished with 10 saves.
Next up for MIT will be a home Pilgrim League game against Babson College on Wednesday, April 18. Norwich will continue its road trip at Daniel Webster College on Monday, April 16.


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Thursday, September 22, 2011
Mixed Media is pouring onto my cards
So for this card I thought I'd AGAIN let mixed media (MM as we call it) show it's face and I think that MM backgrounds make the perfect backdrop for Stamping Bella's new Three Sister stamps. What do ya think?
Vintage Hi Wheel card hubby commented that he liked it so I'm keeping this one under wraps for his 50th birthday in a few weeks. Will he find out, not likely! I don't think he reads my blog unless I tell him to.....so shhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! And if you happened to come by the Stamping Bella booth on Day 1 of Scrapfest you may have seen it...however, I did keep it under plastic so it would be in pristine condition when I brought it home and then I forgot it in my hotel room the next two days.
I used a blend of adirondak sprays, gesso and Crafter's Workshop tiny tiles stencil to create the background. Then I stamped the bike in black stazon and used some Faber Castel Pitt Big Brush pens for some subtle shading as well as the red on the seat and handles. I'm pretty pleased with this one...okay, I'll fess up, I'm REALLY pleased with this one! Hope the hubster likes it!
Next week our challenge will be popping all over the place. That means you have to POP IT UP and use dimension on your card. Hmmmm....willl I play it safe and use a foam dimensional dot, or MAYBE do something more adventurous!!!!!
Time will tell!
13 comments:
- Dana White said...
This is stunning!!
- September 23, 2011 at 12:53 AM
- yvon said...
This is gorgeous, looks just like a painting by someone famous.
Hugs, Yvon
- September 23, 2011 at 4:06 AM
- Riet said...
What a gorgeous card Linda.
Hugs Riet.xx
- September 23, 2011 at 4:14 AM
- Ebru Vatansever said...
Beautiful card Linda !!
- September 23, 2011 at 8:47 AM
- Denimo said...
Ah Linda... this is just beautiful!! Great colors and so very classy looking. I'm sure your hubby will be so very pleased with it! Great job!
- September 23, 2011 at 9:51 AM
- stamping bella said...
Don't forget to put it back into the plastic!!!
- September 23, 2011 at 9:53 AM
- Regan said...
- September 23, 2011 at 11:05 AM
- Cindy H. said...
Wow, this needs to go in a frame after he receives it!! It's absolutely gorgeous!!!
- September 23, 2011 at 12:22 PM
- Tammy Hershberger said...
OK, now you might have roped me in.... I'm TOTALLY going home tonight and trying something different with my "Friends United" stamp! This is beautiful, Linda.... your hubby will love it! (And he reads your blog? Mine doesn't even know how to turn on the computer!)
- September 23, 2011 at 2:52 PM
- Linda Carson said...
OUTSTANDING artwork!
- September 23, 2011 at 5:46 PM
- Tracy V. said...
I think it is beautiful! I love the background and how the stamp looks on it. Great shading too! Btw - YOU have inspired me to start doing a little mixed media! I have been admiring your MM pages the last few weeks, they are just beautiful. So I finally sat down and made a couple things the other night. Loving it! So different then coloring images with copics and pencils. So relaxing!
Tracy V
- September 23, 2011 at 11:01 PM
- jroff said...
Absolutely love !!!
- September 25, 2011 at 12:55 PM
- Michele (mitchygitchygoomy) said...
So glad Emily persisted in introducing you to mm, Linda 'cause you are AMAZING. I so love your way with color. I have "skulked" around your blog for many moons and I just sigh. If I want to copy pencils, I go to Paula, but if I want to copy the vibrant color and depth of copics, there is none like you!
- October 3, 2011 at 10:18 PM


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The N.C. Highway Patrol has charged a man in the death of a woman who died from injuries she sustained in Tuesday's accident on N.C. Highway 150 South in Tyro.
The N.C. Highway Patrol has charged a man in the death of a woman who died from injuries she sustained in Tuesday's accident on N.C. Highway 150 South in Tyro.
Friday morning, troopers charged Charles Anthony Branham, 21, of Wafford Circle, with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle in the death of 28-year-old Kari Barnes. He received a $25,000 unsecured bond and a court date of Nov. 28, said the investigating trooper, Ned Moultrie.
Barnes was driving a Chevrolet Cavalier when her vehicle was struck in a head-on collision on N.C. 150 near John M. Ward Road at 3:06 p.m. She was pronounced dead Wednesday afternoon at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
The Highway Patrol said a Ford Mustang, driven by Branham, was traveling north on N.C. 150 and crossed the center line, striking her vehicle head-on. The Cavalier contained Barnes, her two children, Kaleb, 9, Alexa, 8, and the granddaughter of her mother's boyfriend, Zoei Puckett, 9. All of the children have been treated and released after receiving medical treatment from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem.
Kari Barnes, who was trapped inside the vehicle, was unconscious when first responders arrived. The Highway Patrol said Branham's original travel speed and speed at impact was 55 miles per hour. Barnes' original travel speed and speed at impact was 50 mph. The speed limit is 55 mph in that section of N.C. 150.
The factor in the accident was crossing the center line, and it appeared alcohol was not involved, said Pam Kearns, a spokeswoman with the Highway Patrol. It remained unclear Friday morning what may have led to Branham's vehicle crossing the center line.
Mike Kendrick, the boyfriend of Kari Barnes' mother, Karolyn Underwood, said Barnes was on her way to get medicine for Alexa who had a sore throat. He said the mother of two children was enrolled at Davidson County Community College.
Darrick Ignasiak can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 217, or at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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9:00 pm
Half The Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide Diane Lane and Nicholas Kristof are in Somaliland, where one in 12 women dies in childbirth. They meet with the founder of the country's first maternal health facility and visit villages where hospital-trained midwives work. America Ferrera and Kristof visit India's Kaighat red-light district where a woman and her shelter program working to break the tradition of forced prostitution passed from mother to daughter. Olivia Wilde joins Kristof in Kenya to see how women entrepreneurs are changing their lives and their communities through micro-financing. Part 2 of 2G
11:00 pm
Billy The Kid: American Experience This is a story of a child born to impoverished Irish immigrants, who leads a hardscrabble, itinerant life, coming of age in a lawless corner of New Mexico. An Irish immigrant ring controls all money-making endeavors, with the Mexican population frequently cheated out of property. Henry McCarty, known as Billy the Kid, is ensnared in a centuries-old Irish-English conflict on the plains of the Southwest.G