text:
|2009-03-10, 02:45
|Link #121
Join Date: Dec 2006
Age: 32
Interesting tidbit from MOON PHASE
Compared to last year's 52 new TV anime productions, we'll be seeing quite a decrease this Spring season, as they plan to start 40 new shows. I remember we had a slight noteworthy increase last Fall season, but it seems the much needed decrease is finally coming.
I'll still have 15 new shows to check out. orz
|2009-03-10, 08:16
|Link #122
Join Date: Jan 2007
But here and now, the average otaku will have to cut down on spending considering they are already spending most of their disposable income on anime goods.
As for TRL's comparison. It seems that the average otaku doesn't care much about big budget animation or things that look like big budget animation. And I agree even though my tastes aren't necessarily the same. And I said it before, Miyazaki is a complete different world from the industry that produces the bulk of anime discussed here. So how he fares or what his productions cost isn't really relevant when discussing the future of anime.
|2009-03-10, 08:21
|Link #123
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2008
I also wonder about those who have broken out of their doujin origins, like Type-Moon and authors of Higurashi and how compare with other TV shows, like Samurai 7 for example which I heard had huge costs. In a documentary, it seems like the two persons working on the original Higurashi game worked with a bugdet of like.. ¥0
Going back to production methods, I'm still surprised at how much manual labor goes into the animation. Even if you don't use traditional cells and everything is digitized and painted digitally, the animation itself for many shows is still completely done by hand. I guess even Korea's becoming too expensive for the in-between frames so that work is going to Philippines and China. But I don't think it has to be that way. Even key-frame work can be more streamlined. A lot of US cartoons (e.g. Saturday morning toons) are completely vectorized. You can use skeletal based animation, even cell-shaded animation without having to stick with the physics of the modeling (i.e. do free-form adjustment of the final 2D-projected object and interpolate the frames from those points).
I'm not sure if there is software to do this yet, but I think that VA work can also be improved with some method to automatically sync and animate lip flaps. There are a few methods to do this. You can do beat analysis on the audio to extract the timing for the syllables and combine that with the script to perform the automation. Or you can do full blown voice recognition (probably not accurate); or either attach motion sensors to the VA's mouth or do video analysis on their lip movement. This would also greatly assist with dubbing in other languages as well, if you had a process to re-render the entire show, keeping everything the same but changing the lip flaps. I think this would improve dubbing VA performance too, in my humble opinion.
Anyways, none of this will matter if much of the cost -- and compensation -- is on the business side.
|2009-03-10, 13:07
|Link #124
Feeling comfy
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 44
|2009-03-10, 13:29
|Link #125
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Philippines
Age: 42
|2009-03-10, 13:39
|Link #126
Deadpan Snarker
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: The Neverlands
Age: 41
same as the Music industry: They are churning out SO DAMN MUCH, they're flooding their own market
if there was no illegal downloading, many shows/artists would have been dead and forgotten already, simply because the consumer can't keep up anymore
Everyone is trying to sell me toiletpaper while I only have one *** to wipe
and bitching on me because I get the cheapest available
|2009-03-10, 14:09
|Link #127
Translator, Producer
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Age: 39
|2009-03-10, 15:21
|Link #128
Join Date: Jan 2007
Oh, and Toradora definitely is nothing one has to be ashamed of watching - but its appeal is not based on a big animation budget or that somebody at least makes it look good. On the other hand, big budget anime especially when targeting the international market can be very soulless, mechanical and appealing to lower instincts. Maybe not the instincts that demand moe blobs in fetish costumes but others. And Makoto Shinkai is a one-trick pony in my eyes.
In any case, to say it once again: the question what happens to the anime subculture is not decided at Studio Ghibli. And for the question how webtwopointoh affects movie or TV series production I see Ghibli rather in the same boat with Pixar than with e.g. Gainax. Because Ghibli's target is the mainstream audience.
|2009-03-10, 17:17
|Link #129
Deadpan Snarker
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: The Neverlands
Age: 41
What? You're trying to claim people AREN'T cheapskates?
because believe it or not, people actually do swipe toiletpaper from the stalls
But my point was that -keeping downloading out of the picture-
there's only so much anime you can watch while the studios keep churning out more and more
|2009-03-10, 23:13
|Link #130
Feeling comfy
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 44
Regardless of Shinkai's relative merits as a creator, the point remains that a production of comparable quality to those churned out by full-fledged studios can be be carried out on a very small budget. (I highly suspect, though, that Shinkai called in several favours in order to get by on just US$220,000 for 5 Centimetres Per Second.)
Finally, to what extent is the anime market driven by otaku spending? They may be the most vocal segment, but that doesn't necessarily mean they've got the biggest spending power. Also, the industry is likely to ruin itself by catering only to a niche, instead of expanding its appeal.
|2009-03-10, 23:29
|Link #131
Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2009
|2009-03-11, 04:46
|Link #132
Join Date: Dec 2006
Age: 32
The series themselves may have wider appeal, but what it comes down to is how anime is marketed. For wider appeal, they usually need dumb down the product so that small children can accept it, invest more money in advertising, get earlier TV slots... You can follow TOEI's example (early morning TV series for children -> merchandise -> theatrical release). The problem is, there is no middle road between mainstream and niche, so studios make an extensive assessment how much market potential the original has, then they tailor the anime product accordingly. Why not take risks once in a while? Because they just don't have the money. The mainstream is the motherfucking juggernaut, bitch. You don't mess with it unless you have all the means necessary.
Japan has been selling anime for a while now, the R1 industry tried a new approach but failed. Most of us in this thread, on the other hand, are just armchair quarterbacks with a Western salesman mentality and just assume that the industry is doing something wrong because it's not doing too hot. Industry reps themselves have said that the market's sales potential has been reached. They had enough time on their hands to learn from past mistakes (over 40 years!). Let's have some faith in what they have to say and their methods.
|2009-03-11, 07:17
|Link #133
Join Date: Jan 2007
And when I point out that (real or seemingly) big budget isn't everything, all you think of is "porn". Actually, porn could benefit more from a big budget than a dialogue heavy show.
(*) Or rather the visual component in general than animation in particular. Which is one reason he can keep his budget tight. In any case: he delivers eye candy.
Oh, and Sazae-san has the widest appeal IIRC.
Last edited by Slice of Life; 2009-03-11 at 07:32.
|2009-03-11, 09:29
|Link #134
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2009
What keeps anime interesting is that it serves a niche market ( or several niche markets given the number of genres in anime). Compare it to the independant producers in music or comics who tailer their products for a smaller fanbase that wants something else then what the mainstream delivers. Therefore anime is still as viable as ever. The current economic crisis will hurt but it wont be worse then the fallout of the 90s economic crisis for Japan, if anything the companies should be more resilient due to their previous experiences.
The current problem is twofold:
1) A sector problem:
the people who make anime are not earning enough and a lot of talent is lost as these people leave for other better paying employers. The cause is not a bubble/burst in anime but an inefficient system of subsidaries that loses to much of the money before it reaches the production companies. The solution is mergers between studions for market power or vertical intergration. Production companies merging with the production commitees or merchandise manufacturers. An example is studio Satelight which joined the Sankyo group in 2006 for financial safety or in the 80s Bandai purchasing Sunrise.
2) Captalisation issue:
Dvd sales are dropping (for whatever reason). It's not the first time the anime sector has to adapt to a new way of making money of their product. From different formats (movie/TV to OVA market) to changes in audience (tastes of a more mature audience). At the end of the day the core product is entertainment trough the medium of animation. No matter the audience or way of distribution. New ways of earning money can be online distribution (Kadokawas Yahoo experiment), more focus on merchandise (more Haruhi dolls anyone?) or a new way we haven't even thought off.
As long as people want animated entertainment there will be a way to make money of that desire and the anime industry will have a future.
|2009-03-11, 12:12
|Link #135
Feeling comfy
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 44
Assuming, of course, that new media is even to blame. There are, no doubt, other economic factors at work.
Meanwhile, make a good-enough product for a well-targeted audience and, yes, people will still buy.
|2009-03-11, 19:43
|Link #136
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2008
5cm/sec credits:
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Screenplay: Makoto Shinkai
Storyboard: Makoto Shinkai
Producer: Makoto Shinkai
3DCG Work: Makoto Shinkai, Yoshitaka Takeuchi
Camera: Makoto Shinkai
Cinematography: Makoto Shinkai
Color design: Makoto Shinkai
Editing: Makoto Shinkai
Sound director: Makoto Shinkai
Looking at Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place, there's even less people involved. Also, another similar style of production is Hoshizora Kiseki, where's it's practically all Akio Watanabe
other small scale examples would be with Touhou's A Summer Day`s Dream and Kinema Kan.
Last edited by npcomplete; 2009-03-11 at 21:13.
|2009-03-11, 21:09
|Link #137
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Dying to get back to Japan (but currently near Chicago)
Age: 30
|2009-03-12, 03:11
|Link #138
Join Date: Dec 2006
Age: 32
|2009-03-12, 08:50
|Link #139
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2008
But in all seriousness I wonder if it has to be that much though..
I would assume it didn't cost Touhou that much to produce their 30 min episode
Like I alluded to before about animation methods and what not I believe some of the costs can be driven down. Looking at some behind-the-scenes/making-of footage I see a lot of going back and forth between animators and staff with animation director and director and upper level supervisors for like every little thing.
|2009-03-12, 09:30
|Link #140
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Hokkaido
Age: 69
How about rights fees for the original work? I know that some of the larger houses like Bandai have both anime and manga arms, so the pricing there is a bit obscure. But in general don't the anime studios have to buy the rights to the original work from its publisher?
Then there's marketing, which I'd guess could account for a quarter of the entire budget for a show. Websites, advertising, seiyuu public appearances, it all adds up, not to mention the cost of buying the TV time to show the programs themselves.
So let's suppose for the moment our modest little show sells 5,000 copies of each DVD (which makes it relatively successful according to the figures in the DVD sales thread). For a 12-episode series, there could be as many as six discs at $50 each, for total revenues of $1.5 million. At $100K per episode ($1.2 million total cost) there's not much profit even in a relatively successful show. I'm guessing the real profits come from licensed products and other paraphernalia.
|news, anime, commentary
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text:
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subset: commoncrawl


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Skip to comments.Terry McAuliffe Pledges Colorado-Like Gun Control if Elected
Posted on 09/24/2013 10:53:08 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe's (D) website was updated Monday to show his commitment to bring Colorado-like gun control to the commonwealth.
In the section titled "Investing in Virginia's Urban Centers," TerryMcAuliffe.com now contains the heading, "Support Common Sense Gun Control Measures."
Under that heading, it says McAuliffe "will support mainstream and majority supported gun control measures like universal background checks, limiting the size of magazines, and a return to the 1-gun-per-month rule."
The limitation on magazine capacity is a Colorado-like gun control measure that will put law-abiding Virginians at a disadvantage the moment it is enacted. This is because criminals will not obey it but will keep their "high-capacity" magazines so they can outgun their victims.
Universal background checks will mean an end to private gun sales in the state of Virginia, as they did in Colorado....
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Then let him suffer the same fate the Colorado politicians who voted for that crap did and will.
The rural Virginia voters who weren't fired up about either candidate will not come out in record numbers to vote against him.
This shows the liberals either have the fraud sewed up or their polling shows way too man libs have moved to Virginia.
He really doesn't want to be governor does he?
Hey McAuliffe (you richard head) go be Governor of Maryland — they love that crap over there. Leave Virginia alone you communist POS...
***Universal background checks will mean an end to private gun sales in the state of Virginia, as they did in Colorado***
Really? Do not these fools know their "law" will not stop people from selling their PRIVATE PROPERTY to others who may wish to buy?
Can you see a rancher on the high plains telling his neighbor "I can't sell it to you till we go into town and get a background check on YOU to make sure YOU are not a criminal".
...in a sane world, Terry McAluffe would be toast the second he came out with his promise.
...now, however, in this age of madness, who knows? I guess we will find out in NOV...
Or, it's just the shear, unmitigated arrogance of the left.
Sadly, they may be right.
Black markets are the only free markets left.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the American electorate. The "moms" whose sole accomplishment is to have reproduced and who wet themselves at the thought of a gun will vote for him. The parasites who are too lazy to steal and count on the government to do their stealing for them will vote for him. Blacks will vote for him because they just know that Democrats will give them more of the loot than Republicans will vote for him. Government workers will vote for him because democrats expand government and there's nothing like being an employee in an expanding industry to get ahead.
The former is a given and the latter (demographics) are a b*tch.
Time for a N/S Virginia and California.
I don't believe Virginians are that stupid, but these day one can never tell.
The rural Virginia voters who weren't fired up about either candidate will not come out in record numbers to vote against him."
I hope you're right. My local TV station's website has a poll up---who would you vote for? So far it's Cuccinelli 50%, McAuliffe 24%. Now that sounds good, but I'm in the heart of solidly red central Virginia. The fact that the crook is getting 24% astounds me.
Living up to his nickname "the punk".
Terry, buddy, you might want to check what happens when this issue hits the ballot box. They don't call it a Third Rail for nothing.
Welcome to VA...
It won't make a difference: most voters cast their ballots for whomever they think is "cool", without a hint as to what they are actually voting for. This was abundantly clear to me while standing in line to vote in the last election. Winston Churchill was right when he said that the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.


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While the constant summer rains may have proved to be an inconvenience for tourists and beach-goers this summer, for area resident Betty Price, rain is a nightmare.
While the constant summer rains may have proved to be an inconvenience for tourists and beach-goers this summer, for area resident Betty Price, rain is a nightmare.
Price has been a 31-year resident of Watermark Way in the St. Joe Shores community outside of WindMark Beach and for the last three years, her backyard, garage and utility room have all flooded each time it has rained.
This summer�s weather made her day-to-day routine especially irksome.
It all started four years ago when a holding pond was installed for WindMark Beach.
There wasn�t any form of drainage on the county land behind Price�s household and thus nowhere for the water to go as the rain continued to fall. She noted that as the water levels rise, it spilled out of the pond and down onto her property.
�I would watch the water flowing from the pond back into my yard,� said Price.
Since then her backyard has continually flooded during the summer months and as water levels continued to rise, it invaded her car port and utility room.
Four years later, the utility room is now covered in what Price believes to be black mold and she reported the smell as �horrendous.� Her son Stan had to put her washer, dryer and two freezers up on blocks just to keep them out of the water.
Fed up with the situation, Stan went before the Gulf County Board of Commissioners in Sept. of 2009 and asked for drainage to be added to the area. He didn�t seek an immediate answer, but rather a commitment to solve the problem.
Former Commissioner Bill Williams motioned for a feasibility study and cost estimate to be conducted.
It passed 3-2 but no additional records on the topic were available. In February 2010, the BOCC showed interest in putting together a stormwater committee and Williams requested Stan to be on it, though no additional information was available.
The commissioners recommended that the Price family invest in a pump while the studies could be completed, but having already paid for her dryer vent to be moved up after water levels got too high, Price didn�t want to incur the additional expense of a pump and the electricity to run it.
Unsure what to do, Price reached out to current District 3 Commissioner Joanna Bryan to seek assistance.
Unsuccessful in reaching Bryan and frustrated, she reached out to District 1 Commissioner Carmen McLemore who put her in touch with Jake Lewis at Public Works.
When water levels got too high, Price called Lewis who then brought out the city�s pump to her residence.
�Jake has been very helpful through it all,� said Price.
This year, as the summer rains continued, Price asked Lewis to leave the pump on her property and she puts on thigh-high rubber boots to wade through the water and pump the yard in the morning and evening, a process that takes roughly 2-3 hours.
�I need help,� said Price. �The flooding happens consistently every time it rains.�
Price said that she never had the problem before the WindMark holding pond was dug. She has spoken with attorneys in Tallahassee who have recommended she take action against the county.
Price would prefer not to take legal action; she simply wants a drain installed to keep the water at bay.
�Something has got to be addressed out there,� said County Commissioner Ward McDaniel, who has also visited Price. �Those people can�t continue with that.�
County Commissioner Warren Yeager agreed, �We need to help them because it is safety issue.�
Star News Editor Tim Croft contributed to this report


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The Future.
Labels: Mocksville, North Carolina
Labels: Mocksville, North Carolina
posted by Ryan Hoshor at 4:10 PM | 3 comments
"Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Luke 12:27
I shoot most all of my photos with my Canon 50D or aging Rebel XT along with my 28-135mm IS USM and 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM lenses. For wide-angle, I have the XT's 18-55mm kit lens.
Several people have asked me about using my photos/artwork, so I just wanted to mention that everything on this site belongs to God, and can be freely used as such for personal uses. "Freely ye have received, freely give." May God bless you!
However, if you want to use artwork or photos commercially, please contact me. If you want to find out more, you can read about the Creative Commons license by clicking on the icon below.


text:
Check out this story from Civil War News, which features an update and background information on Philadelphia's Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum. This is the museum that was promised funds for a new building by the state, packed up its collection, left its old quarters—and was then denied the funds needed to move to a new home.
I had the privilege of seeing the collection a few years ago, and it's a fantastic assemblage of material: Meade's uniform, Reynolds's death saddle, Grant's death mask, and more escutcheons and firearms than you can shake a stick at, among other treasures. If you live in Pennsylvania, contact your state officials and tell them to release the funds the CWURM was promised, so these items can be back on public view, where they belong.


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The Weighted Fitness Ball with strap is made with soft, pliable anti-burst PVC that's designed to be easily grasped and used, along with a Velcro strap that goes through the ball and around the user's hand. The strap provides additional support and expands strength-training exercise options. The balls can be used for strengthening and toning both the lower and upper body. They can be held in one or both hands and can be used with or without the strap if desired. The balls are available in three weights and colors — the orange 6-pound ball retails for $20, the purple 8-pound ball costs $25, and the blue 10-pound ball is $30. Contact: Harbinger, 35 Executive Ct., Napa, CA 94558; phone: 800-729-5954; fax: 800-729-5947; www.harbingerfitness.com.
Flooring System
Encore is a transportable pre-finished real oak hardwood floor with an integrated sprung subfloor, providing consistent and safe energy absorption and true ball bounce for multi-purpose use, including basketball, volleyball, aerobics and martial arts. The 8-foot wide by 82.1-inch long sections provide fast and easy installation, breakdown and storage with no tools required. With a DIN rating of 63 and a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years, Encore is guaranteed up to seven years against wear. Contact: Aeson Flooring Systems, 2000 Hamilton St., Suite C200, Philadelphia, PA 19130; phone: 215-636-9000; fax: 215-564-4206; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com; www.aesonflooring.com.
Lyon Workspace Products' new condensed catalog features products that are carried in stock for immediate shipment at all Lyon distribution centers. The full-color catalog features all-welded storage cabinets, lockers, workstations, ergonomic seating, shop furniture, tool storage, modular drawer cabinets, shelving and storage rack. Contact: Lyon Workspace Products, P.O. Box 671, Aurora, IL 60507; phone: 800-323-0096; fax: 630-892-5747; www.lyonworkspace.com.


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If you need to do some construction work, you're in the right place. Sam's Club® offers a wide collection of construction tools, fixtures and industrial janitorial supplies. Whether you're looking for a step stool, a wet/dry vacuum or a backup power supply for your equipment, you'll find what you need.
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Sam's club offers a wide variety of generators and power supplies, engineered with a useful range of features. One of the things you'll need to consider when choosing a generator is your power needs. Some generators are designed to only power small equipment and tools while others have the capacity to power a small- or medium-sized building. The power-rating of a generator (wattage) is typically tied to its size, so the more powerful the generator, the bigger—and louder—it is likely to be.
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An injury to Radamel Falcao leaves Diego Simeone worried despite win at home, meanwhile there was important victories for Espanyol and Osasuna
A goal in the closing stages from Raul Baena saw Espanyol narrowly defeat 10-man Mallorca 3-2 on Friday evening.
The hosts landed the first blow just 16 minutes in when Baena was fouled outside the area and Simao stepped up to lash home the free kick from 25 yards.
However, the match was turned on its head just before the break when Giovani Dos Santos coolly finished into the bottom-left corner and Javi Marquez terrifically volleyed home from a corner to make it 2-1 to Mallorca.
The Catalan side improved after the break, and were back on level terms 22 minutes from time when Joan Verdu dispatched a penalty kick. The match was made all the more difficult for the Islanders when Antonio Luna was sent off for a second bookable offence, and Espanyol completed the comeback seven minutes from time when Baena powered home from a few yards out to make it 3-2.GRANADA 2-0 RAYO
An understrength Rayo Vallecano paid for poor defensive errors as they were defeated 2-0 by Granada at Los Carmenes.
The visitors were missing star players Leo Baptistao and Alejendro Dominguez for the trip, and felt their absence throughout as they lacked a cutting edge in the final third.
The home side opened the scoring midway through the first period when Allan Nyom showed determination to get on the end of a long ball and smash a teasing ball into the area. The unfortunate Jordi Amat diverted into his own net in an attempt to clear, making it 1-0.
The victory was ensured 10 minutes from time when a pacey counterattack from hosts saw Carlos Aranda cut the ball back to Recio 25 yards out, and the debutant lashed a shot into the bottom left corner.GETAFE 1-1 SEVILLA
Unai Emery's La Liga reign as Sevilla boss started with a 1-1 draw with Getafe at Coliseum Alfonso Perez on Saturday evening.
Los Rojiblancos posed the bigger threat in the first period, and should have taken the lead through chances for Alvaro Negredo and Jesus Navas in the first 20 minutes. Their goal did eventually come five minutes before half time when Ivan Rakitic neatly set-up Jose Antonio Reyes to finish coolly for his third goal of the campaign.
Despite being dominant in the first half, Sevilla conceded before the break when Adrian Colunga's free kick deceived Andres Palop to float into the top corner.
Neither side could muster up any meaningful chances as the match went on, ensuring the points were shared.MALAGA 1-1 CELTA VIGO
Malaga passed up the chance to move into the Champions League places in La Liga as they could only draw with 1-1 a plucky Celta Vigo side at La Rosaleda.
The opening stages saw both sides try their luck with shots from distance, but none of the attempts posed any threat to the goalkeepers. Malaga did take the lead 38 minutes in when a goalmouth scramble ensued inside the Celta box and the ball fell to the feet of Martin Demichelis, who had the easiest of tasks to prod home.
The second half was a relatively drab affair, with the only real chance of note proving to be decisive. Alex Lopez powered his way through the Malaga defence and the ball broke kindly for Augusto Fernandez, who slotted the ball into the net to earn a point for the visitors.
The relegation battle between Osasuna and Deportivo at El Sadar ended in a 2-1 victory to Jose Luis Mendilibar's outfit on Sunday morning.
The home side made their intentions known early, with Emiliano Armenteros and Alvaro Cejudo both coming close with decent chances. The early pressure paid off 26 minutes in when Kike Sola got on the end of a cross from Armenteros to bounce the ball in with awkward volley.
Osasuna doubled their lead on the hour mark when a quick free kick from Lolo saw Nino through on goal to the right-hand side, and the 32-year-old made it 2-0 with a powerful strike into the near post.
Deportivo rallied after going two down, and managed to claw a goal back through a Javier Camunas strike at the near post, but it was too little too late and the Coruna side now find themselves at the foot of the table.
Goals from Javi Guerra and Oscar Gonzalez gave Real Valladolid a 2-0 victory over Real Zaragoza in a scrappy Spanish Primera Division encounter on Sunday afternoon.
Guerra struck the post with a header in the opening stages, but put the miss behind him a few minutes later when he latched on to a corner from Oscar to turn swiftly inside the box before blasting home.
Heavy rain caused mayhem with the pitch at the Jose Zorrilla, and the unpredictable surface resulted in injuries for Patrick Ebert, Glenn Loovens, and Apono.
The home side ensured they would claim all three points with 18 minutes remaining. Carlos Pena crossed into the box and Oscar was on hand to finish, sealing the win.
Atletico Madrid continued their fantastic run at the Vicente Calderon with a comfortable 2-0 victory against Levante on Sunday evening, but their victory has been marred with an injury to talisman, Radamel Falcao.
A fine goal opened the scoring for los Colchoneros 13 minutes before half time when Tiago picked out Javi Manquillo with a lofted pass and the full-back reversed a pass to the back post for Adrian Lopez, who slotted home.
The hosts suffered a major blow 12 minutes into the second half when Falcao looked to run on to a pass through the middle, only to pull up clutching his hamstring. The Colombian subsequently had to be substituted.
Despite losing their star player, Atletico marched on and doubled their lead on the hour mark when Koke powered a fantastic strike into the top corner from 25 yards.
The result leaves Diego Simeone's men eight points off the pace at the top of La Liga.


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|The newest Mars rover, the Mars Science Laboratory or Curiosity, for short, is scheduled to launch later this year and land in 2012. The mission's project scientist John Grotzinger discusses where the rover will land, and what scientists hope to learn from the mission.


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Editor's Summary
The application of bibliometric and informetric approaches to study the web, its information resources, structures and technologies, is known as webometrics. Since the name was coined in 1997, the value of webometrics quickly became established through the Web Impact Factor, the key metric for measuring and analyzing website hyperlinks. Link analysis became more focused as link impact analysis and link network analysis, taking the quantity of links as a reflection of research productivity or prestige. Web citation analysis developed to facilitate investigations of links to journal articles, and analysis of keywords and phrases enables linking other types of web content. While webometrics is based in the theory of citation analysis, its methodology and software contributions may offer the greatest value and widest applicability. A study of the ASIS&T site demonstrates link network analysis.
link analysis
network analysis
citation analysis
research methods
information science history
Bulletin Issues
Current Issue
Past issues of the Bulletin are available here, or through the ASIS&T Digital Library.
Bulletin, August/September 2012
Special Section
A History of Webometrics
by Mike Thelwall
The information science field of webometrics is "the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the web drawing on bibliometric and informetric approaches" [1] or, more generally, "the study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals using techniques that are not specific to one field of study"[2]. While the former definition emphasizes the informetric heritage of many bibliometric methods, the latter focuses on the value that webometrics could provide to the wider social sciences, reflecting a shift in webometrics over time from more theoretical studies to more applied studies, though retaining an emphasis on methods development. Webometrics currently provides a range of methods and software for various kinds of quantitative analyses of the web, and, despite initial concerns that web data would always be easily manipulated because they are not quality-controlled, the advocates of webometrics claim that it is useful both for studies of aspects of the web itself, such as hyperlinking among academic websites, and studies of offline phenomena that might be reflected online, such as political attitudes reflected in blogs.
The term webometrics was coined in 1997 by Tomas Almind and Peter Ingwersen in recognition that informetric analyses could be applied to the web [3; see also 4]. The field really took off, however, with the introduction of the Web Impact Factor (WIF) metric to assess the impact of a website or other area of the web based upon the number of hyperlinks pointing to it [5]. WIFs seemed to make sense because more useful or important areas of the web would presumably attract more hyperlinks than average. The logic of this metric was derived from the importance of citations in journal impact factors, but WIFs had the advantage that they could be easily calculated using the new advanced search queries introduced by AltaVista, a leading commercial search engine at the time. Webometrics subsequently rose to become a large coherent field within information science, at least from a bibliometric perspective [6, 7], encompassing link analysis, web citation analysis and a range of other web-based quantitative techniques. In addition, webometrics became useful in various applied contexts, such as to construct the world webometrics ranking of universities [8, 9] and for scientometric evaluations or investigations of bodies of research or research areas [10]. This article reviews a few key areas of webometrics and summarizes its contribution to information science research.
Link Analysis: Impact Measurements and Networks
Link analysis drove early webometrics research, primarily through a combination of the development of improved methods and applications to a range of different contexts. Two types of studies emerged, link impact analyses and link network analyses. Link impact studies essentially compare the numbers of hyperlinks pointing to each website within a pre-defined set, such as all universities in a country or all departments within a discipline in a country. Links to university websites and, in some cases departmental websites, were found to correlate significantly with measures of research productivity or prestige, giving evidence of the validity of using link impact metrics as research-related indicator [10, 11, 12]. They have been used in this role to provide an indication of the most important organizations or websites within specific groups. In addition, a breakdown of the sources of links used in the calculations has been used to identify the sources of the impact, such as the country and organization types that host most of the links.
Link network research created network diagrams of the links among specified collections of websites in order to identify connectivity patterns. In addition to networks based upon direct links between pairs of sites, co-inlinks have also been used to indicate connections between pairs of sites. A co-inlink to a pair of websites A and B is a third website C that contains a hyperlink to both A and B
[4]. This relation is similar to co-citation in bibliometrics and is particularly useful when investigating websites that are similar but do not necessarily hyperlink to each other. Figure 1 is an example of a co-inlink network diagram for ASIS&T. A direct link network diagram would be likely to exclude links between pairs of sites that were similar in some way but were not directly related to each other.
Figure 1. A web environment network for ASIS&T created by Webometric Analyst
The nodes in the network are the websites most highly linked to from a set of 741 pages reported by Bing as containing a URL citation to asis.org. Lines between websites indicate co-inlinks between them from the 741 pages. All the organizations represented should be in some way related to ASIS&T. Green nodes are general international sites and pink nodes are university sites in the United States.
Two important components of link analysis are the software and methods to extract link data. Researchers were for many years able to gather hyperlink information from commercial search engines like Bing, AltaVista and Yahoo! via their advanced link search commands, but these tools were all eventually withdrawn. Link data can still be obtained by the use of specialist link analysis web crawlers, including free programs like SocSciBot (http://socscibot.wlv.ac.uk) and IssueCrawler (www.issuecrawler.net) as well as a range of other crawlers developed by individual researchers. The IssueCrawler initiative from sociology [13] seems to have been particularly successful at spreading link analysis methods to the wider areas of social sciences and the humanities. Within information science, hyperlink-based network diagrams have been used to investigate the interconnections between large groups of organizations, such as universities in Europe [14, 15] and organizations within a specific knowledge sector [16, 17].
Some link analysis research has focused on the links themselves, investigating why they are created and why some sites or pages attract more links than others. These studies seem to have focused exclusively on links in academic contexts. Content analyses have shown that links between academic websites tend to be created for scholarly or educational reasons [18], a partial similarity with citation analysis. Statistical tests have also been used to see which attributes of the website owners (other than research productivity or production, which was already a known factor) tend to associate with higher inlink counts, for example finding that research group website owner gender is unimportant [19]. A recent quite comprehensive study used the most advanced statistical modeling approach yet on a large dataset to gain significant insights into the factors behind academic website interlinking in Europe. Among the findings were that country, region, domain specialism and level (whether awarding doctoral degrees or not) were the most important factors predicting hyperlinks, while reputation was the key factor for the top universities [20].
From Web Citation Analysis to Altmetrics
The second type of webometrics to become popular was web citation analysis: counting online citations to published academic documents like refereed journal articles. The rationale behind early research was to assess whether the web could replace traditional citation databases to assess the impact of articles in open access online journals [21] and subsequently also for all journals [22]. This early research found that although counts of web citations correlated with citation counts from traditional databases, many of the web citations derived from non-academic sources, such as online library catalogues. As a result, the web appeared to be an inferior source of citation impact evidence for journals or individual journal articles.
This strand of webometric research gave way to more specialized investigations into particular types of web citations to academic publications, such as citations from PowerPoint presentations [23], online syllabi [24] and Google Books [25] on the basis that within these restricted domains, web-based citation counts could reveal different types of impact from the scholarly impact reflected by traditional citation counts. For example, online syllabus citations could reflect the education impact or value of articles. This line of research was subsequently overtaken by the altmetrics initiative, discussed elsewhere in this issue.
A promising but relatively little studied type of webometrics is the analysis of mentions of keywords or phrases not necessarily citations. This type of analysis was started by an investigation into the context of online mentions of academics [26], but the keyword approach has also been used to map concepts online [27] and interactions between concepts online by tracking co-words in web pages [28].
Theoretical Perspectives and Information-Centered Research
Webometrics has been a methods-centered field, developing methods to gather and analyze data from the web. Perhaps as a result of this focus, the theoretical component of most webometric studies has typically been drawn from citation analysis rather than being created specifically for web data. For example, many early studies assessed whether web citation counts or web link counts correlated with traditional citation counts, drawing upon Robert Merton's theoretical discussion of citation norms in science. Hence, such studies assessed to some extent how well web data fitted Merton's theory. The lack of development of specialist theory for the most developed area of webometrics, link analysis, reflects the web being a far more varied and complex space than academic journal databases, with theory development in the latter being recognized as problematic and controversial [29].
One partial exception to the lack of native theory for webometrics is information-centered research [30], a style of research theorized to be particularly appropriate to webometrics. An information-centered research study focuses on a new information source, such as a type of web data, and attempts to identify the social science research problems that the data is most suited to address rather than using a priori intuitions to match the data with a research problem and then to assess the value of the data for the problem. This theory was used to justify the development of a range of different methods to analyze web data and to match the methods to a variety of social science problem areas.
Web Data Analysis as a Service for the Social Sciences
Webometrics research has expanded from general or academic web analyses to investigations of social websites, often by automatically downloading data from those websites either through a web crawler or through data requests sent through permitted routes (application programming interfaces). For example, exploiting the information-centered research approach, blogs and RSS feeds have been analyzed to detect public fears about science while social network sites have been investigated to detect friendship patterns and language use. Twitter has been analyzed for the sentiment of public reactions to major media events and YouTube for the factors associated with discussions attached to online videos. In all cases, the methods of the research have been webometrics large scale data gathering and analysis for social science purposes but the findings of the research have been targeted at disciplines outside information science, such as media studies [31], politics [32, 33, 34] and science communication [35]. Many of the programs used are now publicly available in the free software Webometric Analyst.
The field of webometrics has now developed a range of different strands of research, from link analysis to social web analysis, and is used in mainstream information science applications such as research evaluation in addition to applications in the wider social sciences. Its outputs are methods-based, including free software and a range of analysis methods.
Perhaps one advantage of webometrics that has been insufficiently exploited within information science education is that webometric software supports the quick gathering of data targeted to a topic of interest whether defined by a specific set of websites or a set of keywords. This speed is useful for student projects since it allows students to devote more time to data analysis and research design rather than data collection. It also allows projects to be more targeted to student interests, including almost anything that is discussed significantly online. The data quality issues discussed above are even a positive advantage for student projects since they give them scope for an extensive and intelligent discussion of validity issues.
Resources Mentioned in the Article
[1] Björneborn, L., & Ingwersen, P. (2004). Toward a basic framework for webometrics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(14), 1216-1227.
[2] Thelwall, M. (2009). Introduction to webometrics: Quantitative web research for the social sciences. New York: Morgan & Claypool.
[3] Almind, T. C., & Ingwersen, P. (1997). Informetric analyses on the World Wide Web: Methodological approaches to Webometrics. Journal of Documentation, 53(4), 404-426.
[4] Rousseau, R. (1997). Sitations: An exploratory study. Cybermetrics, 1(1), Retrieved June 6, 2012, from www.cybermetrics.info/articles/v1i1p1.pdf.
[5] Ingwersen, P. (1998). The calculation of Web Impact Factors. Journal of Documentation, 54(2), 236-243.
[6] Åström, F. (2007). Changes in the LIS research front: Time-sliced co-citation analyses of LIS journal articles, 1990-2004. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(7), 947-957.
[7] Zhao, D., & Strotmann, A. (2008). Information science during the first decade of the Web: An enriched author co-citation analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(6), 916-937.
[8] Aguillo, I. F., Granadino, B., Ortega, J. L., & Prieto, J. A. (2006). Scientific research activity and communication measured with cybermetrics indicators. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1296-1302.
[9] Thelwall, M. (2010). Webometrics: Emergent or doomed? Information Research, 15(4). Retrieved July 18, 2012, from http://informationr.net/ir/15-4/colis713.html.
[10] Li, X., Thelwall, M., Musgrove, P. B., & Wilkinson, D. (2003). The relationship between the WIFs or inlinks of computer science departments in UK and their RAE ratings or research productivities in 2001. Scientometrics, 57(2), 239-255.
[11] Tang, R., & Thelwall, M. (2003). U.S. academic departmental website interlinking: Disciplinary differences. Library & Information Science Research, 25(4), 437-458.
[12] Thelwall, M., & Harries, G. (2004). Do the websites of higher rated scholars have significantly more online impact? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(2), 149-159.
[13] Rogers, R. (2006). Information politics on the web. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[14] Ortega, J. L., & Aguillo, I. F. (2008). Visualization of the Nordic academic web: Link analysis using social network tools. Information Processing & Management, 44(4), 1624-1633.
[15] Ortega, J. L., Aguillo, I. F., Cothey, V., & Scharnhorst, A. (2008). Maps of the academic web in the European Higher Education Area: An exploration of visual web indicators. Scientometrics, 74(2), 295-308.
[16] Heimeriks, G., & van den Besselaar, P. (2006). Analyzing hyperlink networks: The meaning of hyperlink-based indicators of knowledge. Cybermetrics, 10(1). Retrieved August 1, 2011 from http://cybermetrics.cindoc.csic.es/articles/v10i1p1.html
[17] Heimeriks, G., Hörlesberger, M., & van den Besselaar, P. (2003). Mapping communication and collaboration in heterogeneous research networks. Scientometrics, 58(2), 391-413.
[18] Bar-Ilan, J. (2005). What do we know about links and linking? A framework for studying links in academic environments. Information Processing & Management, 41(3), 973-986.
[19] Barjak, F., & Thelwall, M. (2008). A statistical analysis of the web presences of European life sciences research teams. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(4), 628-643.
[20] Seeber, M., Lepori, B., Lomi, A., Aguillo, I., & Barberio, V. (2012). Factors affecting web links between European higher education institutions. Journal of Informetrics, 6(3), 435-447.
[21] Smith, A. G. (1999). A tale of two web spaces; Comparing sites using Web Impact Factors. Journal of Documentation, 55(5), 577-592.\
[22] Vaughan, L., & Hysen, K. (2002). Relationship between links to journal websites and impact factors. ASLIB Proceedings, 54(6), 356-361.
[23] Thelwall, M., & Kousha, K. (2008). Online presentations as a source of scientific impact? An analysis of PowerPoint files citing academic journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(5), 805-815.
[24] Kousha, K., & Thelwall, M. (2008). Assessing the impact of disciplinary research on teaching: An automatic analysis of online syllabuses. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(13), 2060-2069.
[25] Kousha, K., & Thelwall, M. (2009). Google Book Search: Citation analysis for social science and the humanities. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(8), 1537-1549.
[26] Cronin, B., Snyder, H. W., Rosenbaum, H., Martinson, A., & Callahan, E. (1998). Invoked on the web. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49(14), 1319-1328.
[27] Thelwall, M., Vann, K., & Fairclough, R. (2006). Web issue analysis: An integrated water resource management case study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1303-1314.
[28] Khan, G. F., & Park, H. W. (2011). Measuring the triple helix on the web: Longitudinal trends in the university-industry-government relationship in Korea. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(12), 2443-2455.
[29] Moed, H. F. (2005). Citation analysis in research evaluation. New York: Springer.
[30] Thelwall, M., Wouters, P., & Fry, J. (2008). Information-centered research for large-scale analysis of new information sources. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(9), 1523-1527.
[31] Thelwall, M., Buckley, K., & Paltoglou, G. (2011). Sentiment in Twitter events. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(2), 406-418.
[32] Kim, J. H., Barnett, G. A., & Park, H. W. (2010). A hyperlink and issue network analysis of the United States Senate: A rediscovery of the web as a relational and topical medium. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(8), 1598-1611.
[33] Park, H. W. (2003). Hyperlink network analysis: A new method for the study of social structure on the web. Connections, 25(1), 49-61.
[34] Romero-Frias, E., & Vaughan, L. (2010). European political trends viewed through patterns of web linking. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(10), 2109-2121.
[35] Koteyko, N., Thelwall, M., & Nerlich, B. (2010). From carbon markets to carbon morality: Creative compounds as framing devices in online discourses on climate change mitigation. Science Communication, 32(1), 25-54.
Mike Thelwall is a member of the Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, School of Technology, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK. He can be reached by email at m.thelwall<at>wlv.ac.uk.
Articles in this Issue
Metrics and ASIS&T: Introduction
The Decade of Metrics?: Examining the Evolution of Metrics Within and Outside LIS
A History of Webometrics
Seeding a Field: The Growth of Bibliometrics Through Co-authorship Ties
Taking the Measure of Metrics: Interviews with Four ASIS&T Members
Metatheoretical Snowmen: A Pedagogical Gedankenexperiment in Information Metatheory


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I agree I think that circumcision is a mutilation.
I know it's hard for people to hear - especially men who have been circumcised or parents who have circumcised their child.
I was responding to Michah's post:
Comment by Micah Oliver 13 hours ago I recommend Joe and Richard watch this person's videos on circumcision after listening to episode #28. Of special interest as they relate to the episode is the video(s) comparing female and male circumcision. They are all excellent videos, and I happen to like his approach.
Male circumcision also effects female sexual pleasure. Removing the male foreskin reduces female pleasure when having sex with circumcised male vs an uncircumcised male. It is more pleasurable for a female, to have sex with a male who has a foreskin. It is more easy to climax. External clitoral stimulation is more necessary for a women to climax when having sex with a circumcised male.
Views: 1338
I really can't believe it is 2011, and this is still going on. Sad. If I had to look at my genitals and think that they had been altered when I was a child because of some religious nonsense, I would be furious. What a nonsensical betrayal based on a book full of made up hooey.
And WF Sophia is correct, there have been other discussions about this, but who doesn't want to keep the rant going when it is about such a tragic subject?
I recall one of my cousins who recently had a baby with her gf by invitro fertilization. When it was time to make the decision, her brother and father told her it was of the utmost importance to circumcise the child. Their main argument was that the uncircumcised look makes a boy "stand out." They are idiots.
When my son was born more than 30 years ago, i chose not to have him circumcised, even though it was then the norm in Australia to carry out the procedure within a few days of birth, before discharging mother and child home (I don't know if they still do this as I no longer live in Australia).
The reason boys were circumcised wasn't for religious reasons but because people believed it was more hygienic - something to do with a hot climate maybe? Anyway, because of my decision not to have him circumcised, my son did feel as a schoolboy that he "stood out" as all his peers had mutilated dicks. He wasn't happy about it and was pretty pissed off with me, so I wondered if I'd done the right thing. Now he's grown up, though, he tells me he's glad that he's still intact.
I've always wondered... how the hell do people, especially other guys know what your dick looks like >> I mean are sausage fests mandatory...
Even in change rooms I always went into the private stalls to change, just like it feels weird to use a urinal in public bathroom...
I mean the only people I wouldn't mind being bare naked around would be close friends, or lovers. But in the end it's a cultural thing.
I've seen some weird behavior in that area. Most guys I know are pretty private about their genitalia, but there are some always trying to check out other guys (closet gays, perhaps?) and show off, themselves. The bassist in my first band was like that. "Put it away, Steve! We don't want to see your foreskin!"
Judging from what some of his girlfriends said, though, it may have been compensation behavior, similar to perverts exposing themselves to little girls, for the shrieks and other reactions ... which they seem to interpret as confirmation of their masculinity, for some reason I've never been able to fathom.
Which is why I included the question mark in the parenthetical statement.
I never said that perverts who expose themselves to little girls are pedophiles. I said they're perverts.
It has nothing to do with focusing on the girls they're exposing themselves to. It's a very self-centered action. They pick young girls because they're the ones who will scream and react the most, giving the pervert his desired acknowledgement.
And I wouldn't say it concerns me, as much as it amuses me. Steve had so many issues. His undesired exhibitionist streak was one of his lesser offenses.
I don't know about this. I accuse others of being gay quite frequently, and I am not willing to beat the shit out of them. I usually want to give them a high five.
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|Attention: DocWiki has reached EOL and will be decommissioned January 25, 2019.
Device Association Status for Call Control Groups/Triggers Shows User Does Not Exist in Data Resync Results
From DocWiki
|Problem Summary
|If Telephony User is deleted in Cisco Unified CM and Data Resync is done for Call Control Groups/Triggers and User, Device Association status for Call Control Groups/Triggers shows "User doesn't exist."
|Error Message
|Possible Cause
|Call Control Groups/Triggers Resync is done before Telephony User Resync and at that time the Telephony User doesn't exist in Cisco Unified CM, so status will be displayed as mentioned. But during Data Resync of Telephony User(s), user(s) will be created in Cisco Unified CM and all the devices will be associated as well.
|Recommended Action
|If any error is displayed in the results, perform Data Check to verify the data
|Release 8.5(1)
|Associated CDETS #
|CSCtj36624, CSCtj43801


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Forum:Merging articles
Tolkien Gateway > Forums > Merging articles
Now, this is very annoying and time consuming, but I have merged quite a lot of articles which have been flagged for a very long amount of time. Why have they been left? —Unsigned comment by Reallyfat (talk • contribs).
- Most probably because it's time-consuming (as you mention).--Morgan 10:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
- I've held off as I still hope someday to have articles for every Quenya, Sindarin, etc. word, and if that's the case most of the merge candidates become worth keeping. But I think I'm on my own with that opinion :) --Hyarion 03:45, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
- I too have the same wish. I think it would be great if we had an article for each of the words in Morgan's dictionaries. But we don't need to keep the merge candidates. Whenever I merge
articles, I make sure that if the article has any one piece of etymological information, that piece of information is retained. So the articles for different words can just link to the etymology section of merged articles (where applicable).--Reallyfat Trollion 10:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
- I've also supported the existence of separate articles for each Etymologically interesting name. For example, I would not condone the merging of Dwimordene and Lothlorien, as the former is an OE name with its own etymology, not even a translation. For this reason I would never proceed to merging these or other articles. On the other hand TG doesn't express any clear preference about creating or retaining etymological articles; if a user put there a merge tag, none has the authority to remove it simply because he disagrees. I feel that most users felt like this, so the merging process remained in limbo. I am still not sure if the right thing was done. Sage 13:48, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
- Hyarion: No, I don't think you're on your own with that opinion. :-) However, what we did was to debate quite a lot if we should merge the "same-concept" articles, like the Dwimordene/Lothlórien case mentioned by Sage (which eventually was decided in a meeting, IIRC). I'm personally not convinced that articles such as "Gandalf/Names" is better than having separate articles for the different names.--Morgan 22:23, 15 February 2013 (UTC)


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Style: Classic High
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WESTFIELD, Mass. – At the NEICAAA Championships that took place on Sunday afternoon at Stanley Park, MIT women's cross country team finished fifth out of 37 teams behind Boston College, Vermont, Dartmouth and Scared Heart, but 50 points and three places ahead of Division III No. 1 ranked Williams College.
Freshman Sarah Quinn (Watchung, N.J.) finished 17th in the 5k varsity run (17:49.67), the highest finish for the Engineers, with sophomore Elaine McVay (San Ramon, Calif.) crossing the tape less than two seconds later in 19th place (17:51.33). Sophomore Kali Benavides (Miami, Fla.) finished fourth in the sub varsity race with a time of 18:20.17.
Finishing close behind Quinn and McVay were junior Kaitlin Allen (Bedford, N.H.) in 51st place, freshman Nicole Zeinstra (Holland, Mich.) in 55th, senior Brooke Johnson (Shoreham, N.Y.) in 56th and junior Martina de Geus (Los Altos, Calif.) in 61st, all finishing within seven seconds of each other. Ten seconds later, with a time of 18:41.52, sophomore Dacie Manion (Old Town, Maine) crossed the finish line, coming in 78th place.
MIT occupied a handful of the top positions in the sub varsity race. Finishing behind Benavides in 12th place with a time of 18:37.82 was junior Alexandra Taylor (Harbor Springs, Mich.), followed by freshman Allison Hallock (Boulder, Colo.) in 17th, junior Marie Burkland (Almont Mich.) in 21st and sophomore Cindy Huang (San Jose, Calif.) in 22nd. Junior Louise van den Heuvel (Nashua, N.H.) followed quickly after Huang and sophomore Shivani Kaushal (Grand Blanc, Mich.) was not far behind, crossing the line with times of 19:06.26 and 19:22.81 respectively.
MIT will have almost three weeks break before it travels to Northampton, Mass. to take part in the NEWMAC Championships on Saturday, Oct. 27.


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For lawyers or doctors eager to lend their professional energy to good causes, it's fairly straightforward to find pro bono opportunities. But what if your work involves writing code or fixing bugs? Software developers, technical writers, and other IT professionals who want to volunteer may not know where to begin looking for causes that make use of their expertise.
SocialCoding4Good (SC4G) aims to fill this gap by developing an online platform to match skilled employees from the technology sector with causes that need technical help. An initiative of Benetech, a nonprofit pioneer in leveraging technology for social good, SC4G focuses specifically on opensource projects that address humanitarian issues. Known as HFOSS for humanitarian free and open source software, such projects are proliferating to address causes ranging from human rights to global literacy.
"Open-source projects are perfectly suited to volunteers," explains SC4G leader Gerardo Capiel, vice president of engineering for Benetech. The open-source Firefox browser, for instance, has been developed and improved by thousands of volunteers collaborating from around the world. Why not do the same, he reasoned, to speed the development of innovative tools to protect human rights workers, improve food supply chains in drought-stricken regions, or achieve other social benefits?
Seed funding from the Knight Foundation through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation has enabled SC4G to launch a pilot with HFOSS "sister organizations," as Capiel describes them. Although not formally connected, organizations such as FrontlineSMS and Benetech are like-minded when it comes to using technological innovation to solve tricky social and environmental problems. They also need more extended volunteer engagement than a weekend-long burst of hackathon energy.
The Guardian Project, for example, is building tools on the Android mobile platform to ensure safer communication channels for those working under high-risk conditions. "These tools make secure communication possible in sensitive areas," explains Guardian's Derek Halliday. Having a safe way to gather and send information via mobile device, protect online contacts, or just keep your web browsing history private can be a lifesaver for human rights workers, journalists, health workers, and citizen activists in political hotspots.
The Guardian Project's work has attracted grant funding and government support, "but we don't have the funds to really ramp up resources," Halliday says. Developer headcount runs to "the tens," he estimates, rather than hundreds. Through SC4G, Halliday is anticipating an influx of highly skilled technical innovators to advance the Guardian Project's cutting-edge mobile tools on a limited budget.
On the other end of this equation, technology companies see SC4G as a way to offer employees new opportunities for skills-based volunteering. VMware, a global cloud virtualization company based in Palo Alto, Calif., is the first to commit to the initiative, giving each employee five paid days per year to devote to "causes they care about, things that are closest to their hearts," says Nicola Acutt, director of the VMware Foundation.
Through SC4G, VMware's global workforce of 12,000 "can leverage their specialized skills to have a bigger impact," Acutt predicts, "and find opportunities that spark their passions." What might software engineers gain in return? "Leadership experience, working in new situations—there's a whole host of potential soft skills," she adds.
SC4G is developing its own tools to fine-tune matching opportunities between HFOSS projects and interested volunteers. "We want to pair up the right developer with the right project," Capiel says. "We're breaking projects into small bits so that it's easy for lots of people to collaborate."


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After hitting the board in three previous stakes attempts at the meet, Numb Lips finally prevailed when a three-length winner of the Primal, giving the Agustin Bezara trainee his first career stakes triumph while simultaneously ending an eight-race losing streak.
Numb Lips will start from post six on Saturday with Fernando Jara scheduled to ride.
The David Fawkes-trained Cash Rules doesn't have much grass experience, but is a main-track stakes winner at the meet, having taken the $55,000 Sumter Stakes in early May. The son of Peace Rules followed that victory with second-place performances in both the Primal and the $75,000 Memorial Day Handicap where he finished behind Pacific Classic-bound Where's Sterling.
Cash Rules, who crossed the wire third in his lone lifetime turf try, has drawn post two for the Band Is Passing and will be ridden by leading local rider Luis Saez.
Imported stateside in 2011 to finish fourth, beaten 1 ¼ lengths, in the $100,000 Hallandale Beach Stakes on the Gulfstream grass, Liberty Cap had the looks of an eventual turf stakes winner, but 17 months and 16 starts later, the son of Street Cry enters the Band Is Passing without a stakes victory on his résumé.
In addition to his third in the Primal, Liberty Cap shows a fourth-place performance in the $55,000 Mecke Stakes and is a three-time winner on the year, including a grassy triumph at Gulfstream in March. The Chris Gatis trainee crossed the wire third in his most recent turf appearance, a local starter allowance in early July.
Liberty Cap has drawn post four for the Band Is Passing and will get the riding services of Jozbin Santana.
Caroni Stable's Oligarch crossed the wire fourth in the Primal, his second straight main track stakes attempt, and is a three-time winner over the local lawn, including a triumph in last October's $75,000 Tropical Park Derby.
Trained by Rodolfo Garcia, Oligarch was assigned post five at Monday's post position draw and will be ridden by Eduardo Nunez.
Shivananda Racing's Ducduc, the fifth-place finisher in the Primal, is also scheduled for a start in the Band Is Passing. Trained by Bisnath Parboo, the son of Langfuhr crossed the wire second two starts ago in the Sumter, and prior to that performance was third, beaten just over a length, in the $125,000 Miami Mile Handicap.
Ducduc, the winner of last year's $55,000 Joey Blueeyes, run on the Calder turf course at the same 1 1/16-mile distance of Saturday's race, drew post one and will be ridden by Orlando Bocachica.
Other notables entered in the Band Is Passing include Blackacre Farms, Inc.'s Flatter This, winner of last year's off-the-turf running of the Band Is Passing, and Chasing Tails Stables' Devon Rock, who took a late June Calder turf allowance by 5 ¼ lengths.
Completing the field is Laura White's Clean Shot, Bates Stable, Inc. and Jill Julian's Runyon Humor, and Dinah Stein and Sal Maya's Dinahmite Sal.
The $55,000 Band Is Passing Stakes is scheduled to go as the 10th race on a 12-race Saturday program from Calder with an approximate post time of 5:03 p.m. First race post time is 12:55 p.m.


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Happy Hour | Public
July 9 @ 2:30 pm - 8:00 pm
|Recurring Event (See all)
An event every week that begins at 2:30pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, repeating indefinitely
Event Navigation
Join us for happy hour most week days from 3:30 – 9pm. Drink specials until 7:30! If you would like to make a reservation, please inquire at the office or contact us at (415) 974-1719.


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5.0 Mustang & Super FordsEvents
Vortech Supercharged 2014 Mustang "Yellow Jacket" SEMA Bound
The amount of vehicles and projects headed to SEMA are almost endless, even just the Mustang portion. One particular Mustang was put together by the Vortech Supercharger team, a yellow 2014 Mustang dubbed Yellow Jacket.
"As a lifelong Ford fan, I was inspired to create this project car when I realized Ford doesn't offer yellow on the 2014 Mustang," said Brian Ellis, sales marketing and social media manager for AirPower Group. "We wanted to create something really eye-popping with a mechanical package to match the appearance."
The team at Vortech decided on the Boy Racer body kit by 3D Carbon as well as a carbon-fiber cowl hood along with other carbon accents from TruFiber. All of the carbon-fiber components were covered in a yellow paint by DuPont.
With a build like this heading to SEMA, you need a strong powerplant to back it up. Powering the heart of this beast is a Coyote 5.0L V-8 engine mated to the Vortech V-3 Si supercharger good for 605hp and 473 lb-ft of torque on 7.5psi of boost.
Other goodies include a Webasto electronic sunroof, iForged Icon three-piece wheels in black chrome with a flat black lip (20 X 9-inch front, 20- X 11-inch in the rear) wrapped with Falken Azenis FK453 tires (275/40/20 front, 315/35/20 rear).
For incredible handling, a custom powder-coated Maximum Motorsports Road & Track box suspension package was installed on the Mustang. Also, Baer 6S six-piston brakes will provide stopping power to all four wheels.
We can't wait to see it in person!
Rendering by Gurnade.


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Princeton and Sterling parents are organizing a trip to Nature's Classroom, Point Judith, R.I., on April vacation week, April 21-25. The trip is for any Princeton or Sterling 5th or 6th grader (home or private school students welcome).
Nature's Classroom is a five day camp-like program in which kids learn about nature, the environment, team building, history and much more.
Registration is ongoing while space is available. For more information: for Princeton call either Cindy Chandler at (978) 464-5713, e-mail email@example.com or Stacey Beculfini at (978) 464- 5094, e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.; for Sterling call Elizabeth Gray at (978) 422-3148. For general progam information visit www.NaturesClassroom.org.


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J.L. Gardening has more than 25 years of experience providing full service residential landscape care and maintenance to residents of Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and beyond.
We are not just a "Mow, Blow, Go" operation. J.L. Gardening Service offers a wide variety of services ranging from pruning to new lawn installation. We know every garden is different so we give each of our costumers the time and attention you deserve.
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J.L. Gardening Service will customize your maintenance visit to meet your needs. In addition to general clean up we provide the following:
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We will work with you to create a garden design that meets your needs and is appropiate to your space. JL Gardening can assist you in selecting the right kinds of flowers and shrubs that will flourish in your space according to the season.
(650) 520-9097


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Throwback Music Video Of The Week: Sisqo "Unleash The Dragon" (Reason Why Labels Stopped Spending Big Budgets On Videos)[Unreleased]
Def Jam allegedly canceled the video.
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
Comments will only be displayed by verified emails. No Spamming or Racism.


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The young Lady Bisons competed very well against the regionally ranked competition. Columbia is ranked sixth and Vermont is ranked 15th in the Northeast Region.
"Our women had a really good race," Lipscomb cross country coach Bill Taylor said. "Columbia is a tremendous team, and they 15-pointed the race, but we actually weren't that far off them. For the first mile everyone was together. Columbia made a big move just past the mile and it just kind of confused our team. That's a great learning experience for our women. Now they know how to respond to that.
"I was proud though that our women regrouped after the confusion and pressed on strongly. Alex Newby reacted quickly and was with Columbia's pack until the final 200 meters or so. We had seven women finish within 44 seconds of first place. Alex was only four seconds from first. It was a strong rally and I know we will be better prepared in the future."
Vermont is ranked 15th in the very strong Northeast region.
"They ran very well too, so this was a solid race for us," Taylor said. "Their coach said they ran better than last year when they finished second here.
"It's really a time of learning and building for us right now. The women are learning how to be an amazing team. They did some terrific things today…things that haven't been done at Lipscomb before. Yet, we walk away with so many ways we know we can get better. That's what these races are about, so it's a very positive day in both ways."
Alex Newby (FR – Knoxville, Tenn.) led the women with a time of 18:56 for the 5065-meter course to finish eighth overall. That time is her all-time PR even for a 5-K.
Dani Walker (FR – Wichita, Kan.) followed in 19:09 in 12th place. Rounding out the top seven were Shelby Marvel (SO – Ashland City, Tenn.) in 14th place with a time of 19:11, Ashley Lehman (JR – Blacksburg, Va.) in 16th place with a time of 19:14, Tessa Hoefle (FR - Winnebago, Ill.) in 19th place at 19:25, Jenny Randolph (SR – Knoxville, Tenn.) in 20th with a time 19:30 and Louisa Van Batavia (JR – Burns, Ore.) in 21st at 19:36. Amanda Twigg (SO – Cumberland, Md.) was the eighth and final runner for Lipscomb in 20:37, 32nd in the race.
"It was a challenging course with difficult footing and often hilly terrain on beautiful cross country skiing and cycle-cross trails," Taylor said. "I think the extra 65 meters the women ran is about 15 seconds added to what would be their 5-K times.
"The course was really terrific. Though it was tough, a bit long and a bit slow, it was so nice. It's cross country and both teams enjoyed this."
The Lipscomb men finished third in the meet, behind Columbia who 15-pointed the meet, and Vermont, who beat the Bisons by just six points. Columbia is ranked fourth in the Northeast region and 38th in the nation.
"Well, Columbia's men look really good," Taylor said. "They easily dominated this race. Tim Muller held on well for a long time, but they did drop him eventually.
"Like the women's team, I saw good things happen today. There were very positive signs of improvement mentally and physically. We also have a lot of room to grow and need to keep improving."
Muller (SO – Denver, Colo.) led the Bisons with a 10th place finish in 26:03 for the 8000 meters course.
Isaiah Greer (SO – Johnson City, Tenn.) followed in 14th with a time of 26:33. Geoff Musick and Mike Yang took 17th and 21st in 26:50 and 27:00, while Hunter Hethcoat and Benton Reed followed closely in 23rd and 24th with times of 27:28 and 27:36.
"The men were neck and neck with Vermont the whole race," Taylor said. "Vermont hit that last mile a little better than our men were able to and that was the difference. It was fun competing against them. Both of those teams fought hard."
The experience of running against strong Northeast teams was very positive for Lipscomb.
"Traveling up here has been such a great experience for us," Taylor said. "From a racing perspective we competed well. The women benefited most with a quality win against a regionally ranked team. Both teams did things they haven't done before and both teams learned a lot about what needs to be improved. We will learn from this and be better for it.
"We actually have a bunch of PRs already from this race, even though it was the first 5-K and 8-K of the season and was a challenging course. Athletically, this has been valuable."
Taylor added that the meet was a great example of what makes the sport of cross country special.
"The meet itself was great," Taylor said. "The scenery was beautiful. And I thank Vermont head coach Matt Belfield for being a wonderful host. He arranged a pre-race dinner where we ate with Vermont, Columbia and Saint Michaels, was so nice, and gave us tips on what to see and do around here.
"We've also had so much fun up here. We enjoyed seeing the sights of Burlington and the surrounding area, laughing, and just enjoying the whole experience. What a blessing to be able to do this!"
Lipscomb next competes at home in the Vanderbilt Invite at Vaughn's Gap in Percy Warner Park. Both races are on Saturday morning, Sept. 18th.


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ASA/USA Softball Annual Council Meeting concludes as the organization moves into the 2017 season as USA Softball
November 19, 2016
ASA/USA Softball Annual Council Meeting concludes as the organization moves into the 2017 season as USA Softball
SHREVEPORT, La. – The Amateur Softball Association (ASA)/USA Softball, the National Governing Body (NGB) of Softball in the U.S., concluded the 85th Annual Council Meeting in Shreveport, La. after a week of evaluating proposed rule and code changes for all divisions of ASA/USA Softball. ASA/USA Softball also announced today its sites for the 2018 Championship season as teams will begin their quest for the ultimate goal in softball: to hold up a USA Softball National Championship trophy.
To see a list of 2018 ASA/USA National Championships, please click here
At the Annual Meeting, the ASA/USA Softball Council Members also voted on a restructuring of the Board of Directors to a Regional representation format following the realigning of the regions of ASA/USA Softball from 15 Regions to 10. Starting January 1, 2017, the USA Softball Board of Directors will be comprised of one Board representative from each Region, the current President, past-President and President-elect, an At-Large Representative and four Elite Athlete Representatives. With the restructuring, Region 1 elected Bev Wiley of USA Softball of Rhode Island, Region 2 will be represented by Andy Dooley of USA Softball of Piedmont, Va., Region 3 elected Carlton Benton of USA Softball of Florida, Region 4 elected E.T. Colvin of USA Softball of Mississippi, Region 5 will be represented by Rodney Cobb of USA Softball of Texas, Region 6 will be represented by Darrin Duistermars of USA Softball of Michigan, Region 7 will be represented by Joe Patterson of USA Softball of Nebraska, Region 8 elected Dick Gulmon of USA Softball of North Dakota, Region 9 elected Bill Parks of USA Softball of Idaho and Region 10 will be represented by Sam Ducato of USA Softball of Northern California.
In Championship Play news, the ASA/USA Softball Council Members voted and approved the creation of a new division of Championship play with the Girls' Class C Fast Pitch National Championship Finals. This new division created a Girls' Class C Fast Pitch National Championship for 10-Under, 12-Under and 14-Under in each region. Each tournament will be structured so that each team will play a minimum of four games, two pool play games and a double-elimination bracket. Also added to the 2017 USA Softball code was the creation of a Girls' Regional Championship Finals for 8-Under fast pitch. All teams within a region that are age eligible will qualify for their Regional Championship Finals through their Local Association. The structure of the 8-Under Girls' Regional Championship Finals will give teams a minimum of four games, two pool play games and a double-elimination bracket.
The end of the 85th Annual Meeting also marked the official start of the 2017 season, in which ASA/USA Softball will officially rebrand and rename to USA Softball. As one of the nation's largest and fastest growing sports organizations, USA Softball will continue to sanction competition in every state through a network of 70 local associations. Having grown from a few hundred teams in the early days to over 160,000 teams today, USA Softball represents a membership of more than two million
"This is an exciting time for our organization as the rebrand to USA Softball reflects our vision for the growth of the sport," said USA Softball President Warren Jones. "For over 80 years, we have been the driving force behind the sport of softball, and this new logo truly embodies that character and legacy. As the National Governing Body of Softball, USA Softball will continue to serve as the leader in the sport of softball while helping foster the passion and love for the game to all."
In addition to rebranding, USA Softball has also unveiled a new redesigned logo, which will replace the ASA/USA Softball split logo after the transition to USA Softball. The redesign contains several key elements of previous ASA/USA Softball logos, while clearly identifying the USA Softball brand as the organization evolves towards the future. The home plate shape embodies the sport, while bold, block USA Softball lettering symbolizes USA Softball's authority as the NGB. Along with the redesigned prominent features of the logo, the stars and stripes pay homage to the U.S. flag and classic American iconography, connecting fans and members with the Team USA brand. Several subtleties also lie within the new logo, as the three red stripes reference 1933, the year USA Softball was founded, and the stars represent the four territories of USA Softball.
The 2017 USA Softball Annual Meeting will head to Greensboro, N.C. October 21-27, 2017 while the 2018 USA Softball Annual Meeting will take place in Oklahoma City, Okla.
About ASA/USA Softball
Founded in 1933, the Amateur Softball Association (ASA)/USA Softball is the National Governing Body of Softball in the United States and a member of the United States Olympic Committee. One of the nation's largest sports organizations, ASA/USA Softball sanctions competition in every state through a network of 70 local associations and has grown from a few hundred teams in the early days to over 150,000 teams today, representing a membership of more than two million. ASA/USA Softball is responsible for training, equipping and promoting the six USA Softball National Teams that compete in international and domestic competitions. The USA Softball Women's National Team is one of only two women's sports involved in the Olympic movement to capture three consecutive gold medals at the Olympic Games since 1996. The U.S. women have also won 10 World Championship titles as well as claimed eight World Cup of Softball titles. For more information about ASA/USA Softball, please visit http://www.asausasoftball.com/.
Codi Warren I Managing Director of Communications
Amateur Softball Association/USA Softball
2801 NE 50th Street
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73111
Visit Us Online: ASAUSASoftball.com
Play #USASoftball, where Olympic journey's begin!


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Woman in collision that killed baby had prior DWI arrest
The woman charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving while intoxicated in a fatal crash that claimed the life of a 7-month old girl Tuesday morning was arrested on a DWI charge three years ago in Chautauqua County, records show.
Danielle N. Kellogg, 24, of Brant was pulled over by a Chautauqua County Sheriff's deputy on Route 60 in the Town of Pomfret at about 4:19 a.m. Nov. 26, 2009, according to records obtained by The Buffalo News.
A deputy allegedly saw Kellogg crossed the center line and the fog line and stopped Kellogg.
The deputy smelled alcohol on her breath and noted that her eyes were red and watery. She failed several field sobriety tests and was charged with DWI. She was taken to the sheriff's substation where her blood alcohol content level was measured at .12 percent. She was charged with DWI and DWI per se.
According to DMV records, Kellogg pleaded guilty in Town of Pomfret Court to driving while impaired in January 2010 and paid a $500 fine. She had a conditional license until May 17, 2010, when her full driving privileges were restored. Her license was valid at the time of Tuesday's crash.
Kellogg was behind the wheel of a 2003 Ford Explorer SUV registered to a Fredonia man at about 9:05 a.m. Tuesday when she crossed over the center line of Southwestern Boulevard in Brant on the Seneca Cattaraugus Reservation, Erie County Sheriff's officials said.
Kellogg struck a 1997 Pontiac Grand Am driven by Denise Hine, 31, of Hamburg, who made an unsuccessful attempt to get out of the way of the oncoming vehicle, police said.
The crash occurred after Hine had just dropped off her 4-year-old daughter at school and was driving home with her other daughter, Baylee Marie Dion, who was strapped into her infant carrier seat.
The force of the impact split Hine's Pontiac in two.
The baby was rushed to Lake Shore Health Care Center in Irving where she died.
The mother was taken to Erie County Medical Center with serious, but not life-threatening injuries.
Sheriff's officials obtained a court order to get a blood sample from Kellogg in order to determine her blood alcohol content level.
Kellogg was being held in the Erie County Holding Center in lieu of $20,000 in bail.
Her attorney declined to comment Wednesday.
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