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Buy Happy
I was at the grocery store in front of a mountain of egg cartons, each trying to grab my attention with a label alleging something about the welfare of the chickens who laid them. I mulled over the options. As a conscientious eater, I wanted to buy the most humane, eco-friendly eggs I could get. But the labels weren't offering me many clear indications about the origins of the eggs within. What's the difference between "cage-free," "free-range," "free-roaming," and "farm fresh," and which is the best?
Labels like "cage-free" and "natural"—which commonly appear on eggs, meat, and dairy—evoke the idea of idyllic farms and well-treated animals, but the real picture inside the feedlot or dairy operation is often much grimmer.
After my grocery store experience, I set out on a fact-finding quest. I discovered that most label claims are not regulated. Cage-free hens could be crammed in a dirty warehouse where high ammonia levels cause burns on their feet. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's labeling department requires products labeled "natural" to be minimally processed, so all eggs, no matter how inhumane the life of the hens, can be labeled as such. And all industrially farmed eggs, no matter what kind of label, come from hens who had the tip of their beaks cut off, a painful procedure for the animals as their beaks are loaded with nerves.
But some labels are regulated, and there are ways to make sure that your eggs, meat, and milk were produced with at least some welfare standards:
1. Meet Your Farmer
First, consider getting to know your farmer. Most small farms and ranches give tours, so you can see for yourself what kind of life they are providing the animals. You don't need expertise to spot inhumane treatment. Renowned animal scientist Temple Grandin says a good test of humaneness is to imagine the reactions of ten people chosen at random to walk through the facility. People in the animal industry can become desensitized to inhumane practices. You may be a better inspector than the "experts." A properly run cattle-slaughter facility should pass the test, according to Grandin.
Look for things like cleanliness, space allowances, injuries, and sores. Chickens need ground cover to peck at and places to hide when they lay eggs. Pigs need something to dig and root around in. Cows need other cows, grass, and quiet.
2. Look for the Right Kind of Labels: Third-Party Certification.
If you can't make it out to a farm, third-party certifications are the next best thing. These are programs that certify that their members—farmers and other producers—meet high animal-welfare standards. They're usually run by animal-welfare experts; they use specific criteria, standards, and scoring systems; and they send auditors to observe the farm's performance firsthand.
The most stringent third-party certifier is Animal Welfare Approved (AWA). This program certifies only family farms whose animals live outdoors on pasture or range. AWA has stricter standards on space allowances, transportation times, and weaning ages than any other program, according to a report by Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC).
Other good labels to look for are Certified Humane, Food Alliance Certified, and the fifth level of Global Animal Partnership.
Certified Humane is a program of HFAC. The founder and executive director began working for farm-animal rights in 1998. Certified Humane is endorsed by The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Humane Society of the United States, according to the HFAC website. The treatment of these animals is regulated from birth to slaughter.
"Cages, crates, and tie stalls are among the forbidden practices, and animals must be free to do what comes naturally. For example, chickens are able to flap their wings and dust bathe, and pigs have the space to move around and root," according to the HFAC website.
Food Alliance Certified has regulations for humane treatment, and it also has standards for safe and fair working conditions, protecting biodiversity and wildlife habitat, and conserving water and soil resources, according to the Food Alliance website.
Global Animal Partnership, (GAP), founded in 2008, is a five-step program. At each level, the requirements become stricter, according to the GAP website.
Other third-party certifications include American Humane Certified and USDA Organic.
According to a report by HFAC, American Humane Certified (AHC) has vague or non-existent requirements for pasture, transportation times, and slaughter. AHC does have clear standards that are similar to other certifications for disbudding (horn prevention on young cows), castration, and beak trimming.
The report by HFAC also shows that USDA Organic has minimal requirements for animal welfare. The standards do not address "handling practices such as electric prod use, management practices such as forced molting and weaning, minimum space allowances, euthanasia, or transport," according to a report by Farm Sanctuary.
But federally certified organic is still better than no certifications at all. Growth hormones, some of which cause welfare problems, are prohibited. Outdoor access is required for all certified-organic animals, and organic beef cattle must have access to pasture for a minimum of 120 days out of the year, according to the USDA website.
If you don't see any of these third-party certification labels in your grocery store, ask the retailer to carry them. The more people insist on eating humanely raised animal products, the more change we'll see in our food system.
For more information, see this report comparing third-party certifications done by Humane Farm Animal Care, a report comparing third-party certifications and other industry standards done by Farm Sanctuary, and check out more details on label claims.
We can feed the world and still eat meat—but only a little bit.
Photo Essay: One photographer's take on the mystery of the wild, and our constant efforts to tame it.
Grief, friendship, gratitude, wonder, and other things we animals experience.

subset: commoncrawl


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Hi guys, for a project I'm doing I want to create a program that plays Black Jack.
But as I got thinking about it, I realized I have no idea how I should declare different suits and cards.
I need to be able to randomly choose a card as if drawn from a deck and just need some ideas on how to do it.
I'm really new to java so my understanding is kind of limited. But from what I can tell I can randomly choose an enum from a group of them. and I'm thinking that may be what I have to do to get a random card draw. But that would mean I'd have to assign an enum for every card and its suit right? Also these enums, or whatever I use need to be able to store the value of their card so that I can check the points.
I'm just curios how you guys might go about doing a program like this?
This is kind of how I plan to have it look like when I'm finished. I realize that this is really novice looking, but I'm sort of restricted to how I'm allowed to do this and by what I know how to do. =/ A more sophisticated GUI isn't an option.


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The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 115, No. 20, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 19, 2005
Description: Weekly newspaper from Canadian, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with some advertising.
Date: May 19, 2005
Creator: Brown, Laurie Ezzell
Item Type: Refine your search to only Newspaper
Partner: Hemphill County Library


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MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. – Due to oncoming rain this afternoon, the Georgia College softball game against Lynn University scheduled for 1 p.m. today has been canceled.
The Bobcats are back in action Friday, March 11 at 3 p.m., hosing Wingate University.
The Georgia College Department of Athletics, back-to-back winners of the PBC Commissioner's Cup, sponsors 10 varsity athletic programs at the NCAA Division II level. As a Division II program, Bobcat Athletics prides itself on balancing the life of the student-athlete, evidenced by the teams' multiple appearances in post-season competition as well as documented academic success and community-service involvement. Sign up at www.twitter.com/BobcatSports and www.facebook.com/gcbobcats for up-to-the-minute reports, and visit www.GCBobcats.com for more information, and to nominate your favorite former Bobcats and Colonials to the GC Athletics Hall of Fame.


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Free Streaming Only Lovers Left Alive in High QualityNow you can play full Only Lovers Left Alive in high definition format with duration 123 Min and was released on 2013-05-25 and MPAA rating is 54.
- Original Title : Only Lovers Left Alive
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- Status of movie : Released
- Release date of movie : 2013-05-25
- Companies of movie : Pandora Film, Recorded Picture Company (RPC), Snow Wolf Produktion, ARD/Degeto Film GmbH, Neue Road Movies, Lago Film, Faliro House Productions,
- Countries of movie : Cyprus, Germany, France, United Kingdom, United States of America,
- Language of movie : English, Français, العربية,
- Durationof movie : 123 Min
- Average vote of movie : 7.4
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- Actors of movie :
- Tom Hiddleston ( Adam )
- Tilda Swinton ( Eve )
- Mia Wasikowska ( Ava )
- John Hurt ( Marlowe )
- Anton Yelchin ( Ian )
- Slimane Dazi ( Bilal )
- Jeffrey Wright ( Dr. Watson )
- Cody Stauber ( Adam's Fan )
- Ali Amine ( Taxi Driver )
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Director : Jim Jarmusch, Script : Jim Jarmusch, Writer : Jim Jarmusch, Producer : Jeremy Thomas, Producer : Reinhard Brundig, Music : Jozef van Wissem, Director of Photography : Yorick Le Saux, Editor : Affonso Gonçalves, Casting : Ellen Lewis, Production Design : Marco Bittner Rosser, Art Direction : Anja Fromm, Art Direction : Anu Schwartz, Set Decoration : Christiane Krumwiede, Set Decoration : Selina van den Brink, Costume Design : Bina Daigeler, Makeup Department Head : Stephanie Arble, Wigmaker : Erwin H. Kupitz, Property Master : Jeff Butcher, Construction Coordinator : Sean Clouser, Construction Foreman : Stefan Geist, Set Designer : Christopher Hosey, Property Master : Petra Klimek, Construction Coordinator : Joachim Monninger, Property Master : Sabine Steudter, Art Department Coordinator : Jil Szewski, Greensman : Derek Wilga, Boom Operator : Howard Bevan, Dialogue Editor : Brian Bowles, Foley : Jay Peck, Sound Re-Recording Mixer : Dominick Tavella, Sound Effects Editor : Damian Volpe, Stunt Coordinator : Ele Bardha, Set Costumer : Laia Lipp, Music Editor : Robert Fernandez, Transportation Coordinator : Khalid Ameskane, Transportation Coordinator : Jon Bergholz, Transportation Captain : Patrick Stephenson, Script Supervisor : Maralyn Causley, Script Supervisor : Carolyn Tolley, Legal Services : Gero Brugmann, Location Manager : Mohamed Benhmamane, Location Manager : Chris-Teena Constas, Location Manager : Faical Hajji, Location Scout : Dorothee Leuck,
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A student's UTHSC email account is the official means for receiving communications from the College.
The College bylaws state:
"Should students desire, they can forward e-mail from their official University e-mail address to any e-mail account they choose. Please note, however, that if students elect to forward e- mail and that process fails, they will still be held accountable for reading and responding in a timely fashion to any official information sent to the official University e-mail address."
If you want to have your uthsc.edu e-mail forwarded automatically to another account, do the following:
1. Go to Exchange Webmail (http://exchange.uthsc.edu) but don't log in.
2. Click on "Click Here to Manage Your Account" under Exchange Password.
3. Follow the prompts.
4. On the Exchange Account Manager page, click on "Mail Forwarding" in the left-hand box.
5. Follow the prompts.
6. Note that if you retain copies of forwarded mail, your in-box will eventually become full, future messages will bounce back to the sender, and you won't receive them.
7. Finally, test the system to be sure that you're receiving messages at the correct account.
Student e-mail accounts are maintained by UTHSC for one year after you leave the University. If you want to keep the uthsc.edu account longer, you must request this through the CGHS Office . Note that sponsorship of an e-mail account by the CGHS Office must be requested annually; otherwise, the account will be terminated at the end of one year.
Contact Us
Request information about our Programs
General Information:
College of Graduate Health Sciences
920 Madison Ave
Suite 807
Memphis, Tennessee 38163
Phone: 901-448-5538


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Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum
Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum
Video Summary
The video for this session examines the research and related practices for building positive home-school connections. Dr. Paratore presents research on how language, culture, and socio-economics influence the different ways parents use literacy at home. After the lecture, workshop participants discuss their experiences in promoting parent involvement. They then watch and discuss classroom excerpts illustrating ways to connect school and home literacy.
© 2003 WGBH Educational Foundation. All rights reserved.
© Annenberg Foundation 2017. All rights reserved. Legal Policy


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Av säkerhetsskäl behöver du ge webbläsaren tillgång genom att lösa in en speciell kod som kan hittas in i din inkorg på
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege - Year 1 Season Pass Uplay CD Key
If a user has redeemed the Year 1 Season Pass at any point, before or after 30th Nov 2016, they will receive the following:
- 8 operators,
- All items already purchased (skins, boosters, etc.),
- Any cosmetic bonuses activated with the season pass.
After 30th Nov 2016, the following benefits of the Year 1 Season Pass will not be available, regardless of when the code was activated:
- 5% renown boost,
- 2 extra daily challenges,
- 10% discount on the shop.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is the upcoming installment of the acclaimed first-person shooter franchise developed by the renowned Ubisoft Montreal studio.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege invites players to master the art of destruction. Intense close quarters confrontations, high lethality, tactics, team play, and explosive action are at the center of the experience. The gameplay sets a new bar for intense firefights and expert strategy in the rich legacy of past Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six games.
THE SIEGE GAMEPLAY - For the first time in Rainbow Six, players will engage in sieges, a brand-new style of assault. Enemies now have the means to transform their environments into strongholds: they can trap, fortify, and create defensive systems to prevent breach by Rainbow teams.
To face this challenge, players have a level of freedom unrivaled by any previous Rainbow Six game. Combining tactical maps, observation drones, and a new rappel system, Rainbow teams have more options than ever before to plan, attack, and diffuse these situations.
COUNTER TERRORIST UNITS - Counter terrorist operatives are trained to handle extreme situations, such as hostage rescue, with surgical precision. As "short range" specialists, their training is concentrated on indoor environments. Operating in tight formations, they are experts of close quarter combat, demolition, and coordinated assaults. Rainbow Six Siege will include operators coming from five of the most worldwide renowned CTU: the British SAS, the American SWAT, the French GIGN, the German GSG9 and the Russian SPETSNAZ.
These Operators are specialists with their own expertise within Siege operations. Each has their own unique personality & specialty. Some are focused on assault where as others are defense-oriented. They can be combined within the same team to create new team strategies.
PROCEDURAL DESTRUCTION - Destruction is at the heart of the siege gameplay. Players now have the unprecedented ability to destroy environments. Walls can be shattered, opening new lines of fire, and ceiling and floors can be breached, creating new access points. Everything in the environment reacts realistically, dynamically, and uniquely based on the size and caliber of bullets you are using or the amount of explosives you have set. In Rainbow Six Siege, destruction is meaningful and mastering it is often the key to victory.
- OS: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64bit versions required)
- Processor: Intel Core i3 560 @ 3.3 GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 945 @ 3.0 GHz
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5870 (DirectX-11 compliant with 1GB of VRAM)
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 30 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers
- Additional Notes: SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS AT TIME OF RELEASE: GeForce GTX 460 or better, GTX 560 or better, GTX 650 or better, GTX 750 or better, or any card from the GT900 and Titan Series, Radeon HD5870 or better, HD6870 or better, HD7770 or better, R7 260X or better, or any card from the R-300 series and Fury X. Laptop models of these cards may work but are not supported. These chipsets are the only ones that will run this game. Additional chipsets may be supported after release.
För att aktivera nyckeln vänligen följ instruktionerna nedan:
1. Gå till: http://uplay.ubi.com och ladda ner Uplay klient.
2. Installera Uplay klient på din dator
4. Vänligen följ dessa instruktioner för att aktivera ett spel på Uplay:
- Klicka på Settings
- Välja Activate Product
- Följ anvisningarna för att avsluta processen.
Om du har några problem med aktivering, vänligen kontakta oss via LiveChat eller skicka oss en ticket.
If you have any problems regarding activation, please contact us:


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1510 N. Wells St. 312-649-9640
With its oversized booths for groups and a TV screen so big it nearly covers an entire wall, the main floor of this Old Town sports bar has plenty to offer. But on a warm afternoon, you can't beat a seat on the second floor, where a retractable greenhouse ceiling opens to let in the fresh air and sunshine.
The J. Parker
1816 N. Clark St. 312-254-4747
Thanks to the sweeping vistas of the lakefront, downtown skyline and Lincoln Park from this 13th floor rooftop lounge at Hotel Lincoln, you'll come for the photo ops and stay for the refreshing craft cocktails. Chef Paul Virant—of award-winning restaurant Perennial Virant, located just downstairs—presides over a menu of seasonal snacks.
The Dec
160 E. Pearson St. 312-573-5160
You'll have to cross The Ritz-Carlton's lobby, take the elevator and walk through Deca restaurant to arrive at this outdoor lounge. Thankfully, the journey from street level ends at a terrace tastefully decorated with elegant wicker furniture, a wave-shaped glass wall and a silver sculpture called The Lenz. Polished servers float by with trays of cocktails bound for the welldressed clients you'd expect at The Ritz.
Sully's House
1501 N. Dayton St. 773-244-1234
This neighborhood sports bar is just a few blocks' walk from the nexus of North Avenue, Clybourn and Halsted in the Weed Street District. The second-floor rooftop, called The Upper Deck, features pillow-strewn couches, ottomans and plenty of TVs for a comfy game-watching scene.
Joe's Bar
940 W. Weed St. 312-337-3486
After standing in line to have your ID checked alongside sports fans or country music concert ticket holders (depending on the night), bypass the main door and head up the outdoor staircase to get to Joe's rooftop deck. A covered bar provides shade and shelter from surprise rain showers.
Nomi Garden
800 N. Michigan Ave. 312-239-4030
At this picturesque terrace on the seventh floor of the Park Hyatt, leafy planters, umbrellas and bud vases on each table help the space live up to the name. While the Park Hyatt's indoor restaurant Nomi Kitchen features stunning views to the east, the terrace looks south and west toward the towering buildings of River North and the Gold Coast.


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It's still more than a year before the NBA's collective-bargaining agreement with the hired help expires, and already we're hearing talk of a lockout.
My guess is that the same people who said in 1998 that they'd never again interrupt a season to quibble about money will forget that promise. I'm not sure that they'll sacrifice half of a season or more to the battle as they did last time, but there will be a play stoppage.
It will probably come down to canceling training camp and maybe starting the season late. But a strike or lockout is still likely because the gap between management and workers is as enormous as the amount of money involved.
The reason we know it's serious is that NBA commissioner David Stern chose NBA All-Star Weekend to tell the world that his league is hemorrhaging money and the players are being unreasonable in their contract demands.
Stern said the NBA is losing $400 million this year and has lost at least $200 million a year for the four previous years. Other sources say that among the teams losing money by the barrel are Atlanta, Memphis, Detroit, Miami, Orlando, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Indiana, New Jersey, Minnesota, Charlotte, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
According to the Associated Press, the league has presented a proposal to the union that calls for "first-round picks to have their salaries cut by about one-third, reduce the minimum salary by as much as 20 percent, and guarantee contracts for only half their value. Also, the total value of a maximum salary would drop sharply, as would the total years players could sign for, and the players would see a reduction in their share of the basketball-related income, of which they currently receive 57 percent."
No wonder the players association, led by Billy Hunter, tore up the league's proposal. These are expensive demands and huge give-backs.
This news cast something of a pall over All-Star Weekend. In most years, the game is a celebration. This year, it's a negotiating ploy.
Bringing up the finances and labor negotiations at such a time is like a couple throwing a party for its wedding anniversary and then using the occasion to tell the guests that the couple is contemplating a separation. Cheery it's not.
The reason I see a play stoppage is that the players are not going to want to give back so much. They've got it awfully good. The average salary is nearly $5.5 million, and the minimum salary for the last rookie on the end of the bench is a smidgen under $475,000. The players get 57 percent of all revenue under the league's salary cap.
But they had it even better under the previous agreement, and it's no fun for any of us to give back luxuries we had come to think of as our birthright. What would rankle the players most is cutting back on the length of contracts and reducing the amount of the deal that can be guaranteed.
That's also what would make the owners most happy. They're particularly tired of lavishing huge amounts of money on players who then get fat and stop playing. But with all the money guaranteed, the owners are stuck with the Shawn Kemps of the world. It's hard to blame them for resenting that.
It's felt that the owners also want a harder salary cap. This is to save them from themselves. If the rules are going to allow teams to exceed the cap, the ones that really want to win will do it, even if they have to pay a luxury tax. The only way for the owners to keep themselves within their budgets is to make it part of the rules.
Nobody is going to feel sorry for anyone in this fight. The owners are rich guys who extort arenas out of local taxpayers. The players are mostly kids from tough circumstances who were lucky enough to win the genetic sweepstakes. They're not fighting over a health plan or vacation days. They're rich guys fighting over stacks of money, and no matter how it comes out, they'll still be rich when it's over.
But the amounts of money at stake are what is likely to lead to a disastrous play stoppage. We are talking about highly competitive rich people on both sides of this fight. The players aren't used to surrendering, and neither are the owners. And the more they snipe at each other, the more personal it gets; the more people dig in their heels.
So how much time remains doesn't matter. These two trains have been on the same track, rushing into a head-on collision for years, and neither side has done anything to avoid it. They're still not doing anything except increasing the speed on the locomotives and disconnecting the brakes.
They're heading for a crash, and it's not going to be pretty.


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You have come to the right place to find out all there is to know about your race experience at IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong.
Please explore the above drop down menu to find all information necessary to have a great race. If you are looking for course information, please visit the Course tab above.
If you can't find what you're looking for and need assistance, visit the Contact tab and let us know how we can assist you.


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BACKGROUND IMAGE: iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
- FeatureSnapshot: Do you outsource your backups?
- FeatureSony soldiers on with AIT-5 tape drive
- FeatureThree ways to outsource backups
- FeatureLessening filers' backup load
- FeatureSurvey Says: Offsite tapes continue to grow
- FeatureHow faster tape drives can slow down your backups
- FeatureTricky backup for SharePoint
- FeatureCDP: Look before you leap
- FeatureBackup-to-disk performance tuning
- FeatureUsers eye snapshot to cut back on tape
- FeatureBackup SLAs: The art of diplomacy
- FeatureIs VTL a transitory technology?
- FeatureDisaster recovery: Test, test and test some more
- FeatureAnatomy of an upgrade: Veritas NetBackup 6.0
- FeatureSnapshot: Have you fulfilled an electronic discovery request?
- Feature64-bit Exchange lessens I/O load
- FeatureQuality Awards II: The elite of enterprise arrays
- Tech ReportThree ways to create clustered storage
- FeatureLocal governments feel regulatory pinch
- FeatureSurvey Says: Users back up immense amounts of data
- FeatureLatest VMware rev tackles storage shortcomings
- FeatureStorage apps keep Exchange running 24/7
- FeatureForecasting capacity with an eye on performance
- FeatureTo survive, backup reporting tools must expand their scope
- FeatureBackups are not archives
- FeatureThe pros and cons of portable storage
- FeatureBlackBerry strains Exchange storage
- FeatureStorage Firsts
- FeatureRethinking data protection strategies
- FeatureWhat's scarier--not being able to recover your data or recovering a smoking gun or two?
- FeatureNew backup techs need new thinking
- FeatureBackup best practices are always evolving
- Feature10 points to consider before deploying an e-mail archive
- FeatureSome small tech upstarts might play big roles
- FeatureGetting started with encryption key management
- FeatureThe wide world of tech support
iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Backups are not archives
While it's possible to restore data from old backups, you shouldn't use them as archives. Leading storage expert W. Curtis Preston details the differences between the two technologies and explains why you need an e-mail archiving program.
- W. Curtis Preston, Druva
Using a backup program to create archive files isn't a good idea, because trying to find specific information in backups is costly and time consuming.
A bottle of grape juice left on a shelf long enough will ferment, but no one would call it wine. Similarly, it's possible to restore data from old backups, but no one should call them archives. Simply put, backups make lousy archives.
Archives are for the logical retrieval of information; that is, to retrieve information grouped in a logical way. For example, with archives you can store reference data such as:
- The CAD drawings, parts lists and other manufacturing information for a widget your company used to make
- All of the information pertaining to a former customer
- All information related to a closed project, account, law case, etc.
- Tax returns, financial records or other records for a particular year
The second way archives manifest themselves is in the logical storage of active data. Suppose, for example, it was discovered that a critical safety part was removed from a particular widget's design. It would be important to see every version of the specification, along with information about who changed it. And what about the common practice of electronic discovery of e-mail systems? Think about the discovery requests that can occur when someone in management is accused of harassment or discrimination, a trader is accused of promising financial returns or a company is charged with colluding with its competitors. Such accusations may result in e-discovery requests that look like the following:
- All e-mails from employee A to employees B, C and D for the last year
- All e-mails and instant messages from all traders to all customers for the last three years that contain the words "promise," "guarantee," "vow," "assure" or "warranty"
- All e-mails that left a company going to domains X, Y and Z, or to certain specific e-mail addresses
|Turning backups into archives
|Another common question is what to do when switching from backups as archives. What should you do with all of the old tapes in the old backup format(s)? The answer is the same as it is for changing backup formats. Your only real alternative is to restore the oldest versions of the data being archived, archive it, delete it and then restore the next version. It's not pretty, but it's reality. The good news is that every backup you turn into an archive means storage savings.
Old backups aren't enough
The most common way data is archived is by keeping backups for a long time. Weekly or monthly full backups are performed, and then the backup is kept from one year to 50 years, depending on business requirements. There couldn't be a worse way to archive.
There are many difficulties with using backups as archives. The most common use of backups as archives is for the retrieval of reference data. The assumption is that if someone asks for widget ABC's parts (or some other piece of reference data), the appropriate files can just be restored from the system where they used to reside. The first problem with that scenario is remembering where the files were several years ago.
Even if you can remember where the files belong, the number of operating systems or application versions that have come and gone in the intervening time can stymie the effort. To restore files that were backed up from "Apollo" five years ago, the first requirement is a system named Apollo. Someone also has to handle any authentication issues between the backup server and the new Apollo because it isn't the same Apollo it backed up from five years ago. Depending on the backup software and OS in question, the new Apollo may also need to be running the same version of the OS and applications the old Apollo was running five years ago. Otherwise, there may be incompatibilities in the file system or database being restored.
Satisfy electronic discovery requests
Backups are also used to satisfy electronic discovery requests, which can be even more challenging. Let's use the most common electronic discovery request as an example: a request for e-mails that match a particular pattern and were sent via an Exchange server. (The following also applies to other e-mail systems, such as Lotus Notes or SMTP.) There are two big problems with using backups to satisfy such a request. The first is that it's impossible to retrieve all e-mails sent or received by a particular person. It's only possible to restore the e-mails that were in the Exchange server when backups were made. If the discovery request is looking for an e-mail that somebody sent, deleted and then cleared from their Deleted Items folder, it wouldn't be on that night's backup, and thus would never show up when attempting to retrieve it weeks, months or years later. It would therefore be technically impossible to meet the discovery request using backups. This means that even after doing your best to successfully satisfy the discovery request, a plaintiff may claim you haven't proven your case.
The second problem with using backups to satisfy an Exchange electronic discovery request is that it's very difficult to retrieve months or years of e-mails using backups. Suppose, for example, a company performs a full backup of its Exchange server once a week, and for compliance reasons it stores these backups for seven years. If the company received an electronic discovery request for e-mails from the last seven years, it would need to perform many restores of its entire Exchange server to satisfy the request. The first step would be to restore the Exchange server to an alternate server using last week's backup. Next, you would have to run a query against Exchange to look for the e-mails in question, saving them to a .pst file. You would then have to restore the Exchange server using the backup from two weeks ago, rerun the query and create another .pst file. It would be necessary to restore the entire Exchange server 364 times (seven years multiplied by 52 weeks) before you're done. And almost every step in this process will have to be done manually.
The above scenario isn't impossible to accomplish, but the recovery effort will entail an incredible amount of time and money. A plaintiff in a civil suit or the government doesn't care how much it costs the defendant; your company has a court order to produce the e-mails regardless of cost.
|Which is best for archiving: Disk or tape?
An archive system encounters the same issues as a backup system if tape is used as its primary storage medium. One solution might be to use content-addressed storage (CAS) as the primary storage device for archives. If the product supports a standard file-system interface, such as NFS or CIFS, as well as single-instance storage and delta-block technologies, it could solve a number of problems.
First, a disk product using single-instance storage and delta-block incremental technologies will be less expensive to operate than a tape-based system because you can't apply delta-block technologies to tape-based systems. Second, if the CAS device supports a file-system interface, then migrating between storage systems should be relatively simple. With a tape-based system, you have to copy all data from the old tape format to the new tape format. With a file-system-based system, you simply copy data from the older device to the newer device.
Finally, you could potentially solve the format issue. If archive products can support the discovery of existing CAS systems, you could theoretically switch archive products with no ill effects. The raw data would still be accessible via the file-system interface, and the meta data could be imported--or the new archive system could grab the meta data from the CAS device. Your mileage will definitely vary, but solutions are available.
Other backup bugaboos
Backups are also an extremely inefficient way to store archives. While an archive system will make sure it has only one or two copies of a particular version of a file, a backup system usually has no such logic. If a company is using weekly full backups as archives (or creating "archives" with its backup product but not deleting the original files), and storing its archives for seven years, it will have 364 copies of many of its files stored on tape--even if those files never changed. This leads to an incredible amount of media waste.
Another strike against using backups as archives is the number of times a company changes backup formats and tape formats over the years. Almost every company using backups as its archives has a number of older tape and backup formats it must continue to support for archive purposes. While older tape formats can be converted with a lot of copying, converting older backup formats is another story. Most people choose to hold onto both old tape formats and old backup formats, and hope they never have to read them.
True archiving
The most important feature of an archiving system is that it contain enough meta data to allow information to be retrieved in logical ways. For example, meta data can include the author or business unit that created an item. (An item can be any piece of archived information, such as a file, a record from a database or an e-mail.) Meta data might also contain the project the item is attached to or some other logical grouping. An e-mail archive system would include who sent and received an e-mail, the subject of the e-mail and other appropriate meta data. Finally, an archive system may import the full text of the item into its database, allowing for full-text searches against the archive. This can be useful, especially if multiple formats can be supported. It's particularly expedient to be able to do a full text search against all e-mails, Word documents, PDF files, etc.
Another important feature of archive systems is their ability to store a predetermined number of copies of an archived item. A company can then decide how many copies to keep. For example, if a firm is storing its archives on a RAID-protected system, it may choose to have one copy on disk and another on a removable medium such as optical or tape.
Two types of archivers
Archive systems can be roughly divided into two categories depending on the way they store data. The first is the traditional, low-retrieval archive system attached to your backup software package. Such an archive system lets you make an archive of a selected group of files and attach limited meta data to it, such as "widget XYZ," and then have the archive system delete the backup files in question. The good thing is that it allows the attachment of meta data and can reduce multiple copies in the archive by deleting the duplicate backup files as they're archived. The bad news is that if you want to search archives using different types of meta data--such as owner, time frame, etc.--you need to create multiple archives. The main use for this type of archive is to save space by deleting files attached to projects or entities that are no longer active.
The second--and newer--category of archive systems realizes that any archived item might need to be retrieved for different reasons and would thus require different meta data. To support multiple types of retrievals, it's important to store the actual archived item only once, but with all of its meta data in a searchable database. Such a system realizes that a given archived item might be put into the archive not to save space, but to allow it to be searched for logically. Unlike its predecessors that stored the only copies of reference data, newer archive programs store an extra copy of the data, leaving the original in place.
As discussed previously, one of the problems with using backups as archives is that they won't have all occurrences of a file or message; they'll have only those items that were available when the backup was made. Some of the newer archive systems solve this problem by archiving data automatically. For example, every e-mail that comes in or is sent out is captured by the archiving system. Every time a file is saved, a version of the file is sent to the archive system.
Another advantage of newer archive systems is their use of single-instance store and delta incremental concepts. They store only one copy of a file or e-mail, no matter where it came from or who it went to. (Of course, the archiving system records who it came from or who it was sent to.) If that file or e-mail is then changed and sent/stored again, the archiving application will store only the changed bytes in the new version. Single-instance store saves a lot of disk space.
Regarding the format issues of backups as archives, many archive systems still grapple with those issues (see "Turning backups into archives"). Many people still store their archives on tape and, as time passes, may change their archive software. Therefore, this problem could persist even for archives (see "Which is best for archiving: Disk or tape?").
Newer archiving systems also serve as a hierarchical storage management-like system, automatically deleting large, older files and e-mails, and invisibly replacing them with stubs that automatically retrieve the appropriate content when accessed. This is one of the main business justifications used to sell e-mail archive software. In addition to satisfying e-discovery requests, you can save a lot of space by archiving redundant and unneeded e-mails and attachments.
Surveys show that more than 90% of typical e-mail storage is consumed by attachments. If you can store only one copy of an attachment across multiple e-mail servers (and Exchange Storage Groups) and replace it with a stub, then you can save a lot of storage. If you add delta-block incrementals to that, you can save even more storage.
If your company has more than one employee, it wouldn't be hard to build a business case for archiving. And if you're using backups as archives, you could be in for a pretty rough time when you get an electronic discovery request. Perhaps you should look at an e-mail archiving product or an enterprise content management product today.
Related Resources
- Filling the Gaps in Office 365 Data Protection –Druva Software


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The 85th annual Academy Awards ceremony airs this Sunday evening at 4pm Pacific on ABC. Have you seen all the films yet? With nine nominees crowding the Best Picture category alone, we won't blame you if you haven't. However, these things are always more interesting when you have a dog in the fight (and something to talk about at Oscar parties come Sunday)—so if your Friday and Saturday plans permit, consider taking in a last-minute film or two.
We're honored to have five original, exclusive poster designs below, created just for us by LA-based graphic artist (and film buff) Midnight Marauder, representing five of his favorite Best Picture nominees. Read his crib notes, watch the trailers, and then hit up Fandango to find a screening near you, pre-Oscar night.
ARGO – Directed by Ben Affleck. "I went a little Syriana on this design. I guess the film struck me as CIA on a mission. George Clooney produced the film, so it has that vibe to it."
LINCOLN – Directed by Steven Spielberg. "I'm a big Civil War buff. I ritually watch Civil War by [documentary filmmaker] Ken Burns a few times a year. So the entire Lincoln story is something I'm deeply passionate about. Only a true maverick like Daniel Day-Lewis could bring Lincoln's last few months to the screen with such vigor. For the design, I wanted something simple and nostalgic."
DJANGO UNCHAINED – Directed by Quentin Tarantino. "QT is a marvelous writer. I can imagine him giddy with excitement when he called Christoph Waltz over to read his part. I loved the energy of each character—but when Waltz and DiCaprio left the film, it lost me a little."
AMOUR – Directed by Michael Haneke. "Haneke has crafted quite a love story, with devastating effects. This one will really get to you if you let it. I couldn't help bringing a Polish touch to such a depressing and beautiful film." [Ed. note: Artists in Poland have been particularly renowned in the realm of poster art for decades.]
ZERO DARK THIRTY – Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. "Female directors are a bit rare in the industry, but I love Bigelow's films. She's right up there with action guys like Paul Greengrass and Guy Ritchie. Again, I was feeling inspired by Polish poster design."
— — —
The Real Winner: As many critics might attest, the year's truly best movies don't always win awards—or even get nominated. In Mr. Marauder's opinion: "Honestly, the best picture this year is The Master. It's a shame that Paul Thomas Anderson [director of There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights, among others] hasn't yet gotten the recognition he rightly deserves."
More Midnight Marauder: The grid above contains just a few of our latest favorites from Marauder's vast archive of hundreds of eye-widening poster designs, spanning from celluloid classics to upcoming releases. We chose these based solely on aesthetics—but given the designer's taste level, you can bet money each is worth adding to your Netflix queue as well. [Click images to enlarge. Ryan Gosling's The Place Beyond the Pines, bottom left, is due in theaters late March.]
Marauder's latest limited-edition print—created for a recent 'Oscar Legends' exhibit at Hero Complex Gallery in San Francisco—is still available for sale (framed if you so desire). It depicts 1978 Best-Picture winner The Deer Hunter, about which Marauder had the following to say: "One of my favorite films of all time…it encapsulates everything that I adore in cinema. Director Michael Cimino's intimate epic about family, brotherhood and war is the ultimate '70s film. The Russian roulette scene is one of the greatest gifts to cinema ever realized."
If you find yourself in the Portland, Oregon, area this Sunday—see the Deer Hunter print in person, along with Oscar Legends as depicted by many other artists, at Hero Complex's pop-up gallery at the Hollywood Theatre.
[Artwork © Midnight Marauder. View more of his work on Tumblr and Behance.]


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Swimming Pool Blog
by Rob Cox, November 22, 2010
Pool Cleaner Tune-Up - Robotic Pool Cleaner repair
Robotic pool cleaners aren't really ROBOTS - but they are computer controlled and more importantly - independent of the pool pump and filter system. This independence allows robotic cleaners to operate at peak efficiency, even when the pump or filter is dirty or off.
Robotic pool cleaners include brand names like Aquabot, Aquatron, Aquavac, Dirt Devil or Dolphin. All of these devices share the characteristic of a belt driven rover, with two internal motors - a pump motor and a drive motor. The pump motor does the vacuuming and keeps the suction close to the floor and the wall, while the drive motor is connected to pullies and belts that propel the cleaner forward and in reverse.
Robot pool cleaners operate on low voltage, plug a transformer into any 115v outlet, and plug your cleaner cord into the power box to send 24 volts to the pool cleaner to power the motors. A distinct advantage to the robotic pool cleaner is that while it vacuums, it also filters. The internal debris bag, made of a fine mesh, traps particles as fine as 2 microns, reducing the work load of your filter and chemicals.
Usually reliable, robot pool cleaners will from time to time refuse to move, or turn on, or clean the entire pool upon demand. Here's some tips on what to check when your robotic pool cleaner takes a day off.
- Robotic Cleaner is not moving:
- Is there water being pushed out of the top of the unit?
- Robotic Cleaner is moving slowly or not climbing walls.
- Check for loose or worn drive belts, pulleys, rollers.
- Check for loose wheel tubes or missing bushings.
- Check for worn drive tracks or wheel tube brushes.
- Check that cleaner bag is not needing to be cleaned.
- Check internal floatation pieces.
- Robotic Cleaner Cord is tangling
- Check your hose floats are well spaced and floating.
- Lay in sun straight an uncoiled for a day
- Coil up from the cleaner toward the cable plug end.
- Position cord floats over crimped sections.


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****POWDA PUFF TUESDAY**** Come join us at Sierra on tuesday for some freshies that mother nature unloaded on the Sierras...enjoy the day as
ANGIE aka NIKE DAT SHIT does face plants off jumps...or watch
MATT H. aka Philosoraptor do a nose dive on the West Bowl run...always good stuff.. If you do not have a Season Pass, ticket info can be found here: ***
http://www.sierraatta... Those with Season Passes may also be able to get discount tickets at the resort.
- If you are willing to drive, please state in RSVP how many you can take with gear. Carpoolers please watch the bottom of this post to see what carpool you're in. Drivers, please also watch this post and flag any necessary adjustments that need to be made to your carpool.
- We meet at 6:30am on the dot, we leave at 6:45am sharp!
- If you plan on carpooling, have $15 cash for your driver... Please try and have exact change!
- When we get to the resort we will meet at ****Base Lodge**** at 9:00am
LUNCH: We will meet at ****360 Smokehouse**** at 12:30pm for lunch. It is important that we all make this rendezvous in the event that we become separated and do not have a cellphone or walkie talkie... Please try to stay with someone who has one of the two. Please try to make sure, if we separate into smaller groups, that we all have a way to communicate with each other.
- $15 for gas for the driver (if you're carpooling; Exact change is appreciated)
- A bagged lunch or money to purchase food
- All your gear! Boots, board, gloves, goggles, etc. (or money to rent)
- Optional: Motorola Walkie Talkies: if you have one, bring it! We use channel 7-38 so we can stay in touch on the mountain!
If you have an Android, BlackBerry, iPhone or Magellan, bring it! Go to
www.phresheez.com and add the app to your device. This way we can race each other on the mountain, GPS your fastest speeds, your longest runs, track your milage, and see how well you're doing on the mountain! It's a great FREE app.
As always, please be safe and wear a helmet! Looking forward to meeting some new faces and seeing some regulars!


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Pershing has rolled out the first iteration of NetXInvestor, a new portal for end clients of RIAs and independent BD advisors that offers customized views and tools for individual clients controlled by their advisors who custody or clear with Pershing.
Patrick Yip, director of Advisory Market Technology Strategy at Pershing, said in a Friday interview that the new portal—which replaces NetExchangeClient—reflects Pershing's business strategy to help advisors "grow their business and build their brand," and its technology strategy to meet the changing demands and expectations of end clients.
"When I was younger," said Yip, "all the cool technology was at work; now it's at home." Yip says that "for the last 20 years we've been building tools for baby boomers," but now it must build them for Gen X, Gen Y and millennial clients, offering those clients choice to interact with their advisors "through any device at any time."
In addition to the end client platform, which was "built from the ground up," says Yip, and will be enhanced throughout 2014, Pershing also is planning to release this year new versions of its NetX360 platform for advisor use and its mobile platform.
The NetXInvestor platform is white labeled for either the RIA firm or the broker-dealer and comes with a choice of "themes," Yip said, by which he means the design and options that clients can view and use on the site. For example, Yip said that for some clients, the theme will look like what Apple device users are accustomed to, while for younger clients—"a Gen Y who's looking for something that pops more, with streaming news and more popup alerts"—there will be a design more familiar to Android users.
The advisor will control the theme (including colors, logos and styles) that the end client is viewing, but beyond design, functional customization is available through "entitlements" chosen by the advisor. One example is trading. Most clients of RIAs do not trade on their own, but an RIA could allow an individual client to do so through the secure environment of NetXInvestor.
All clients will be able to view the daily updated value of their portfolio, have access to news and research (customized to their holdings), be able to set up alerts for specific holdings in their portfolios and access cash management tools. The news feature, says Yip, will "change context depending on where you are in the site," to match the views and data on that page. A Quick Links button on the client's home page will bring up contact information for the client's advisor, but later this year that feature will become part of a "communications center," says Yip, that beginning in Q3 or Q4 will allow more robust, secure collaboration between client and advisor, such as sharing documents.
Further enhancements scheduled for NetXInvestor "later this year," Pershing said in a statement, are e-signature, investor-initiated asset movement requests and additional collaboration tools.
NetXInvestor combines the former NetExchange Client, NetExchange View, NetExchange Select and myeDocumentsuite.com.


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Regarding any aspect of contact or purchase, any information shared with Zeal will be solely utilized for the purposes of order assistance or product assistance only. Zeal does not share any phone, address or email information with 3rd party vendors, nor is any information shared outside of Zeal based products.
All personal information, including payment information & contact information is utilized for Zeal based service only, and will not be shared, sold or utilized in any other fashion or form.


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FH Publishing necesitaba un nuevo diseño de impreso o envases y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 110 diseños de 23 diseñadores freelance.
Creation Health & Healthy 100 (Florida Hospital Publishing)
For over one hundred years the mission of Florida Hospital has been: To extend the health and healing ministry of Christ. Opened in 1908, Florida Hospital is comprised of eight hospital campuses housing over 2,200 beds and twenty walk-in medical centers. With over 17,000 employees—including 2,000 doctors and 4,000 nurses—Florida Hospital serves the residents and guests of Orlando, the No. 1 tourist destination in the world. Florida Hospital cares for over one million patients a year. Florida Hospital is a Christian, faith-based hospital that believes in providing Whole Person Care to all patients – mind, body and spirit. Hospital fast facts include:
• LARGEST ADMITTING HOSPITAL IN AMERICA. Ranked No. 1 in the nation for inpatient admissions by the American Hospital Association.
• HOSPITAL OF THE FUTURE. At the turn of the century, the Wall Street Journal named Florida Hospital the "Hospital of the Future".
• ONE OF AMERICA'S BEST HOSPITALS. Recognized by U.S. News & World Report as "One of America's Best Hospitals" for ten years.
• SPORTS EXPERTS. Florida Hospital has an enduring track record of providing exclusive medical care to many sports organizations including: The Orlando Magic NBA team, Disney's Wide World of Sports, Walt Disney World's Marathon Weekend, the Capital One Bowl, and the World Cup and Olympics.
Florida Hospital's mission is not only to provide healing services to our patients, but also to help them experience Optimal Health in Mind, Body and Spirit. This book serves as a teaching tool for helping reader's imagine the possibility of living to a Healthy 100.
Though our primary target audience is the million patients who pass through our hospital every year, there are several other target audiences as well. We also provide this book to the patients of the other 34 hospital's in our system that will use the book to explain the principles of Whole Person Health.
In addition, the book will be made available for sale to church groups, businesses, and major on-line retailers such as Amazon. The book will also be featured on TV, print, and radio advertising.
Looking for this book cover to have a similar "feel" as another book we created called the Creation Health Discovery (file of cover attached). Namely, we would like a clean, bright design that looks like it might be in the same family of products. You can also look at the web design for the site http://www.Healthy100.org and http://www.CreationHealth.com to get a feel for the design. Especially note the font on the phrase "What do you want to do when you're 100?" at the top of the Healthy 100 website with the vertical lines at each end. That's about as much of a logo type look as we have so far.
Book Title:
8 Secrets of a Healthy 100: What You Can Learn from the All-Stars of Longevity
Des Cummings, Jr., PhD
with Julie vanPutten, MD, PhD, MPH, MS, FAAFP
(author name should be larger, co-author smaller)
Also, if there is an interesting way to do it, we might like to include that phrase on the cover design, "What do you want to do when you're 100?" Could be a badge or something. Of course, if it doesn't work on the front cover we may be able to use it on the back cover at the top.
We would love to see two kinds of treatments. One that is text oriented (no photography) and one that incorporates some imagery. Our main concern is to AVOID the typical "health book" cliché of images like an apple, a joyful person leaping in the air, etc.
Trim size: 6" x 9" (portrait)


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If age were measured in symbols rather than numbers, Burke Snowden would be strawberry Pop Rocks. On the corner of his nightstand sits a half-consumed package that he opened weeks ago, then decided to save "just in case." Many of the items stashed inside his disheveled green bedroom speak of life in the eighth grade, where Burke stays out of trouble and in the middle of an enthusiastic crush on a classmate named Ingrid Wu. She is smart, he says, and she knows French. She is the Winnie Cooper to his Kevin Arnold, though he is too young to understand the reference; they are in like.
In the right-hand corner of the room, past a periodic table of the elements, a map of the solar system and a Bop-It, is an overstuffed cardboard box that holds 26 decks of cards and more than 900 score sheets — tools for Burke's after-school job. "We had to get new ones because the old cards were purchased in the '60s, and they're all gross and sticky," Burke says. "This is my bridge club now, and I want to do things differently."
Burke is the youngest director of an American Contract Bridge League-accredited club in the country. Bridge is a game that many people assume is dying — and culturally, they might be right, but Burke is bringing it new life. He has already achieved life-master status, the rough equivalent of becoming a chess master or grandmaster. In July, he and his youth partner won first place in both the pairs and the Swiss team events at the national youth tournament in Toronto. A two-time national champion, Burke is the best youth player in the state, if not the West, and he is 36 years younger than the next oldest player at his club: his dad, fifty-year-old Hewlett-Packard computer programmer Craig Snowden.
Burke Snowden
"It's gotten to the point where he won't just beat you, he'll beat you badly," says Craig, who is known as "Burke's dad" at national tournaments. "Most people in Colorado know who he is, and they know how old he is. Some of them don't like that."
Thanks to a school newsletter that refers to his success as the "Snowden Storm," Burke's fellow Mustangs at Kinard Middle School in Fort Collins know that a champion walks through their halls and runs in their P.E. class. But Burke isn't content with just mastering the game himself: He wants to win over an entirely new generation. If he can become the marketable face of American bridge before he turns twenty and moves beyond the youth category, he might be able to push the game out of the mothballs and into the mainstream. With two national wins, approximately 520 master points and a level of hubris that only a fourteen-year-old boy can possess, Burke has more than a few advantages on his side.
All his game needs now is the same thing just about every kid heading to high school wants: popularity.
There is no Bobby Fischer of American bridge. Bridge is not a sexy game. It is not even an easily approachable game. Although chess, its more popular strategy sibling, is commonly taught and encouraged in schools, there are no nationally sanctioned scholastic bridge programs. While chess requires two players and 32 black and white pieces, bridge demands four players and 52 cards for rounds that average three and a half hours at the club level and eleven hours at the tournament level.
In one of the most famous observations about the game, noted player Warren Buffett pronounced, "Bridge is such a sensational game that I wouldn't mind being in jail if I had three cellmates who were decent players and who were willing to keep the game going 24 hours a day."
Burke seconds the requirement for "decent players."
Bridge is a game of logic, and it is tough to master. Four players, split into two pairs, begin the game by counting their point cards (ace, king, queen and jack) and bidding on the strength of their best suits. From there, they spend the rest of the game calling their own bluffs and attempting to achieve at or beyond the level of what they'd promised the other players. "It's the smartest game in the world," says Norma Sands, Denver's only full-time bridge instructor. "It can also be the hardest. It requires an advanced skill that not everyone possesses, and it requires you to change the way you think and constantly adapt."
The Greater Denver Area, known as Unit 361 of the ACBL, currently offers more than twenty options for lessons — from beginning bridge to its advanced conventions — but few people who take these lessons are anywhere near Burke's age. More than 1,000 people are registered as ACBL members in Denver, and thousands more play but don't pay membership fees. But only one number really counts: The average age of ACBL's current membership is approximately sixty.
Burke, then, is a missing link between the game's most common enthusiasts (retired baby boomers) and the generation they must appeal to in order to survive and adapt (their grandchildren). This makes him the focus of much attention from both players and officials, even if it also makes it tough for him to find a partner. Billie Turner, the partner with whom he took on a regional tournament in Reno last week, is 75 — 61 years Burke's senior.
"One day, our club director called me and asked me to be his partner, saying she was having trouble finding people to play with him because he's a kid and they don't think he's any good," Turner remarks. "She begged me to go in and play with him, but I'll tell you one thing: I played with him one time, and I got rid of all my little old ladies."
Burke is confident and demanding, and he was much the same way when he began playing, at age six. At the time, he was competing in chess (large trophies still decorate his bedroom), and he learned bridge sitting on his father's lap. First he wanted to hold the cards for his dad, then he wanted to play them for his dad, then he wanted to play by himself, then he wanted to win, then he won, and then he kept winning. When he started, his hands weren't large enough to hold the necessary thirteen cards, so his dad gifted him with a cardholder.
"What really helps is his ability to focus," Craig says. "He has an almost singular obsessiveness when it comes to planning his bids and his moves throughout the game, and I've seen few other kids think like that. Bridge has changed that aspect of his personality." At every tournament Burke attends, at least one player asks Craig how he persuaded his son to play bridge. The blunt answer is that he didn't. Early on, Craig and his now-ex-wife, Katie Snowden, actually discouraged their son from the game to protect his chess skills and his future social life.
"When I started, the quote-unquote 'good players' in Fort Collins didn't like me, and everyone got crabby with me because they've all been playing for 45 years," says Burke. "They were all kinds of annoyed with me because I'm a kid and I'm supposed to be playing baseball or something like that. Playing bridge means I lost out on parts of my childhood, but I don't think that matters."
Four years into the lessons, books and Burke's constant training in both bridge and chess, the Snowden family hit an insurmountable obstacle. On September 20, 2007, close to his tenth birthday, Burke was scheduled to participate in the seventh and final round of a scholastic chess competition that he was expected to win — on the same weekend as a bridge tournament he had never attended.
His parents chose chess. Burke chose bridge. He won.
And chess lost: Burke never played the game again. Instead, he joined the ACBL, earning his first points toward his life-master status and pouring the cement for his national reputation that first weekend. That same year, he applied to become an accredited bridge-club director — just in case, he says. In order to be officially sanctioned by the ACBL, a club must be run by an accredited director who has passed a test on the game's rules and regulations.
"The test is a joke," Burke sighs, slouching on a couch in the Southwestern-themed living room of his dad's Fort Collins home. "I didn't even have to try."
"You should take that with a grain of salt," Craig warns. "Bridge is different for Burke than everyone else. Most people take a class to become accredited, but he just asked me for a book called The Laws of Bridge."
The book, Burke corrects his dad, is actually called The Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge as Promulgated in the Western Hemisphere. He pronounces the word "promulgated" wrong, but you get the point.
Burke looks and dresses like a five-foot-tall Old Navy ad, but he talks like a Metamucil ad. He smiles almost any time he is not losing, an act that opens a mouth structured by braces strung together with blue rubber bands. When that mouth opens, it drops phrases picked up from the older players at his club, which sound like they were borrowed from The Great Gatsby. He calls his fellow players "cards." He says that Turner is "75 years of age," "a real character" who "thinks she's the world's fair." (Turner, it is worth noting, has 2,400 master points on Burke.)
When discussing his accomplishments, Burke calls himself a "talented chap" — then proves his chronological age with an unsubtle round of show-and-tell. Burke keeps his bridge achievement cards inside a blue plastic sleeve so that they will not get dusty — in addition to cats and various common outdoor plants, he is allergic to dust — and he will show them to you one by one. He will let you touch them. He will tell you what each one means. But only one of them really matters. Separated from six white paper cards is a gold plate marking his greatest achievement to date: At thirteen, Burke Snowden became a bridge life master. That meant that only 20 percent of ACBL players were at or above his status. And since then, Burke himself has surpassed it, upgrading the title to bronze life master.
He recognizes that his attention to the game has required some sacrifices. "I guess I'm not the dictionary definition of normal, but bridge is what matters about my life, and it's what I'm good at," Burke says.
But Craig, in turn, points out that Burke helped select and cut down the impressive Christmas tree immediately behind him — a normal activity for a normal tradition that lots of normal boys perform. And what was underneath that tree on December 25? What did Burke request for Christmas?
A subscription to Bridge World.
Because Burke is familiar with most of the country's bridge-club directors, his reputation precedes him. Recently it came up at a regular Thursday duplicate bridge game at Denver's Northwest Bridge Club. One of seven ACBL-accredited clubs in the Denver area, Northwest is a mainstay of the region's fierce but aging duplicate bridge scene. Burke's wins and frequent trips to play at Denver clubs have made him a common topic of conversation.
Tucked into one of seventeen card tables covered with red cloths and scattered across the scuffed dance floor of the Arvada Lions Club, a woman named Connie mentions Burke. "Oh, he's adorable," she says, her speech punctuated every three seconds by the hiss from her oxygen tank. "But he's kind of a rude little boy, isn't he? He corrects you all the time, like he's never heard of respecting his elders."
"He can be as mean as he wants," her partner says. "We need more of him. Nobody will care about bridge after we die if everyone who plays it is right about to die."
The two laugh, and the conversation moves to a frequent complaint: Neither has been able to interest her own children in the game, so how did Burke's parents manage it? It's a common theme at clubs across the metro area.
"Kids these days have too many distractions, and most of those come from technology," says Steve Wainz, the 62-year-old co-owner of the Denver House of Cards, one of the area's largest clubs. At his club, players use handheld devices to track their points — one of the ways the game has started preparing for the future. "If they had any skill set other than killing and blowing people up with little remotes connected to their TVs, they might take an interest in the culture of bridge. That's what it is: a culture."
Along with a handful of recreational clubs, the Denver area's generous selection of accredited clubs — the Denver House of Cards, the Bridge Club, Castle Rock Bridge Club, Heather Gardens Bridge Club, Denver Metropolitan Bridge Studio, Northwest Bridge Club and the Arvada Bridge Club — are connected by their ties to Unit 361 of the ACBL, a history of shared infighting, and aging players. Verbal directions to the games include stops at filling stations, not gas stations, and references to landmarks that no longer exist. Individually, the clubs are distinguished by geographic situation, the number of games they offer, the quality of food served at each game, and the personalities of their owners, a scale that slides from "pleasant" to "quite difficult," with few points in between.
Wainz, for example, was banned from the Denver Metropolitan Bridge Studio, still run by former colleague Mike Thompson, after an argument — and he has since attracted players from Thompson's club because some find Thompson tough to handle.
Four of the seven clubs claim they are the city's oldest, and the real title is almost impossible to trace. Although some, like Wainz's Denver House of Cards, kept their original identities when they were purchased from previous owners, others have morphed into different entities each time they changed hands and addresses. All of the clubs, though, face the same challenge trying to enticing younger players:
They can't.
The largest obstacle, says Marvel Heinsohn, is a lack of promotion by the ACBL. Nationally, the ACBL maintains a non-profit organization called the Foundation for the Preservation and Advancement of Bridge, founded in 2008 to do exactly what its title says. The primary way it does this is by granting small scholarships to youth players who win national titles. Burke's college fund, for example, includes $2,000 he earned last year in Toronto through a North American Bridge championship. But the grants are few and far between, and the Greater Denver and Northern Colorado chapters of the ACBL, units 361 and 363, devote "absolutely nothing" to promoting the game at the local and state levels, Heinsohn says.
"The opinions vary widely, but the reality is that only old people play bridge right now, and that's neither how it used to be nor a remotely good thing," says the 82-year-old owner of the Bridge Club. "We continue to get new players out of retirement, but I worry that the game will no longer be relevant if the only people passionate about it are in their seventies and eighties."
Not everyone shares his worry: Sands insists that attracting youth to the game doesn't matter as much as attracting players in general — although she says her classes have drawn younger students in recent years. One of these is seventeen-year-old Nick Riley, who attended Sands's holiday party with his mother in tow. "I'm also trying to teach my friends the game," Riley says, noting that he's instructing his girlfriend, too. "And while I keep hearing from everyone that the game will die without people my age, I'm more concerned with the fact that it isn't adapting. Even if the numbers weren't changing at all, it's unhealthy for a game to stay in stasis with only one generation for so long."
One of the most common tools promoting bridge is the notion that it keeps the mind young, that it's a potential means of warding off Alzheimer's. The mental activity is part of what attracts Burke, but this age-based advertising strategy doesn't do much to advance the game.
"I don't care about Alzheimer's," Burke says. "I just turned fourteen years old. The game's effects are long-term, not short-term, and we have to find a way to promote the reality in a way that speaks to people my age as well as their age."
Buying his own club was a big move for Burke. It provides a way for him to not only promote the game, but also to bring his parents together again. The two divorced when Burke was six, and he's traveled between their homes on a weekly basis ever since. But now his club puts them in the same room every Thursday from 6:30 to 10 p.m., when they help their son facilitate games.
Burke is elated about this. "My mom cooks all the food, and my dad plays in the club, so I get to work with both of them a lot," he says. "They're the reason I started playing bridge, and it will be great to work with them again and see them together."
Because Burke's club game is geared toward intermediate newcomers, his status as a life master prohibits him from doing anything but monitoring. His main function is to make calls on bridge rules when players ask for his advice, and he worries about the realities of a fourteen-year-old telling a 74-year-old that he cheated and needs to leave. Bridge directors are frequently called upon to make risky decisions during heated moments; this is where his dad comes in handy. Even at Sands's holiday party, an event presented without competition, one team had to be silenced when a loud argument broke out and each player accused the other of playing so poorly that they lost the game.
Burke had worked as a director at Fort Fun for two years when the club's owners, retired married couple Marilyn Pultz and Bill Foliss, announced that they planned to sell the club in order to travel. Burke, who was at a music camp in Wyoming at the time, learned of this via e-mail and immediately called his parents to convince them they should buy the club. The three of them offered $1,200, but for months they competed against another group vying for ownership.
As the January 1 deadline to turn over the club approached, Pultz and Foliss took an informal straw poll and asked club members which new director they'd prefer. The vote came back in Burke's favor, and though his parents anted up the up-front costs, Burke must cover maintenance, liability insurance, rent at Saint John's Lutheran Church, where the games are held, and a sanction fee to the ACBL; he plans to repay his parents at a rate of $50 to $100 every Thursday. The move has made him a young businessman, and he is an aggressive one.
"They want to keep their talons on it as long as possible," Burke says of Pultz and Foliss, "so we said we'd go ahead and pay them now instead of in installments. And the list of items they're giving us isn't even itemized. They're claiming they're giving me a great deal, but I'm not so sure."
He's far more sure of how he plays the game. After rounds, he tends to point out any mistakes his partner made — an action that pits his personality against players who are senior in both age and master points. "I tell them, 'This is what you should have done instead; that wasn't logical,'" he says. "I'm trying to make them better."
As a game, bridge is a great equalizer: Depending on which cards you are dealt, it's entirely possible to beat one of the country's highest-ranked players based on chance alone. But some members of the Colorado bridge community have yet to grow used to seeing a fourteen-year-old as their equal.
"When I'm playing with Billie, she gets angry, even though I'm probably about as good as her or better at this point," Burke says.
According to Craig, his son is decidedly better — even though Turner has earned almost 3,000 master points in a game where it is possible to earn as little as .4 after eleven hours of play.
For what it's worth, Turner boasts that she has yet to compete in a tournament with Burke in which the two earned fewer than 35 points — though this is not technically true. "When my kid was that age, he wasn't nearly as smart," she says. Turner praises Burke as though he were her own grandson, boasting about everything from his grades ("straight As") to his maturity ("fourteen going on forty") to his handwriting ("beautiful") to his latest oboe concert ("very impressive"). "She still thinks she's trying to teach me, so she tries to tell me something, but I know I've done it right, and she gets mad and yells at me," Burke says. "I'm more of a natural at it than she is. She doesn't have the talent for it, but she's been playing since 1976."
Burke started playing with Turner shortly after her husband and partner, a life master with more than 5,000 points, died of pancreatic cancer and left her alone at the table. Although Burke's relationship with Turner is mercurial, the two have developed clearly independent roles as their partnership has developed over the years. Anything related to the computer, which Turner is uncomfortable using, is Burke's job: It was he who booked their tickets to Reno, obeying Turner's instructions to save $25 by leaving at 6:35 a.m. the day after Christmas. After tournaments, Turner calls Burke to ask him to look up their rankings and points on the computer and read them out loud to her.
"Competitive bridge is a crazy world," he says. "Sometimes I wonder if I'll be like that."
Burke's plans to popularize bridge don't stop with playing the game. In November, as part of National Novel Writing Month at Kinard, Burke penned 50,000 words of an epic fiction experiment that he has yet to finish — or even let his parents read. Unsurprisingly, the plot centers on bridge, though his dad's girlfriend, Lisa, is attempting to convince him to add a female love interest named Abigail.
"It's about this older bridge club director and this younger director he's trying to mentor and improve, and all this other stuff happens," Burke says. This part of the plot mirrors his own life, but the details grow more complicated from there. "It kind of ended up being a Dan Brown book on top, and I'm not sure what's happening. It's all this politics, and some of the directors work against the league and are radical communists."
In the world where his book is set, video games are outlawed and everyone has taken up bridge instead. As a result, the ACBL plays a large role in the government. For Burke, it's an almost utopian society. In order to compete at a decent level, players must be able to sit stationary for three-and-a-half-hour rounds, and the biggest hurdle to recruiting his friends to play has been a combination of their interest in video games and their short attention spans: Was it the chicken or the Metal Gear Solid?
Since his first tournament, in the fourth grade, Burke has made three major attempts to recruit his peers. Because conflicts with other clubs and district rules prohibit him from starting an official after-school club, he has tried teaching during the lunch hour. When he was in fifth grade, he'd amassed a solid and regular group in his elementary-school cafeteria — only to see his friends leave for recess when the weather got nice. The other two times were even less successful.
"They'd much rather be playing video games," Burke says. "I'm going to try again next year when I'm in high school, when they have better attention spans. It's going to work eventually, and I know they'll be sorry they didn't start earlier."
Because of his strong memory and penchant for deconstructing and rebuilding VCRs, Burke's best friend, Spencer, is a particularly qualified candidate, and he remains Burke's pet project until the time when Burke can reach out on a broader scale. "We went to a tournament and met some kids from Mount Pleasant, Iowa, who have ten bridge champions there at the youth level but less than 10,000 people," Craig says. "The difference is just promotion. That's why he gets out there, to gain some notoriety through the game so that the other kids will see him and hopefully start to care."
In most other aspects of his life, Burke is a typical, if highly intelligent and particularly obsessive, member of the middle-school community. Ingrid Wu recently wrote him a note on one of the wide-ruled notebook pages inside his binder. It was in French, he says, but he understood it. On Facebook, his relationship status is "It's complicated." He takes private oboe lessons, though he'll have to switch to tenor sax or clarinet to join the marching band when he moves to high school; his oboe tutor is not happy about this. When asked for his favorite band, he opts instead to share his favorite composer, Hans Zimmer, and his favorite film scores, Gladiator and Angels & Demons. When his dad claims that Burke likes to ride bikes, Burke corrects him: "It's definitely not bad, I guess."
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Burke definitely enjoys Dan Brown novels, and he augments the three bridge periodicals that come with his ACBL membership with books he checks out at his school library. He describes the quality of his school chess team as "glorified babysitting," and he complains that players take each other's kings and continue to play without realizing the game is over. In December, when his class took the pre-ACT Explore test, Burke scored 25 out of 25 possible points.
The same test challenged the students to answer questions about their future careers with the goal of prescribing them one, though the category that Burke self-selected falls at the exact opposite point of the circular graph from the one the data suggested for him. But he's not sure he wants to be a professional bridge player, either.
"It's dependent on people wanting to play and how I do at tournaments until then," he says, quickly couching the possibility behind logical probability. "So many things have to fall into place for it to work. I might become a paid partner, though, because all these rich women from the mountains hire these guys, pay for them to fly out and to play, and they make a living like that year-round."
But Burke's dad, who has never pushed his son to pursue bridge nearly as much as Burke has pushed himself, hopes for something a little more concrete. "We try hard to make sure he has a real life alongside his bridge life," Craig says. "I hope he gets a real job."


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On Education: Conversations with Riccardo Mazzeo
On Education: Conversations with Riccardo Mazzeo
ISBN: 978-0-745-66205-3 April 2013 Polity 100 Pages
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Faced with the bewildering features of our liquid modern world, many young people are inclined to withdraw - in some cases into the online world of games and virtual relationships, in other cases into anorexia, depression, alcohol or even drug abuse, hoping to find shelter from a world perceived as more and more dangerous. Others launch into more violent forms of behaviour, like street gangs and the looting carried out by young people who have been excluded from the temples of consumption but are eager to participate in the ceremony. And all this happens while our politicians look on, uncomprehending and indifferent.
In this short book Zygmunt Bauman - the leading social theorist of our liquid modern world, here in conversation with Riccardo Mazzeo - reflects on the predicament of young people today and on the role of education and the educator in a world where the certainties of our predecessors can no longer be taken for granted.
Table of contents
1 Between mixophilia and mixophobia 1
2 José Saramago: ways of being happy 7
3 Gregory Bateson and his third level of education 11
4 From closure of mind to 'permanent revolution' 15
5 Oak trees and ridiculously minute acorns 24
6 Looking for a genuine 'cultural revolution' 27
7 Depravation is the cleverest strategy of deprivation 31
8 Minutes to destroy, years to build 40
9 The young as a tip for the consumer industry 54
10 The effort to improve mutual understanding is a prolific source of human creativity 60
11 The unemployed can always play lotto, can't they? 65
12 Disability, abnormality, minority as a political problem 74
13 Indignation and swarm- like political groupings 80
14 Defective consumers and never- ending minefields 86
15 Richard Sennett on difference 100
16 From Lacan's 'capitalist' to Bauman's 'consumerist' 112
17 ?i?ek and Morin on monotheism 121
18 Proust's petite madeleine and consumerism 126
19 On fuels, sparks and fires 130
20 On glocalization coming of age 136
Inside Higher Ed
"When graduates can't find jobs, the bargain of commercialised education – take out enormous student loans that will be repaid by your supposedly high salary later on – breaks down. So worries the sociologist Bauman, in a perky and colourful written interview with the Italian publisher Mazzeo. Even so, Bauman remains hopeful about the 'openness' of mind ideally encouraged by schooling – indeed, as he points out sharply, it is not 'practical' otherwise."
Steven Poole, The Guardian
- This is an engaging new book from one of the most influential and widely read sociologists in the world today.
- Bauman, in conversation with Riccardo Mazzeo, reflects on nature and role of education and on the predicament of young people in our contemporary, liquid-modern world.
- What role should educators play in a world where young people find themselves faced with deep uncertainty about their future, where the prospects of securing a stable, long-term career seem increasingly remote and where intensified population movements have created more diverse communities in which different cultures find themselves living side by side?
- This book will appeal to anyone involved in teaching and education and to a a wide audience of general readers interested in current affairs.


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ANAHEIM, Calif. — Nearly 38 percent of lesbians polled in a national survey were not routinely screened for cervical cancer, putting them at risk of developing a highly preventable cancer, according to a University of Maryland School of Medicine study being presented at the 11th Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research. Cervical cancer is caused by a sexually transmitted virus, the human papillomavirus (HPV), and can be detected through regular Pap smears.
The percentage of lesbians not being screened as recommended is higher than for women overall. According to information compiled by the Centers for Disease Control's Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), 13 percent of women have not had a Pap test in the last three years.
"This study highlights an often-overlooked cancer disparity," says the study's author, J. Kathleen Tracy, Ph.D., an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a researcher at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center. "We know that HPV can be transmitted during same-sex sexual activity, so lesbians are at risk of developing cervical cancer. If these women aren't screened, they are at increased risk of getting this type of cancer by missing opportunities to identify precursor cervical abnormalities that can be treated."
Dr. Tracy, a health psychologist, is presenting these results at the cancer prevention conference, which is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).
According to Dr. Tracy, a key barrier to effective screening among lesbians is a lack of communication with their health care providers. "We shouldn't underestimate the importance of open communication between patient and provider," Dr. Tracy says. "Our research showed that women who were open with their primary care doctors and gynecologists about their sexual orientation were nearly 2½ to three times more likely to have routine screening than those who did not disclose it. They also were more likely to be screened if their doctors recommended it and they believed that having routine Pap tests was beneficial."
E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., vice president for medical affairs at the University of Maryland and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, says, "Cervical cancer is very treatable if detected early through routine screening with Pap tests. Dr. Tracy's research shows that a significant percentage of the lesbian population is not being screened as recommended. We need to eliminate barriers to screening for this subset of women and to educate them on the benefits."
Dr. Tracy and her colleagues sent a standardized internet survey in 2010 and early 2011 to 3,000 women who identified themselves as lesbians. Of these, 1,006 women responded to the survey, with nearly 38 percent reporting that they were not getting regular cervical cancer screening. Sixty-two percent said they were routinely screened.
The two most common reasons for not getting Pap tests as recommended: not having a physician referral (17.5 percent) and not having a physician (17.3 percent). "Physician recommendation appeared to be a potent determinant of regular screening behavior," Dr. Tracy says. "Routine screeners perceived more benefits and fewer barriers to screening, and knew that not having a Pap test put them at increased risk for cervical cancer, than did women who were not screened."
"Women who identify as lesbian are at potentially elevated risk of cervical cancer because they are not routinely screened," researchers concluded. "Evidence-based interventions should be developed that address critical health beliefs that undermine participation in screening. Given the value placed on physician recommendation, patient-provider communication may serve as the optimal mode for intervention delivery."
Women should begin to have Pap tests at the age of 21 or within three years of becoming sexually active, whichever comes first. For many years, women were told to have yearly Pap tests until age 30 and then have them every two to three years if they had three normal tests in a row. The American Cancer Society now recommends that women age 21 to 29 have the test every three years. Women age 30 to 65 should have a Pap test and an HPV test every five years. A doctor may suggest more frequent screening if a woman has risk factors for cervical cancer.
The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute. (R21CA120635).
About the University of Maryland School of Medicine
Established in 1807, the University of Maryland School of Medicine is the first public medical school in the United States, and the first to institute a residency-training program. The School of Medicine was the founding school of the University of Maryland and today is an integral part of the 11-campus University System of Maryland. On the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine serves as the anchor for a large academic health center which aims to provide the best medical education, conduct the most innovative biomedical research and provide the best patient care and community service to Maryland and beyond. www.medschool.umaryland.edu.
About the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center
The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, which is part of the University of Maryland Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The center is recognized for its active clinical and basic science research program. It has comprehensive programs to treat all types of cancer and is a major referral center for patients throughout Maryland and the region. It is ranked 11th among 900 cancer centers nationwide by U.S. News and World Report. For more information about the center, go to www.umgcc.org.


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A 56-year-old Cheektowaga man was ordered Friday to serve a six month jail term for choking his former girlfriend by Cheektowaga Town Court Justice Paul S. Piotrowski.
Derrick E. Stevens of Atwood Place was sentenced on his guilty plea to criminal obstruction of breathing in connection with the June 2 incident in the home they had been sharing. Cheektowaga Police Capt. James Speyer said Stevens choked the woman with both hands until she almost passed out.
When the woman ran to a bedroom and tried to call police ,Stevens ran in after her and threw her to the floor. Cheektowaga Police Officer Jessica Stronka later that day arrested Stevens on both the obstructing breathing charge and harassment and obtained a court order of protection for the victim.
But on July 13 Stevens broke into the victim's home and was arrested by Police Officer Jay Ober who found Stevens hiding in a closet. The victim managed to quickly call for police.
Justice Piotrowski rebuked Stevens and told him he was going to jail because of his history of criminal behavior.


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Climbing airbag
General climbing discussions. Climbing, Bouldering, Mountaineering. Anything!!
**Keep the arguments to the suject, not the members!
**Keep the arguments to the suject, not the members!
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Climbing airbag
http://www.iol.co.za/html/newideas/page ... hp&id=2333
Good idea, bad idea?
- twiga
Good idea, bad idea?
- twiga
- Justin
- Posts: 3844
- Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 8:31 am
- Real Name: Justin Lawson
- Location: Montagu/Cape Town
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A friend had the idea using an inflatable landing mat similar to that used by pole vaulters. Imagine climbing twenty meter routes ropeless without the prospect of getting wet, as in deep water soloing, if you fall! We should try it, it sounds totally wild. Bags not carrying the airbag into the crags tho!!
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8 posts • Page 1 of 1