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Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a part of the Institute for Education Sciences within the United States Department of Education. IPEDS consists of twelve interrelated survey components that are collected over three collection periods (Fall, Winter, and Spring) each year as described in the Data Collection and Dissemination Cycle. The completion of all IPEDS surveys is mandatory for all institutions that participate in, or are applicants for participation in, any federal financial assistance program authorized by Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended.[1] Statutory Requirements For Reporting IPEDS Data
The IPEDS program department of NCES was created in 1992 and began collecting data in 1993.
- 1 IPEDS Use the Data Page
- 2 IPEDS Glossary
- 3 Data collected in IPEDS[1]
- 4 College Navigator
- 5 IPEDS Peer Analysis System
- 6 Controversy surrounding "Unit Record" data reporting
- 7 References and notes
- 8 References
- 9 External links
IPEDS Use the Data PageEdit
The Use the Data Page, formerly called the IPEDS Data Center, allows users to retrieve IPEDS data, including the ability to view trends on most frequently asked subject areas, retrieve data on a single institution, download or customize an institution's Data Feedback Report, compare institutions on a single variable, calculate descriptive statistics of an institution with or without a comparison institution, generate standard reports for an institution, download data files, and access other resources for data users. [2]
IPEDS GlossaryEdit
The IPEDS Glossary provides definitions for postsecondary-related terms used in the collection and dissemination of IPEDS data.
Data collected in IPEDS[1]Edit
IPEDS collects data on postsecondary education in the United States in the following areas: institutional characteristics, institutional prices, admissions, enrollment, student financial aid, degrees and certificates conferred, student persistence and success (retention rates, graduation rates, and outcome measures), institutional human resources, fiscal resources, and academic libraries.
Institutional characteristicsEdit
Institutional characteristics data are the foundation of the entire IPEDS system. These include basic institutional contact information, tuition and fees, room and board charges, control or affiliation, type of calendar system, levels of awards offered, types of programs, and admissions requirements.
Institutional pricesEdit
IPEDS collects institutional pricing data from institutions for full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students. This includes tuition and fee data as well as information on the estimated student budgets for students based on living situations (on-campus or off-campus).
Basic information is collected from institutions that do not have an open-admissions policy on the undergraduate selection process for first-time, degree/certificate-seeking students. This includes information about admissions considerations, admissions yields, and SAT and ACT test scores.
Because enrollment patterns differ greatly among the various types of postsecondary institutions, there is a need for both different measures of enrollment and several indicators of access. In IPEDS, the following enrollment-related data are collected:
- Fall enrollment — Fall enrollment is the traditional measure of student access to higher education. Fall enrollment data can be looked at by race/ethnicity; gender; enrollment status (part-time or full-time); and or level of study (undergraduate or graduate).
- Residence of first-time students — Data on the number of first-time freshmen by state of residence, along with data on the number who graduated from high school the previous year, serve to monitor the flow of students across state lines and calculate college-going rates by state. These data are collected in even-numbered years.
- Age data — The age distribution of enrolled students offers insight into the relationship between the changing demographics of college-going cohorts and enrollment in different types of postsecondary institutions. They also permit detailed projections of enrollment by institutional type and by age. Because a student's dependency status is strongly related to age, the data can be used to provide estimates of the number of independent and dependent students attending postsecondary institutions. These data are collected in odd-numbered years.
- Unduplicated 12-month head count — Enrollment figures based on the unduplicated head count of students enrolled over a 12-month period is particularly valuable for institutions that use non-traditional calendar systems and offer short-term programs. Because this enrollment measure encompasses an entire year, it provides a more complete picture of the number of students these schools serve.
- Instructional activity — Data on instructional activity is measured in total credit and/or contact hours delivered by institutions during a 12-month period.
- Total entering class — Data on the number of incoming students (students enrolling for the first time in a postsecondary institution versus students transferring in from another postsecondary institution) at an institution. This measure permits the calculation of the graduation rate cohort as a proportion of the total entering student body.
Student financial aidEdit
IPEDS collects data on the number of full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students who receive different types of student financial aid, including grants and loans, from different sources at each institution. IPEDS also collects data to show the average dollar amount of aid received by these students. Finally, as a result of the Higher Education Act (1965), as amended, IPEDS collects data to calculate the average net price at each institution for the following two groups: (1) full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students who receive grant and scholarship aid; and (2) full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students who receive Title IV federal student aid.
Degrees and certificates conferred (completions)Edit
IPEDS collects data on the number of students who complete a postsecondary education program by type of program and level of award (certificate or degree). Type of program is categorized according to the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP), a detailed coding system for postsecondary instructional programs. These data provide information on the number and location of completers by field. Business and industry, the military, and other groups that need to recruit individuals with particular skills use these data extensively. The data also help satisfy the mandate in the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act for information on completions in postsecondary career and technical education programs.
Student persistence and successEdit
IPEDS collects two types of data to help track postsecondary student progress and success.
- First–Year Retention Rates — The first-year retention rate measures the percentage of first-year students who had persisted in or completed their educational program a year later. These data have been collected since 2003.
- Graduation Rates — Graduation rate data provide information on institutional productivity and help institutions comply with reporting requirements of the Student Right-to-Know Act.
- Outcome Measures - Starting with the 2015-16 collection, IPEDS collects information on the number of awards conferred and the enrollment status of four degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate student cohorts: 1) Full-time, first-time, 2) Part-time, first-time, 3) Full-time, non-first-time, and 4) Part-time, non-first-time. The reported data are for two points in time: 6-years and 8-years after a cohort enters an institution.
Institutional resourcesEdit
IPEDS collects institutional data on human resources and finances.
- Human resources — Human resources data measure the number and type of staff supporting postsecondary education. Because staffing patterns vary greatly across postsecondary institutions, IPEDS measures human resources in three ways:
- Employees by assigned position — These data classify all employees by full- or part-time status, faculty status, and occupational activity.
- Salaries — These data include the number of full-time instructional faculty by rank, gender, and length of contract/teaching period; total salary outlay; and fringe benefits.
- Staff — These data include demographic and occupational characteristics for staff at institutions.
- Finances — Finance data includes institutional revenues by source, expenditures by category, and assets and liabilities. This information provides context for understanding the cost of providing postsecondary education. It is used to calculate the contribution of postsecondary education to the gross national product. IPEDS collects finance data conforming to the accounting standards that govern public and private institutions. Generally, private institutions use standards established by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and public institutions use standards established by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB).
- Academic Libraries - Information on collections, expenditures, and services for libraries at degree-granting institutions. Data collected through the IPEDS system replaces the previous U.S. Census and NCES Academic Libraries Survey, which collected data from institutions every other even-number year and was not a mandatory collection.
College Navigator is a "free consumer information tool designed to help students, parents, high school counselors, and others get information about over 7,500 postsecondary institutions in the United States - such as programs offered, retention and graduation rates, prices, aid available, degrees awarded, campus safety, and accreditation." Most of the data comes from IPEDS, although other data sources within the Department of Education are also used.[3] The website went live in September 2007 as a replacement for College Opportunities On-line (COOL) and was named in a December issue of Money magazine that year as "the best first screen" for researching colleges.
IPEDS Peer Analysis SystemEdit
The IPEDS Peer Analysis System (PAS), replaced by the IPEDS Data Center and then the Use the Data portal, is no longer online. However, it was once a tool that allowed a user to build a comparison list of colleges and/or universities and compare them to a linchpin school. This data is downloadable into various formats. Information that can be retrieved in this manner include: (1) Institutional characteristics and student charges, (2) Enrollments, (3) Completions, (4) Graduation rates, (5) Student financial Aid, (6) Finance, (7) Faculty salaries, (8) Fall staff, (9)Employees by assigned position.
A similar tool to the PAS was the Dataset Cutting Tool (DCT), which was available around the same time as the PAS. However, DCT is outdated and is no longer available.
Controversy surrounding "Unit Record" data reportingEdit
In March 2005 The US Department of Education released a study on the Feasibility of a Student Unit Record System Within the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. This Unit Record proposal met with immediate and vocal opposition from congressional leaders as well as colleges and universities. The US Department of Education argued that the development of a national student unit record tracking system, with appropriate privacy safeguards, which collects, analyzes and uses longitudinal student progression data was a vital tool for accountability and policy-making. This sparked an immediate reaction regarding the implications of what this means for Institutions of Higher Education.[4][5] Unit Record reporting, as originally conceived, would require institutions that report to IPEDS to upload not summary data but rather to upload files that contain individual student records. These files would contain a wide range of information on the student but would, most importantly, include the student's Social Security Number. Concerns were raised that attending even one course would mean you are added to a federal database for the rest of your life. In a report issued in March 2006 by the US Department of Education, Social Security Number was specifically excluded from the Unit Record upload data. It has been suggested that SSN will still be collected but it will be done so by a third-party before it is uploaded to the IPEDS Unit Record Database.
Huge IPEDSEdit
In January 2007 it had become clear that Unit Record reporting was on the upswing. Some of the most vocal opposition was still coming from colleges/universities. It was at this time that the notion of "Huge IPEDS" was floated by Mark S. Schneider, the Education Department's commissioner for education statistics. In a January 24, 2007, Federal Register notice, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced it is seeking comments on a set of proposed changes to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) for 2007-08 through 2009-10. The first installment of Huge IPEDS (optional in 07-08, mandatory in 08-09) would include:
- Collect website addresses for admissions and financial aid offices, instead of phone numbers.
- Add item to collect an estimate of the number of full-time and part-time students enrolled exclusively in online or distance education, by level.
- Add the following question: Does your institution have an online application? If yes, provide URL. This link will be added to COOL.
- Add the following question: Does your institution have its transfer of credit policy posted online? If yes, provide URL. This link will be added to COOL.
- Does your institution use the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), National Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (MAPP), or Other assessment tools (please specify)? Yes/No for each. If yes, and if your institution makes the results available on your website, provide URL/s. These links will be added to COOL.
- Does your institution have a Fact Book online? If yes, provide URL. This link will be added to COOL.
- Does your institution post information on its website regarding assessment and/or student outcomes? If yes, provide URL. This link will be added to COOL.
- Item in matrix format to collect information on accountability measures used by the institution, and scores. The matrix will have 3 columns: a column in which to write in the name of the accountability measures used by the institution, a column for the institution's score on that item, and a column for the data year for the score. Note: Once an institution adds a measure, the name of that measure will be added to a list which other institutions will be able to choose from, rather than having to write it in again.
- Collect more detailed student financial aid data. Currently, the number of full-time, first-time, degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students receiving aid (fall or full-year cohort) and the average amount of aid received are collected for 4 aid categories: Federal grants, State grants, Institutional grants, and Loans. These categories will be expanded to the following list, and the number of full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students receiving aid (fall or full-year cohort) and the average amount of aid received will be collected for each
- Collect additional information on aid recipients: 9-cell grid to collect numbers of students by dependency status (dependent, independent with dependents, independent without dependents) crossed by living arrangement (living on campus, living off campus without family, living off campus with family). For public institutions, this will be collected by in-district, in-state, and out-of-state status. This information will be posted on COOL.
References and notesEdit
- "Report from Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education" (PDF). 2006-06-22. Retrieved 2007-02-08.
- Lederman, Doug (2006-06-27). "A Stinging First Draft" (HTTP). Retrieved 2007-02-08.
- "Feasibility of a Student Unit Record System Within the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System" (HTTP). 2005-03-21. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
- "A Test of Leadership, charting the future of U.S. Higher education" (PDF). 2006-09-01. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
- Lederman, Doug (2006-06-27). "A Test of Leadership, charting the future of U.S. Higher education" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-02-12.
- "Changes to IPEDS Data Collection, 2007-08" (HTTP). Retrieved 2007-02-21.
- Lederman, Doug (2007-02-19). "Huge IPEDS Lives" (HTTP). Retrieved 2007-02-21.
- ^ a b "The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System". Nces.ed.gov. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
- ^ "The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System". Nces.ed.gov. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
- ^ "College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics". Nces.ed.gov. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
- ^ "Report from Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education" (PDF). Ed.gov. 2006-06-22. Retrieved 2007-02-08.
- ^ Lederman, Doug (2006-06-27). "A Stinging First Draft" (HTTP). Insidehighered.com. Retrieved 2007-02-08.


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This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Six Utahns cast ballots Monday in the presidential election that really counts the Electoral College. Mitt Romney received all those Utah votes, but, of course, he still lost nationally.
"Do I wish I were voting for the winner? Absolutely," said Utah Attorney General-elect John Swallow, one of the six Utah electors. "But do I stand in line and say as an American the election is over and I will support the president of the United States? Absolutely. That's what we do in this country."
"It's bittersweet and a little disappointing" to vote for Romney when it is known that he already lost, said Kyle Hicks, another elector. "But it's an honor to represent Utah with my vote."
President Barack Obama is projected by most media to win the Electoral College by a 332-206 margin. The Constitution requires electors to vote in their state capitols at noon on the Monday following the second Wednesday in December and send ballots to Congress to be counted on Jan. 6
The Electoral College gives each state votes equal to the number of its members in Congress and Utah has two senators and four members of the House, one more than in the 2008 presidential election because of population gained in the 2010 Census. The District of Columbia is also given three votes.
In most states, electors are pledged to the candidate who wins the overall popular vote there.
"So voters instruct electors, who cast the actual votes," Lt. Gov. Greg Bell told students who watched the voting in the Capitol's Old Supreme Court Chambers. "Today is what counts," said Stan Lockhart, an elector who is a former chairman of the Utah Republican Party.
In Utah, the state conventions of political parties vote to select a slate of electors to cast the state's official ballots if their party's nominee wins the statewide popular vote. The last time the Democratic electors in Utah were able to cast ballots was 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson won in a landslide.
The Republican slate became the official electors here this year as Romney won 72.8 percent of the popular vote.
The official electors besides Swallow, Hicks and Lockhart included Utah Republican Party Chairman Thomas Wright; former GOP gubernatorial candidate Fred Lampropoulos; and Terry Camp, an aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
Two states Nebraska and Maine determine how their electors are pledged a bit differently. In those states, one elector is pledged to the popular vote winner in each congressional district, and two votes are given to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
Dave Wasserman with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report figures that if every state used the same method as Maine and Nebraska, Romney would have won the electoral vote 276-262.
While Republicans in several states are discussing pushing to change the system because of such findings, Lockhart the former GOP chairman who was one of the Utah electors said he doubts Utah would ever make such a move.
"My sense is that Utah is more traditional in our approach, so I don't anticipate that things will change," he said.
Some Utah legislators have also proposed that Utah join a growing compact of states that would pledge to give their Electoral College votes to whoever wins the national popular vote.
State Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, has said that would help ensure that a candidate cannot win the popular vote but lose the election which happened in 2000 with George W. Bush and Al Gore, in 1876 with Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, and 1888 with Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland.
Stephenson has said it would take focus away from 11 swing states, which essentially decide elections under the current system, and force candidates to worry about all states.


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Get DVD Talk Feeds
Filmed in North Braddock, Pennsylvania (just outside of Pittsburgh) Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace (2013) examines a handful of characters in a town crippled by a failing economy, their own bad choices and/or quite a bit of bad luck. Our central characters are Russell (Christian Bale) and Rodney Baze (Casey Affleck), two brothers who have taken decidedly different paths in life. Russell, the older of the two, lives with his girlfriend Lena (Zoe Saldana) and works at the same steel mill that will eventually take the life of his father. Rodney, currently in the middle of multiple tours in Iraq, is knee-high in gambling debt owed to John Petty (Willem Defoe); in turn, Rodney resorts to rigged bare-knuckle fighting to help settle Petty's own debts to local drug dealer and absolute monster Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson).
Hard (or harder) times are right ahead. Russell is arrested for DUI-related vehicular manslaughter, while Rodney and John are confronted by Harlan for failing to make amends. Things go south and, before you know it, Rodney goes missing and Braddock police chief Wesley Barnes (Forest Whitaker) gets involved. Unable to deal with the police's slow response, the recently-freed Russell and his Uncle "Red" (Sam Shepard) attempt to seek out Harlan themselves at his well-guarded residence in New Jersey's Ramapo Mountains. It's a long trip, but things end back west in Braddock.
Aside from this nagging complaint, my only quibble with Out of the Furnace is the fact that it's overstuffed by either a few scenes or at least one supporting character. Between Russell's wayward brother, his girlfriend, his thankless but steady job, his kindly uncle and his dying father, I'm not surprised that they didn't throw in a dead wife and single fatherhood. Early scenes also set the stage in blunt, unforgiving black and white: Harlan might as well be Satan in the flesh, while Russell valiantly attempts to remain "straight and narrow" despite the unfortunate hand he's dealt. With only one exception, almost every hurdle he overcomes is inflicted by others, and simply pitting this type of character against such a monster may be why Out of the Furnace feels slightly more predictable and generic than it really ought to.
In all honesty, Scott Cooper's follow-up to Crazy Heart is anything but a sophomore slump; at worst, it feels vaguely like a handful of movies you've seen before. The performances are uniformly excellent, it looks and sounds better than its budget implies, the action hits hard and, at times, it's emotionally affecting. So while a few trims here and there---or a more delicate treatment of the "good vs. evil" dynamic---would've potentially made Out of the Furnace a more satisfying film, there's still enough here to warrant a closer look (and even more so if you're a fan of the principal cast). Fox's Blu-ray serves up an excellent A/V presentation but, unfortunately, comes up short in the extras department.
Not surprisingly, the rough and rusty Out of the Furnace translates quite well to Blu-ray, boasting a strong amount of image detail and a striking, muted color palette. Presented in the film's original 2.40:1 aspect ratio, this 1080p transfer displays strong black levels, excellent contrast and, most importantly, no flagrant digital problems like compression artifacts or heavy DNR. Despite some of its other shortcomings, Out of the Furnace is certainly a well-shot film and this Blu-ray absolutely delivers in every possible area. Fans and new viewers alike should be pleased with Fox's efforts.
Similarly, the film's DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix isn't flashy but gets the job done. The imposing industrial backdrop of Braddock and the surrounding areas lends itself to plenty of excellent surround usage, whether it's a quiet personal exchange or a sudden burst of violent action. The fight scenes---and in several cases, the fallout from these brawls---is particularly enveloping at times. The dialogue is crisp and typically easy to understand, while Dickon Hinchliffe's appropriate score (and Eddie Vedder's contribution, which bookends the film) enjoys plenty of presence without fighting for attention. Optional English (SDH) and Spanish subtitles are included during the film and most of the supplements.
Out of the Furnace is too well-shot and acted to be considered a throwaway revenge tale, but it rarely feels like much more than the sum of its parts. The story does manage to take a few interesting turns along the way, especially if you saw the trailer and assumed it spoiled all the surprises. There's also at least one too many characters on board, which tends to cripple the momentum at times. Fox's Blu-ray offers a terrific A/V presentation but only the bare minimum of extras, which may disappoint those looking for a deeper look behind the scenes. So while Out of the Furnace doesn't always fire on all cylinders, it's still an underrated production that should please fans of the cast. Recommended.
Randy Miller III is an affable office monkey by day and film reviewer by night. He also does freelance design work, teaches art classes and runs a website or two. In his limited free time, Randy also enjoys slacking off, juggling HD DVDs and writing in third person.


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Greenwich cruises to State Open swimming championship
NEW HAVEN -- For the spectators who hadn't seen Alex Lewis compete prior to the State Open Swimming Championships, they will surely remember what they witnessed from Greenwich High School's star swimmer Saturday at Yale University's Kiputh Pool.
For Greenwich coach Terry Lowe and the Cardinals fans accustomed to watching Lewis, they will no doubt remember his fantastic farewell performance.
Lewis ended his brilliant four-year career in style, winning two individual events, helping the Cardinals take the first-place medal in two relay events and breaking numerous records along the way in Greenwich's latest State Open triumph.
Winning the majority of the events, Greenwich garnered its 31st CIAC State Open title in 43 years, amassing an astounding 652 team points during Saturday's championship meet. Fairfield Prep finished as the runner-up to Greenwich for the second straight year, posting a score of 455.5. Pomperaug placed third (391), followed by Brookfield (250) and Middletown (232.5). Darien finished seventh (183.5) and Staples was eighth (181).
"We absolutely blew away how we thought we were going to do in most of our events," the Princeton University-bound Lewis said. "Every event we achieved something and exceeded our own expectations."
Said Lowe, who has guided Greenwich to all of its titles: "This has to be considered the best team we've ever had when you look at the performances we put forth this week."
Lewis broke the CIAC record he set during Wednesday Class LL finals in the 100 freestyle on Saturday, winning the event in an All-American time of 44.16 seconds. He also established a State Open mark in winning the 100-yard backstroke for the second straight year (49.08, All-American time).
"I really enjoyed being a part of a team that's won the State Open three of four years," said Lewis, one of the Cards' captains. "Helping lead a great group of guys has been a lot of fun."
It didn't take Greenwich long to break its first record on the day. The Cardinals' 200-yard medley relay team of John Montesi, Iain Edmundson, Julian Fraser and Lewis won the meet's opening event in a State Open record/All-American time of 1:33.06. The Cardinals' quartet own the state record in the event - a mark of 1:31.99 they set at the Class LL Championships on Wednesday. Pomperaug placed second (1:36.25), followed by Wethersfield (136.44).
Fairfeld Prep senior Nick Wargo won the meet's first individual event, touching the wall in the 200 freestyle in 1:41.27. Riley Strassner of Avon took second in 1:42.34, while Brookfield senior Daniel Krentsa was third and Greenwich's Ben Wurst finished fourth.
"We are a small group that came here to the Open, so to come in fourth behind Greenwich, Fairfield Prep and Pomperaug -- that was our goal of the day," Brookfield coach Brian Reiff said. "They are monstrous teams, so to top off our great season by finishing fourth here today is special."
Greenwich junior Thomas Dillinger claimed two first-place medals in two individual events, winning the 200-yard individual medley (1:49.64, All-American time) and the 500 freestyle (4:36.50). Fairfield Prep junior Bryce Keblish was second in the 200 IM (1:50.47), while Pomperaug's John Feller finished third in the 500 freestyle (4:38.86).
"After the LL meet, I knew it was going to be a fast heat," Dillinger said of the 200 IM. "I stayed strong, worked my back half a bit stronger and just tried to ride it through. Overall, I'm thrilled with my performance."
Junior Ed Moss successfully defended his State Open title in the 50 freestyle, touching the wall in 20.87. Fairfield Prep's Bjorn Davis was the runner-up (20.96).
"I had to get really psyched up to hold my position as the top seed," Moss said. "It was good to have someone like Bjorn beside me to drive me to swim harder. It feels amazing to be on a championship team like this."
In one of the most exciting races of the afternoon, Keblish edged Greenwich's Montesi of GHS for the 100 butterfly title, posting a time of 49.59 (All-American). Pomperaug's James Davey was third (50.61), followed by Norwalk/McMahon junior Eddie Donovan (52.23).
"That's the first time I broke 50 in the 100 butterfly and my first title in the event," Keblish said. "From top to bottom, it's been an incredible ride for our team. We have a lot of guys coming back next year, so we'll see what we can do."
Said Donovan: "I missed our school record by one tenth of a second in the butterfly, I really wanted to get that record. But I'm happy finishing fourth in the event."
Donovan's Norwalk/McMahon teammate Anthony Dell'Isola placed fifth in the 200 freestyle (1:43.85, followed by Darien sophomore Zac Pear.
"Even though I didn't want to fall as far behind as I did, I thought I did a good job of coming back," Dell'Isola said. "A 1:43 is a school record, so I can't complain about where I finished. It was a really fast meet."
The 200 and 400-yard freestyle events were races that had everyone's attention. Fairfield Prep's squad of Wargo, Brandon Cole, Keblish and Davis won the event in a state and State Open record time of 1:23.18. Greenwich (Nick Hyden, Julian Fraser, Moss, Dillinger) placed second in a state/State Open record showing of 1:23.53.
The 400 freestyle saw Greenwich (Montesi, Moss, Dillinger, Lewis) win in a CIAC/State Open record finish of 3:00.59. Runner-up Fairfield Prep also had a record-setting swim (3:01.08). Both times were among the best in the nation.
"What a thrill those relays were," Fairfield Prep coach Rick Hutchinson said. "We push each other to be the best and that's what happened at the end. That final relay was amazing."
Said Lewis: "We couldn't have done it without Prep next to us. Many colleges don't go as fast as we did today in the relays. Those races were incredible."
Lowe knows he coached a outstanding athlete in Lewis the past four years.
"Lewis so dedicated and determined," Lowe said. "He has worked so hard for four consecutive years, doing a lot of extra work to develop into a great swimmer. It's all about the effort he puts in and the character he shows."
email@example.com; 203-625-4423
State Open Swimming Championships
Team Scores: 1. Greenwich 652; 2. Fairfield Prep 455.5; 3. Pomperaug 391; 4. Brookfield 250.5; 5. Middletown 232.5; 6. Glastonbury 188; 7. Darien 183.5; 8. Staples 181; 9. Manchester 155.5; 10. Sheehan 147; 11. Amity Regional 134; 12. Wethersfield 126; 13. Farmington 109; 14. Torrington 100; 15. Sacred Heart 95; 16. Lyman Hall 92; 17. Norwalk/McMahon 88; 17. East Lyme 88; 19. Newtown 87; 20. New Canaan 84; 21. Ludlowe 81; 22. South Windsor 75; 23. Wilton 73; 24. Bristol Coop 63; 25. Ridgefield 62.5; 26.
Trumbull 61; 27. Branford 57; 28. Avon 55; 28. Cheshire 55; 30. Rocky Hill 46; 31. Platt/Maloney 44.5; 32. Rockville 39; 33. Notre Dame-WH 38; 34. Conard 35.5; 35. Xavier 32; 36. Hand-Madison 28; 37. Holy Cross 24; 38.Hall 22; 38. Fitch 22; 40. Southington 18; 40. H-K 18; 42. New Fairfield 17; 43. Masuk 16; 44. Shepaug Valley 13; 44. Simsbury 13; 46. Valley Regional 12; 46. Weston 12; 48. Hamden 9; 49. NFA 7; 50. Barlow 5; 51. Newington 4; 51. Windh/RHAM/Coven 4; 53. St. Joseph 1; 53. Guilford 1.
200-yard medley relay -- 1. Greenwich (John Montesi, Iain Edmundson, Alex Lewis, Julian Fraser) 1:33.06; 2. Pomperaug 1:36.25; 3. Wethersfield 1:36.44; 4. Fairfield Prep 1:37.08; 5. Middletown 1:36.68; 6. Manchester 1:38.68; 200-yard freestyle -- 1. Nicholas Wargo (Fairfield Prep) 1:41.27; 2. Riley Strassner (Avo) 1:42.34; 3. Daniel Krensta (Brookfield) 1:42.94; 4. Ben Wurst (Greenwich) 1:43.51; 5. Anthony Dell'Isola (Norwalk/McMahon) 1:43.85; 6. Zac Pear (Darien) 1:44.19; 200-yard individual medley -- 1. Thomas Dillinger (Greenwich) 1:49.64; 2. Bryce Keblish (Fairfield Prep) 1:50.47; 3. Matt Dagenais (Middletown) 1:50.03; 4. Patrick Savidge (South Windsor) 1:51.97; 5. Brandon Cole (Fairfield Prep) 1:53.72; 6. AJ Pite (Amity Regional) 1:53.92; 50-yard freestyle 1. Ed Moss (Greenwich) 20.87; 2. Bjorn Davis (Fairfield Prep) 20.96; 3. Jack Malespini (Rocky Hill) 21.17; 4. Jack Doherty (Middletown) 21.52; 5. Kyle Neri (Lyman Hall) 21.55; 6. Carl Thurston (Sheehan) 21.56; 100 butterfly -- 1. Bryce Keblish (Fairfield Prep) 49.59; 2. John Montesi (Greenwich) 49.82; 3. James Davey (Pomperaug) 50.61; 4. Eddie Donovan (Norwalk/McMahon) 52.23; 5. Julian Fraser (Greenwich) 52.31; 6. David May (Notre Dame-West Haven 52.37; 100 freestyle -- 1. Alex Lewis (Greenwich) 44.16; 2. Ed Moss (Greenwich) 45.87; 3. Bjorn Davis (Fairfield Prep) 45.92; 4. Nicholas Wargo (Fairfield Prep) 46.71; 5. Jack Malespini (Rocky Hill) 46.76; 6. Kyle Neri (Lyman Hall) 46.86; 500-yard freestyle -- 1. Thomas Dillinger (Greenwich) 4:36.50; 2. Connor Robison (Sheehan) 4:38.57; 3. John Feller (Pomperaug) 4:38.86; 4. Brandon Cole (Fairfield Prep) 4:39.09; 5. Matt Dagenais (Middletown) 4:39.35; 6. Karl Bishop (Cheshire) 4:39.68; 200 freestyle relay -- 1. Fairfield Prep (Nicholas Wargo, Brandon Cole, Bryce Keblish, Bjorn Davis) 1:23.18; 2. Greenwich 1:23.53; 3. Middletown 1:27.68; 4. Pomperaug 1:28.56; 5. Brookfield 1:29.24; 6. Wethersfield 1:29.29; 100-yard backstroke -- 1. Alex Lewis (Greenwich) 49.08; 2. John Montesi (Greenwich) 50.65; 3. John Whiteside (Fairfield Ludlowe) 50.76; 4. Tyler Prescott (Platt/Maloney) 51.65; 5. Gregory Meyer (Pomperaug) 51.95; 6. Matt Traub (Torrington) 51.98; 100 breaststroke -- 1. Patrick Savidge,(South Windsor) 57.77; 2. Iain Edmundson (Greenwich) 58.53; 3. Jonathan Frank (Rockville) 58.66; 4. Stefan Pla (New Canaan) 59.46; 5. Drake Freiberg (Glastonbury) 59.72; 6. Joseph Ahlberg (Glastonbury) 59.93; 400-yard freestyle relay -- 1. Greenwich (John Montesi, Ed Moss, Thomas Dillinger, Alex Lewis) 3:00.59; 2. Fairfield Prep 3:01.08; 3. Pomperaug 3:07.45; 4. Manchester 3:14.27; 5. Amity Regional 3:15.21; 6. Brookfield 3:15.63.


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ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — Lucia Aguero stood with the other farmers in the standoff. About 300 of them had occupied the rich politician's land that they insisted wasn't legally his. On the other side of the clearing were some 200 riot police. She watched as the two negotiators walked up to each other and began talking.
And then the shooting started.
The negotiators were both hit. The young woman threw herself to the ground, shielding a friend's 4-year-old boy beneath her as she felt a bullet's sting in her thigh. In the end, 17 were dead, including the men who were trying to resolve the six-week-old occupation.
Politicians opposed to President Fernando Lugo seized on the "Massacre of Curuguaty" on June 15 to vote the sandal-wearing leftist out of office for "mismanaging" the property dispute. Paraguayans' hopes that Lugo would make good on his promises of land reform died.
Six months after the shootout, there has been no official accounting of how a peaceful negotiation ended with a barrage of bullets that killed 11 farmers and six police officers. Farmers and their supporters say the official investigation is a one-sided effort to make an example of the farmers, so nobody will dare challenge the interests of powerful landowners ever again.
Grieving relatives suspect the dead farmworkers were wounded and then summarily executed by police after the firefight. In separate interviews, they described bullet wounds in three of the corpses that they said showed people were shot at close range in defensive positions.
Catalino Aguero, Lucia's father, lost his 24-year-old son, De los Santos, in the firefight.
"They gave me my son's decomposing body in a black plastic bag. He had bullet wounds in both feet, but a huge hole in his neck," Aguero said. "Witnesses of the tragedy told me my son begged for help, lying face down, because his wounds were painful, but a police officer came close and shot him."
His daughter Lucia, a 25-year-old mother of two, was arrested along with 11 other people, mostly farmers. She was taken to a hospital emergency room after she was wounded, but doctors were too busy with other victims to remove the bullet from her thigh.
"When I couldn't stand the pain any longer, I used a razor blade in jail to make a cut, and pulled out the .38-caliber bullet with my finger," she said
Aguero joined a hunger strike to protest being jailed without formal charges. She lasted 59 days, and nearly died before a judge said she and three others could return home under police custody until a hearing Dec. 17.
The former president, Lugo, has called the shootout a setup. His land redistribution efforts were threatening the economic interests of the country's most powerful businessmen, and they needed a scandal big enough to bring him down, he said.
"This government of coup-plotters has no interest or political will to seriously investigate and clear up the case. And the prosecutor's performance gives little credibility," Lugo declared last month.
Promises of land reform got Lugo elected, but he made no headway as president, with no available state land to redistribute or money to pay for expropriations. No major landowners wanted to sell, with soy prices reaching historic highs.
One leader of the new president's Authentic Radical Liberal Party, Deputy Elvis Balbuena, told the AP that Lugo has only himself to blame.
"He was entirely responsible for the Curuguaty case," the legislator said. "He has as his presidential legacy the deaths of 17 people. Lugo was commander of the security forces, he was a friend of the leaders of different groups of landless farm workers, and he . oversaw the office that administers the distribution or purchase of land."
Prosecutor Jalil Rachid has had six months to investigate and is expected to deliver his evidence to a judge Dec. 17. Police have made no comment, deferring to the prosecutor.
Despite complaints that he has ignored human rights violations by police, Rachid told The Associated Press that he's only building a case against the farm workers.
The suspects are "accused of murder, criminal conspiracy, invading private property and resisting authorities. We also have a list of 54 fugitives," Rachid said in a brief AP interview. "I'm only bringing forward these accusations."
Most of the suspects were among the wounded, while the fugitives' names came from a list of people who hoped to claim a plot of land through the occupation.
The farmers say the prosecutor should be investigating police, too.
Martina Paredes said her brother's body had one bullet wound in the leg and another in the head. "For me, they shot him from above," she said, execution style.
When the non-governmental Human Rights Coordinator complained to the prosecutor's office, it was told that "Paraguayan law doesn't penalize summary executions, so the prosecutor's office can't investigate a complaint about an act that's unpunishable," said the group's lawyer, Jimena Lopez.
Paredes said victims' families want to file an official complaint against the national police, but their lawyer's priority is to defend the 12 suspects — who face 18 to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Ballistics tests would presumably indicate whether the negotiators were felled by the kind of automatic weapons that police carried, or by one of the handful of low-caliber hunting rifles recovered from peasants. But Rachid has not revealed what evidence he's gathered.
Advocates for the farmworkers say he's biased because his father was close friends with the owner of the occupied ranch. Rachid has dismissed those accusations, saying his critics are only trying to influence the country's presidential election, scheduled in April.
The peasants say they're afraid. Early Saturday morning, one of this community's few surviving leaders, Vidal Vega, was killed by two masked gunmen on a motorcycle as he fed his chickens. He was expected to be a witness for the defendants.
"We think he was assassinated by hit men who were sent, we don't know by whom, perhaps to frighten us and frustrate our fight to recover the state lands that were illegally taken," Paredes told the AP.
Most of the jailed suspects are farmers. A businessman who gave a ride to a wounded survivor was also detained, as was a Communist Party activist who helped organize the occupation.
The underlying dispute that set up the clash was decades in the making. The area's poor residents allege the land was stolen from the state by Sen. Blas Riquelme, a leader of the Colorado Party that backed dictator Alfredo Stroessner from 1954 to 1989 and has dominated the nation's politics ever since.
Riquelme, who died of a stroke in September at age 83, took over the property in 1964, benefiting from a Stroessner law that granted free title to any adult male willing to farm fallow land. So many military officers, politicians and businessmen took advantage of the law that by the end of the dictatorship, all of Paraguay's rural state-owned land was in private hands.
Local farmers challenged Riquelme's claim, but after eight years of legal fights, the peasants lost patience and invaded a forested corner of the 135-square-mile ranch in May.
"Our leader, Ruben Villalba, told us with such conviction that the property would be divided up. And so we followed him," said Roberto Ortega, 58. He sold his tiny shack and plot of land to a neighbor for $3,000 and marched onto the Riquelme ranch with his wife, carrying all their remaining possessions. Their only son was killed there.
Most of the occupiers came from Yby Pyta, or "Red Dirt" in the native Guarani, a settlement of wooden shacks that runs along the asphalt highway that carries soy to Brazil. The town is surrounded by vast, privately owned industrial agriculture: the Riquelme soy operation across the highway, and an even bigger Brazilian-owned sunflower plantation behind them. Beyond that there's soy, and more soy.
For Lidia Romero, the mother of Lucia Aguero, the fight for a plot of farm land came at much too high a price.
"With my daughter in jail and my son dead, I am destroyed," she said. "I barely have the will to keep on living."


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Munir Alawi is a photographer, documentarian, and digital artist. He was born and raised in Bethlehem, Palestine. Passion for photography began when he first encountered the extraordinary facets of life in his home city. His work reveals a visual record of his experiences, emotions and visions. Alawi has exhibited in United States, Canada, and in Middle East. His work has been reviewed in Gulf News. Munir Alawi lives and works in Toronto, Canada. If you have an inquiry, please contact Munir by email at email@example.com Thank you for visiting Munir�s Art Gallery, and he would appreciate any comment on his work.
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Sunbird has built its reputation on following the yachtsmen to the sun and delivering the service and aftercare that our customers demand. Service on site where you sail.
Whether from our headquarters at Clyde Marina, with its full service boatyard facilities or throughout our 4 Mediterranean bases from Palma to Turkey our offices are staffed by experts. We will deliver to you the high level of service you expect and deserve.
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Established across the Mediterranean, our staff are all directly employed avoiding the pitfalls often found in other franchised operations. We maintain our core values across all of our staff and all of our bases.
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Dan and Jessica Ferrigno and their three children, Drew and Emily, both 7, and Hannah, 4, came Saturday to Maple Lane Farms in Preston to cut down their own Christmas tree.
"This is the awesome-est tree ever," Drew said, as his father strapped the tree to the roof of their car. Drew named the 7-foot-tall Fraser fir "Bob."
The Ferrignos, who live in Colchester, said they prefer real trees to artificial ones. "We like the look of them better," Dan Ferrigno said. "We like cutting them down."
They are not alone. Beginning the day after Thanksgiving, local Christmas tree farms opened to solid business.
Mike Hutchinson, who lives in Hopkinton, Mass., but grew up in Preston, returned to Maple Lane on Saturday for the 15th straight year.
"Every year, we come on Thanksgiving to see our family, and the next day or the day after, we come to get a tree," he said.
"We go up in the far back," Hutchinson said. "We call it tree hunting."
The busiest time is about two weeks before Christmas, said Vernon "Griff" Gray, co-owner of Gray Ledge Tree Farm in Plainfield.
Gray, a retired teacher, runs the farm with his brother on his parents' former dairy farm on Lathrop Road. He grew his first tree as a high school project.
Growing Christmas trees is a year-round job. Trees must be fertilized and trimmed so they'll have the full, round appearance buyers like, Gray said.
"It takes a lot of work to get them like this," he said.
Allyn Brown III, owner of Maple Lane Farms, agreed.
"It's a long process," he said.
It takes seven or eight years for a tree to grow 7 feet tall, said Tate Tomis, who works at Maple Lane Farms.
Maple Lane Farms grows different types of firs, Tomis said.
"The firs will hold the needles longer than some other varieties," he said.
Gray grows spruces on his farm.
"I like the Norway (spruce), because it's got a fragrance," he said.
As long as they're kept watered, natural trees will last to Christmas and beyond, Gray said. He cautioned that when trees that have been outdoors in the cold are brought indoors, they use huge amounts of water for three or four days, and it's necessary to keep the stand filled.
"They think it's spring, and it's time to grow," Gray said.
Tomis advised putting a fresh cut on the bottom of the tree and never letting water in the stand get below that line. "Otherwise, the tree will heal itself," he said, and it won't be able to keep itself well-watered.
Seven-year-old Isabella Tussing came from Stonington to Maple Lane Farms on Saturday with her parents to cut a tree.
She noted one advantage it has over an artificial tree: "It smells good," she said.


text: EAC Suddenly won't rip to flac anymore 2018-02-12 05:48:58 HI All,After ripping 400+ CD"s with the same settings I'm suddenly getting errors when trying to rip cd's to FLAC. It will extract the .wav without any issues, but I always receive an error when it tries to convert to flac now. I have literally not changed anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated!Thanks!


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In honor of Music Therapy Week, music therapist Erinn Frees gives us a look at her job at Children's Minnesota.
Stepping onto the Children's elevators each day, guitars on our backs and instruments in hand, we tend to draw comments from fellow riders. They range from the typical "You must be the entertainment" to "Do you actually play all those instruments?" to "I wish I had your job."
Although explaining the ins and outs of music therapy isn't always possible by the time one of us gets off on the fourth floor, we do usually manage to smile and say, "I'm one of the music therapists." After being in this field for almost seven years, I find that this doesn't always provide a lot of clarification. So in no particular order, here are five things that you might not know about music therapy:
1. Music therapy isn't just for fun. Don't get me wrong, music therapy usually is fun. What kid or teen doesn't enjoy music, especially when they get to play along on a shaker or fancy electronic drum set? However, a casual observer may not notice that a music therapist has goals for each patient he/she works with, ranging from giving a 3-year-old an effective means of emotional expression when he doesn't have the words, to giving a 15-year-old relaxation strategies using music during a procedure, to motivating a 10-year-old to get out of bed. The point of music therapy is that we are using the musical experience as a means of reaching a non-musical goal.
2. A child doesn't need to be a musician or have musical experience to benefit from music therapy. Our goal as music therapists is not to teach kids how to play an instrument, or sing better, or dazzle everyone with their harmonica stylings. Therefore, the child doesn't need to be musical to benefit from music therapy. Even patients who are sedated can benefit from music therapy, as music therapy can lower heart rate and blood pressure, as well as increase oxygen saturations. Patients who are able to participate on a more active level can play drums, shakers, xylophones and even a special type of harp with little to no previous musical experience. A music therapist may use teaching the guitar as a way to improve the child's fine motor skills, or having a child blow through the harmonica as a way to encourage deep breathing, but learning skills on these instruments is never the goal of the session.
3. We always use patient-preferred music. Music therapists use music from all genres to effect positive changes in the patients we work with. We wouldn't use "Old MacDonald" in a session with a 16-year-old (unless he or she requested it!) and we probably wouldn't use a song from the 1920s with a 5-year-old. One of the first things music therapists ask when getting to know a new patient is what kind of music the he or she prefers. We then work to accomplish our goals using this or similar music. We can't promise to know every song, (we're not human jukeboxes!) but we can always use recorded music or find a similar song if need be.
4. Music therapists are not just musicians waiting to make our big break on "American Idol." Across the board, the music therapists I know went into the field because they want to use their passion for music to make a difference in people's lives. We went to school for four or six years to do exactly what we do: music therapy. We spent six full months doing an unpaid music therapy internship and worked hard for the jobs we have. Although some music therapists perform outside of their day jobs, we are not performing when we are working with patients. Just listening to us sing is not likely to accomplish very many therapeutic goals!
5. We don't just sing and play instruments. We do a lot of singing and instrument play with kids, this is true. However, we also work with kids doing songwriting (for emotional expression, processing, or a way to "tell your story"), lyric discussion (again to process emotions, facilitate coping, or put a new perspective on problems), music-assisted relaxation, procedural support, recording, and CD compilation.
So let's go back to the elevator, so we can finish those conversations:
"You must be the entertainment!" – No, I'm not a performer. I do get to spend the day making great music with courageous, insightful and amazing kids, though!
"Do you actually play all those instruments?" Yes, I can… but I'd rather have the kids playing them!
"I wish I had your job!" – Yes, it is a wonderful and rewarding profession, and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else!


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The destruction left in Hurricane Sandy's wake continues to echo through New York as residents of Staten Island, Coney Island, Manhattan, and other hard-hit areas continue to make do without power or food or, in some cases, somewhere to go. New York's citizens have been battered, as have the technology and media businesses that call the city home.
Gawker went down. BuzzFeed went dark for a while. Flooding prevented other startups from making their way to their offices, which, given the fact that a lot of Manhattan lost power, probably would have been shut down anyway. If there were ever an appropriate time to call it a night (or a week), the days after Sandy finished her whirlwind trip through New York would have been a prime candidate.
For Squarespace, that wasn't an option.
Despite warnings to the contrary before Sandy had even touched the East Coast, the blogging platform never went down. Where Gawker and BuzzFeed's data centers failed, Squarespace managed to operate despite being pummeled by the "storm of the century" via a mixture of obstinance, dedication, and dumb luck.
The company, which we have written about before, is a hosted blogging solution for bloggers and companies that want to build sites without being constrained to WordPress, Drupal, or other similar solutions. Squarespace is defined by its stability, and the company promises that "with our reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure, there's no downtime, and nothing to install, patch, or upgrade."
Preparation for the storm started on Monday. Squarespace switched its infrastructure at Peer1, over to backup power before darkness swallowed Manhattan as a preemptive measure, and Squarespace's Jesse Hertzberg notes in a blog post that the company "took comfort over the fact that [it] had enough fuel to last three to four days." Then the building started taking on water.
By the next morning, the entire basement had flooded, putting the fuel pumps and tanks out of commission. Squarespace had enough fuel to stay up for around four hours. The news was passed along to Squarespace CEO and founder Anthony Casalena, who, like many New Yorkers, had lost power and cellular coverage.
Somehow, Casalena says, the message got through – "I don't know if the tower was on a battery backup or what" – and he started stuffing shirts into his backpack and walked from his apartment in SoHo to the data center, which is on Wall Street. Casalena says he had two goals: To help, if he could, and to keep an eye on things so he could tell his systems staff to pull the plug (and take the service offline) at the last possible moment.
A lack of fuel wasn't necessarily the problem. Because the basement had flooded, the problem was the fact that they couldn't get fuel from point A (the fuel tanks) to point B (the generator). All they had to do was get the fuel from one point to another by filling buckets and barrels and carrying them up 17 flights of stairs. So that's what Casalena, other Squarespace employees, and Fog Creek employees did.
After turning to Craigslist to purchase oil drums, some 20 people set up a relay system to transport the fuel from the flooded basement to the still-running generator. Eventually they managed to get a working pump together, putting an end to the back-breaking task.
Casalena was careful to point out that he wasn't the only one who deserves credit for Squarespace staying online. Seine Kim, a PR person at Squarespace, says that some of their employees walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to reach the data center and see how they could help.
"Chance events that [got] strung together allowed this to happen," Casalena says. When we spoke on the phone this afternoon he seemed to be genuinely surprised at the fact that Squarespace didn't go down, and wondered at what may have happened if he hadn't gotten those messages on his phone or if others hadn't shown up to carry those buckets and barrels up all of those stairs.
In a previous article we questioned how entrepreneurs might react in a time of stress. At the time, we didn't know that one of the worst storms of the last century would hit, and that entrepreneurs* would be forced to make do with what the limited resources at their disposal.
It would have been understandable if Casalena and the rest of the group that kept Squarespace running had just said "fuck it" and gone back to their apartments. The basement was flooded, they had already warned customers that the service would experience some downtime, and much of Manhattan was blocked off from electricity, fuel, and the surrounding boroughs. Saying that the situation was completely screwed would be an understatement.
They kept going, however, and Squarespace managed to stay up. Casalena says that there may be some downtime in the future, as they're still running off backup power, but that he expects it will be for "a few hours, not a couple weeks," like it may have been if he hadn't gotten those messages.
"We're just really lucky," Casalena says. I might expand that to "Lucky, loyal, and insane," but the sentiment rings true.
*And many other people who have nothing to do with technology and have been affected by Hurricane Sandy. Information on where and how to help can be found here.


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First of all, you should know how many skin types there are. Well, you'll be quite surprised to find out that there are only three: normal, oily and dry. If you are asking what is sensitive skin, you should know that this is not a skin type, but a skin condition. In other words, an oily or dry skin can also be sensitive, as skin sensitiveness generally depends on our degree of resistance against external factors and allergens, but also on our skin typology. Based on your skin type you can adapt the skin care routine and find the suita... Read More


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These are the cars of the week-long Monte Carlo Historique rally, which ended last Friday. It appears to be classic car heaven.
This picture looks like it should have been taken some time in the late '70s, not at the start of 2013. The event had around 300 entries running the world-class driving roads in the south of France, and was both organized and won by Renault Classic.
(Hat tip to IEDEI!)
Photo Credit: Renault Classic


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Last Sunday afternoon I went to an art auction in Mecox for WPPB, our local public broadcasting station. Really why I went was because I had a drawing of mine in the auction, a cartoon I had done called HAPPY NEW YEAR 2002 and they told me it had been selected for the live auction. People were going to hold it up and walk it around. I had never had anything of mine auctioned off like that before, people raising their hands and bidding this and that. I wanted to see it.
Before I left the house in East Hampton, however, I set a timer on the TV to record a show I wanted to watch. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., ESPN would broadcast a women's soccer World Cup match between the United States and Japan for the world title. A lot of people had been talking about this. I never understood the attraction of soccer, but it didn't seem like much else was on, and I wanted to relax in the late afternoon before heading out for that evening's summer festivities here in the Hamptons.
Anyway, I watched the soccer match when I got home from the art auction. (Nobody bid on my cartoon. C'est la vie.) It was a nice afternoon distraction. But I have to say now I understand soccer. The entire country now understands soccer. In fact, the whole country pretty much shut down to watch this. I think, if what happened to me watching this event happens to others, this is going to be considered the seminal event that finally turns America into the soccer-crazy country that it has so far avoided becoming. [expand]
From what I learned listening to the sports commentators before the match began, America has faced Japan 17 times in women's soccer in recent years and has won every one of them. America was supposed to make it to the playoffs. Japan was not. The Americans were heavily favored.
The game started. Physically, the two teams made quite a contrast. The Japanese were small and slight. The Americans were big and strong. The fastest people out there were the Americans. The only good thing you could say for the Japanese was that they were pretty crafty.
The Americans ran all over the Japanese in the first half. They also ran all over them in the second half. Most of the time, the Americans were swarming around the Japanese net trying to get the ball in. And most of the time, the Japanese would try to kick it out of the way to keep the Americans from doing it.
It is not easy using just your feet and your head to get a ball into a net on the other side of somebody trying to keep you from doing that. Again and again, the Americans fired away at the Japanese goal. They bounced it off the crossbar. They banged it into the goalie who only just managed to deflect it away from the goal by a few inches.
In the various short timeouts that occurred during the first half when somebody got injured and was lying on the ground for a few minutes, the Americans would assemble by their coach, who it seemed to me was telling them to just get rougher and rougher. On the other side, the Japanese coach seemed to be trying to find creative new ways to get the ball down to the other end.
Indeed, the Americans now began playing rougher. There were more violent collisions. The collisions would throw the Japanese players back, the Americans would come charging ahead. Midway through the first half, the Americans broke through and scored. At this point, I really began to understand this game. There were set situations in which you could do things. But there were screwy situations too. The idea was to sort of combine them both, hope your opponent wasn't in an advantageous position and pray for luck. If it was there, there could be a goal.
But the Japanese team, not letting the goal bother them, played happily on as if this had never happened. If they got knocked down, they got up enthusiastically. They could not run as fast, kick as far or throw a ball in as quickly. But they just kept going.
And then I saw what it was about the Japanese that had resulted in their getting into this final by upsetting the powerful team from Germany. They were so alert. If the other team's positioning was just slightly off, they could fire the ball laser-like down the field in an intelligent and very terrific thrust. If a teammate was down there, there could be a shot on the goal. It wouldn't work, but they kept at it. They got shots that way.
It did put me in mind—this Japanese offense—of karate or Judo. There was this suddenness to it, a series of defensive parries preceding it, then, whammo. I think it is in their culture. They've always been smaller than their enemies. This is their reply.
Just before the half ended, one of these thrusts resulted in a quick goal. The Americans may have battered them and outshot them by a three-to-one margin, but they went to the sidelines for halftime with the score 1-1.
At the half, the commentators talked about the fact that in all of Japan, a land of 100,000,000 people, only 25,000 women play soccer. In America, a land of 300,000,000, about 30,000,000 girls and women play soccer.
There was talk about how lucky the Japanese girls were in this first half. There was talk about how with the physical beating they were taking they could not hold on forever. There was also talk about how wonderful it would be if the Japanese women brought home this championship to their damaged nation, so recently victim to earthquake, tsunami and nuclear breakdown all on one day.
As the second half began, I realized I was now rooting for them. I thought—what the hell is this? I thought—don't say a word. Don't ever tell anybody this. But I could not help myself rooting for them. They were like children, irrepressible, determined, confident and unflappable, and they went on and on and again they were losing.
The second American goal came midway through the second half. Again, it was inevitable. There were so many shots. It was bound to happen. So here the Americans were a second time, in the lead. Goals are so infrequent in soccer. This could do it for them.
During a time out, their coach urged them not to play for time, but instead go for a third goal. And boy they did try. But just before the match ended, there it was again—laser-like thrust by the little guys, right through the American defense, past the goalie and into the net. I leaped up and pumped my fist. Then I sat down to see what would happen next.
Time was winding down. Again the Americans pounded at the Japanese. And again and again the Japanese turned them away. At this point, with about 50 seconds left in the match, my wife came into the TV room and sat down.
"Oh I've seen this," she said. She was referring to the fact I was watching this on tape. "I know how it ends. The Japanese…"
"I DON'T WANNA HEAR THIS!! I shouted at her.
"Okay, okay," she said. And then she just sat quietly for a while and I thought—the end of that sentence, is it "lose?" or "win?" "Lose" doesn't sound right. Damn.
The game ended at 2-2, and as a result they had a shoot-out. This is where one team puts the ball down in front of the goal and one of their players tries to kick it with one big kick past the defending goalie. The teams would alternate. They'd each get five shots. The one with the most in the net wins. And if it's tied, it goes to sudden death. At this point, my wife left the room.
"I know how this ends," is what she said.
The sudden death was not necessary. The Japanese got their shots in. The Americans, not as often. So the Japanese won and everybody went wild. People were jumping up and down cheering. People were jumping up and down crying. Personally, after a while, I wiped away my tears and sat back down.
It was said that it will take years for the Americans to get over this loss. But they will. Life will go on.
As for Japan, we won!! We won!! We won!! Don't tell anybody I said that. [/expand]


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Forum Home > Regional > Africa
Darfurs War of the Future
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Senior Member
Joined: 27 July 2005
Status: Offline
Points: 651
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Posted: 25 September 2006 at 9:57am
I've cut and pasted this from the original, which should be
compulsory reading for all. It is high time everybody had their eyes
opened as to the real reasons behind today's conflicts and began
thinking about their future and their children's future. The future
depends on decisions we make today, and we should make those
decisions while armed with the truth.
War of the Future
Oil Drives the Genocide in Darfur
By David Mors
A war of the future is being waged right now in the sprawling desert
region of northeastern Africa known as Sudan.
This war is being fought with Kalashnikovs, clubs and knives. In the
western region of Sudan known as Darfur, the preferred tactics are
burning and pillaging, castration and rape -- carried out by Arab
militias riding on camels and horses. The most sophisticated
technologies deployed are, on the one hand, the helicopters used by
the Sudanese government to support the militias when they attack
black African villages, and on the other hand, quite a different
weapon: the seismographs used by foreign oil companies to map oil
deposits hundreds of feet below the surface.
This is a resource war, fought by surrogates, involving great powers
whose economies are predicated on growth, contending for a finite
pool of resources. It is a war straight out of the pages of Michael
Klare's book, Blood and Oil; and it would be a glaring example of the
consequences of our addiction to oil, if it were not also an invisible
Invisible because it is happening in Africa. Invisible because our
mainstream media are subsidized by the petroleum industry. Think
of all the car ads you see on television, in newspapers and
magazines. Think of the narcissism implicit in our automobile
culture, our suburban sprawl, our obsessive focus on the rich and
famous, the giddy assumption that all this can continue indefinitely
when we know it can't -- and you see why Darfur slips into darkness.
Racism enters into our refusal to even try to understand Africa, let
alone value African lives. And yes, surely we're witnessing the kind of
denial that Samantha Power documents in A Problem from Hell:
America and the Age of Genocide; the sheer difficulty we have
acknowledging genocide. Once we acknowledge it, she observes, we
pay lip-service to humanitarian ideals, but stand idly by. And yes,
turmoil in Africa may evoke our experience in Somalia, with its
graphic images of American soldiers being dragged through the
streets by their heels. But all of this is trumped, I believe, by
something just as deep: an unwritten conspiracy of silence that
prevents the media from making the connections that would threaten
our petroleum-dependent lifestyle, that would lead us to
acknowledge the fact that the industrial world's addiction to oil is
laying waste to Africa.
When Darfur does occasionally make the news -- photographs of
burned villages, charred corpses, malnourished children -- it is
presented without context. In truth, Darfur is part of a broader oil-
driven crisis in northern Africa. An estimated 300 to 400 Darfurians
are dying every day. Yet the message from our media is that we
Americans are "helpless" to prevent this humanitarian tragedy, even
as we gas up our SUVs with these people's lives.
Sudan is now the seventh biggest oil producer in Africa after Nigeria,
Libya, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, and Equatorial Guinea.
Oil companies and exploration companies like Halliburton wield
political and sometimes military power. In Sudan, roads and bridges
built by oil firms have been used to attack otherwise remote villages.
Canada's largest oil company, Talisman, is now in court for allegedly
aiding Sudan government forces in blowing up a church and killing
church leaders, in order to clear the land for pipelines and drilling.
Under public pressure in Canada, Talisman has sold its holdings in
Sudan. Lundin Oil AB, a Swedish company, withdrew under similar
pressure from human rights groups
Last June, following the new seismographic exploration in Sudan and
with the new power-sharing peace treaty about to be implemented,
Khartoum and the SPLA signed a flurry of oil deals with Chinese,
Indian, British, Malaysian, and other oil companies.
In short, Sudan embodies a collision between a failed state and a
failed energy policy. Increasingly, ours is a planet whose human
population is devoted to extracting what it can, regardless of the
human and environmental cost. The Bush energy policy, crafted by
oil companies, is predicated on a far different future from the one
any sane person would want his or her children to inherit -- a
desolate world that few Americans, cocooned by the media's silence,
are willing to imagin
More information on the real policy towards Darfur is worth reading
Appeasement Driven by Oil
The Bush Administration and Darfur
By David Morse
Senior Member
Joined: 27 July 2006
Location: Germany
Status: Offline
Points: 1035
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Thank you Duende for posting the article. No one can say that they didn't know about this genocide. I remember that Christiane Amanpour (CNN) once said that she still feels very guilty for not giving enough attention to the Ruandan genocide and that this will always bother her conscience. Here, once again, Amanpour and other are silent, except for occasional glimpses when Hollywood people make a five minute fuss about it. What is wrong here? I don't understand it. Can we really live with the knowledge that we've supported Haliburton, the Canadians and Americans and others in the genocide of the people of Darfur?
The African Union will add 4,000 troops to its mission in Darfur, bringing the number of police and soldiers to 11,000. Sudan has refused to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force into the region. Approximately 200,000 people have died since violence flared in 2003.http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNew s&storyid=2006-09-25T144844Z_01_L24821179_RTRUKOC_0_US-S UDAN.xml&src=rss
Senior Member
Joined: 07 June 2005
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 2369
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May we send prayers out to the people of Darfur.
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Rumi
Senior Member
Joined: 29 March 2006
Status: Offline
Points: 1283
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Asalaamu alaikum,
Thank you so much for this article sister Duende. I pray that this post finds you and your family in good health. I personally know some of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan and have heard their stories of the tragedy and degradation that many of the peoples of Darfur and Sudan are suffering because of the greed of a few. We have many refugees from both Somalia and Sudan that have resettled in southern Arizona: many of them go into healthcare in order to support themselves, so I am often their supervisor. These people are warm and loving and I cannot understand on earth why anyone would harm them!
"Every good deed is charity whether you come to your brother's assistance or just greet him with a smile.
Senior Member
Joined: 16 February 2006
Status: Offline
Points: 211
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Thank you Duende for the article.
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blink(1), the USB RGB LED
blink(1) is a super status light: it packs three dimensions of information (color, brightness and pattern) into a single tiny package that fits into any USB port on nearly every device. It makes it incredibly easy to connect any data source in the cloud or on your computer to a full-color RGB LED so you can know what's happening without checking any windows, going to any websites or typing any commands.
We designed blink(1) in the spirit of our favorite old school Unix tools and we tried hard to make it simple, flexible, and robust.
Do you want to know if a friend has signed onto Skype, but don't want a window popping up every time anyone has logged on? Do you want to be notified when a long download has finished? Do you want to know the snow conditions at Tahoe without checking every hour? Do you want to make a "busy" light for your office that glows red when your calendar says you're in a meeting?
You can do all four at once: you can simultaneously control as many blink(1)s as you have USB ports. Have a 36-port USB hub? You can fill it with 36 blink(1)s, each of which is showing a different piece of information.
Get things done without having your face buried in the computer. If you're expecting a call and don't want to make noise, blink(1) can help.
Monitor network speed when you're in the cafe, so you know when the guy in the corner is seeding on BitTorrent and it's time to go elsewhere.
Ever wanted a physical "Busy" indicator for your cubicle or office? With blink(1) and a USB extension cable, you can let your coworkers know when you really can't be interrupted.
And because blink(1) is physically unobtrusive and requires no drivers to confound the OS, it makes a great multi-modal notification light for rack-mounted servers, alerting to task updates or system alerts.
blink(1) is a USB HID device, so no special drivers are needed, just applications. We provide apps for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and embedded Linuxes like those used on BeagleBone and DD-WRT.
On Windows, blink(1) can appear as a system service. On Mac OS X, it can be an Applescript target. On Linux it's a command-line tool.
The name "blink(1)" is a play on the Unix help system ("man pages") where command's help pages are given by their name and section.
Not only are the blink(1) tools and apps open source, so is its entire design. Feel free to hack it to make it do cool new things.
blink(1) builds on our experience making thousands of BlinkMs, the popular Smart LEDs for Arduino.We wanted something that is as fun and as useful as BlinkM, but made for everyone, not just prototypers and designers.
Q. Wait, so this is just an RGB LED with a USB connector in a case? A. Yes, and it's the most flexible and easiest to use one, anywhere. To make it all work, there's also a tiny USB controller with our firmware to make it easy to program and control, but basically yes.
Q. Which computers does blink(1) work with? A. Just about anything with a USB jack. Specifically, blink(1) is a USB HID-compliant device and the apps we release for it work on Mac OS X 10.6+, Windows XP+, Ubuntu/Debian-style Linux. The command-line tools can be compiled for just about any POSIX-compliant Unix-style platform including the Raspberry Pi, DD-WRT WiFi routers, BeagleBone, and some Android phones.
Q. Can I hook it to my Twitter? A. Yep! Our BlinkATweet app lets you control blink(1) based on Twitter keyword search or Twitter user post.
Q. What other web apps does blink(1) work with? A. At launch we plan on having blink(1) work with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and through IFTTT.com, Boxcar.io many other web services.
Q. Can I control it from my phone? A. Yes! If your phone can load a web page it can control blink(1). The blink(1) service on your computer can appear as a password-protected web app for your phone or any other network enabled device.
Q. Is blink(1) hackable? A. Definitely. We're working to make the enclosure openable so you can get at the circuit board. And if you know Arduino or AVR programming, you can modify how blink(1) functions. blink(1) can be programmed with the Arduino IDE. We will include example hacks of how to turn the blink(1) into a USB keyboard and mouse emulator.
Funding period
- (35 days)


text:
Dake Kang, Dan Sewell
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Former South African president Nelson Mandela's close family members gathered to hear a somber prayer wishing the anti-apartheid icon a "peaceful, perfect end" as he lay in hospital in critical condition with his life seemingly slipping away.
Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba visited Pretoria's Mediclinic Heart Hospital late on Tuesday to pray with Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, "at this hard time of watching and waiting."
Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent 27 years behind bars for his struggle under white minority rule and went on to become South Africa's first black president, was admitted on June 8 with a recurrent lung infection.
During a 19-day vigil, his family, and the world, have watched as the 94-year-old slipped from a stable to a critical condition.
Many now fear for the man, who, in defeating apartheid, changed the course of history and inspired millions across the world.
The archbishop's prayer seemed to echo a growing feeling of inevitability about Mandela's condition that is increasingly voiced by South Africans, to whom he remains a moral giant, even though he stepped back from public life a decade ago.
"May [we] be filled with gratitude for all the good that he has done for us and for our nation, and may [we] honor his legacy through our lives," the prayer read.
"Grant Madiba eternal healing, and relief from pain and suffering," it said, referring to Mandela by his clan name. "Grant him, we pray, a quiet night and a peaceful, perfect end."
According to local media, elders from Mandela's Thembu clan were due to visit him in hospital yesterday to decide what to do.
"They want to visit Tata [father] himself and discuss what should be done," an unnamed local chief told the Times newspaper.
It follows reports that a row broke out at a family gathering on Tuesday over whether to move the graves of Mandela's three children to Qunu, where Mandela is expected to be buried, the village where the charismatic former leader spent his childhood tending cattle and living in mud-walled huts.
The police presence in the neighborhood of Mandela's home was bigger early yesterday, compared with previous nights. Outside the hospital in Pretoria, flowers and messages of support piled up as a growing crowd sang hymns.
"I'm here because of Tata Mandela," said 38-year-old Tolly Mogane, one of the generation Mandela led from the darkness of racist rule to democracy. "Today I'm free, nobody is going to tell me to go home."
As South Africans have become resigned to Mandela's mortality, his role in shaping their nation has come into sharper focus.
"Mr Mandela set the example," said Rosemarie van Staden, who was handing out muffins to well-wishers. "He wanted us to be a rainbow nation and we really must carry on."
South African President Jacob Zuma called on South Africans to respect the Mandela family's "dignity and privacy."
Meanwhile, messages of goodwill flooded in from overseas.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai described the iconic figure as "an inspiration."
The White House said it was monitoring Mandela's condition, but could not yet say whether his ill health would affect a planned visit by US President Barack Obama to South Africa from tomorrow as part of a tour of Africa.
In any case, Obama is unlikely to see Mandela as he is "indisposed," South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said.


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NEW BEDFORD — The daughter of a woman suffering from dementia who jumped from a second-story nursing home window last weekend is adding details to the home's version of events.
NEW BEDFORD — The daughter of a woman suffering from dementia who jumped from a second-story nursing home window last weekend is adding details to the home's version of events.
Julieta Dalzell told The Standard-Times that she and her sister arrived for a visit just after lunch Saturday at the Savoy Nursing and Rehab Center on County Street only to find their mother missing from her locked-down room. Police and the home had attributed the missing mother's discovery to a nurse's aide.
Administrator Derek Leblanc said Wednesday that shortly before the daughters arrived, the patient had been directed to the dining room after wandering into another patient's room but apparently wandered away within minutes and was not there when her daughters arrived.
Dalzell said the family was surprised to learn there were no window alarms.
"When we brought our mom they told us there were alarms on the windows," she said.
Leblanc has confirmed there were no alarms.
Window alarms are not required by state law in nursing facilities, according to the state Department of Public Health, which was investigating Wednesday.
Dalzell said that while she was upstairs and the staff was busy searching the building, a fire truck arrived and her sister ran out to see why it was there. "She thought my mother had been hit by a car," Dalzell said.
The mother had a history of wandering away, according to the home and the family.
Leblanc said the two nurses who discovered the patient lying on the sidewalk called 911 and brought blankets to her. It was about that time that Dalzell's sister saw the fire truck outside and went to see what had happened, fearing her mother had been hit by a car. It was she who noticed the open window above.
The staff then checked the room and found it in disarray, Dalzell said.
The woman's injuries are different than described by police in the initial reports. The woman did not have a broken hip and leg but rather a broken neck, back (in two places) and ribs.
She is in stable and sedated condition at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence and faces a long recovery, Dalzell said.
The earlier description was based on the early examination by the staff, Leblanc said.
"I'm not blaming the staff," Dalzell said. "I'm blaming the facility" for not having window alarms.


text:
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