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GOP group readies immigration blitz
While Republican leaders continue to talk – and talk – about how best to update the party's hard-line image, one of the country's most prominent conservative outside groups is ready to put real money into the effort.
The American Action Network is poised to launch a major advocacy campaign aimed at winning support for immigration reform on the right – the first significant effort within the Republican coalition to create an atmosphere in which it is safe for GOP lawmakers to support an immigration bill.
Story Continued Below
AAN officials described the campaign in detail to POLITICO, outlining how the organization aims to drum up support for both immigration legislation and Republican budget proposals in the coming months.
The nonprofit group and an affiliated super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, spent a combined $55 million on advocacy and electioneering in 2011 and 2012, officials said. With $44 million of that total coming from AAN – a number that hasn't previously been shared – the group can expect to have substantial resources for its policy messaging going forward.
The immigration effort will begin this weekend with a six-figure television buy featuring former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez urging voters to support fixing "a broken system." It is branded as a message from the Hispanic Leadership Network, an arm of AAN that has spent several years reaching out to Hispanic voters from the right.
The campaign represents a political gamble, though one that could alter the current dynamic of immigration reform. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has been the party's most outspoken advocate for an immigration proposal, but it remains to be seen how receptive the larger conservative community will be to enacting a compromise law.
The Gutierrez commercial will run nationally in both English and Spanish, on programs including ABC's "This Week," "Fox News Sunday" and the network Univision. There will also be a digital component to the advertising in targeted markets.
"America's the only place where a little boy who couldn't speak English can grow up to be a CEO and U.S. secretary of Commerce," Gutierrez says in the ad. "Washington must pass immigration reform that grows the economy and respects the rule of law."
In interviews, AAN leaders described the push for immigration reform as a long-term commitment on the part of the organization. AAN's think-tank affiliate, the American Action Forum, plans to put out a study in March, authored by former Congressional Budget Office head Douglas Holtz-Eakin and emphasizing the potential economic benefits of immigration reform.
Strategists said that Gutierrez is only the first HLN supporter who will be featured in television ads; the group's national advisory committee includes other Republicans as prominent as Jeb Bush and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. (Gutierrez recently resigned from a senior position at Citigroup to helm a super PAC focused on immigration.)
AAN president Brian Walsh said the focus on immigration reflects "our desire to see this problem solved and a real bill make it through the House and the Senate this year, or at least this Congress."
"We will be tapping into our grassroots, we will be tapping into the leadership we've built over the last few years [for] what we believe is going to be a very difficult debate moving forward, but one that we feel strongly about," Walsh said.
AAN advisers said that immigration represents a longstanding area of interest for the group, which plans to orient itself over the next year toward that issue and the ongoing fiscal battles on Capitol Hill. Dan Conston, AAN's communications director, said they anticipate those will be "the defining issues of the next six to eight months, and probably past that."


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Mumbai: Filmmaker Karan Johar, who is known to have lavish sets and larger than life and expensive films, says he was under pressure when he was asked to make the film 'Bombay Talkies' on a tight budget.
"We have our own style of film making but we didn`t have much budget. First of all nobody gives me a budget because I have always made larger than life films. This is for the first time I have to work under a budget and it was difficult to make a film under a budget.
"The budget was Rs 1.5 crore each. We consciously made an effort to make it in 1.5 crores... we did not cheat by putting our own money into it," Karan Johar, told reporters during the trailer launch of the film.
"Bombay Talkies" which is a film to celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema has four diverse filmmakers coming under one roof to make four short films.
Director Anurag Kashyap says megastar Amitabh Bachchan`s house `Pratiksha` plays an important role in the film.
"Amitabh`s house plays a very important role in the film. For the first time when I had to come to Mumbai, I was standing outside his bungalow. `Pratiksha`, his bungalow, is the protagonist in my film."
Kashyap is happy with the film. "When we saw all the film together we felt good suddenly you feel you are part of something big and this has not happened before."
His film is about the madness and importance given to stars in Mumbai by their crazy fans.
Director Zoya Akhtar says when she was approached to make this film, she had a short story ready.
"I have a short story ready when I was approached for the film and I could adapt it to the film. But you have got to like it the way it is. I am glad I did this (film) and I am very proud to share a credit in this film."
Johar, who is known to cast one of his close friends Shah Rukh Khan in most of his films, says he didn`t have any character for him in this film.
"I haven`t thought of Shah Rukh Khan because he is part of my life, part of my system. I look up to him and I didn`t think off casting him because there was no character for him in this film."
Aasked what titles would they prefer to give to their respective films, Akhtar says 'Sheila Ki Jawani' while Kashyap felt `Murabba` would be apt. Johar likes the title 'Ajeeb Dastan Hai Yeh' and Dibakar Banerjee who is making an emotional film, feels 'Star' would suit it as a title.
'Bombay Talkies' is being made to celebrate the 100 years of Indian cinema. It has four segments directed by Johar, Akhtar, Banerjee and Kashyap respectively. The film is slated for May 13 release.
The film features Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukerji, Katrina Kaif, Randeep Hooda, Nawazuddin Siddiqui among others.

subset: commoncrawl


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Nationwide shortages of popular drugs used to treat ADD and ADHD are sending parents scrambling, with some combing multiple pharmacies for the Adderall and Ritalin that keep their kids calm.
Don't miss these Health stories
More women opting for preventive mastectomy - but should they be?
Rates of women who are opting for preventive mastectomies, such as Angeline Jolie, have increased by an estimated 50 percent in recent years, experts say. But many doctors are puzzled because the operation doesn't carry a 100 percent guarantee, it's major surgery -- and women have other options, from a once-a-day pill to careful monitoring.
- Larry Page's damaged vocal cords: Treatment comes with trade-offs
- Report questioning salt guidelines riles heart experts
- CDC: 2012 was deadliest year for West Nile in US
- What stresses moms most? Themselves, survey says
- More women opting for preventive mastectomy - but should they be?
Molly Taylor, 46, of Worcester, Mass., was turned away empty-handed this week when she went to pick up prescriptions of Adderall XR for herself and her 16-year-old son, Luke.
"They don't have them," an incredulous Taylor told msnbc.com. "You could be waiting several days, which would have a HUGE impact. If you can't get it that day, it's very, very difficult."
In the past two weeks, federal Food and Drug Administration officials added the drugs methylphenidate hydrochloride and amphetamine mixed salts, the generic names for Ritalin and Adderall, to an expanding list of national drug shortages. Some distributors cite manufacturing delays and increased demand as the reasons; others offer no explanation for the shortages.
But the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, which tracks drug supply issues, has listed the products in short supply for nearly a month, and there have been regional reports of spotty shortages even before that.
"We have been following this for a bit," said Erin Fox, manager of the Drug Information Service for the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics, which runs the ASHP list, adding later: "This is a frustrating one for parents."
5.4 million children have ADHD
In the United States, an estimated 5.4 million children ages 4 to 17 have ever been diagnosed with ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and 66 percent of those with current ADHD take medication to control the condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year, that amounted to 152 million units sold of Adderall and Adderall XR, the extended-release version of the pill, 35 million units of Ritalin and nearly 702 million units of generic ADHD drugs, with sales totaling more than $1.2 billion, according to data from Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions.
For millions of children — and adults — the stimulant medications ease the symptoms of ADHD, allowing them to control distracted thoughts and behavior well enough to participate in school, work and social life.
The drugs are taken daily, but when patients miss even one dose, the consequences can be swift, said Ruth Hughes, interim chief executive of the organization CHADD, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
"The symptoms come back very quickly," said Hughes, who is the mother of an adult son with ADHD. "If you start that spiral, within 24 hours you begin to get in the loop of negative feedback. It doesn't take very long until it has a truly negative impact."
The current shortages affect various doses of the medications supplied by several manufacturers of brand-name and generic drugs. That means patients who find they can't get their usual prescriptions might be able to find a similar drug in a different strength, made by a different manufacturer.
However, because the drugs are tightly controlled by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, prescriptions are doled out only a month at a time, and patients have to visit their doctors in order to authorize new drugs, which could be more expensive than the old ones.
"At the very least, it's an inconvenience and there may be additional costs," said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York. "Unfortunately, it's going to be trial and error."
The shortages could last weeks or months, according to manufacturers' notes to the FDA.
For some families, that may mean visiting multiple pharmacies, Adesman said. One CHADD member had to try 13 pharmacies before she could find the correct dose of her drug.
"In most cases, you're not thinking ahead," noted Taylor, the Massachusetts mom.
Fortunately, Taylor had squirreled away five pills apiece for her and her son, just in case of insurance delays or other emergencies. For a few more days, Taylor is OK. But once her stash is gone, she worries about how long it might take to replace the drug.
Without Adderall XR, her son's concentration in sports and school may suffer. In many families, life becomes just generally more difficult.
"You don't even realize how much of a spider web effect this is," she said. "It affects everything."
© 2013 msnbc.com Reprints


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Samuel looking for trustworthy, loving family
In his own words, Samuel, 12, says he is looking for a family that's trustworthy with a lot of love to give.
You might be the one he is looking for.
Samuel is athletic and fun to be around.
"I am a good friend and funny. I am a good student. I don't like to get in trouble," he said.
"He will do well in a family that is energetic, that is willing to get out there, play sports, and go see him in sports," said child advocate Nicole Redford.
Samuel loves soccer and says he wants to grow up and be a soccer player.
"I know he likes to play with his brother and rustle with his brother. So a family would have to be open to a little horse play," said Redford.
Samuel said he loves his brother and sister. They like to go everywhere together.
"My biggest wish is to find a great family," he said.
"They need a family that is connected to faith community," said Redford.


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Alpha versions are known for being "bad" or, at the most, "unpolished". After giving it a few shots, however, I feel like I am either missing the point somewhere or just plain bad at the game. This has provoked a few questions:
1. Is it literally possible to complete a level in alpha?
2. Are enemies supposed to regenerate? (the tutorial goat seems to have given an unrealistic example of the game)
3. As a summary, what has been done with the beta to improve it from its available alpha form?
I know the alpha version will not be receiving updates and I'm not here asking for a free game. I just hope the forum community can give me a better understanding of what the game used to be and what it is currently. I might also be fishing for alpha tips. Alpha tips would be appreciated.


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The Federal Emergency Management Agency offered details Wednesday on how to register for financial aid after the Sunday tornado devastated parts of Faulkner County.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday issued a declaration for individual assistance to help storm victims in the county, less than 24 hours after Gov. Mike Beebe sought federal aid for those hardest hit.
Storm victims can register for financial assistance by applying online at DisasterAssistance.gov; via a mobile device at m.fema.gov or via the registration phone line at (800) 621-3362, Faulkner County spokesman David Hogue said in a statement.
Faulkner County residents can dispose of debris by leaving it at the road in front of their property to wait for pickup, or by hiring a contractor who should dispose of debris separately, Hogue said. Those placing debris at the roadside should take care not to cover or impede access to utility meters, he added.
Roadside debris must be separated into six categories: vegetation such as tree limbs and shrubs; construction and demolition debris; white goods such as appliances; e-good such as TVs and electronics; household hazards such as cleaning solutions or chemicals; and regular household garbage, which will be picked up by normal means.
"Contractor debris is not eligible for pickup under FEMA regulations," Hogue's statement added.
FEMA does not approve particular contractors, but some are barred to qualify for financial assistance, according to the statement. Property owners should check contractors' credentials with FEMA, Hogue said.
Mayflower: Traffic, curfew, boil order
Meanwhile, officials say Arkansas 365 from Pulaski County to Mayflower is not open to through traffic Wednesday; drivers who need an east-west route may take I-40. Our online traffic map shows in real time which routes are experiencing delays.
A curfew is still in effect in Mayflower and Vilonia from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. for all residents and nonessential personnel, Hogue said. Mayflower is also under a boil order, he said.
Restoring electricity
Entergy Arkansas said shortly before noon that more than 2,200 customers remained without power, nearly all in Faulkner County. On Tuesday night, most without electricity were along Arkansas 89 South and Arkansas 365 South in Mayflower, the utility said.
About 900 linemen and others were working to restore power, including crews from surrounding states, Entergy said. The utility expects all to regain power by Friday.
Crews are working Wednesday in downtown Vilonia, along Church Street and along Naylor Road. In Mayflower, crews are working along Arkansas 365 South down to Plantation Drive, the utility said.
Car seats given away in Vilonia
The North Little Rock Police Department is in Vilonia on Wednesday to give out child car seats to storm victims.
Police spokesman Sgt. Brian Dedrick said to see the Red Cross to find where the department's truck and trailer and car-seat technicians will be set up. North Little Rock officers plan to be in Vilonia through Friday until they run out of seats.
Parents should take their children who need car seats along with them to get the seats fitted correctly, Dedrick added.
Volunteers are being signed in and tagged so they can be counted toward federal aid money and so workers can be used more efficiently, officials have said. Those who want to help must sign in here:
• Beryl Baptist Church, 863 U.S. 64 Business, Vilonia.
• City Hall, 2 Ashmore St., Mayflower.


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by Sean Griffin, November 8, 2011
Evaporation is Stealing your Money: Protect your Swimming Pool
A major cost in owning a swimming pool is maintaining crystal clear pool water at the desired water temperature. Pool Filtration directly adds to your monthly energy bill as pumps run daily to filter every gallon of water. Perfect water chemistry comes at a cost and the last thing any swimming pool owner wants is to lose the valuable heated water you've paid good money to perfect. Evaporation accounts for the largest loss of heated and treated pool water so prevent evaporation and safeguard your water. Minimizing water consumption will help you reduce your swimming pools Carbon Footprint and lower the bills!
Before you start adding safeguards for evaporation I recommend going through and confirming the pool structure is sound and there are no leaks. You can gauge the amount of water loss due to evaporation and rule out any additional leaks by using a simple water Bucket-Test. On a hot, sunny, humid day evaporation can account for ¼" of water loss. If you discover additional water loss you will want to attend to fixing any pool leaks. Even small drips can add up to be gallons upon gallons.
Evaporation is the process by which water is converted from its liquid form to its vapor form and thus transferred from land and water masses to the atmosphere. Evaporation accounts for up to 90% of heat loss from a swimming pool. If you have concluded water loss has been limited to evaporation you will want to begin to combat the thief. You can envision your evaporation prevention tactics as a series of barriers guarding against cold night time temperatures and cross winds. Draw out a strategy or make a checklist of ideas you can incorporate in your backyard.
Barriers around the pool can be your first line of defense. Limiting and redirecting wind flow across the surface of the pool water will drastically reduce evaporation. Landscaping can be the perfect wall. Hedges, shrubbery, and lattice fences can create privacy, add to the backyard landscaping, and help control where the wind blows. Pool Safety Fencing made up of mesh material will also serve as a wind deterrent as well as a safety barrier.
Install a swimming pool cover. The most important of any evaporation deterrents is a pool cover .A covered swimming pool can save up to 70% on operating costs, reduce chemical consumption by 35-60%, and reduce evaporation up to 98%. Pool covers are offered in several forms. Solid safety covers and automatic pool covers can reduce water loss almost entirely. Solar covers will optimize heat transfer from the sun and also prevent overnight heat loss. Solar blankets are offered in many forms. Liquid solar blankets invisible to the eye, solar rings, solar fish, and original solar blankets with solar reels will all protect the surface of the water.
Optimize your solar consumption and limit gas use. If you have solar paneling on the roof make sure you are controlling the flow of water to prevent adversely loosing heat by running water through cold panels. This is normally done with an automated solar system which will sense temperatures and automatically change an actuator valve to achieve desired temperatures. Tone down the temperature at the pool heater. A difference of even one degree can save you up to 10% in fuel consumption.
Once you've achieved your goal of limiting water and heat loss due to evaporation the savings will follow. The payoff is long term and you might not notice any drastic changes but over time the benefits will add up. Evaporation prevention is just one of many ways to make your swimming pool eco friendly and lower the cost of running.


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U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission
New Orleans Store Fired Employee Because of Ulcerative Colitis, Federal Agency Says
HOUSTON — Saks Fifth Avenue, the high-end retailer based in New York City, has agreed to pay $170,000 to settle a disability discrimination suit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. The settlement resolves the charge of a former Saks makeup artist, Marlene Babin, who claimed that Saks fired her from its New Orleans store because of her disability, ulcerative colitis.
According to the EEOC's suit (No. 08-4464 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana), Babin began working for Saks in 2000. She was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, in 1999. From February of 2004 through December of 2004, Babin underwent five major surgeries in connection with her colitis. During this time, she spent a total of three months in the hospital and had to take four extended medical leaves of absence from work.
In January of 2005, while Babin was recovering from her fifth surgery, Saks informed her that she had to return to work in February or be fired, claiming that she had exhausted her available leave. In fact, Babin had more than 900 hours of available paid leave balances, the EEOC said. Although Babin had been scheduled by her surgeon to return to work in March, she obtained a release to return earlier, to avoid being fired.
Just before her return, however, she fell and broke her wrist. On the next work day, Saks told Babin that she was terminated, effective immediately, because she had allegedly exhausted her available leave, and because she could not be accommodated to work with her broken wrist, even though Babin had been working with the broken wrist for six days. However, two other employees in the New Orleans store had in recent years worked with a broken wrist or hand, and were not fired. Saks told Babin to reapply once her wrist had healed.
On the day after her cast was removed, Babin applied for an open makeup artist position at the store's La Mer counter. Six weeks later, Babin interviewed for the La Mer position. That same day, Saks sent Babin a letter stating that it did not have any positions appropriate for her background, even though Babin had more than 20 years of experience as a makeup artist, the EEOC said. Saks left the position vacant for about two months, later hiring a non-disabled person with no full-time experience as a makeup artist.
Saks later admitted that Babin had in fact been "very qualified" for the La Mer position. The EEOC contended that Saks fired Babin because of her colitis, and that the issue of her broken wrist was merely a cover for its discriminatory motives.
Disability discrimination violates the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The EEOC filed suit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement. Babin was also represented by private attorney Jeffrey T. Greenberg.
After extensive sworn deposition testimony was taken from witnesses in the case, Saks filed a motion with the court, asking that the suit be dismissed for lack of evidence. Federal Judge Martin L.C. Feldman, presiding for U.S. District Court in New Orleans, issued a 30-page decision in which he denied Saks's motion to dismiss the case and set forth reasons why a jury could find in Babin's favor. The decision set the stage for a jury trial, which will not be necessary now because of the settlement.
Besides the monetary award, the company agreed to a number of measures, such as implementing a written policy on disability discrimination and having supervisory and human resources staff undergo training on disability discrimination on an annual basis during the two-year period of the consent decree.
Babin commented on the settlement, "I was devastated when Saks fired me and then refused to hire me back. I loved my job and took a lot of pride and joy from working with people. The court's decision in refusing to throw my case out means a great deal to me. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to have my story heard. I feel that by this settlement, justice was served."
Jim Sacher, the EEOC's regional attorney in Houston, who is in charge of all EEOC litigation in Louisiana, said, "This is a strong and appropriate settlement. The allegations here were very serious and were supported by a wealth of solid evidence. Ms. Babin was an excellent employee who did not deserve to be fired because of her disability. We are pleased that Saks has agreed to compensate Ms. Babin and to take additional steps which will benefit employees and applicants in the future. The EEOC will continue to scrutinize situations like this very closely, and to file suit where necessary to enforce the ADA."
According to company information, Saks has 53 stores nationwide and employs approximately 15,000 people. In 2009, Saks reported a net worth of more than $900 million.
The EEOC enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Further information about EEOC is available on its web site at www.eeoc.gov.


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Season's Greetings!
From everyone here at Cricket Web we would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
We would like to thank you all for your continued support you have given us throughout the year and we hope that you join us again for 2013 where among other projects we should see the release of the Cricket Web book
Take care and stay safe over the holiday season.
From us all here at Cricket Web
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year


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Muhammad Ali Boxing genuine signature autograph book AFTAL RACC UACC
Muhammad Ali Boxing genuine signature autograph book AFTAL RACC UACC
A hard back edition of the book "Muhammad Ali - A thirty Year Journey" by Howard Bingham and signed by both Bingham and Muhammad Ali on a bookplate on the title page. Book is in excellent unread condition and would make a perfect gift for any boxing fan.
We believe we take authenticity more seriously than any other retailer of signed products anywhere. So firstly we only select products from the very best independant dealers to display on this site. This means that every item has already been checked and verified as authentic before our own team check it again before it is offered to you here.
Every item is then issued with its own unique COA that both confirms its authenticity and confirms that if it is shown to be non authentic at any time in the future, then you will be offered either a full refund, or similar product of the same value. Full details can be seen on our Unique Guarantee page.
All items are always correctly packed for safe delivery to you, wherever they have to go. We can ship to almost every country in the world, and post items on a daily basis with most orders leaving us within 24 hours of order. Orders for custom framed items may take a little longer, but not normally more than an extra 7 days.
UK insured and signed for post is free on orders over £100.
Orders under £100 are £7.95 and are always sent tracked and signed for your security.
Orders outside of the UK but within the EU are normally £14.95 and Rest of the World £18.95 but some larger framed items can be more depending on the size and weight of the item, so we may need to quote you for any item to any country before dispatch.
Every Item comes with our Autographs.co.uk Certificate of Authenticity included. Every COA includes a numbered hologram with the matching numbered one attached to the item itself. The COA is an important document realting to the item and should always be kept safe.
Every COA is dated and signed by a director of the company and printed on high quality paper, and our full contact details including phone number is printed onto each one.
|Item Details
|22cm x 26cm
|hardback book
|Signed By
|Muhammad Ali and Howard Bingham


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Enterprise Social Networks - The Heart of any Social Business
Yammer are our guest hosts today on Social Workplace Twitter Chat (#SWChat) which gave me the perfect excuse to write this post.
Social Networks in our personal lives have become so embedded in our culture that signs like "Follow me on Twitter" or "Like my Facebook Page" are becoming the norm. I even saw one on the side of a local bus recently requesting to follow the bus company on Twitter.
So if we have embraced social networks in our personal lives so readily to be better connected to our friends, why is it taking so long to do the same inside a company to better connect our employees?
A company that is socially connected is not just going to be more effective and more efficient, but it's going to have a knowledge reach spanning the entire company that any employee can tap into and make use of. This is the Power of the Enterprise Social Network and the heart of any Social Business.
"It's not important for you to know all the answers, but it's key that you know someone in your employee network that does"
Many of the presentations I now give uses this tag line because it's time we put more focus and attention on building employee social relationships. By doing so we build up employee trust and an expansive knowledge network which we can then utilise.
Let's take the following scenario:
Your CEO is tired of the scatter gun like approach to internal communications and wants something done about it. As your companies Head of Communications your CEO assigns you to deal with it quickly.
However, you already have a PR nightmare on your hands which is taking up all of your time...
So what do you do...
- bluff your CEO and drag out the project with high level strategy stuff that talks a good project but delivers nothing (oh yeah, you know what I'm talking about!) ?
- put in a lot of over-time?
- assign someone in your team to take on the project and re-prioritise their priorities?
None of these responses are ideal and are unlikely to deliver a good solution.
However, for a company that has embraced Enterprise Social Networks, there is another way....put a "Shout Out" to your employees asking for active participants (volunteers to be part of the project team) and passive contributors (volunteers to contribute from the sidelines).
This "Shout Out" approach provides some great business benefits:
- avoids duplication of time, money and effort if someone is already working on something similar in your organisation (in large enterprises duplication is often a common occurrence)
- delivers a better solution as the volunteers are interested in the subject matter
- allows you access to a large knowledge network to minimise risks and issues
- provides a better chance of adoption as the employees themselves have been involved in the delivery of the project
I call this Open Collaboration (yes, I avoided using the term social) and have been trialing it now for a while with some great success.
This is just one example of what you can do once your company's employees are better socially connected which couldn't be possible without first developing your Enterprise Social Network.


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DOYLESTOWN (PA) – Sean Fakete kicked a 26-yard field goal in overtime as Lebanon Valley College first overcame a 17-point, second-half deficit and then a Delaware Valley College touchdown with no time remaining in regulation to post a 34-31, Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) road victory.
The win, combined with upset victories by King's College over Lycoming College and Albright College over Widener University, puts the Flying Dutchmen in sole possession of first place in the conference with just two games remaining. They upped their record to 7-1 overall and 6-1 in the MAC. It was also the 100th win for Lebanon Valley head coach Jim Monos.
Delaware Valley, based on the other results, would have moved into a five-way tie for the top spot in the standings if it pulled out the win. Instead, the Aggies dropped their second straight home overtime game and fell to 5-3 overall and 4-3 in the MAC.
Fakete's game-winning kick capped a wild final 23-plus minutes of the game after Rasheed Bailey's two-yard touchdown catch midway through the third quarter gave Delaware Valley a 24-7 lead. Lebanon Valley then scored the next 24 points to take a 31-24 lead only to see the Aggies drive 97 yards in 70 seconds and score on the last play of regulation where the snap took place with one-tenth of a second on the clock.
After Delaware Valley's miracle score, the Flying Dutchmen won the overtime coin toss and elected to go on defense first. Three straight passes from Aggie quarterback Aaron Wilmer fell incomplete and Brandon Snyder came on to try a 42-yard field goal. Snyder got all of his kick but it smacked high against the right upright and fell back into play.
Needing just a field goal to win it, Lebanon Valley went to its ground attack and freshman Brendan Irving, who got his first start of his career, continued his strong game by picking up 15 yards over three plays. Quarterback Brian Murphy then netted a yard on second down and centered the ball for Fakete, who came on the field on third down to attempt the game-winner. His boot left no doubt and the Flying Dutchmen had their first win over Delaware Valley since 2002.
It did not appear as if overtime was a possibility after Jake Ziegler's 45-yard punt was downed at the Aggie three-yard line with 1:10 remaining and no timeouts. Delaware Valley then faced third down when Wilmer scrambled out of bounds after gaining 21 yards and a first down. He then hit Lewis Vincent over the middle to the Aggie 48 and spiked the ball to stop the clock. Wilmer scrambled and hit Rasheed Bailey, who went out of bounds at the Lebanon Valley 27 and was hit late for a personal foul penalty and another 14 yards to the Flying Dutchmen 13-yard line with 14 seconds to go.
Wilmer's next two passes were broken up as was his pass on third down. But, there was still one-tenth of a second left on the clock and the Aggies had one more play. Wilmer looked to the left corner of the end zone for a fade and wideout Bobby Marterella came down with it for the improbable touchdown. Snyder hit the extra-point for a 31-31 score and overtime.
Delaware Valley started strong on the afternoon and scored on two of its first three possessions for a 14-0 lead. It took the opening kickoff and drove 75 yards on 11 plays, capped by a nine-yard scoring pass from Wilmer to Bailey just 4:19 in. Then with 18 seconds gone in the second quarter, Kyle Schuberth scored from a yard out to cap a six-play, 82-yard drive.
Lebanon Valley cut that lead in half with 4:41 remaining in the first stanza as an Austin Hartman three-yard touchdown run was the final part of a nine-play, 97-yard scoring drive. Both teams stalled and the Aggies got a final chance with 26 seconds left in the half. They moved the ball 26 yards and Snyder hit a 35-yard field goal with two ticks to go for a 17-7 lead.
After Bailey's second touchdown catch of the game made it 24-7 with 8:25 left in the third, the Flying Dutchmen got rolling. First, Fakete boomed a 44-yard field goal with 4:50 to go in the quarter, and then Hartman's two-yard touchdown run with 17 seconds left in the third made it a 24-17 contest.
Delaware Valley was stopped again and Lebanon Valley went on a nine-play, 59-yard scoring drive that ended when Tyler George outleaped an Aggie defender in the end zone for a 16-yard touchdown catch on a third-and-11 play with 8:24 remaining.
Lebanon Valley then forced the lone turnover of the game as Wilmer was sacked by Andrew Burkholder and Joey Scerbo recovered the loose ball at the Flying Dutchmen 47. Three players later, Irving broke free and raced 40 yards for a touchdown and a 31-24 advantage with 4:49 to go. It looked like that was going to be the game-winner, but the Aggies pulled off their last-second play only to see Lebanon Valley regroup and win it in the extra session.
Wilmer completed 25 of 43 passes for 335 yards and three touchdowns. Bailey was at the receiving end of nine throws and two scores while Marterella had three catches for 31 yards and the tying touchdown. Schuberth netted 84 yards and a score on 19 carries. Bernard Avery had 11 tackles and a sack to lead the defense.
Irving carried the ball 23 times for 134 yards and one touchdown. Murphy was 16-for-25 for 198 yards and one touchdown while Joey Miller caught seven passes for 103 yards. Frank Gaffney did not add to his Division III-best total of 13 sacks, but he finished with 10 tackles for Lebanon Valley.


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ATLANTA - Lobbyists could not spend more than $75 at a time on public officials under a bill passed Thursday by Georgia's legislators on the final day of their annual session.
The legislation, now headed for Gov. Nathan Deal's desk, would impose the first limits on what lobbyists can spend in Georgia. Lobbyists can now spend as much as they want to influence state legislators and other officials as long as they publicly report their expenditures.
The plan would tighten rules, forcing people to register as lobbyists if they are paid to lobby or get more than $250 in reimbursements for their lobbying work. Both chambers voted unanimously to approve the plan one hour ahead of the midnight deadline on the General Assembly's final working day. The chamber erupted into cheers and applause after the votes.
Any bills not approved by midnight Thursday automatically fail for the year.
"I think it's an improvement, a historic improvement, in our law," House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, told lawmakers. "I think that we can leave here tonight, hold our heads high and know that we did the people's work, and kept faith with the people of Georgia."
There are exceptions to the rules. Lobbyists could spend as much as they want on food, beverages and registration at group events where entire legislative chambers, committees and caucuses are invited. It would restrict those committee events to one per calendar year. Lobbyists could also pay to send public officials and their staff on trips within the United States. An effort to close a loophole allowing attorneys to skirt some lobbying rules failed.
Deal, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill.
"Gov. Deal thinks it's a good first step," Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said in a statement. "He thinks the reforms are appropriate, and he wants to keep an eye on how this is implemented and enforced to make sure it's fulfilling its intended purpose."
Tightening lobbying rules was one of several big decisions expected Thursday. Lawmakers also settled on a $41 billion budget for the fiscal year starting in July, one of the General Assembly's last remaining tasks.
Republican leaders in both chambers had long been divided on how to change lobbying rules. The debate intensified this summer after Georgia voters supported putting limits on lobbyist spending in nonbinding ballot questions.
About 87 percent of voters in the Republican primary election - roughly 827,800 people - voted to support a $100 limit on lobbyist gifts. Nearly 73 percent of voters in the Democratic primary - about 423,800 people - voted in support of stopping unlimited lobbyist spending on lawmakers. That ballot question did not propose a specific limit.
Ralston had opposed restrictions on spending, saying it would encourage lobbyists to make expenditures without publicly disclosing them. But Ralston reversed course in August and backed a ban on lobbyist spending on individual lawmakers. His legislative plan left big exceptions, allowing unchecked spending on legislative committee, delegations and caucuses.
Although the vote in the Senate was unanimous, Sen. Joshua McKoon, R-Columbus, said the ethics bill "reminds me of the old Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
He said he had concerns that the bill did not set an aggregate limit on gifts but said he would vote for it because it was step in the right direction. He encouraged lawmakers to return next year and to consider further restrictions on lobbyist gifts.
The Senate in January adopted an internal rule banning senators from accepting lobbyist gifts worth more than $100. That rule is weaker than the agreement discussed by lawmakers Thursday.
Talks to overhaul state gun laws broke down late Thursday over disagreements about allowing people to carry guns on public college and university campuses. House lawmakers earlier passed a bill allowing people with a weapons license to take their guns onto campus, though not student housing or sporting events. College officials strongly opposed the measure. It failed in the Senate, which adopted less-sweeping firearms legislation this year.
"I'm disappointed we weren't able to reach a timely agreement strengthening our Second Amendment rights," said President Pro Tempore David Shafer, R-Duluth. He noted that the bill remains alive for consideration during the next legislative session.
Lawmakers changed the regulation of video poker and other similar coin-operated machines in the state, opening the door for some proceeds to be directed to the HOPE scholarship program. The legislation moves oversight of the machines to the Georgia Lottery Corp. and away from the state Department of Revenue. The bill had garnered opposition from anti-gambling groups, but supporters said the goal was to crack down on illegal gambling by making it easier to identify rogue machines.
The bill calls for 5 percent of net receipts to be retained and directed to the HOPE scholarship program, reaching a maximum of 10 percent over time.
"It does not make anything legal that was illegal before, and it does provide for the HOPE scholarship," said Sen. Butch Miller, R-Gainesville.
Officials at the Environmental Protection Division failed in a late push Thursday to pass legislation that authorities said was necessary to protect wildlife and guarantee water for farmers in the lower Flint River basin. Environmental watchdog groups criticized the bill as an attack on water rights and a bargaining chip in an ongoing tri-state water dispute among Alabama, Florida and Georgia.


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It has been cold and snowy here for the past few days. Which has made going outside to play a much less appealing activity for me... But there is still a Little Girl to entertain, so I have been doing my best to be creative. One problem though, is that when I ask Little Girl what she would like to do, her answer is usually "Elmo!" Well, we can only watch so many Elmo DVDs in a day (that would be one...!), and her Elmo stuffed animals and coloring book don't hold her attention for as long as other activities. So today I decided to get creative. It had been a few days since I had baked anything, and we should be getting some company tomorrow, so I thought it only appropriate to multitask. I asked Little Girl if she would like to help me make Elmo cupcakes. She was pretty excited about the idea, so I figured we should go for it. I started my looking on-line for different examples of Elmo cupcakes. I then needed to think about what I had on hand to use for decorations. My two concerns were: 1) I didn't have enough eggs to make both cakes and frosting and 2) the only red food coloring I had was liquid drops - I knew that would water down the frosting and end up pink... So Little Girl and I made a quick trip to the craft store and the neighboring grocery store for gel color and eggs. Tools in hand, it was time to bake.
I used my regular yellow cake recipe, but added a whole lot of red (liquid) food coloring to it. How much? Oh, something like 18 drops. And the result? Still pink. But oh well, the cakes cooked up nicely, so I figured that the pink base would be fine...!
Next, it was frosting time. I used the same frosting recipe I used for my birthday cake a few weeks ago. I then added my new red gel food coloring. I watched the gel mix into the white frosting... and watched it turn pink. I added more gel. Still pink. Hmm... Not how I had hoped things would go... I decided to use the pink as a base coat on the cakes while I tried to figure out how to make sure Elmo didn't wind up being pink through and through...
When I spoke with my sister later in the day she offered her bright red sanding sugar to me, but the little matters of a 45 minute drive between our houses and her just getting home after having a baby (welcome home, Baby Boy!!) made it so that the genuine offer wasn't very practical. But it got me thinking. With the gel coloring, I wouldn't have to worry too much about dissolving... I would try to make my own red sugar! While I think that my fingers might be permanently stained, I wound up with a great color that was much more appropriately Elmo than the pink was!!
With the color right, it was time to make the facial features. I didn't have marshmallows or black decorating icing or anything. But I did have miniature spice gel candies, mini chocolate chips and small chocolate sandwich cookies. Those turned into eyes, noses and mouths.
This was a lot of prep work, and I wasn't even done yet. But it was finally time for the last step. Assembly. I have to admit, though, I was enjoying myself the whole time. (Well, except for the part where it was a little creepy seeing 16 pairs of little googly eyes staring at me...!) I couldn't wait to see how they looked put together. And I was also curious to see if Little Girl would like them.
When she woke up from her nap I brought her to the kitchen to see who was there. She took one look and answered, with a huge smile:
ELMO!!!Totally worth it!


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If there is any place on earth you might expect to find them—the true believers in the imminent coming of manned undersea outposts or spectacular domed colonies on the ocean floor—it would be here, in Key Largo. This first major stop along the 100-mile Overseas Highway to Key West is home to the world's only underwater hotel, the only continuously operating underwater lab and classroom, and the only undersea research base. And it is in Key Largo that you find divers like Ian Koblick, whose even tan hints at his lifetime of outdoor ventures. His hair and trademark goatee are graying, although for a septuagenarian he looks as if he takes regular dips in the Fountain of Youth. Like so many others along this steamy island chain, he's wearing shorts and
a billowing Hawaiian shirt. No matter that he is seated behind a large desk in the kind of high-backed executive chair more often associated with Brooks Brothers.
The wood-paneled walls around Koblick's office are filled with memorabilia that attest to his years as an undersea pioneer and a genuine player in a decades-long quest to turn ordinary divers into "aquanauts," the name applied to those equipped to live on the seabed, much as crews launched into space get to be called astronauts.
Koblick was among the early converts to the concept of undersea living when it came of age in the 1960s, in the shadow of the momentous achievements of the race to the moon. But the nascent quest to equip aquanauts to live in "inner space," as some called the vast undersea realm, never got anything close to the billions of dollars pumped into launching the Apollo astronauts into outer space, birthing an industry and defining the global zeitgeist.
Koblick's early brush with official indifference convinced him that the government would never support an undersea corollary to the space program. So he went looking for entrepreneurial solutions to creating underwater habitats: school bus–size seafloor shelters that give aquanauts a pressurized, climate-controlled base, just as the International Space Station gives astronauts a hospitable home in orbit.
A prominent example of such a habitat, called Jules' Undersea Lodge, lies a stone's throw from his office, submerged in a lagoon that juts like a cul-de-sac into Key Largo Undersea Park. Part tourist destination and part science center, the park has a homegrown feel and a touch of that easygoing kitsch that seems to permeate the Florida Keys. How Jules' Lodge—once a state-of-the-art, research-oriented seafloor habitat of Koblick's design—came to be a novelty underwater hotel in a lagoon says a lot about the struggle to keep the concept of manned sea dwellings alive.
Koblick may sound like a romantic dreamer for his enduring belief in the value of seabed habitats and his persistent efforts, over many years, to create new ones. But he is not alone. Just a couple of miles from Koblick's office along the Overseas Highway, you'll find a cadre of believers, a dozen or two of them, depending on the day. They work out of a pair of canalfront houses whose interiors have been transformed over the years into mission control for the world's only surviving full-fledged sea base, called Aquarius. Owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Aquarius has spent more than two decades perched out on a reef 60 feet below the surface and 9 miles from shore, serving as a scientific research base in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The combined activities of this public, science-oriented habitat and Koblick's private Undersea Park make Key Largo the kind of mecca where aquatic dreams live on.
Until just half a century ago, the idea of housing human divers on the seabed was pure science fiction. Even with the advent of modern scuba in the 1940s, strict depth and time limits were inevitable because of the physiological effects that come from breathing underwater and under pressure. In order to avoid painful internal injuries and even death, typical dives to modest depths of, say, up to 100 feet lasted only minutes, not the days or weeks that would be necessary to live and work out of a seafloor habitat.
Then, in the late 1950s, a genial, charismatic U.S. Navy doctor named George Bond, who had been trained as a diver, caused a stir by questioning the conventional diving limits. Despite resistance from Navy skeptics, Bond began a series of experiments at the Navy's submarine base at New London, Connecticut, where he was in charge of the medical research lab. Much as NASA used simulators to test dogs and monkeys before launching them into space to gauge the physiological effects of g-forces and weightlessness, Bond sealed animals, and eventually human volunteers, in pressurized tanks to simulate a deep-sea habitat. Instead of weightlessness, the aquanaut would have to endure, among other things, artificial atmospheres with gaseous mixtures different from what we breathe on land, maintained at significantly higher pressures than those at sea level to match the water pressure at depth. One problem is that when divers descend more than about 130 feet, customary levels of nitrogen (78 percent of air on the surface) have a narcotic effect. Bond found that helium proved a suitable replacement on long-duration dives. Oxygen, making up 21 percent of the air at sea level, can cause convulsions and death if pressure gets too high, so oxygen had to be progressively reduced with every foot of descent, and then slowly raised as a diver came back up.
In making these adjustments, Bond and his team were testing a concept known as saturation diving, which turned out to be the key to prolonged stays underwater and under pressure. Much as a sponge absorbs liquids, bodies absorb gases through the process of respiration. A body becomes "saturated" as the gases a person breathes disperse into the blood and tissues. At greater depths, a diver has to breathe higher-pressure gases so his lungs are not crushed by his higher-pressure surroundings. As pressure goes up, so does saturation, like a dry kitchen sponge absorbing more liquid the longer it's held underwater. Once a diver was saturated with the right gases for a given depth and pressure (a process that took a day), he could safely remain at that depth indefinitely. The finding was a revolutionary advance that changed what could be done on the seafloor—provided, of course, that divers, once saturated, had a properly equipped, pressurized habitat as a dry shelter. No one had ever built such a thing.
Favorable results from Bond's lab compelled Jacques Cousteau and the American inventor Ed Link to jump into the Mediterranean with small ocean habitats in the fall of 1962, just a few months after the first orbital spaceflights. Link's prototype wasn't much larger than a phone booth, with room for just one diver. Cousteau's was little more than a cylindrical tank, shorter than a school bus but with beds and amenities enough to accommodate two aquanauts for a week. These and the other early underwater habitats had dry interiors, pressurized to match the water pressure outside. That meant a hatch in the floor could remain open without the sea rushing in, and the aquanauts living inside had ready access to the sea outside at any time of day or night. By 1964 the Navy had launched Sealab I, 40 feet long and 9 feet in diameter. Equipped like a camper, it had bunks, galley, toilet, shower, and a hole in the floor so that four aquanauts could come and go.
The first Sealab aquanauts were deployed to the seabed southwest of Bermuda for 10 days at a depth of nearly 200 feet. They demonstrated the ability to spend hours in the water and work outside the habitat, all while undergoing physiological testing to make sure they weren't killing themselves by living in this alien environment.
While all this was going on, Koblick was graduating from college in California and setting his sights on a graduate program in marine biology. His interests led him to become an early devotee of scuba, the perfect tool for gathering fresh seaweed samples offshore from Monterey, where he had an internship at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. That experience convinced him that to truly know the ocean, a scientist had to work in the ocean—or better yet, live in it just as Jane Goodall lived in the jungle to study chimps. He felt so strongly that he turned down a scholarship to Duke University, putting off graduate school and moving with his wife and young son to the Virgin Islands, where the seawater would be warmer than at Monterey. He soon landed a job at the newly formed Caribbean Research Institute and took the lead in establishing an ecological research station at Lameshur Bay on St. John.
Koblick's timing was perfect: A second Sealab trial came in the summer of 1965, this one located off the coast of San Diego. The new habitat, looking like a cross between a submarine and a railway tank car, accommodated three separate teams of 10 aquanauts for two weeks each. It was followed a few years later by the 60-foot-long, cylindrical Sealab III, which was designed so a dozen aquanauts at a time could conduct experiments at a depth of 600 feet, a giant leap out onto the continental shelf.
When a delegation from Washington, D.C., came to scope out the Virgin Islands as a possible site for a new, still more advanced habitat, it was as if the candy store had come straight to the kid. Koblick saw his chance to become an aquanaut. He eagerly led the sales pitch, showing visiting representatives everything he could think of—including a sampling of the tasty, cheap local rum—to convince them that the waters around the Virgin Islands would be ideal for their prototype. He called it Tektite, for meteors that survive their fall through the atmosphere, crashing into the ocean and leaving pearl-like fields of debris along the seafloor.
The pitch paid off. Tektite, jointly funded by the Office of Naval Research, NASA, the Department of the Interior, and General Electric, the habitat's builder, was approved and placed in Lameshur Bay. Whereas Sealab had a military orientation, Tektite focused on marine biology and geology, and on duration more than depth. NASA's interest was in the psychological lessons that might be gleaned from observing people living in cramped quarters in a hostile environment—conditions similar to long-duration spaceflights. Instead of a more common horizontal tank, Tektite had side-by-side vertical tanks, each about 12 feet in diameter and two stories tall, that were mounted on a rectangular base, like upside-down bell jars on a shoe box. Four divers from the Department of the Interior were selected as aquanauts, but Koblick had argued for a few alternate aquanauts—just in case—and he was soon off to Washington and Philadelphia for physical tests and training to be one of them.
Tektite's inaugural mission began in February 1969. The habitat's depth was about 45 feet, a fraction of the 600 feet or more that Sealab had been aiming for—so less complexity was needed for the pressurized gas recipe and the aquanauts' eventual decompression. But the 60-day mission there set a duration record and marked another significant step in undersea habitation. As an alternate aquanaut, Koblick did not get to stay inside the habitat but was in the water every day to help carry out Tektite science projects, especially chasing down lobsters to attach color-coded tracking tags. Though the narrow focus was lobster biology, Tektite's overarching mission was exploring just how marine research might most effectively be carried out from a seafloor base.
When Tektite came to a successful end, Koblick was appointed special assistant to the governor of the Virgin Islands for undersea programs and immediately started lobbying the Interior Department to get a chunk of the money needed to bring the Tektite habitat back to the same spot.
It took some doing, but a year later Tektite II was launched. This time Koblick got his wish: a shot at being a bona fide aquanaut who lived under the sea. For three weeks he and others on the crew set up beacons outside lobster dens, part of a signaling system that alerted them whenever lobsters were on the move. To Koblick it felt as though they were firefighters, leaping into action at the sound of the alarm. Over the weeks of residence, they also studied the fluctuations and migrations of planktonic organisms in the water column, still a focus of research today. Tektite II operated successfully for seven months, through the fall of 1970, housing a total of 53 marine scientists.
The Tektite II project had been so costly that there would be no Tektite III. But soon after, Koblick and his newly formed nonprofit, the Marine Resources Development Foundation, approached the Puerto Rican government with an idea of his own. Could he help them launch a similar habitat program to size up offshore resources and inventory sea life on nearby reefs? That's how a new and improved habitat—whimsically called La Chalupa, Spanish for a type of fishing boat with a tendency to capsize—got its start.
While most habitats had a tanklike appearance, La Chalupa looked more like a barge, about 50 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 10 feet tall. Its hollow interior contained two adjoining cylindrical chambers that could be sealed and pressurized as living quarters. A ballast system took in and released water to help sink and raise the habitat, which was designed for easy towing. It could house up to five aquanauts at a time for two weeks, at depths ranging from 50 to 106 feet.
On one of La Chalupa's first missions, in 1972, scientist-aquanauts surveyed nutrients and bottom sediments and described algal populations, identifying some 30 new species. On a later mission they collected fish to determine their food sources. They studied the behavior of reef fishes and fish parasites, as well as coral's ability to slough off silt that could drift in from nearby dredging operations. They also tested a saturated aquanaut's ability to reach depths down to 300 feet, extending the possibilities for exploring from a habitat placed at 100 feet. Koblick himself was a Chalupa aquanaut in the spring of 1974 when his mission almost came to a tragic end.
Koblick and his dive buddy, Al Waterfield, a research diver from the University of New Hampshire, were 150 yards from La Chalupa unspooling a transect line, a cord to keep track of their whereabouts. Koblick was wearing a closed-cycle rebreather—a complex piece of gear that could supply breathing gas for longer periods in dives to 300 feet. He took a breath at one point and also sucked in some water: The gear had sprung a leak. To make matters worse, the water was laced with the chemical compound the rebreather used to absorb carbon dioxide, causing a burning sensation in his mouth and throat.
Koblick gave an emergency signal to Waterfield, who went to get help. Meanwhile, Koblick used the transect line like a handrail to pull himself along the seabed, but he felt that the ocean was closing in on him. The coral in his peripheral vision began to blur. His field of vision narrowed, as if he were looking through a telescope. Before long all he could see were his hands grasping the line in front of him. "Mother Ocean, you are not going to get me," he said to himself, just before coming over a rise, the habitat no more than 20 yards away. Then he passed out. Next thing he knew, he was getting slapped in the face. His fellow aquanauts had managed to drag him up through the entry hatch in the floor of La Chalupa and resuscitate him. He sputtered and coughed up water. His throat still burned and he developed a painful ear infection, but he was alive.
Before the mission was over, Koblick and the Chalupa crew were struck anew by their front-row view of the dynamic undersea environment. The four aquanauts were lying in their bunks, looking out a port window as big around as a manhole cover, sipping rum and Cokes—the soda was flat because of their pressurized surroundings. A smattering of small fish and crabs mingled outside on a grassy patch of sand. A gurnard fish entered the scene, using its winged pectoral fins to cruise along the bottom. Out of nowhere a fish the size of an overstuffed golf bag appeared—some kind of snapper, perhaps, though no one was sure. It hovered near the gurnard, moved in, and—slurp!—sucked it up like a vacuum cleaner, leaving a puff of sand. The big fish started to swim off, then stopped and spit out the gurnard, which hastily swam away.
Koblick hoped La Chalupa would open a deep-sea vista for more scientists, but when the Puerto Rican missions ended in the mid-1970s after a new round of funding cuts, he could find no other takers for his state-of-the-art habitat. So he towed it back to Florida, where it languished for almost a decade, until his foundation converted it into Jules' Undersea Lodge—named for Jules Verne, of course. It's like a cozy cabin that sleeps up to six, in considerable comfort, and has been doing so since the mid-1980s, when it was placed in Emerald Lagoon, in about 30 feet of water at Key Largo Undersea Park. Koblick co-owns and operates the park with his longtime business partner, Neil Monney, a former professor and director of ocean engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy. The two met during Tektite, and Monney later signed on as a Chalupa aquanaut. While teaching at the Naval Academy he instigated the small tank of a classroom called MarineLab, which is next door to Jules' Undersea Lodge in the lagoon. With Jules' Lodge and MarineLab, the two partners could continue to offer a window into the underwater world and provide a taste of the freedom that comes from having an open hatch in the floor.
The habitat movement might have stalled there, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had Aquarius built in Victoria, Texas, in 1986. At 43 feet in length, the tanklike Aquarius, dispatched to the Virgin Islands, could accommodate six aquanauts to depths of 120 feet. But after hurricane Hugo walloped the islands in 1989, Aquarius was moved to the Florida Keys. Its current assignment in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary enables study of the third-largest living coral barrier reef system in the world.
It was typically warm in Key Largo last August as staffers prepared to cruise out to Aquarius aboard the George F. Bond, NOAA's 46-foot research boat that's named for the father of Sealab. They were about to meet up with researchers who, nine days earlier, had jumped off the stern of the Bond and swum the 45 feet down to where they could enter the habitat through its "wet porch," a water-filled foyer the size of a Jacuzzi. Team leader Chris Martens, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had lived and worked out of Aquarius a half-dozen times before. So had his coinvestigator, Niels Lindquist, a unc marine scientist. Now they were using their days in Aquarius to zero in on the causes of ocean acidification, which may be contributing to the degradation of coral reefs. Of particular interest: whether some acidification might be caused by respiration of bottom-dwelling creatures like sponges, or whether most can be attributed to carbon emissions from an industrialized world.
Using more than a dozen instruments placed around the habitat, including a first-of-its-kind underwater mass spectrometer that tracks fluctuations in key gases up and down the ocean waters, aquanauts watch readouts in real time on computer screens. When alerted to interesting changes on the reef, they quickly gear up and swim out, like Koblick in the lobster-tracking days of yore, to supplement that information with their own firsthand reports. Through this combination of instrumentation and on-site measurements, the scientists are putting together a more precise picture than ever before of what's happening on Conch Reef, as the Aquarius site is known.
"The habitat allows you to become part of the surroundings," says Martens, echoing Koblick almost word for word. "You watch twilight come, nighttime, you see things happening, you understand what's going on. It allows you to go out the next morning and ask the next question, because you're looking for something new. It's an immersion kind of thing."
But sending down human explorers instead of using robot submersibles brings pitfalls and risks. Stings around Martens's face and neck attest to attacks from jellyfish, noticeably more abundant on this mission, and a curse but in some ways a blessing as well. The surge in moon jellies might be fodder for a future mission, and yet another research paper on top of the 300 Aquarius has already spawned in top-notch journals—assuming the missions can go on. That has been in question since 2009, when a diver was returning alone to the habitat from a work site about a hundred yards away. Something went wrong with his breathing gear and, just as Koblick did during that close call outside La Chalupa, he passed out. But by the time the stricken Aquarius diver could be hauled back to the habitat, he was already dead. On top of that are the national pressures to slash government spending. Aquarius must compete with other NOAA programs for a slice of the agency's annual budget of about $5.1 billion, most of it devoted to weather and satellite studies.
"We are very precariously near the tipping point of losing Aquarius," says former congressman Brian Baird, who represented southwestern Washington State for a dozen years until January 2011 and served on the House Committee on Science and Technology. "If I had to bet, I'd say it's very possible we do lose Aquarius, and I think that would be such a shame."
The situation echoes Koblick's frustration of years ago, when Tektite was stymied by governmental ambivalence. Yet four decades later, the Key Largo dreamers are still at it, seeking a formula for dwellings on the ocean floor. Tourism is one recurring theme. Former congressman Baird likes the idea of a government-sponsored habitat that would be open to the public, with user fees defraying costs as in national parks. Submersible builder L. Bruce Jones is forging ahead with the Poseidon Undersea Resort, a $200 million development on a Fijian island. The centerpiece will be two dozen podlike underwater rooms, 12 along either side of a corridor as long as a football field. Each 550-square-foot luxury suite is to be encased in a clear acrylic shell, about 40 feet below the surface, a depth similar to Aquarius's. The resort has no firm opening date, but Jones claims the market for this five-star approach to undersea living is out there, even at a projected price of $15,000 for seven days and six nights.
A research-oriented project called
SeaBase1 aims to tap the ecotourism market by giving recreational divers a chance to live as aquanauts and work alongside scientists, lending a hand with tasks like reef restoration. The hope is to place SeaBase1 on the east side of Ambergris Caye in Belize, where the local reef joins a contiguous, 500-mile-long chain that is second in length only to Australia's Great Barrier Reef. "The charge on us is to get her built, and once she's built
we feel very confident that users will pay the operational costs," says Chris Cooper, vice president of SeaBase1 and the son of the project's founder Richard Cooper, a former Sealab and Tektite aquanaut and a longtime University of Connecticut professor of marine sciences who died last year. The group hopes to raise the $35 million it will need to create the habitat, a boxy structure that would accommodate 25 aquanauts at depths up to 60 feet.
The most forward-thinking of the new undersea habitats may be a vessel called SeaOrbiter, currently funded by an international consortium. The vertically oriented structure, which stands 170 feet tall, is a massive buoy that looks like the fusion of a spinnaker sail and the Starship Enterprise. Designed by the renowned French architect Jacques Rougerie, SeaOrbiter would float and drift with currents, with more than half of the towering craft below the waterline at any given time. A one-fifteenth scale model has passed muster in a Norwegian wave tank. The submerged part of SeaOrbiter is designed to house a team of a half-dozen saturation divers, about a third of the planned crew, at a storage depth of about 40 feet. From one of the vessel's lower modules, they would be able to swim directly into the sea or ride an elevator down to 150 feet. A two-person submersible could dive from the mother ship to 2,000 feet.
"We just received funding to go forward with this project, and we're going to realize it, and it's quite incredible," says Bill Todd, a project manager of NASA's Neemo group, which is tasked with running experiments and training sessions at Aquarius. Todd has worked with the SeaOrbiter group for a decade. Years of engineering evaluations have been done, as have final drawings and technical schematics, and a contract has been hammered out with a shipyard in France to build SeaOrbiter. They could be cutting metal on the project in time to deploy the craft on its first mission by next year. "It's going to revolutionize 'inner space' exploration," Todd promises.
Finally there is Dennis Chamberland, a NASA engineer who has been trumpeting the cause of aquatic habitats for years. Chamberland leads a private effort to build a prototype underwater community. Though he prefers not to discuss the details with members of the press, his sci-fi-sounding effort, Atlantica Expeditions, calls for a true undersea colony, where "families live and work" and "children go to school." He says his vision of a high-tech cluster of habitats would deliver "a new ocean civilization whose most important purpose will be to continuously monitor and protect the global ocean environment."
Chamberland's first expedition, Atlantica 1, planned for the summer of 2014, aims to send three aquanauts on a 100-day underwater mission, longer than any yet recorded, to test "systems intended for permanent human residence of the undersea world." But most important, he is designing his habitats so they will not require compression diving. "Just like a moon base, the permanent facilities of the new world of Aquatica will have a constant, safe, close to Earth-normal living environment with lockout access to the remote and extreme external environment," he says. "It is a preeminent paradigm shift that allows the frontier to be opened where it was not practical before."
If that sounds like a habitat too far, more pragmatic plans are brewing all the time back in Koblick's office. The topic of the day is marine archaeology, a job for which a habitat could be the perfect tool (see the interview with George Bass, page 40). The marine archaeologist's work can be as detailed, painstaking, and slow-paced as that of terrestrial counterparts,
so having a base near the site of a shipwreck would offer enormous advantages over repeated short-duration dives.
The key for Koblick is that archaeology could underwrite new habitats, providing a money model for bases on the seafloor. Toward that end, he recently asked the European Union to fund excavation of a 500-year-old wreck off the coast of Croatia. The request was denied, but it will not be his last. What remains as clear as the view out the window of La Chalupa is that the dream lives on.
Ben Hellwarth is the author of Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor.
36,000 Feet Under the Sea
Even the most outlandish of the proposed undersea colonies would sit just a few hundred feet below the waves. To really plunge into the ocean's dark mysteries, you need a submersible—as director James Cameron splashily demonstrated in March when he descended nearly seven miles (35,756 feet, to be exact) aboard Deepsea Challenger, a 24-foot vessel equipped with a robotic sampling arm. Cameron dived to a part of the Pacific's Mariana Trench that was visited just once before, by a U.S. Navy sub that spent 20 minutes there in 1960. Cameron stayed at the ocean's deepest spot for three hours. Deepsea Challenger belongs to a generation of craft that are opening the ocean's extreme depths to direct exploration; if sea colonies are space stations, these are missions to Mars. Other players in the seven-mile-deep club:
Triton 36000, the world's deepest-diving multipassenger sub (shown at left). Built by Triton Submarines around a superstrong glass sphere, it can carry a crew of three to a depth of seven miles in 75 minutes.
Virgin Oceanic, a one-person sub backed by billionaire adventurer Richard Branson. The vessel uses airplanelike wings to "fly" across the bottom of the ocean for distances of up to six miles.
Deepsearch, designed by DOER Marine, will be capable of eight-hour missions, giving marine biologists a chance to perform extended field studies of extremely deep aquatic life. —Eric A. Powell
Discover Magazine


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versatile superzoom compact camera with good sharing features
Judged on image quality, the Samsung WB350F isn't the best. But throw in a 21x zoom, excellent Wi-Fi, and simple operation, and you get something unique.
Wi-Fi, filters and effects aplenty
Samsung's new travel compact offers Wi-Fi, 21x zoom, full manual controls and a brilliant touchscreen.
The big-screened, Android-powered compact zoom camera makes a comeback
Pros: Flawless Android integration, bundled 50GB Dropbox account.
Samsung's latest Android-powered camera packs in lots of versatility and sharing options, and a 21x optical zoom. But the camera sensor doesn't deliver significantly better results than what you'll get from a good smartphone.
Is this second-gen Android camera the best choice for a smartphone-like experience from a dedicated device
The monster bridge camera with the monster zoom lens
The Samsung WB2200F is somewhat of a strange-looking duck, but definitely check it out if you're in the market for a mega-zoom.
Excellent wireless features and an abundance of shooting options
Sharp images, Integrated Wi-Fi
Suit a wide range of abilities
Fast maximum aperture, neutral colors, integral handgrip
Abundance of shooting options for all types of shooters
Excellent Wi-Fi implementation
Digital compact camera looks great
Compact body design, yet still very ergonomic
First camera with total connectivity
Good macro feature, Samsung sharing apps included
Combines a smartphone and digital camera with 3G, 4G and WiFi
Image quality is good
Dual IS, Live Panorama, Built-in effects and editor
Very good picture quality, and excellent Wi-Fi capabilities
Sharp lens. Wi-Fi. GPS. Long zoom range. Crisp OLED display.
Generally attractive daylight shots
GPS and Wi-Fi connectivity
Abundant set of shooting and editing options
Built-in Wi-Fi
18x zoom in a compact body
Colours are lush and images vibrant straight out of the camera
'Overall the Samsung WB700 is pretty responsive.'
'The camera is reasonably quick to focus and is ready to shoot within a couple of seconds of switching on.'
'Excellent build quality.'
Expansive focal range in a compact chassis
ReviewGist helps you find the best products to buy by making sense of online reviews.
We are currently aggregating 376,500 reviews
covering over 29,474 products.
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The Red Land Express. (San Augustine, Tex.), Vol. 1, No. 39, Ed. 1 Saturday, March 9, 1861
Description: Weekly newspaper from San Augustine, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.
Date: March 9, 1861
Creator: M'Cutchan, A. D.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Newspaper
Partner: The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History


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State Treasurer Janet Cowell plays an active role in safeguarding the state�s money, as well as that belonging to public employees whose retirement security depends on the health of the pension fund. So far she has done her job competently and generally with the taxpayers� best interest in mind.
The most recent earnings statement is a testament to her office�s ability to manage money. It shows that North Carolina�s pension fund ended the 2012-13 fiscal year with returns of 9.52 percent, more than 2 percentage points above the state�s target and even bested the market benchmark.
While that�s an admirable accomplishment, Cowell is focusing on what could happen months and years into the future. And she says that without more flexibility it is likely � if not a sure bet � that the current investment strategy will lose ground, especially as more employees retire.
Cowell told the Wilmington Star News last month that keeping the status quo could have a significant detrimental effect on the pension fund down the road. At the time, she was promoting a bill giving her the flexibility to shift more money to riskier ventures such as hedge funds and private equity. She pointed to the fixed-return investments, which actually lost money last fiscal year. That�s partly because the bullish performance of the stock market and �large-category� investments, such as private equity, real estate and hedge funds, has kept interest rates on bonds very low.
On the other hand, bonds tend to perform better when the bottom drops out of the stock market, as it did in 2008. But Cowell is concerned that returns across the board will suffer unless some changes are made.
The General Assembly passed the bill in the last hours of the legislative session. The new law raises the threshold on �large-category investments only slightly, from 34 percent to 35 percent � less than the 40 percent Cowell sought. In that sense, it represents a cautious nod to the treasurer�s concerns without risking too much at one time.
The association representing state employees and the conservative Civitas Institute both oppose the provision. They worry � with good reason � that relaxing restrictions that have served North Carolina well over the decades could lead to irresponsible investments and painful losses.
Our state has one of the best-managed pension funds in the nation, and that is largely due to its conservative investment strategy. Changing the mix might bring even higher returns in the short run, but investment is a long-haul activity.
Cowell made a strong argument for a bit more flexibility, but the Legislature must keep a close eye on the performance of state funds and be prepared to make corrections quickly if the financial picture changes. We can�t allow North Carolina to slip into the company of other states whose pension funds are in serious jeopardy.
Wlmington Star News.


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This column originally appeared on Real Money Pro at 8:47 a.m. EST on Dec. 24.NEW YORK ( Real Money) -- Today, I see many traders and investors afflicted with what I call the stock market trading jones. Market participants feel compelled to overtrade. It comes in the form of a near-obsession in overtrading both on news-based dislocations (to the upside and downside) and on non-dislocations in the normal course of business, typically through chart gazing. The need to play too many earnings reports and the desire to trade macroeconomic events reside among numerous other catalysts. There are several obvious influences that contribute to the addiction of too-frequent trading:
- Brokers. Brokerage companies have made trading at home easy and inexpensive. Sophisticated Internet-based trading platforms allow individual investors to trade actively at markedly reduced commission rates relative to any other time in history.
- Societal pressures that favor short term over long term. As a society, we have grown increasingly impatient. The media (and for that matter our society) increasingly emphasizes short term over long term and instant gratification over building value through intermediate-/long-term value. Today, we even communicate more briefly than ever in staccato-like form via tweets of under 140 characters on Twitter and the acronym soup of instant messaging. How-to-profit books, teaching us how to gain money and fame quickly, outsell more thoughtful investing books such as Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. All of these pressures (in the pursuit of instant riches) contribute to excessive trading by individuals.
- Quick solutions and foolish acceptance of a special sauce to investment success. We too often seek quick solutions to complex problems/issues. Increasingly, traders seek a special sauce, an algorithm or stock chart that evokes the promise of immediate success, often shunning the heavy lifting and time-consuming analysis. In its simplicity, this also leads to excessive trading, as if the appearance of a chart is an almost mystical and certain way to produce the Benjamins. Technical analysis has a broad definition and when utilized intelligently can be a very helpful adjunct in making (and timing) trades and investments. But too often the decision to make so many of these trades is seen purely through the narrow interpretation of a stock chart, a view that historical price action will provide us with a guide into the future. I see this often on Real Money Pro -- particularly in front of an earnings release. Does anyone really think that prior to, say, Nike (NKE - Get Report) reporting its most recent earnings, a trader can outsmart the legions of other traders by virtue of looking at a chart? Does that really make sense to any of you?
- Shortening cycles. In our fast-moving world, economic, corporate and investment cycles are ever more truncated. Performance definitions grow ever briefer, whether it is the duration of a CEO's or baseball manager's career, measuring a company's profit performance, investors' patience with their investments (manifested in heavy turnover and reduced holding periods compared to any time in history) or with defining investment performance.
Nonstop Trading Is a Mug's GameSo, let me be direct and straightforward on this subject -- nonstop, excessive trading is a mug's game. Any market mathematician will tell you that the more trades you make the less successful you will be. I have written for years that waiting for the right pitch in trading and investing is the way to succeed over the long run in this game. I believe this now as strongly as ever.
Oaktree as Our TemplateA superior investment will likely trump the jones of too-frequent stock market trading. Let me demonstrate this observation by looking at the chart of Oaktree Capital Group ( OAK - Get Report), a stock I have consistently praised since it went public in spring 2012. Oaktree is a nonvolatile, low-beta stock. It's an intelligently and conservatively managed company that does not present the thrills and agonies of volatility that are possessed by many favorites of traders such as Apple ( AAPL - Get Report), Google ( GOOG - Get Report) or Amazon ( AMZN - Get Report). Over the last six or seven months, however, the shares have steadily advanced and have provided a great risk-adjusted return. In theory, a buy-and-hold of Oaktree (just to use one example) will likely have trumped the numerous trades of someone possessed of the stock market trading jones. Or go to the SEC filings of some of the great modern-day investors such as Lee Cooperman's Omega Advisors. What you will find is a remarkably stable and consistent list of the hedge fund's top stock holdings -- it's the real pro's proven and time-tested antidote to delivering superior risk-adjusted returns.
The Media Sell Constant TradingThe business media is well-intentioned and inhabited by a lot of my friends. I am respectful of their contributions, but they too often encourage the stock market jones. By and large, the media have an agenda that is different from yours. It doesn't make them bad guys -- their objectives of a growing audience and higher ratings are inherently dissimilar to your objective of making money. Moreover, as I have recently chronicled, the media's reaction to events of the day (e.g., the sovereign debt crisis, the Presidential election, the fiscal cliff, etc.) is often hyperbolic and simply wrong-footed (from an investment standpoint). Always remember that they are in the press box, and you are on the playing field. Not surprisingly and understandably (it's in their basic interest), the media too often advance the idea of constant trading and even, at times, (by inference) the dream of instant investor gratification. For every long-term investor queried, it seems as if there are at least 10 traders (maybe more) questioned in the business media. Maybe it wouldn't sell as well, but I wish there were more forums and time spent on long-term investing in the media. Unfortunately, many investors watching and listening can't help from being influenced by the media's barrage and sometimes short-term emphasis of time frame. By contrast, long-term price targets (defined in years) are deemphasized, as these are not subject matter seen as capturing ratings and audiences, and typically take a backseat in discussions. We are often inundated with ways to make fast money. By inference, the pundits and talking heads tell us that this is best accomplished by trading almost every market or individual stock wiggle, often based on technical levels and/or in the knowledge of how to react to certain triggers or events. In the ultimate level of the absurd, the media conduct contests to guess where the S&P 500 and DJIA will close at month's end, what will be the exact jobs number and so on, as if these guesses will provide some sort of magic market elixir to delivering outsized trading gains. The thrust of many of the conversations on CNBC and Bloomberg are too often based on mindless guessing of short-term forecasts of which few really have any edge whatsoever. How often does a business show start with the moderator saying something like this: "The S&P is up by half a percent today, so where is it going to end the day?" Or the dialogue goes something like this:
- "What is the next move in Apple?"
- "How do we play IBM's (IBM - Get Report) earnings report tonight?"
- "Whither Research In Motion (RIMM)?"
- "If Friday's jobs report is 150,000 or more, how will the market react?"
- "How will the fiscal cliff debate impact the market today?"
- "Sovereign debt yields are lower today -- how will our markets react?"
Trade in ModerationImportantly, I want to emphasize that there is a place for trading, as I believe intelligent trading can be a profitable adjunct to investing. I am very much an advocate of opportunistic trading, especially when one concludes that the market is range-bound without a clear bias in either direction or, for example, when one can get in front of an earnings report with an informed and variant view or by responding quickly to an earnings quality in an earnings report (among other means). Done effectively, trading can result in a cash-register effect, contributing to the aggregate returns in your investment account. But only in moderation and only when the right pitch (read: enhanced reward vs. risk) is offered up.
In Summary
"Millions of people die every year of something they could cure themselves: lack of wisdom and lack of ability to control their impulses." -- Irving Kahn, Chairman Kahn Brothers GroupThe essence of today's opening dispatch is that my definition of a good trading setup is far narrower and more selective than most on Real Money Pro and elsewhere. My advice is to stop multiple and numerous trades that one justifies by reacting to the media, based on technical analysis or based on any number of other reasons -- unless you are very lucky, it will not pay off in the long run. More likely, you will trade (and churn) your way into investment oblivion.


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Pundits swoon over Clinton's speech
Bubba is back — off script but on message, according to TV pundits of all stripes.
Former President Bill Clinton's nearly 50-minute speech Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was praised by panelists and reporters on all three major cable-news networks.
Story Continued Below
"I've been watching this former president of the United States going back to 1992 when I was CNN's White House correspondent, and I have to tell you, this may be the best speech I have ever heard Bill Clinton deliver over all of these years, and I listened to so many of his speeches during his eight years as president," CNN's Wolf Blitzer said.
"Affable. Effective. As a Democrat it doesn't get any better," MSNBC's Ed Schultz said. "I'm sitting here and I'm giddy. This is exactly what [President] Barack Obama needed."
GOP political adviser Steve Schmidt said Clinton's political prowess is unmatched on either side of the isle.
"I wish to God as a Republican we had someone on our side who had the ability to do that," Schmidt said on MSNBC. "We don't. It would be great if we did."
Fox News' Brit Hume raved, "I've always said if I were ever in trouble and if I were guilty, especially if I were guilty, I would want Bill Clinton there to defend me. Nobody does it better. He's the most talented politician I ever covered and the most charming man I've ever met. And no one in my view can mount an argument more effectively than he can."
Then Hume tempered his praise.
"That doesn't mean everything he said was true," he said, later adding, "It was a little self-indulgent, and it was about 30 percent too long."
GOP commentator Alex Castellanos said on CNN that Clinton's speech may have sealed Obama's reelection.
"Lock the doors, you don't have to come back tomorrow. This convention is done. This will be the moment that probably reelected Barack Obama," he said. "Bill Clinton saved the Democratic Party once. It was going too far left, he came in as the new Democrat and took it to the center. He did it again tonight."


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Twin blasts shake anti-government protest in Bangkok
BANGKOK - Twin explosions shook an anti-government demonstration site in Thailand's capital, wounding at least 28 people in the latest violence to hit Bangkok as the nation's increasingly bloody political crisis drags on.
Police said the blasts Sunday near Victory Monument, in the north of the city, were caused by fragmentation grenades - the same kind that killed one man and wounded dozens Friday in a similar explosion targeting protest marchers.
The demonstrators, who control several small patches of Bangkok, are vying to overthrow Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's government and derail Feb. 2 elections she called to quell the crisis. The protest movement has refused to negotiate and the rising casualty toll has only deepened the deadlock.
Witnesses said the explosions occurred about two minutes apart. The first blast went off about 100-200 yards from a stage set up by protesters, leaving a small crater beside a shop. The second went off near a row of vendors selling T-shirts in the street, leaving bloody clothes and a ripped white-and-blue plastic tarp scattered across the ground.
Police released closed circuit camera images of the suspect that showed a man wearing a black baseball cap bag hurling one of the grenades toward a tent behind the stage. The grenade hit the roof of a small coffee shop and exploded. The suspect ran, threw a second grenade and was chased down an alley before fleeing by motorcycle.
Although the vast majority of Bangkok remains calm, political violence nearly every day over the last week has kept the city of 12 million on edge and raised fears hostilities are only just beginning.
On Friday, another grenade hurled at marching demonstrators in the city center killed one man and injured dozens. And late Saturday, a gunman opened fire on protesters in the capital's Lad Prao district, seriously wounding a 54-year-old volunteer guard who was shot in the back.
There are conflicting theories about who is behind the unrest. Demonstrators blame the government and its supporters, who in turn accuse protesters of staging the attacks to pressure the military or judiciary to intervene - scenarios that would benefit the protest movement, which lacks the numbers to bring down the government on its own.
Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said "both sides of Thailand's political divide use violence and spin to serve their political goals." He added such attacks are likely to continue.
Thailand's army has staged about a dozen successful coups since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.
The last coup, in 2006, toppled then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra - Yingluck's brother - and touched off a societal schism that in broad terms pits a poor rural north who back the Shinawatras against a Bangkok-based elite backed by the army and staunch royalists who see Yingluck's family as a corrupt threat to traditional structures of power.
Yingluck's opponents - a minority that can no longer win at the polls - argue the Shinawatras are using their electoral majority to impose their will and subvert democracy.
The crisis boiled over again late last year after the ruling party attempted to push through an amnesty bill that would have allowed Thaksin to return from self-imposed exile. Thaksin has lived abroad since 2008 to avoid a prison sentence for a corruption conviction.
Sunday's blasts wounded 28 civilians, five of them critically, according to the Erawan Medical Center, which tracks casualties.
Police Col. Kamthorn Auicharoen, an explosive ordnance disposal officer, said intact grenade levers found at the scene indicated the explosives were Russian-built, anti-personnel RGD-5s.
A senior member of the protest movement, Sathit Wongnongtoey, condemned the bloodshed but said "condemnation is not enough ... it's the government who did it."
Yingluck's administration and the political movement that supports her, the Red Shirts, have denied responsibility for organizing the violence.
Anxious about triggering military intervention, Yingluck has ordered police to avoid confrontations. The strategy has undermined rule of law and the government's authority, however, with police essentially ceding scattered pockets of Bangkok to demonstrators.
The protest movement has armed guards, and it has at times taken the law into its own hands. Another protest leader, Issara Somchai, said demonstrators detained two men Saturday allegedly found with small homemade explosives and handcuffs. He said the men were being "investigated."
"We are taking care of them. They are safe with us," he said, adding they were being protected from demonstrators who could seek revenge.


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["Aboard the Mohawk Galveston Tex."]
Description: Postcard image titled "Aboard the Mohawk Galveston Tex. Maurer Photo" as written at bottom of the image. The photograph shows a ship with two decks of people at the rails. There is a banner on the second deck rail that reads: "Texas Shriners, Galveston-Rochester". There are lifeboats with a few people milling about on top deck.
Date: [1900..1920]
Partner: George Ranch Historical Park