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Photo: Kurdish Struggle
Rojava dispatch: for whom doth the bell toll in Syria?
- December 4, 2015
Conflict & Combat
"Chilling and authentic": a review of Heval, the first in-depth eye-witness account of the war against ISIS by a Western volunteer who joined the YPG.
- Author
All in-text photos courtesy of Jørgen Nicolai.
In late 2014, Jørgen Nicolai, a mechanical engineer from Denmark, bid goodbye to his wife and young daughter and boarded a plane bound for the city of Erbil in northern Iraq. From there he was smuggled into eastern Syria, where he spent several months with the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, fighting against some of the most fanatical and fearsome fighters on the planet: the men who fly the black flag of Islamic State.
Having barely made it out alive, Nicolai has now written a book, Heval: A Soldier's Personal Account of the Fight Against Islamic State, in which he chronicles his experiences.
This book is the first in-depth, eye-witness account of the war against Islamic State that has been published in English, and the perspective it provides on the conflict is invaluable. Although Nicolai's story itself makes for an exhilarating read, the book's real value lies in the insights it offers into the Kurdish struggle, the gruesome tactics employed by Islamic State, and the process by which ordinary men and women can wind up risking their lives fighting in "other people's wars".
For Nicolai, the conflict in Syria was always likely to become personal; having lived and worked in the country before the war, he had built up a substantial network of Syrian friends and acquaintances. He followed the uprising against Assad with a keen eye, and watched with dismay as his adopted city of Aleppo was gradually reduced to rubble.
When a close Syrian friend of his was abducted from his home by Islamic State militants, and this man's wife and children forced to flee to Iraq in search of refuge, Nicolai felt obliged to do something.
Joining the militia
After speaking to his friend's relatives and making a few contacts via Facebook, Nicolai flew to the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Erbil, with $1,000 in cash and a suitcase full of children's winter clothes. His first mission was to deliver these to his friend's family, whom he had been told were now living in a United Nations refugee camp not too far from Erbil.
Though food, water and electricity were available at this camp, it was a miserable place to live. Muddy tracks ran between the tents. Broken families were the norm; old men staggered about aimlessly while orphans in rags rummaged through piles of moist garbage.
Nicolai found his friend's wife all but a shrunken shadow of her former self. "She looked old and tired," he writes. "She had deep, dark rings under her eyes, as if she had been crying for a long time." Which, of course, she had been; her husband was almost certainly dead, and she and her children were homeless. Her life, like that of so many other Syrians, was in ruins.
After spending a couple of weeks visiting the family and doing what more he could to help them, Nicolai approached the Kurdish authorities with a request to join their militia, the peshmerga, to whom he could offer his services as a technician. But although his initial meetings with the Kurdish security forces seemed promising, his offer was ultimately rebuffed; western governments such as Denmark's were none too keen on their own citizens participating in the conflict, and had apparently asked the Kurds to prevent foreign volunteers like Nicolai from signing up with them.
The situation in Syria was different, however. Nicolai knew that the YPG were accepting foreigners, as he had already made online contact with them back in Denmark. After being rejected by the peshmerga, he tapped his connections in the YPG and they arranged for him to be smuggled across the border.
Nicolai describes how he was then transported to a safe house in Sulemaniyah, in southern Iraqi Kurdistan, and from there to an isolated guerrilla camp nestled among the limestone crags of the Zagros mountains in the north. He had to wait here for some time; under pressure from the Turkish government, the Iraqi Kurds had officially closed the border to Syria and it was necessary to wait for an opportune moment to cross it clandestinely.
Up at the camp, in the cold and wet, Nicolai befriended a few other foreigners, ate naan bread with goat's cheese and marmalade, practiced speaking Kurdish, and drank endless cups of hot tea. At night he could listen to the howling wolves that roamed the mountains. But although he relished this simple lifestyle, like the other foreigners he was becoming impatient; they had not come all this way for a holiday.
Finally the order came to pack their bags. The foreigners gathered their gear and began the long and difficult hike back down into the valley. There they found a pickup truck waiting to take them the rest of the way to the border.
Although the ride that followed was very welcome, it was not a pleasant experience. "We sat like sardines in the back of the truck," Nicolai recalls. "As we had to drive on small, winding mountain roads, it was not long before we all had aches and pains, and sore tailbones."
Shipped off to the front
Once he had arrived in Syria, Nicolai encountered many other foreigners who, like himself, had come to join the fight against Islamic State. But although they shared this much in common, their backgrounds differed widely; there were "Christians, Muslims, Yazidis, Jews, Hindus, Africans, Chinese, Europeans, Persians, Arabs, Turks and many others in our ranks."
Some volunteers, such as the African teenager Nicolai saw manning a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup truck, or the young Iranian who perished almost as soon as he picked up a weapon, had little or no professional military training.
Others, however, had substantial combat experience: among his comrades Nicolai counted hardened ex-PKK guerrillas, former French Foreign Legionnaires, and decorated British and US special forces veterans who had seen action in conflict zones such as Northern Ireland and Iraq.
Regardless of their background, new recruits were required to undergo a training program to familiarize them with elementary Kurdish, basic battle skills and handling of the Russian-designed equipment they would soon be using.
Nicolai, who already had some military training under his belt, spent only ten days at the YPG academy. After this, he was shipped off in a minivan to the front near Serekaniye — a battle-scarred Syrian-Turkish border town where "people on the Turkish side [of the heavily fortified border] could stand on their balconies and drink tea while the war was being played out in front of them."
Assad's forces, the Free Syrian Army, the Kurdish YPG and the jihadists had all laid claim to this area, which was now carved up "like Berlin during the Cold War." The YPG's front line against Islamic State was relatively static here; both sides had dug in and were more or less content to trade the occasional bullet or grenade rather than risk incurring substantial casualties during a full-scale assault on the other's positions.
There were regular supply convoys moving through the area, however, and these were more vulnerable to attack than were Islamic State's fortifications. Nicolai and his team recognized an opportunity to go on the offensive, and began reconnoitering for an ambush on the convoys. The Kurdish base commander, although he needed some convincing, eventually gave his approval to the plan they came up with and even agreed to help assist in its execution.
The attack caught the jihadists completely by surprise; their response was slow and clumsy, and Nicolai and his team escaped the firefight entirely unscathed. Nevertheless, he writes, "after we had returned to camp I could feel both my legs and hands shaking." They celebrated the small victory that evening at the base with a rare feast of meat and a night of Kurdish dancing around the fire.
He had survived his first encounter with Islamic State.
The traumas of war
Further engagements with the enemy were to prove few and far between, however, and the days that followed were dreary and uneventful. Nicolai eventually became dissatisfied with the lack of action at Serekaniye and requested reassignment to the area around Tel Hamis, a small university town near the Iraqi border, where the front line was more fluid.
Here, he would come face to face with some of the nastier characteristics of this conflict, such as suicide bombers, IEDs, deliberate mutilation of the dead and the use of civilian human shields.
Splashed brains, severed limbs and shattered bodies became ordinary sights for him. On one occasion, cleaning up after a victorious skirmish, Nicolai was required to straddle the body of a jihadist he had just shot dead so as to keep it from sliding off the hood of his Humvee; there was no room for this particular body on the back of the vehicle, as it was loaded up with other corpses.
"I didn't want to look at those we'd killed," he writes, "and certainly not touch them … but we had to bury the bodies. If we let them lie in the sun, they would spread disease."
During another battle, Nicolai came under intense machine gun fire and was forced to take cover next to two dead Kurdish comrades. One of the men was unrecognizable; part of his head had been blown off by the heavy caliber bullets.
The other dead comrade was someone Nicolai knew; a gentle teenager who had been completely devastated by the loss of his loved ones in the war. Nicolai had been worried about him; "[now] I couldn't take my eyes off him," he recalls. "He lay open-mouthed, staring blankly skyward. … I really wanted to cry, but I had to turn my grief into anger; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to focus on fighting and surviving."
Nicolai had to grapple with the traumas of war without any of the support normally offered to professional soldiers in the West. Unsurprisingly, the fighting weighed heavily on him.
"I gradually began to feel tired," he writes. "My body was covered in wounds and bruises. On my hands I had big burn blisters from [my machine gun's] hot barrel. I could feel that I was more tense and that my patience was running thin. … War, violence and the hard life at the front were beginning to wear me down both physically and mentally."
He had not seen his family for five months, and he knew that "there were limits to what [his] wife and child could stand."
Eventually he decided it was time to go home, and went out the same way he came in. After recuperating with his family back in Denmark, he put pen to paper and soon had a finished manuscript in his hands.
A "one hundred percent donation"
The book he then published is clearly focused on his own experiences, but it is not simply the tale of one man's life at the front. It is also an implicit declaration of solidarity with the Kurdish people and their struggle for freedom. This being so, at no point is the reader exposed to overt political evangelizing; one reads nothing of Abdullah Öcalan or his idea of 'democratic confederalism', for example, despite Nicolai's obvious familiarity with the YPG's history and ideology.
Nicolai's own views on the Kurdish socialist experiment and the broader issues surrounding the conflict are in fact rarely made explicit, and when they are expressed they are usually couched in measured terms.
Nevertheless, his repeated comments regarding the limited quality and quantity of the YPG's weaponry, for example, or the way he describes his Kurdish comrades' jubilation at the sight of coalition warplanes, seem to be not only simple statements of fact but also gentle reminders that the Kurds are in dire straits and require more support.
Similarly, his genuflections to the generosity and courage of the Kurdish spirit tend to leave the reader asking why this apparently secular, egalitarian and democratic community has in fact been given so little help by the West. With his usual subtlety, Nicolai suggests that this particular question might best be answered by looking more closely at Turkey's role in the Syrian conflict.
But the proof of the book's purpose seems reflected in Nicolai's use of an independent platform to publish it and in his plan for the proceeds from its sales. Nicolai told this reviewer that he chose to publish independently for two reasons: the first being simply that it was easy to do so; the second, that traditional publishing companies take a very large cut from a book sale's profits.
This, he says, would have left almost nothing to give to the humanitarian organizations, such as UNICEF and the Kurdish Red Crescent, to which he has pledged to donate all proceeds from the book. "It's one hundred percent donation," he insists. "I don't want to be that guy who profited from the war."
In any case, Nicolai's use of an independent publishing platform is not a marker of the book's quality. Heval is not of the same literary caliber as For Whom the Bell Tolls, it is true, but Nicolai does not presume to be Hemingway. He has his own personal — and refreshingly unpretentious — style of telling a story. He captures atmosphere and personality well, and molds his narrative with considerable skill.
Because the text has not been scrutinized by the eye of a professional editor, however, minor grammatical errors and some strange turns of phrase remain. Oddly enough, this fact only seems to add charm to the book. Nicolai is a Dane who speaks English as his second language, and one clearly detects this northern European accent in the structure of his thoughts and expression. One hears his authentic voice, as it were, as if in direct conversation with him.
A work of fiction, of sorts
Another important point to note is the fact that Heval is listed as a work of fiction, despite the book's inclusion of many documentary photos and the fact that Danish journalists have verified the central tenets of the story. Nicolai says that he chose to do this not because he has grossly distorted the truth, but simply because he wants to be completely open with his readers.
"Ninety-eight or ninety-nine percent of the book [accurately represents reality]," he says. "And I could have written it as a 'true story.' But as Alfred Hitchcock said: drama is life without all the boring stuff. I took some liberties, which I have as an author, but because there are a few small things that are, you could say, made up, I just didn't want to say that [the book was non-fiction]."
Given this, some caution is warranted when reading Heval as a factual account of the war. Nevertheless, considered in the context of the Danish media's corroboration of Nicolai's story, and read next to the brief accounts of other foreign fighters, Heval provides valuable insight into the local textures of a crisis that is now fully global in its consequences.
Reading this book, one smells the acrid decay of civility in Syria and tastes the bitterness of ethnic conflict. Though the freshness of the Kurds' growing hope, watered though it is by their tears and blood, may seem to bring some small solace from all this, it must be tempered by an awareness of the mistreatment to which the Kurds' Arab neighbors have increasingly been subject.
Heval provides a vivid portrait of the pain and rage and fear moving so many people in the world today, not only inside of themselves but across international borders. Nicolai's response to the death of his friend Anas at the hands of Islamic State is of course what stands out here, but one thinks too of the Sunni Arab tribesmen whose grievances have been left to fester and coalesce into that aggressive cancer of a caliphate.
One's mind turns also to the many Syrian refugees like Nicolai's friend's wife and children; to the drowned toddler washed ashore in Turkey, for example, whose family fled the fiery onslaught of Islamic State only to find the cold embrace of death at sea. One thinks too of those who exploited the refugee crisis to murder Parisians in cold blood.
Ultimately, one is forced to reflect on the question of what a single human life should mean to others, and on how fragile humanity can be. Rather chilling, in the context of all this, is it to be reminded of the words of the English cleric John Donne, which inspired the title of Hemingway's famous account of the Spanish Civil War and which perhaps ring more true today than ever:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Jørgen Nicolai's book
Heval: A Soldier's Personal Account of the Fight Against Islamic State
can be ordered here.
Source URL — https://roarmag.org/essays/heval-foreign-fighter-ypg-rojava-book/


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Recap of the article: $1 million donations for Planetarium
A former professor at the Orange Coast College donated $1 million for the construction of the new planetarium. With a target of $20 million to get the new facility, the professor made her donation with the belief that it was the right thing to do have developed a deep interest in the development of the school. According to Professor Mary McChesney, the school planetarium is a good development which will not only support the students, but it will also lend its services to the entire community. Currently, the Orange Coast College has received $2.6 million from donations to serve their purpose. Of this amount, $1 million came from the 93 years old former professor of the institution. Professor Mary McChesney is interested in purchasing a Foucault pendulum for the school which will be instrumental in the practical demonstration of how the earth rotates. The project will be one of its kind, and the equipment has to possess the latest technology for the benefits of the students and the society as a whole.
The services offered by Orange Coast College
Currently, the college has more than 135 different courses to be undertaken. All the courses that are offered by the college are accredited by the Western Association of Schools. The institution has the highest population in the student base. There are several community colleges, but the Orange Coast College produces the largest number of its students to the best universities in California. Considering the ranking system used in the case of Orange County, the college is ranked the first because of its offered services and the quality of education. One basis of ranking is the number of students that the Orange Community Colleges takes to California University and the California State University.
The foundation and operation of the Institution
Founded in 1947, the first class in the Orange Coast College was opened in 1948. The College focused on lower division degrees where after completion; the students can relocate to the major University like the California State University. The college focuses on both science and art. The quality of education is currently on the rise, and its popularity and preference have improved its operations.
Visit http://www.orangecoastcollege.edu/ to learn more.

subset: commoncrawl


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Hospital Ships – "Come Back to Life" [mp3]
from Destruction in Yr Soul, out June 18th on Graveface Records
A plodding, wistful folk rock song that explodes in slow motion grandeur about halfway through. Nice opening track from the forthcoming record.
Camera Obscura – "Fifth in Line to the Throne" [mp3]
from Desire Lines, released June 3rd on 4AD Records
5th studio album from Scottish quintet carries on their fine tradition of dream pop.
Queens of the Stoneage – "If I Had a Tail" [stream]
from …Like Clockwork, released June 4th on Matador Records
New album from the bona-fide Kinds of Cock Rock. Hell Yeah!!!!!!!
Hailer – "Any Way I Can" [mp3]
from Another Way, out now (bandcamp)
Sydney, Australia psych poppers fancy themselves as "rock n roll shape shifters".
Boards of Canada – "Reach for the Dead" [stream]
from Tomorrow's Harvest, out now on WARP
Scottish brothers return after a long hiatus; their take on droning electronic still sounds fresh.


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Drop in Juvenile Crime Rate
On June 11, 2017 Kate Pett and Brian Randall of the Asheville City Schools Foundation and In Real Life program, wrote an article for the Asheville Citizen-Times. In it, they share important information about the dramatic decrease in juvenile crime complaints in our community and the powerful impact that local programs are having on this story. Three parts of this story stand out:


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Retro Flute
Eduardo Tarilonte is well known for his 5 star Anthology series. The same award winning attention to detail has been applied to this latest release. Retro Flute is not a "yet another flute library." Above and beyond the extreme scripted features and flawless recording/sampling quality, Retro Flute provides the user with something new and innovative. Though it will sit extremely well in a Cinematic, Classical or Jazz ensemble track, it is the retro sound used by many progressive rock artists that produces a pure and powerful tone. Perhaps the most exciting feature of Retro Flute is the ability to generate the popular sung style, best described as the flute being sung through as it is sounding. This mix of instrument and vocalist has never been sampled before.
- Sustained Straight Tone & Vibrato
- Sung Style
- Various Staccato Options
- Repetitions
- Overlaying Options
- Player Breath Noise
- Key Noise
- Slide Down
- Runs
- Flutter
- Mordent
- Half and Whole Tone Trills.
For the express purpose of allowing the user to be in command of each exclusive mixing situation, Retro Flute is recorded within a controlled studio environment.
Advanced Scripting
Offering the composer real-time control is our top priority. By means of advanced scripting technology within Kontakt, coupled with Bela D Media's specialized programming staff, remarkable real-time control has been achieved. The Kontakt script features user friendly "tweak the patch" parameters including Effects, Filters, EQ, Envelopes and more.


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KAMLOOPS - The UBC Okanagan Heat defeated the Thompson Rivers WolfPack in a women's volleyball exhibition match Friday, Sept. 23.
The Heat took the match 3-1. The WolfPack took the first set 25-20, but UBC Okanagan won the next three straight by scores of 25-18, 25-17, and 25-19.
The pre-season contest was played on the Warner Rentals court at the Tournament Capital Centre in Kamloops, B.C.
The UBC Okanagan offence was led by fifth year Megan Festival, fourth year Michelle Jakszuk, and third year Siobhan Fitzpatrick. Those three outside hitters earned 10, 9, and 7 kills respectively in the match.
Thompson Rivers' attack was headed up by fifth year outside hitter Iullia Pakhomenko, with 14 kills, and third year outside hitter Rachel Windhorst, who earned 11 kills. Freshman WolfPack setter Abbey Spratt also led the match in assists, with 26.
Heat head coach Steve Manuel said after the match, "I liked to see how we battled down the stretch…In a couple of sets we got down." He added, talking about his team's pre-season performance, "We are still trying to find our identity. We are a fairly new group. It took us a while to play like a team. Sometimes it takes a little more than a few sets: sometimes it takes a whole season. What I liked to see is that as we got rolling we played more like a team. Sometimes the contact wasn't what we wanted it to be but they supported each other out there."
Asked how this year's team will compare to last season's national bronze medal-winning side, Manuel said, "We are on par. It will be a slower process for us this year… Our exhibition schedule is heavier later on. We are going to take it nice and slow with this team." He added, on starting the pre-season against a perennial contender, "I have TRU in my books as one of the teams that is going to 'be there.' I am happy with how the girls played tonight."
The elder Heat players will undoubtedly play a key role on a team that graduated six players after the 2015-16 season. "We have some veterans," said Manuel. "Megan (Festival) is a warrior. She played very well tonight and was a stabilizing force. I liked what I am seeing from our (fifth year) setter Emily Oxland…She has a bunch of new weapons out there and she is trying to figure out how to use them." The Heat coach also added, on a highlight of Friday night's match, "The serving run (8-0 in the fourth set) by Michelle (Jakszuk) was unbelievable."
The Heat volleyball women will play next in an intra-squad match during the Royal Visit to the UBC Okanagan campus on Tuesday, Sept. 27. They will then play in an exhibition tournament at the University of Ottawa Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, and will take part in a number of training sessions with the University of Alberta in Canmore from Oct. 21 to 23 before getting their regular season underway on Friday, Oct. 28 when they will host the Brandon University Bobcats.


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To view the Reliance Trust Company of Delaware Privacy Policy click here.


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Sajjad, what do you mean by "recently specify"?
I recall that at the 1999 meeting there were one or two DNR people there
who were puzzled by the language of the regulations. The language was so
strange that everyone there-- the DNR people, Larry Page, and others--
spoke as though they could and should be reviewed and revised. If I
recall, darters are taboo because the language in the regulations specifies
Percids, which almost certainly was originally intended to refer to walleye
and yellow perch (Who cared about darters when it was written?!) I don't
think there's a state in the US that doesn't have a gamefish bias in its
regulations and activities, but still, this seems a silly mess that could
be fixed with very little trouble.
-- Jay DeLong Olympia, WA /----------------------------------------------------------------------------- /"Unless stated otherwise, comments made on this list do not necessarily / reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American Native Fishes / Association" / This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes Association / nanfa_at_aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word / subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to / nanfa-request_at_aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to / nanfa-digest-request_at_aquaria.net instead. / For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org </x-flowed>


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MAXIM Integrated Products, represented by Arrow Electronics Australia Pty Ltd , has introduced an integrated inverter controller, the MAX8759.
It is designed to drive cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) using a full-bridge resonant inverter for maximum efficiency.
Input power is converted to light with high efficiency. Safety features effectively protect against single-point fault conditions such as lamp-out, secondary overvoltage and secondary short-circuit faults.
Brightness is controlled through three mechanisms: a 2-wire SMBus-compatible interface, an external ambient light sensor (ALS), or system PWM control.
The MAX8759 provides ±2.5% accurate lamp-current regulation, adjustable with an external resistor, for superior CCFL inverter performance.
A 10:1 dimming range can be achieved by turning the CCFL on and off using a digital pulse-width modulation(DPWM) method, while maintaining the lamp current constant.
The MAX8759 supports Intel display power-saving technology (DPST) to maximise battery life and includes two lamp-current feedback input pins that support dual-lamp applications with a minimum number of external components.
An internal 5.35V linear regulator powers most of the internal circuitry and the MOSFET driver, which directly drives four external n-channel power MOSFETs. The resonant operation ensures reliable striking and provides near-sinusoidal waveforms over the entire 4.5V to 28V input range.
The MAX8759 is available in a space-saving (5mm x 5mm), low-profile (0.8mm), 28-pin thin QFN package and operates over the -40°C to +85°C temperature range.


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1. Flower Arrangement Pitcher
Two classic things to bring to a party are adult beverages and flowers, so why not combine them? If you're searching for a fabulous recipe to wow the crowd with, make apple cider sangria; white wine, apple cider, and caramel vodka. Yum! First things first, though. Let's make this pitcher flower arrangement.
For this project you will need:
- drink pitcher
- plant pot
- paint (optional)
- floral foam
- florals
- ribbon
First, purchase your hostess a pitcher for serving your favorite drink. Then, find a plant pot that fits the opening of the pitcher. If you have a glass pitcher like the one here, you want to paint the pot to match the colors of your arrangement. Then, cut your floral foam to size to fit inside the plant pot.
Now you are ready to arrange your flowers! Once you have everything assembled, tie a ribbon around the pot to complete the look. Your hostess will have something to decorate with AND a functional gift to use the night of the party.
2. Frame Display
Being a party goer is fun! All you have to do is show up. Make sure you let your hostess know how much you appreciate all their hard work. Consider giving your hostess a thank you in a grand way by putting a thank you note in a frame display that they can use again later.
First, spruce up an old frame with some coconut oil. Then, insert a new backing using burlap and cardboard cut to size.
The last step is to attach a clothing pin to the frame using your glue of choice. All that is left to do is write your thank you note and give your hostess a smile. Instead of a plain old envelope, it's a perfect holder for your thank you note AND they can use it again later for whatever they wish… including the menu for the evening!
3. Personalized Wreath
A wreath makes a beautiful gift that your hostess can enjoy all season long, and they are easier to make than you might think!
First, gather your supplies:
- Grapevine wreath
- Spray paint (optional)
- Florals
- Floral wire
- Wire cutters
- Pre-cut wood letter
If you choose to paint your wreath, this would be the first step. Using spray paint to put light even coats on both sides of the wreath.
Then, using your wire cutters separate all the floral stems and start assembling your wreath! Arrange the florals in whichever way you find pleasing. Each floral stem can be attached on the back of the wreath by wrapping floral wire around the stem and the grapevine.
Lastly, personalize the wreath for your hostess by painting the wood letter and attaching it to the wreath using wire.
4. Marble Cheese Platter
You will never believe this cheese platter uses scrap wood and one marble tile!
Cut your wood to fit the size of your tile. Then, using the same type of wood, cut two smaller pieces to serve as the edges of the cheese platter. Then, using wood glue attach the three pieces together. Using stronger adhesive, attach the tile to the wood. Drill holes for your handles and screw them in.
Pair it with some cheese and you're all set. Fancy!
5. Snowman S'more Dessert Bar
Your host worked hard to put together the various elements of the party. Tell them to skip worrying about what to make for dessert, cause you're bringing a s'more bar! Not just any s'more bar, but one that is complete with an ice sculpture snowman!
Start by filling some balloons with water. Three different sizes – just like a snowman. You'll want to be sure to leave some air in them so it creates a divot as it freezes. This will allow you to stack them later on
Once they are completely frozen, cut the balloon and remove the ice. Warning: this part is extremely cool and will be a lot of fun! Once they are stacked, you're ready to assemble the rest of your snowman.
Use a hole punch to cut out some eyes and buttons. Cut a small piece of orange for the nose and a piece of ribbon for the scarf. You'll also want to make a mini top hat. Just wet the surface a little bit, and your pieces will stick to the ice. Pair it all with your s'more bar and you're ready to go. So cute!
Okay, so I know this post said it was going to include five gifts, but I couldn't resist giving you all a bonus gift idea!
BONUS: Thankful Pumpkin
Remember the hot glue pumpkin from my 10 Ways to Decorate a Pumpkin Under $10 post?
Give this pumpkin an update from Halloween to Thanksgiving! Just peel off the lettering and follow the same process as you did before. Repaint and viola!
Questions or comments? Leave them below.


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NEW YORK, (Reuters) – The teenage daughter of an Indian diplomat who says she was wrongfully arrested and falsely accused of sending threatening emails to two of her New York City teachers has sued the city for $1.5 million, claiming civil rights violations.
Krittika Biswas, the daughter of the vice-consul in the Consulate General of India in New York, was arrested and jailed for a night last year after gym and calculus teachers at her high school accused her of sending lewd and violent emails.
The next day, Biswas was suspended from John Bowne High School in the New York borough of Queens and compelled to attend classes at "an alternate location without an applicable enriched academic program, and more akin to 'reform school,'" according to the lawsuit.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown dropped all charges against Biswas, who was 18 at the time, and ordered the records from the case sealed. A spokeswoman for Brown declined to comment because the case is sealed.
Biswas has denied sending the messages and her lawyer described the case as one of "mistaken identity."
A representative at the high school declined to comment, and one of the teachers involved in the incident, Jamie Kim-Ross, could not be reached for comment.
Biswas claimed diplomatic immunity. But the U.S. State Department said she "does not enjoy immunity from arrest or from criminal or civil jurisdiction under international law."
"We sympathize with Ms. Biswas and her family. We have no comment on this ongoing litigation," State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said in a statement.
Biswas returned to India, where she holds citizenship, and has continued her studies there.
The lawsuit names Kim-Ross, as well as the principal at John Bowne High School, the city Department of Education, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and others. The second teacher was not identified by name.
A spokeswoman from the city's law department declined to comment on the case because she said the city had not yet been served with the lawsuit.


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Essential Teller Issues
April 18, 2018 @ 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
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Essential Teller Issues zeroes in on six modules that remind the teller how important their job is, how significant their actions are, and how customers should be interacted with. This teller training program is information-packed and attention-grabbing! Tellers will leave this workshop with a renewed commitment to excel on the job. Every attendee will also get a copy of a comprehensive training manual that doubles as a guide for the workplace.
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Janice Branch has been a Senior Training Consultant for InterAction Training for over fifteen years. She is a Certified Bank Training Professional and has all the right stuff to wow her participants. Janice is the go-to person when it comes to teaching how to coach, manage, lead, negotiate, service, sell or train at every level in an organization.


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'Since someone will forever be surprising / A hunger in himself to be more serious / And gravitating with it to this ground / Which he once heard was proper to grow wise in.'Johnson's new book is as engaging and well observed as the first two, the difference being that it finds him in the tangle of thorns that is professional politics rather than the worlds of childhood and workaday employment that were the grist of This Boy and then Please Mr Postman. But obviously he and I had plenty to talk about; and on the side he could not have been kinder on the subject of how he was getting on with The Knives.
Thursday, 6 October 2016
Church-Going & Book-Talking in Dulwich
Posted by Richard T Kelly at 02:09:00
Labels: alan johnson, church-going (larkin), dulwich books, faber and faber, long and winding road (johnson), please mr postman (johnson), Richard T. Kelly, the knives (richard t kelly), this boy (johnson)
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Armageddon - Meteor Impacts - Super Volcanoes - Nuclear Holocaust - Virus Pandemics - Mega-Tsunamis - Planet X - Prophecies - Melting Ice Caps - Alien Invasion
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Meteor Impacts
Mega Tsunamis
Super Volcanoes
Virus Pandemics
Nuclear Warfare
Bible Prophecies
Planet X
Ice Caps Melting
Alien Invasion
Biological Warfare
What is Biological Warfare?
Biological warfare is the use of pathogens - bacteria and viruses that damage the body - to harm an enemy's population. They can be released to one person and spread to infect thousands or millions. They cause terror and death. Most pathogens that could be used have mortality rates (the percentage of those infected that die) of greater than 50%, some greater than 90%. Some are highly infectious, and can spread across a population with terrifying speed. Others can simply be posted to an enemy, as we saw during the anthrax attacks. Several of the most feared viruses cause agonising deaths - for example, Ebola liquefies the internal organs.
Who would carry out Biological Warfare?
Many countries - including the US - have had biological weapons programs. The present number developing such weapons is thought to be 17. This excludes the many terrorist groups also believed to be researching these weapons, and nations with stockpiles of these weapons.
Of all these, many could have a motive to launch a biological attack on the US in the near future. Countries presently creating biological weapons include: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Bulgaria, India, South Korea, South Africa, China and Russia - a terrifying mixture of America's cold war enemies (China, Russia), rogue states (Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea), countries that could easily go to war in the near future (Israel, Taiwan) and other countries that despise America (Vietnam, Cuba). Add to this terrorists, like Al Queda and Aum Shinrikyo ('The Supreme Truth'), and a frightening number of people have the ability to start biological wars.
When have they been used?
So far biological weapons have had little used, mainly due to the lack of wars since their development. The largest use of biological weapons was during World War 2, when Japan used bubonic plague to kill 300,000 Chinese civilians. In 1974 a local cult used salmonella to infect 750 people. The terrorists Aum Shinrikyo tried to grow Botulism but failed.
Why are they so dangerous?
Biological weapons are arguably more dangerous than any other form of weapon, for these reasons:
� Nuclear and chemical weapons only kill people in an isolated area, meaning that large numbers have to be used to kill most of an enemy's population. Biological weapons can kill thousands with a microscopic amount.
� They are virtually undetectable before being deployed, allowing them to be transported into hostile countries by car or plane, as well as by missile.
� They cause no damage to buildings, allowing a country to eliminate its enemies and move in to take control of undamaged cities.
� They can kill far more people than any other type of weapon.
� Even if only a few die, they cause terror within an enemy's population.
� They are extremely cheap compared to other weapons. A vast arsenal can be grown from one sample. This is especially beneficial for terrorists.
� They can be acquired with terrifying ease. Using only a false letterhead and credit card, a man in America was able to acquire a large amount of Bubonic Plague. He was later found to be a member of a white supremacist organisation, had he not been caught another outbreak of plague could have occurred.
How could they be distributed?
There are many ways in which they could be distributed. Russia developed techniques using missiles and bombs to spread the pathogens. Anthrax was recently deployed using the post. Al Queda attempted to acquire crop-dusting planes, which could be used to spread pathogens to millions. They could be released from conventional planes. Terrorists could release them in ventilation systems to spread them across a building. However they are spread, infectious pathogens could soon be passed to others, leading to casualties thousands of times greater than the original number infected.
Which are the most dangerous pathogens?
One of the most feared viruses is Ebola and its close relatives Lassa and Marburg. These are viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs), which refers to the internal bleeding they cause. Blood starts bleeding out of the eyes, mouth and ears. The internal organs start to liquefy. The nervous system can degenerate, and patients suffer seizures and delirium. Some suffer shock or go into comas. Between 50 and 90% die an agonising death, making Ebola one of the most deadly viruses known. Death happens after just a week of infection, as victim dies they become convulsive, splashing infected blood around them.
There is no vaccine, there is no cure. The virus is spread by human contact, allowing one infected human to spread it to many others. For example in 1996 a doctor treating patients with Ebola in Gabon unwittingly transmitted it to a nurse in South Africa when he travelled there, killing her. It can also be spread in bodily fluids, dangerous as Ebola victims bleed a lot, and through the air, but only for short distances.
Bubonic Plague
In 1347 bubonic plague slaughtered more than 40 million across Europe and China in one outbreak. Glands swell to the size of grapefruit, limbs fill with fluid and flesh turn dark purple. It was so devastating because of its combination of being highly contagious and nearly always lethal if untreated. The bacterium - yersinia pestis - also has an awesome reproductive rate - in ten hours a single copy can produce a billion others. This means that terrorists could grow a vast amount in just a few days. There is a vaccine but a surprise attack would overwhelm hospitals and could potentially kill thousands. In a country with no sophisticated health system the effects would be far worse, as the outbreaks in Europe in the Middle Ages showed.
Botulism toxin is the single most poisonous substance known. It is highly lethal and infectious. Botulism can show its symptoms within just 2 hours of ingestion. It initially causes blurred vision, vomiting and nausea. Later, the toxin damages motor neurones, the nerves that connect the brain to muscles. This causes paralysis, and in some cases means that patients cannot even breathe for themselves. For these reasons botulism has been a weapon of choice, many countries have stockpiles of it and the terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo tried to create it.
Smallpox is one of the most devastating of all infectious diseases. It is highly infectious, kills 30% of victims and can spread in any climate or season. It is carried in the air, making it extremely contagious and able to contaminate many people in a short time. Smallpox used to ravage the world but following a vaccination program in 1980 the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that it had been eradicated, so countries stopped vaccination. In the same year Russia started to produce large quantities, successfully adapting it for use on bombs or missiles. Russia's industry is still capable of producing vast amounts of smallpox, enough to kill hundreds of millions. Vaccination ceased in 1972 in the US - everyone born after that date has no immunity.
The outbreak of anthrax by post last year reminded the world why anthrax is so feared. Many people were infected, several killed, but this was only on a tiny scale. If anthrax were spread through the air, more cases of the most dangerous form, inhalation anthrax, would occur. In the largest outbreak of inhalation Anthrax, in Sverdlovsk, Russia, 1979, 68 out of 79 died - 86% mortality rate. Al Queda tried to acquire crop-spraying planes for this purpose, but it could also be spread from a conventional aircraft. A US estimate suggested that just 100kg of anthrax released over Washington would kill up to 3 million people. A release of this much would be simple for terrorists who had acquired the bacteria. Staying indoors would be no protection - the spores are so tiny they could get inside. Anthrax could cause similar casualties to a nuclear weapon at a tiny fraction of the cost to terrorists and with far less technology.
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Deakin Book A Room
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RefWorks system maintenance – August 25th
August 21, 2013
RefWorks will be undergoing system maintenance between 3:00am and 9:00am on Sunday 25th August 2013 and will be unavailable during this period.
After the system maintenance has been performed, users may notice brief periods of slow response time while further routine testing is carried out.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.


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NEW ORLEANS -- The Gulf Restoration Network called the GoCoast 2020 Commission's report in important step but the group feels the plan needs to do more to ensure the long-term health of the Mississippi coast, according to a news release from Mississippi's GRN organizer Raleigh Hoke today.
Gov. Phil Bryant released the final report on Monday in Biloxi, laying out the blue print for Mississippi's use of RESTORE Act funds in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Here are some of the views of the Gulf Restoration Network on the final report:
- The Eco-restoration portion of the final report does a good initial job of surveying restoration needs on the Coast, and existing programs, like the Mississippi Coastal Improvement Program, that could help drive restoration. However, ecosystem restoration must be central to all the GoCoast 2020 goals, and that isn't always the case in this report.
- The Workforce section misses the mark since it completely ignores the Mississippi Jobs First Act and barely mentions emerging opportunities for local workers in coastal and marine restoration. The Jobs Act is designed to give local workers a leg up in finding employment from work financed through BP fines and other disasters, and it must be more fully considered in the Go Coast 2020 plan. Studies show every million dollars invested in ecosystem restoration creates between 17-36 jobs, on par or greater than the direct impact of many road, port and energy infrastructure construction projects.
- While the Go Coast 2020 Report is a welcome stop towards restoring Mississippi's coast, glaring omissions, like failing to thoroughly examine opportunities for workers in the restoration economy, bring into question its credibility.


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Need your order in time for Christmas? Check out our Holiday Shipping Deadlines.
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by Lisa Yount
Our tank tops are made from a 50% cotton / 50% polyester blend and are available in five different sizes. All tank tops are machine washable.
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Our tank tops are made from a 50% cotton / 50% polyester blend and are available in five different sizes. All tank tops are machine washable.
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Suki Highers
November 17th, 2018
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March 24th, 2018
I absolutely am in love with this purchase. It has been worn a few times already and has held up great after each wash with no fading, loss of shape or pealing. This graphic works best I think against the grey I chose. Love that this artist represents the beautiful diversity of our Puerto Rican culture. This image resonates with me being that I am Puerto Rican of mostly African descent. Thank you Ida Yvette Robles for representing all of us Boricuas!
Matt McCary
March 22nd, 2018
This item arrived stained and dingy. The t-shirt itself has a stain on it and the color is absolutely nothing like the photo. The product detail has my image on a white tank top; however, the tank top that arrived looks like it was washed with a bunch of brown clothes and has a dirty look to it, aside from the stain. I took a picture of a Gildan white t-shirt I own (thats been washed several times already) with the tank top I received to show how dingy the tank looks. I've opened a ticket regarding a refund or replacement on this item and still have yet to hear back from anyone. Yet again, not a good first impression for this company.
Ammonites are the ancestors of the chambered nautilus; they are a perfect symbol for the spiraling evolution of life from the nurturing water. This digital photocollage nature-fantasy is a perfect image for lovers of the ocean and sea life. It is also a fine subject for quiet meditation: immerse yourself in its calm blue depths at the end of a stressful day.
As an artist I am a magician, transformer, and guide to other worlds. I see landscapes in rocks and tree bark, sunsets and galaxies in the peeling paint of old cars. Using Adobe Photoshop and other software, I combine photographs, fractals, and other images from a variety of sources to reveal secret places within and beyond our everyday surroundings. Recent themes in my work include the spiritual/magical dimension of life and the changes wrought by time. I was a writer (educational/nonfiction writer and poet) for most of my life, but beginning at age 50 (I am now 73) I revived a childhood dream of being an artist. My art has won prizes at local shows and has been exhibited (sometimes as one-woman shows) at Bay Area galleries and other...
Our return policy is very simple:
If you're not happy with a purchase that you made on Pixels.com, for any reason, you can return it to us within 30 days of the order date. As soon as it arrives, we'll issue a full refund for the entire purchase price. Please note - Pixels does not reimburse the outgoing or return shipping charges unless the return is due to a defect in quality.
Pixels sells thousands of pieces of artwork each month - all with a 100% money-back guarantee. We take great pride in the fact that hundreds of thousands of artists have chosen Pixels to fulfill their orders, and we look forward to helping you select your next piece!
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Our administration fees (inclusive of VAT) are as follows:
For any additional tenants requiring referencing, there is an additional charge of £50 per tenant, per application. All occupants over the age of 18 will need to be referenced.
These fees include all the costs for the application, tenancy agreement and inventory check-in.
Should your references not prove to be acceptable and we have to employ a guarantor, there will be an increase in the administration fee of £50.


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I guess Israel is too scared to actually file legislation that attacks real guns
(Daily Caller) New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel is calling for legislation to renew the federal ban on plastic guns, according to his official congressional website.
"Recent reports have pointed to the new possibility of building guns at home using a 3-D printer," Israel's website states. "Right now, plastic guns are illegal under the Undetectable Firearms Act, but this law is set to expire next year."
The only problem is that these guns don't actually, you know, exist.


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I presented this topic to The Villages Philosophy Club on 14 February 2014 and my Powerpoint slides are available:
The brains of people with AD contain "Plaques" of Amyloid Beta, a protein, and tangles of another protein called tau. By the time a person manifests objectively measurable cognitive impairment, Amyloid-β, (Aß), is strongly positive in the regions of the brain known as the "DEFAULT NETWORK" – which are particularly vulnerable to (Aß) deposition.
Aß can fold into a misshapen form that causes other normal Aß molecules to assume the wrong shape and clump together. Proteins may later break off from the aggregate and seed the beginnings of the same process elsewhere. This biochemical domino effect involves a mechanism called "CORRUPTIVE PROTEIN TEMPLATING".
As this biochemical domino effect spreads through the brain, this inexorable progression of Aß deposits engulfs most areas of the cerebral cortex (the brains outer layer) progressing to the midbrain finally reaching the lower brainstem and cerebellum in the organ's deepest reaches.
There are no exact transition points that define when a patient has progressed from the pre-clinical phase to the mild cognitive impairment phase and then to the dementia phase.
Diagnosing dementia involves many factors which include:
o A complete physical
o A complete neurologic examination
o MRI & CT scans of the brain
o Blood & Urine tests
o Thorough discussion of patients medical history & symptoms
All of the above with a qualified neurologist and neuropsychologist
From my personal experience, observing my spouse, I could see signs of cognitive problems that needed to be addressed:
o Problems using the microwave
o Problems using TV remotes
o Problems w/ electronics that have to be programmed
o Difficulty organizing M – F pillbox for AM/PM medications
o Difficulty with driving directions through roundabouts
I obtained from a friend connected with the American Academy of Neurology suggestions for possible Neurologist from various institutions and current publications (April 2013) relevant to Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's dementia, genetic risk factors for late onset AD, recent genes associated with early onset AD, radioactive biomarkers for PET scans of the brain, and biochemical biomarkers present in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). I also obtained excellent advice from a former classmate MD (specialty Internal Medicine), with experience diagnosing this disease, and his recommendation: "Seek a well- established neurologist in the field and obtain a blood test for the ApoE gene.
After a 3 - 5 hour initial exam with a neurologist associated with the Brain Institute, and the neurology dept., Shands Hospital, U. FL, Gainesville and psychologists on the staff --- the preliminary diagnosis was possible MCI with orders for a full day of neuropsychological testing, MRI of the brain and follow up in 2 months.
With the preliminary diagnosis of MCI, the review article (April 2013) on MCI was very important. The slides on MCI are self-explanatory regarding it's clinical characterization and the significant interest in understanding the transition from MCI to AD.
After 8 hours of extensive neuropsychological testing at Shands, the final diagnosis was changed from MCI to early stages of AD, verified by the appearance of hippocampal atrophy, one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage in AD patients. Blood tests results came back: Genotype *E2/*E4 (*E4 is a strong genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's).
Recommended treatment: begin memory medication (Aricept) ASAP, returning in 4 months for subsequent evaluation of the effectiveness of the medication.
The blood test results for Genotype APO*E2 / APO*E4, are explained in the AAN Review Article Continuum on New Genes and Insights from old Genes, which explains the significance of APO*E4 as a genetic risk factor for AD, increasing the risk by a factor of 3 to 4 fold.
Subsequent slides explain three other genes strongly associated with "early Onset" Alzheimer's (prior to age 65 and experiments with APP-Transgenic mice, genetically engineered (with the APP gene) to produce the precursor protein from which the human Aβ fragment is generated and spontaneously develops Aβ brain deposits at a relatively consistent age.
Future Experiments with APP-Transgenic Mice hopefully may yield important clues to solving the problem for early detection and the subsequent prevention of dementia.
Lee Conrad


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Seasons – Platinum Series
Seasons were designed by Alexander M. Chin. Their mission is focused on providing high quality decks to the world of card enthusiasts by pushing boundaries and changing the standards of design
SEASONS is a B&W edition playing card set that captures the essence of the changing season. The intricately flourished decks incorporate 100% custom deck design, from the embossed and foiled tuck cases, to the intricately illustrated court cards. These decks remain minimal in color, embracing the designs in true form.
The passion and care put into these decks show. With all the work put in, there's no wonder that the United States Playing Cards Company referred to these decks as, "The most detailed cards we've ever printed."
The names Primavera and Seronda are translated from the romance language of Bable meaning Spring and Fall.


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A reminder about Boobies
Today is the last day of the Boobiethon. Head on over and give a couple of dollars for a very, very worthy cause.
If you end up being the 150th donor, you will receive access to the (uncovered) pay-per-boobies page regardless of the donation amount
I finally submitted my twins today. For the first time, I went uncovered.
Thanks to Robyn and crew for raising money once again for the Susan B. Komen foundation. It takes a lot of work to make these fund drives work and these gals and guys have pulled it off successfully each year.


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Jennifer Lopez pulls the plug on San Diego ConcertNovember 14th, 2007 - 10:18 am ICT by admin
Meanwhile the papers have attributed Lopez's unofficially confirmed pregnancy to be the reason for the cancellation.
"Unfortunately, rerouting the tour has been impossible due to the event's last-minute postponement caused by the area wildfire emergency," People quoted the Live Nation.
According to the San Diego Union Tribune, tickets for the event, which could be refunded at point of purchase, were slashed by $35 last month in an unsuccessful move to boost lagging sales.
As for rumors Lopez, 38, needs a new record label due to her diva demands and disappointing record sales, Epic Records reveals that that's simply not true.
"We love Jennifer. We just made two new videos!" a rep for Epic said. (ANI)
- Jennifer Lopez: Victim of Wardrobe Malfunction - Oct 20, 2010
- Anthony probes Lopez's relationship with first hubby - Apr 22, 2012
- Metallica show cancellation 'epic failure', say upset fans - Oct 29, 2011
- J.Lo suffers wardrobe malfunction on night out with Marc Anthony - Oct 19, 2010
- Outrage over Marc Anthony and Jlo's plans to buy Puerto Rican home - Nov 08, 2010
- JLo, Marc Anthony separate - Jul 16, 2011
- Enrique Iglesias says his career is going full blast - Aug 27, 2012
- Jennifer Lopez suffers wardrobe malfunction - Oct 18, 2010
- Enrique Iglesias wants to record with JLo - Jul 24, 2012
- Ricky Martin to promote Puerto Rico tourism on world tour - Mar 15, 2011
- Metallica concert cancelled, tickets to be refunded (Lead) - Oct 29, 2011
- JLo, Anthony's clothing line to go ahead - Jul 20, 2011
- No NOC, rains too...Bryan Adams Delhi concert called off (Second Lead) - Feb 15, 2011
- Don Omar to compose song for Jennifer Lopez's TV show - Feb 14, 2012
- JLo plans concert film - Aug 21, 2012
Tags: attributed, cancellation, demands, diego union tribune, diva, fires, jennifer lopez, last minute, live nation, point of purchase, postponement, pregnancy, record label, reveals, san diego union, san diego union tribune, southern california, unsuccessful move, wildfire


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2 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 large eggs whites (beaten)
2 tsp. minced ginger
1 garlic clove (minced)
3 cups chopped cabbage'
1 cup shredded carrots
5 shiitake mushrooms (sliced)
2 tbsp. low sodium soy sauce
3 tbsp. hoisin sauce
1 tsp. sesame oil
3 cups cooked, shredded chicken
1/4 cup scallions (sliced)
1. Heat 1 tbsp. vegetable oil in a large skillet over high heat. Scramble the eggs. When done set to the side.
2. Heat 1 tbsp. vegetable oil in the skillet Add ginger and garlic and cook for 1 minute.
3. Add cabbage, carrots and mushrooms. Cook for about 5 minutes. (add a drop more oil if needed)
4. Stir in the soy sauce, hoisin sauce, and sesame oil.
5. Add the cooked chicken an eggs to the skillet. Mix and cook for an additional 3 minutes.
*Serve in warm tortillas.


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• May 14, 2004 | 1:16 AM ET
Despite all of George Bush's troubles, the Kerry campaign can't seem to get any traction. Various people are wondering why not, and now there's even a poll that shows him with a mere one-point lead in California. That's got to be bad news for the Kerry Campaign, as California is normally safe territory for Democrats.
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But I have a different worry. What if Kerry wins? I don't know if he'll take the right positions -- as I've noted here before, he's said some excellent things on Iraq, and some not-so-excellent things -- but my real worry is that his positions, good or bad, won't matter because, even if he's elected, he'll be too weak to govern effectively.
I think it's fair to say that if Kerry wins, he'll win based on anti-Bush sentiment among Democrats and swing voters. But although the anybody-but-Bush vote might be good enough to get him into office, once he's elected it will evaporate: the dump-Bush voters will have gotten what they wanted, and they won't have any special reason to support any particular policy of Kerry's -- or even Kerry himself. (And polls bear out that this is what's going on, as RealClearPolitics quotes from the Investor's Business Daily poll: "Intensity of support among Bush voters is much stronger than support for Kerry, the poll continues to show. While 68% of Bush's supporters say they support him strongly, only 38% of Kerry's supporters say the same for him.")
So Kerry might find himself elected, but with support that rapidly fades away, leaving him subject to Washington crosswinds and a slave to his party's interest groups. That's pretty much what happened to President Jimmy Carter. He owed his election to backlash over Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, and the lingering residue of Watergate. But that turned out to be an insufficient base on which to govern. Carter's own party (especially, though not only, rivals like Ted Kennedy) cut him to ribbons. We lost ground both at home and abroad as a result.
I'm not as down on Jimmy Carter as some people are, but I don't think that many people regard his presidency as a high point in American history. If the Kerry Campaign is going to avoid that fate, Kerry needs to start putting together a program of his own, one that's got a more positive agenda than "I'm not George W. Bush." And -- here's the hard part -- he has to sell that to a lot of voters, so that if he's elected he'll have a mandate. Otherwise, a Kerry victory might leave the country with four years of weak leadership.
I doubt I'll support Kerry in November -- it's not impossible, but he'd have to convince me that he's strong on my biggest single issue, the war -- but even if I decide to oppose him, I don't want him to be a weak President if he's elected. No matter who's in charge, the country will need strong leadership, not drift, in the coming years. I hope the Kerry Campaign folks keep that in mind.
• May 12, 2004 | 11:14 PM ET
As I wrote earlier, the charges of misconduct against American troops in the Abu Ghraib prison are serious, and deserve a full investigation. I can't help but feel, though, that the media have jumped on them a bit hard, perhaps because they offer an opportunity to make the Bush Administration look bad in an election year.
How bad have things gotten? Well, the Boston Globe ran pictures purportedly of U.S. troops raping Iraqi women. Trouble is, they turned out to be pictures that had been pirated from a porn site. You can read more about that here, here, and here. The Drudge Report has a scan of the actual picture the Globe ran (it isn't on the Globe website) but be warned if you go looking for it, it's pornographic.
The Abu Ghraib story, however, has lost some of its luster in the wake of the brutal beheading of American Nick Berg by Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. This has even anti-American Arabs unhappy, as this report from The Guardian notes:
"This shows how base and vile those who wear the robe of Islam have become," said Abdullah Sahar, a political scientist at Kuwait University.
The video was released on the Internet yesterday, but appeared too late for columnists in the Middle East to comment. But many Arabs said today that the grisly execution, attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, surpassed the US military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, which has been the top story for the past 10 days in the Middle East.
"We were winning international sympathy because of what happened at Abu Ghraib, but they come and waste it all," Mr Sahar said of the militants responsible.
Of course, it's just as wrong to claim that this crime proves that all Arabs, or all Muslims, are murderous thugs as it is to claim that the Abu Ghraib incidents prove that all American troops, or all Americans, are evil.
Indeed, what we're missing in this is perspective and the sensation-driven news media -- too anxious to publish provocative pictures to check their authenticity first -- are making things worse. Instead, it's worth reading the Belmont Club weblog, whose analysis of Iraqi events has generally been more accurate than the Big Media's by a rather large margin.
Belmont Club notes today that facts matter more than emotion, and observes:
And the final fact is this. The only exit from war's inhumanity is through the doorway of victory. For while it may be mitigated, controlled and reduced to a certain extent fundamentally "war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it", though victory can end it. While it continues, as many in the Left who long for a 21st century Vietnam hope, it will unleash unpredictable forces which no one can control. Those who delighted in discovering the photographs at Abu Ghraib little imagined Nick Berg's video. And while we can safely grant Andrew Sullivan's plea and publish both, for reasons the media imagine are laudable, it is what comes next that I am afraid of.
Read the whole thing.
And here's another point: While reports of troop misconduct have bypassed government controls, so have reports from the troops of far more important events. Read this e-mail from a soldier in Iraq to get a picture of what's going on that's very different from the gloom-and-doom peddled regularly on the news.
• May 11, 2004 | 7:58 PM ET
In the heavily Muslim northern part of Nigeria, my brother often had variations on this conversation:
So, you're American. You're Jewish, right?
Er, no.
But aren't most Americans Jews?
Er, no. Maybe, like, two percent.
But they control everything in America, right?
No, not really.
Are you sure? Because I've always heard. . .
Sadly, this is becoming less unusual. After World War Two, people thought that anti-Semitism had been vanquished. In fact, it's thriving yet again -- even in allegedly liberal settings like American and European universities -- and you can't blame it all on Saudi-funded propaganda efforts, though there are far more of those than most Americans realize.
Ron Rosenbaum has edited a just-published collection of essays entitled Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Antisemitism, that looks at the resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world, and especially in its place of origin, Europe. The authors include David Brooks, Frank Rich, Barbara Amiel, Larry Summers, Nat Hentoff, Philip Roth, and a host of other luminaries.
To my mind, a growth in anti-Semitism is an early-warning sign of more general societal decay. It's no surprise that it's widespread in Arab countries, where dictators since World War Two have used it as a way of distracting their people from misrule at home. What's more troubling is that anti-Semitism is arising in Europe, its original wellspring, once again. There are a lot of reasons to be worried about the political health of Europe, even without the disastrous history of European anti-Semitism over many centuries -- especially, of course, the 20th. But the resurgence of anti-Semitism is yet another reason to think that Europe continues to have festering political issues that might once again burst forth to trouble the world.
Rosenbaum's book won't solve the problem, but at least it's bringing some attention to it, from a variety of perspectives. Let's hope enough people notice.
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The GOP Has It Backwards About Ted Kennedy
Via tweet from Kyle Moore, comes this op-ed from Geoff Garin about which political party most needs another Ted Kennedy:
Ted Kennedy's voice and leadership will be sorely missed in the effort to pass health-care reform. But when Republicans say that Democrats don't have anyone to take his place in achieving a bipartisan compromise, they are either missing, or deliberately obscuring, the relevant lesson of Kennedy's example.
The truth is that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, with the support of the White House, has worked hard for months to reach consensus with Sens. Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe and Mike Enzi on a health-reform bill — incurring, for his trouble, more than a little heat from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But so far, the Republicans haven't had the will, courage or independence to strike a deal. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been doing his best to end the negotiations, apparently agreeing with Jim DeMint's political assessment that health care could be President Obama's Waterloo. And now Chuck Grassley says he could sign only a compromise that a majority of the GOP caucus would support.
The problem is not that there is no Ted Kennedy among the Democrats who understands the art of compromise. The problem is that there is no Republican willing to provide, for health reform, the kind of bold leadership that Kennedy provided to help pass controversial legislation when George W. Bush was president.


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I get the above error when I started XAMPP this morning. It ran all day yesterday without problem (I installed it yesterday). There are no logs for today.
I can't attach a screenshot, so the entire message for Apache is:
Problem detected: Apache Not Found!)
Disabling Apache buttons
Run this program from your XAMPP root directory!
I am running the program from the XAMPP root directory as an administrator. I am using Windows 7 and XAMPP Control Panel v3.2.1.


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Are you sure?
This action might not be possible to undo. Are you sure you want to continue?
The Second Edition of Connective Tissue and Its Heritable Disorders: Molecular, Genetic, and Medical Aspects is the definitive reference text in its field, with over 40% more pages on the nature, diagnosis, and treatment of disease than its predecessor. Collecting new research on disorders detailed in the first edition as well as on those previously excluded, editors Peter Royce and Beat Steinmann provide the most up-to-date clinical and scientific information for medical specialists treating affected individuals. Features of this revised and updated volume include detailed reviews of the clinical diagnosis, mode of inheritance, risk of recurrence, and prenatal diagnosis of each inherited connective tissue disorder; a thorough description of the morphology of connective tissues; a completely updated and revised section on the biology of the extracellular matrix; and the addition of syndromes such as craniosyntosis, and disorders of sulfate metabolism.


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Present: Rich Bennett, Cynthia Bowker, Will Chaney, Bill Covey, Winston Harris, Bobbie Meng, Suzy Shaw, Hilton Soto, Geoffrey Stewart, Ying Tang
Ongoing Systems Updates
- Martha Hruska will be in charge of the Systems Department during Bill's Leave of Absence. Staff meetings will continue to be held - as will Liaison and Middle Managers. Martha will chair Middle Managers, but she has a scheduling conflict with the Liaisons timeslot. Whoever is appointed temporary chair will have to send out the meeting reminder. Systems staff will have full phone contact and access to Martha.
- Bill notes that there are great peripheral prices on items for home computers right now: 20 Gig HD at Best Buy - Maxtor for $120, CD Write Once - 30 Gig - $15, CD read/write 8x4x32 - about $200 (internal only). Memory and other items are available at really good prices.
Equipment Received/Installed/Repaired
- Barcode readers received.
- Work station status: Dell station is hung up somewhere, Winston is checking on it.
- Bill is clearing out his old trouble tickets and he encourages everyone to do the same, as Martha likes detail.
Software Projects Status
- Classification Plus & Cataloguer's Desktop license expired a week early. Bill is working to fix it.
- North Tower - Will saw Tim on Thursday. The wiring job is on hold for some reason and Digital was anxious. Will is going to check on this.
- Conduit - money is now available, Facilities will purchase and install. Digital will be back - need to coordinate with Judy.
DP Coordinator
- Employee-Patron Update blew up. A special request to Hilton was to take the 9 & 10 month faculty off the list. Tigert said the list should be cleaned up this week. Exchange/Access Services is still doing some A&P manually requested faculty status.
- Dean's Menu - will be handled by Suzy & Debra in Bill's absence. Dean's Menu relates to other things - CMS may go away, which will affect how we do our batch submissions. It is scheduled to go away on the first of March - we'll try to move utilities to Unix. TSO is too expensive. We received a request to cancel Ed Teague's VM account from NERDC.
- Ying had a meeting with Erich & Stephanie - they have many new requests. Ying & Winston may reschedule their meetings with Erich for every other Tuesday instead of every Tuesday.
- Items sent to West via mail - leave slips, packing slips, etc. - seem to not be arriving at their intended destinations. Bill will investigate.
- All students except for Jorga are out this week.
- Debra out today & tomorrow.
- Bill's last day will be August 22.
- Labor Day Holiday - Mon. Sept. 4.
Back to the Systems Homepage
Last updated August 22, 2000
by Debra Harris


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Cross-border investors drive Europe property market
Dubai, March 3, 2013
European commercial real estate investment turnover reached 44.8 billion euros ($58.3 billion) in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2012, an increase of 53 per cent on Q3 2012 and 25 per cent on Q4 2011, according to real estate services firm CBRE.
The increase in investment activity was largely driven by a significant rise in cross-border investment.
Cross-border investors accounted for 46 per cent of the total in Q4 2012, up from 36 per cent in Q3 2012 (and 38 per cent in Q4 2011). This increase also goes a long way towards explaining the growth in average transaction size in Q4 2012.
The average transaction volume for investors buying in their own market stood at €21 million, increasing to €56 million for cross-border European investors and 89 million euros for non-European buyers.
US buyers were the most active cross-border investors accounting for 23 per cent of international investment in the second half of 2012. The purchase by US private equity firm Lone Star of over 1 billion euros of assets in eastern Germany was the most notable deal of the quarter.
This was due not only to its size but the relatively opportunistic nature of the buyer and the diversity of the assets acquired. The transaction also suggests that international investor interest may have begun to return to the secondary market.
German investors were the second most significant cross-border buyer in the second half of 2012 but, unlike American investors, German money remained focused on prime property and in key European cities. Paris and Central London accounted for 50 per cent of German cross-border investment.
Norway made up the top three cross-border investors this quarter following strong activity by the Norwegian government pension fund (NBIM), which was involved in several of the largest deals recorded in 2012, including the purchase of a 50 per cent interest in the Meadowhall shopping centre in the UK and the sale and leaseback of Credit Suisse's headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.
London continued to lead the way as the largest and most liquid investment market in Europe accounting for 21 per cent of activity in the European markets in 2012. International investment activity in London registered a sharp year-on-year increase of 59 per cent in 2012 rising to 13.4 billion euros compared to 8.4 billion euros in 2011, with substantial investment coming from Asia and the Americas.
The French market benefited from institutional funds seeking prime office and retail space in Paris and Lyon and increased activity from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. With the exception of the capital from the Middle East, cross-border investment into Paris came largely from Europe, in contrast to London.
Four of the ten largest transactions recorded in Europe in H2 2012 occurred in Germany, and 26 deals were valued at over 100 million euros. Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and Hamburg were among the top ten most active cities for investment in 2012. In contrast to London and Paris, more than half (59 per cent) of investment in these cities was made via domestic investors. Similarly, investment in Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen was largely domestic.
Jonathan Hull, managing director, EMEA Capital Markets, CBRE, said: "We expect to see continued inflows of capital from diverse global locations during 2013. Key players from Asia and the US will continue to seek opportunities across major continental European markets."
"Whilst London has been the major beneficiary of inward capital flows to date, we believe a number of other European cities will be seen as more attractive during the course of the year. However, differing risk profiles of investor groups will dictate their depth of interest in individual markets.
"While there is no imminent prospect of trading volumes returning to the levels of 2006 or 2007, Europe's major markets are operating at a much improved level of liquidity and the gradually improving economic backdrop in some core markets is likely to facilitate greater cross-border investment in 2013," he added. – TradeArabia News Service


text: Just came across flixtime on the BBC today, Just tested it and it delivered : This Vid Only slight problem is downloading it which means signing up for their Lite package - 5$/month or 25$/6 months etc. They have more packages with greater scope to play about with the video, quality etc etc - but if you just want to create a quick vid for free, and embed it/share it - This site rocks!!! Does all that "Andy Jenkins" trickery, (think that was his name) without you doing anything!!! Only get 60 seconds though for free, 180 5$/mth and so on..


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Makerere University is a founder member of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and is one of the main beneficiary of the Competitive Grants System. As part of implementation, RUFORUM provides support to its member universities to undertake projects that are deemed strategic to generate research and development solutions. Through the RUFORUM platform, university research teams are provided with experienced mentors to provide backstopping support and feedback on all aspects for project implementation. It is on this basis that RUFORUM convened a three day meeting with research teams from Makerere University. Research projects that were targeted for support included the Graduate Research Grants awarded in 2014 and 2015 as well as Institutional Strengthening Grants (ISGs) awarded from 2014 to 2016. The meeting focused on assessing the status of implementation of all RUFORUM supported projects in the university; providing opportunity for collaboration across projects; emphasizing the importance of timely completion; and providing support to graduate students to secure timely completion of their training and research programmes.
Date of publication:
Region Focus:
East Africa
RUFORUM Annual Reports, Strategic Plans, and Other Corporate Outputs
Agris Subject Categories:
Project sponsor:
Web resource


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How do I plan events for Bruin Plaza?
Bruin Plaza is an outdoor venue that can be used for various activities from noon concerts to food sales. Amplified sound is limited to the 12-1pm hour. The venue is reserved at Student Organizations, Leadership & Engagement and equipment is requested at the Student Union Event Services Office at least one week in advance. Please review these guidelines.
How do I plan events for Meyerhoff Park?
Meyerhoff Park is a free speech venue and the ideal location for a noon speaking event. Your organization must reserve the space with your CSP advisor and bring the sound request to the Student Union Event Services Office at least 3 days in advance.
What are the meanings of the Events Online Status?
- Deactivated – The Event Organizer has not submitted the application in the time allotted. The Event Organizer should contact the Scheduler and have them Re-activate the event application.
- In Progress – The Event Organizer has submitted the application and the Facilitators and CSP Advisor are reviewing the application.
- Confirmed – The CSP Advisor authorized the Application.
- Past Due – The CSP Advisor(s) did not sign the application in the allotted time and the application is still unconfirmed.
- Denied – The CSP Advisor or Facilitators have denied authorization but the Scheduler has not Cancelled the application yet.
- Cancelled – The application was cancelled by the Scheduler.
Can I advertise my event or student group in the Student Union?
Yes! We have multiple ways you can advertise. Check our the Advertising link on the left.
Where do we reserve classrooms?
If you are interested in reserving classrooms on campus please contact the UCLA Events Office at Kerckhoff Hall 168 or call the main office (310) 825-8989.
I missed the Lottery. Can I still reserve meeting rooms?
Yes, you can still reserve meeting rooms but you will have to wait until after the last day of lottery appointments. For more details refer to the Lottery Guidelines.
Can my registered student group co-host an event with an outside company, non-profit, or UCLA department?
Co-hosting with an outside company or non-profit can be a very rewarding and educational experience for your group. However, the rules regarding co-hosting an event with anyone other than a fellow UCLA registered student group are very strict. In order to receive the student group benefits (free venue rental, reduced rates, etc), the entirety of the event must be initiated, programmed, planned, and executed by the registered student group members. Please speak with your ASUCLA event manager and your CSP advisor to see what your options are.


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Directory of Heating Contractors in Wooster, OH
Contractors, are you considering buying leads? Contact Us.
About Wooster
The city of Wooster is located in the heart of Ohio. Located slightly to northeast of the geographical center of the state, the city's summers feature average temperatures in the 70s. In the winter, the temperatures are very cold, with averages often in the high 20s. It is the county seat of Wayne County and is often referred to as having an "education industry." Because the College of Wooster and a subsidiary of Ohio State are both located here, Wooster can boast more PhDs per capita than anywhere else in the United States. It is also home to a minor league hockey team.
Local Heating / Cooling Parts Suppliers
(216) 262 3300


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Posted at 22 Aug, 19:07h in Case Studies
A global brand with a successful loyalty program needed to find new ways to increase its market share and enhance its consumer engagement. One shortcoming of the rewards program was that members could only earn points for their purchases in the brand's specialty retail stores using a registered card. When they bought the brand's products in grocery stores or other wholesale channels, they didn't earn points.
The brand leveraged the OPTEL Verify Brand Software loyalty retail channel expansion module to double the members in its loyalty program within a year.Download Case Study


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The Samsung Moment, Samsung's first Android device in the states, is now available on Sprint for $179 with new 2-year contract. What makes the Moment special is that it packs a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, a hardware keyboard, and an 800 MHz processor. For Sprint Users who are looking to jump onto Android but can't leave a hardware keyboard, the Moment looks like a great option. And like the HTC Hero, the Samsung Moment ships with Android 1.5.
Who's buying the Samsung Moment? Who's waiting for DROID?


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Developing SOP Skills:
This article brings about the fundamentals of writing / imposing industrial Standard Operating procedures (SOP's); which ensures internal compliance requirements / external regulatory requirements. If you are a pharma / bio pharmaceutical manufacturer, this is no surprise with Food and Drug Administration because "establish" means to define, to document, to implement and to comply with regulatory requirements.
There are unnumerable instances of regulatory authorities and warning letters regarding compliance procedures that take place within bio pharmaceutical facilities throughout the global landscape. For Example: If companies do not have any quality audit process in place to ensure that the quality system is in compliance with the established quality management requirements and to influence the effectivity of the quality process. If as on date no audits that have been taken place, facility take a commonsense approach and look at what is mandatory to exert concontinue reading


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Boyfriend jeans are obviously a staple in everyone's wardrobe these days. In fact, I had one. Unfortunately my recent weight loss means that it's way too big now! Now it's been given away and my wardrobe no longer has a pair of boyfriend jeans in it. Le sigh. So the search is on for the perfect pair of boyfriend jeans. *serious face*
|Photo Credit: Kristina B on Lookbook [LINK]
Jeans from H&M
|Photo Credit: Alyssa L on Lookbook [LINK]
Jeans from Romwe
The two examples above are what I'm looking for: light wash, slightly distressed, baggy from the hips down. The ones I've found usually fulfil the first two criteria...but fail miserably at the third. Because of my proportions - tiny waist, big booty - things are either perfect at the waist and too tight at the butt, or too loose all around.
I've even taken the boyfriend jeans term literally and tried on men's jeans, but as it turns out, there's added...space...around the crotch area. Which I cannot fill. I don't know why I didn't know this before...( ̄ー ̄)
|Sorry, Jessie J. In this case, I cannot do it like a dude la.
I've yet to go to stores with a higher price range like Zara and Gap, and honestly I'm reluctant...but it looks like that's what I've gotta do! I'm thinking this is less an obsession and more of a necessity (hashtag justificationnnnn! Am I right or am I right??).
What say you? Any suggestions on where I should continue my hunt for the perfect pair of boyfriend jeans?


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Obama Promises Smarter U.S. Immigration System
Remarks Suggest President Considering Executive Actions to Deal With Issue
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama on Friday promised to help make the much-criticized U.S. immigration system smarter.
Mr. Obama's remarks came as a recent influx of immigrant children into the U.S. has emerged as a humanitarian crisis, in part because of federal rules that require them to be sent back across the border.
At a Fourth-of-July...


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Snell Memorial Foundation's Response to:
The New York Times online article "Sorting Out Differences in Helmet Standards"
Dear Sirs;
I welcome the opportunity to discuss the advantages of Snell certification in response to Mr. Ford's recent article, "Sorting Out Differences in Helmet Standards" which appeared in the New York Times on-line edition, September 24, 2009.
Mr. Ford describes Snell as "financed by helmet makers." In fact Snell receives no direct financial support. Snell certification services are conducted on a fee for service basis. Charges are levied for testing and for the Snell certification labels which go into each Snell certified helmet. These are the only revenues. Snell's directors and staff (www.smf.org) are not allowed any financial connection with the helmet industry. This is customary for any not-for-profit organization serving the public interest. Further, Snell's charges to the industry are minimal. The real costs of Snell certification go into the additional engineering and quality control necessary to meet Snell Standards. The value is in the helmets.
Mr. Ford mentions conflicts. There is no real conflict between Snell Standards and government mandated helmet requirements. Helmets must meet the government requirements or they are not eligible for sale. Snell motorcycle helmets distributed for sale in the US meet DOT requirements. It's the law. In fact, NHTSA suggests that Snell certification can be a better indication of DOT compliance than a simple "DOT" label by itself.
And there is no real cause for conflict between Snell Standards and those who prefer the mandatory minimums set forth in the United States' DOT standard or in ECE 22-05 now required in Europe. Snell Standards are voluntary. Manufacturers choose to produce Snell certified helmets and riders choose to wear them. The reason Snell has been able to set standards and certify helmets for the last fifty years is that many riders, experts and manufacturers agree that Snell Standards and Snell certification demand more than the mandatory minimums.
Mr. Ford contends that Snell certified helmets are too hard. But he offers no data supporting the conjecture that softer helmets will reduce the incidence of fatality or serious, long term head injury. And of the few experts he names, none have published any basic research on brain injury. What is true is that Snell certified helmets have met and continue to meet US Federal requirements. And these Snell certified helmets will provide protection in head impacts much more severe than those called out in the Federal tests.
There are at least two dimensions to helmet performance: momentum and energy. The helmet must control the momentum transfer between the wearer's head and the impact surface, that is; it must be sufficiently soft to keep the g's within safe levels. But the helmet must also manage the total impact energy. Because once the energy management is exhausted, the helmet loses all capacity to limit g levels. Any remaining shock will, instead, test the physical limits of the rider's bone and tissue. There seems to be no upper limit to the amount of energy management a rider might ever need. And street riders certainly need as much or more than riders in many competitive events. Snell Standards look for all the energy management any rider, street or competition, could reasonably be expected to wear.
DOT requires only a fraction of the impact energy management demanded in Snell Standards and ECE 22-05 demands even less than DOT. But there is no official objection to helmets managing more than these mandatory minimums. And there is a considerable gap between these minimums and the most that current technology can provide. Snell certification identifies helmets with premium levels of impact management and, in so doing, serves those who choose to build those helmets and those who choose to wear them.
Mr. Ford refers to Mr. David Thom's comparison study of helmets performed for Motorcyclist Magazine. In fact, Mr. Ford himself wrote the resulting Motorcyclist Magazine article. Our objection, at the time, was that the comparison avoided the issue of energy management capacity. Only liner softness was considered. Interestingly though, all the helmets described in the article appeared to satisfy all the mandatory requirements. So to say that any one of these helmets was better than another, calls the mandatory requirements into question. But without studies demonstrating reduced incidences of serious injury or death, such statements are unwarranted.
Mr. Ford worries over the differences between the current Snell M2005 and the M2010 revision which takes effect in October. The principal motivation for M2010 is that it makes it possible for the same helmet to meet Snell, US and European requirements. Riders everywhere may now be able to choose headgear with premium levels of impact management just as riders in the US have for years.
Mr. Ford also worries that there may not be any helmets certified to both Snell M2010 and ECE 22-05. In fact, a helmet meeting both M2010 and ECE 22-05 has been advertised in Europe since spring. When this M2010/ECE helmet succeeds, I'm sure the manufacturer will not have to wait too long for competition.
Finally, Mr. Ford worries that riders will not be able to distinguish between helmets certified to M2005 and those certified to M2010. He closes with the suggestion that riders avoid Snell certification altogether. I anticipate no such problems. Snell does not require it but I am certain that every manufacturer of M2010 certified helmets will proclaim their M2010 status loudly and clearly. However, I am also certain riders will be as well protected with M2005. My own advice is simply this: Wear a helmet. If you can, wear a Snell certified full face helmet. If none of those will do, then wear a Snell certified open face helmet. And if none of those will do, then wear a good DOT or even ECE 22-05 helmet from a reputable company. But wear a helmet. Our species has no inborn capacity for sustaining direct head impacts. Anyone in harm's way ought to armor up.
Edward B. Becker
Executive Director/Chief Engineer
Snell Memorial Foundation


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I applaud the filing of the Competitive Workforce bill in the Florida House of Representative. House bill 391, filed by Rep. Kelly Skidmore, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Florida's civil rights statues.
Currently, it is legal to discriminate against someone in employment, housing and public accommodations because that person is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). The bill would add these categories into laws that already protect Floridians based on race, age, disability, sex and religion.
"I am proud to be the sponsor of this very important legislation," said Representative Skidmore, "I look forward to working with Equality Florida and all Floridians who believe that discrimination is wrong and ought to be illegal."
As the Competitive Workforce Bill was being filed, the Tampa City Council voted to add "gender identity and gender expression" to its existing human right ordinance, which already includes sexual orientation protections.
"Even as cities and companies across our state adopt policies banning anti-gay and gender identity-based discrimination, Florida law fails to provide statewide protection to LGBT Floridians against workplace discrimination," said Mallory Wells, Public Policy Director for Equality Florida, "Equality Florida is working with fair-minded legislators to introduce this legislation because no one should lose their job because of who they are."
Organizations and businesses can sign online to support the Competitive Workforce Bill.