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Save £5 (50%)
Tesco Flocked Single Air Bed
This comfortable and versatile single air bed is ideal for camping trips, festivals or for use as a guest bed. It has a strong vinyl coil beam construction, and a waterproof flocked top that prevents sheets from slipping and provides a soft velvety feel for added comfort.
Easy to set up, this air bed inflates in just 1-2 mins using the 2-in-1 valve. It weighs 1.5kg and has a maximum weight capacity of 75kg. Included with the bed is a repair patch and an instruction manual. Pump sold separately.


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Some things money can't buy.
Darrelle Revis is not among those things.
Responding to a fan on Twitter this morning, the Buccaneers cornerback said he'd rather be richer and winless than still be a member of the 5-4 Jets, via the New York Daily News.[tweet https://twitter.com/Revis24/status/397285603106361344]
It was obvious that the relationship with the Jets was not good at the time he was traded, and hadn't been for a while.
But that's a callous tone to take when you're 0-8 and just getting off a red-eye after your team blew a chance to win at Seattle the day before.

subset: commoncrawl


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Browse Artwork
- 1 / Converging Cultures
- 2 / Dreams and Visions
- 3 / History and Memory
- 4 / Ceremony and Society
- 5 / Cosmology and Belief
- 6 / Death
- 7 / Domestic Life
- 8 / Writing
- 9 / Portraits
- 10 / The Natural World
- 11 / The Urban Experience
- 12 / Conflict and Resistance
- 13 / The Body
|Portrait of Woman Wearing Corset
|Unknown artist, United States
|ca. 1899
|Photographic print
|Meat Joy
|Carolee Schneemann (American, b. 1939)
|Group performance with raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, plastic, rope, and shredded scrap paper
|Burning Man Effigy
|American artist
|Early 21st century
|Wood, nails
|Soul Recovery Ceremony paraphernalia
|CHiXapkaid (Michael Pavel) (b. 1959); Kay-UAmihs (Winona Plant); and Sm3tcoom (Delbert Miller) (1944-2005), Skokomish Indian Nation, Southern Puget Salish, Pacific Northwest
|Wood, paint, cedar bark, grass, imitation huckleberries
|The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton
|Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
|Oil on canvas
|Andy Warhol
|Alice Neel (American, 1900–1984)
|Oil on canvas
|Kennedy Family on beach, Hyannis Port, 1959 (Caroline overhead)
|Mark Shaw (American, 1922–1969)
|Vintage gelatin silver print
|Diane von Furstenberg
|Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987)
|Equestrian Portrait of the Count-Duke Olivares
|Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977).
|Oil on canvas
|Chrysler Building
|William van Alen (American, 1882/3–1954)
|Steel frame, brick, concrete, masonry, and metal cladding
|Tribute to Jackie Robinson
|David McShane (American, b. ca. 1970)
|I Hear you Bro
|Darius Jones (Leon Reid IV) (American, b. 1979) in collaboration with Brad Downey (American, b. 1980)
|Aluminum, Spray Enamel
|La grande vitesse
|Alexander Calder (American, 1898–1976)
|Sheet metal, bolts, and paint
|Benjamin Franklin Parkway
|Paul Philippe Cret (French, 1876–1945) and Jacques Greber (French, 1882–1962) (designers)
|Pavement and trees
|The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York
|Christo (American, Bulgarian-born, b. 1935) and Jeanne-Claude (American, French-born, 1935-2009)
|Vinyl poles, nylon fabric, and metal bases
|The New York City Waterfalls
|Olafur Eliasson (Danish, b. 1967)
|Scaffolding and piping
|Tar Beach 2
|Faith Ringgold (American, b. 1930)
|Silkscreen on silk
|Blocks, Strips, Strings, and Half-Squares Quilt
|Mary Lee Bendolph (American, b. 1935), Gee's Bend Quilter's Collective, Gee's Bend, AL
|Bud (William) Fields, Lily Rogers Fields, and Lilian Fields
|Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975)
|Gelatin silver print
|Fallingwater (exterior)
|Frank Lloyd Wright (American, 1867–1959)
|Concrete, steel, stone, and glass
|Honeycomb Quilt
|Elizabeth Van Horne Clarkson (American, 1771–1852)
|ca. 1830
|Revenge of the Goldfish
|Sandy Skoglund (American, b. 1946)
|Cibachrome color photograph
|Lienzo of Ihuitlan
|Mexican School, Oaxaca
|Mid-16th century
|Cotton, dyed pigments, and ink
|The Railroad Stations Were at Times So Over-Packed with People Leaving that Special Guards Had to Be Called in to Keep Order from the Migration Series
|Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917–2000)
|Tempera on gesso on composition board
|Stu-mick-o-súcks, Buffalo Bull's Back Fat, head chief, Blood Tribe
|George Catlin (American, 1796–1872)
|Oil on canvas
|American Marines Raising American Flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima
|Rosenthal, Joe (American, 1911–2006)
|Gelatin silver print
|Mulackstrasse 37, Berlin from The Writing on the Wall, Projections in Berlin's Jewish Quarter
|Shimon Attie (American, b. 1957)
|Photograph (of slide projection)
|Untitled, page number 21, from the Arrow's Elk Society Ledger
|Arrow (Elk Society), Cheyenne (active 19th century), Central Plains
|ca. 1875
|Graphite and colored pencil on ledger paper
|Racing Clocks Run Slow: Archaeology of a Racetrack
|Shimon Attie (American, b. 1957)
|(Still from) Three-channel high-definition video installation
|Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point Trail
|Albert Bierstadt (American, born Germany, 1830–1902)
|Oil on canvas
|Falls of the Yosemite
|Eadweard Muybridge (British, emigrated to the US, 1830–1904)
|Albumen print
|The Serpent Mound
|Possibly Adena culture (500 BCE–200 CE) or Fort Ancient culture (1000 CE–1550 CE)
|ca. 1000–1200 CE
|Clay, rock, and soil
|Spiral Jetty
|Robert Smithson (American, 1938–1973)
|Mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, and water
|Wallowa Mountains Memory
|Kay WalkingStick (American, Cherokee, b. 1935)
|Oil and gold leaf on wood
|Central Park (view of the Turtle Pond)
|Frederick Law Olmsted (American, 1822–1903) and Calvert Vaux (English, 1824–1895)
|Originally designed 1857
|Stone, earth, topsoil, water, various tree and plant species
|Pelea de Gallos (Fight of the Roosters)
|Miguel Luciano (Puerto Rican, b. 1972)
|Acrylic on canvas
|Memorial for Solomon and Joseph Hays
|Unknown artist, United States
|Watercolor, pearls, gold wire, beads, and locks of blond and brown hair (natural, chopped and dissolved) on ivory
|Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats from Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)
|Kara Walker (American, b. 1969)
|Offset lithography and silkscreen
|For the Guggenheim
|Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
|September 26–December 31, 2008
|(Photograph of) light projection
|Ed Ruscha (American, b. 1937)
|1962, reworked 1963
|Oil on canvas
|One and Three Chairs
|Joseph Kosuth (American, b. 1945)
|Wood chair, black and white photograph, and text
|Graffiti Tag
|Faro (Egyptian, active early 21st century)
|ca. 2006–2009
|Spray paint
|Abstract Figures on Paper
|John J.B. Murry (Murray) (American, 1908–1988)
|Tempera and felt-tip pen on paper


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DuraPlay Courts High Performance Basketball Court Surfaces are the most innovative basketball court systems, incorporating recent advancements in technology to insure a comfortable, safe surface. This is the ideal court for residential backyards or for professional basketball courts. The 3/4 in. thick, shock-absorbing suspended surface reduces playing fatigue and provides better ball rebound with exceptional game performance. DuraPlay Courts offer a superior grip surface design that delivers unequaled performance in game play, allowing for greater safety when jumping and turning in close proximity. Manufactured with a patented 6-point locking mechanism connecting each tile manufactured with Swiss design and a 16 injection point tooling to present the flattest, most uniform game court tiles on the market. This flatness and tight locking mechanism allows for the truest, most responsive ball bounce of any tile available today. Superior surface grip gives you greater safety when jumping and turning in close proximity. The absorbing nature of the tiles reduces impact from falls that might otherwise cause injury. Note: DuraPlay Courts require 3 weeks for delivery to your home or to a local Home Depot. Because of the wide selection of color options, each court is made when ordered.
- Manufactured using the safest copolymer heat reflective materials UV additives molded into each tile to offer greater protection from color fade
- 0.625 in. thickness x 45 ft.11 in. width x 29 ft. 11 in. length
- Precision engineered interlocking tiles arrive numbered for easy placement
- Can be installed on both concrete and wooden subfloors
- Both residential and commercial use
- Cleans easily with a damp cloth, mop and hose
- Custom made to order. Please allow 3 weeks for delivery
- All orders for this item ship via freight and arrive in multiple boxes


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Welcome to ESL Techies. As technology integration specialists, we have been training ESL teachers to create 21st century classrooms that help ESL learners acquire both content and language skills.
The idea for ESL Techies.com began several years ago while we were training teachers on how to use iPods in the classroom. We presented our workshop "Using iPods in the ESL Classroom†at Channel Thirteen's Celebration of Teaching and Learning in NYC and it was very well-received. We realized immediately that there was a great need to help teachers and administrators maximize the potential uses of technology in the ESL classroom.
What is really exciting is that we know technology is an incredibly unique, effective and engaging tool that helps our kids who are struggling to keep up with their native English speaking peers. So finally, today we have the blog we have dreamed about.
We hope you will visit and contribute often as we discuss the various ways that the classroom learning environment is changing for the better for our ELLs. Our aim is to provide you with all sorts of useful information. There is so much to share with you, that we hardly know where to start.
This blog will become a great resource for you and an even greater place to visit regularly for new ideas worth trying in your classroom, school, or district.


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Ubuntu 9.04 Wallpaper: No Jackalope
The last few Ubuntu Linux released featured background and artwork that depicted the versions codename. For example when Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron was released we enjoyed the abstract bird-like background and then Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex brought us the Ibex background which wasn't too bad. As Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Alpha version rolled out users enjoyed new login screen, themes and the new boot splash theme. I was sure we'd be commenting about a new Jackalope background any day now. Now as I preview the release of Ubuntu 9.04 Beta codenamed Jaunty Jackalope, I see no Jackalope background. Instead it looks like Ubuntu has added a stylish background that favors the same theme colors as previous versions but gives off a professional vibe. I'm both excited for the new look but disappointed in the lack of a Jackalope background.
In case you prefer the lighter more "Ubuntu-like" look, Ubuntu 9.04 has also included this lighter version in the Ubuntu 9.04 beta release. The second abckground looks a little more like the traditional Ubuntu background.
Here are a few places that you can find interesting Ubuntu artwork. If you know of a few places feel free to comment and i'll add them to this article.
Ubuntu Artwork:
Here's a look at the two new backgrounds included in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.
May 28, 2009 at 5:33 am
Thanks a lot!! This is great. Thanks for sharing.
October 3, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Very Nice Thank You 🙂
March 28, 2009 at 10:11 pm


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National Anthems Midi Files Backing Tracks
Download National Anthem MIDI Files Backing Tracks
Download the latest and classic National Anthem MIDI and MP3 backing tracks with free lyrics (where available). Hit Trax has a large range of MIDI and MP3 backing tracks covering many popular genres and artists.
Choose from over 40,000 tiles, professionally produced by our team of musicians. All Hit Trax backing tracks are licensed and royalty paid (AMCOS).
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The new action spy thriller "Red 2" starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker and Helen Mirren opens at a Costco. The only action at the moment is a shopping cart with a bum wheel. A heated discussion about backyard grills and power sprays is underway. Until a box, a bomb and an old spy on Aisle 3 threaten to upset this banal scene.
It's official, the retired and extremely dangerous — a.k.a. RED — crew of aging international spies is back for another round of AARP-style havoc. Which means the world will be a safer place — eventually — and youngsters, that would be anyone under 40, will learn to respect their elders or pay for it.
What was a minor gag in 2010's "Red" has become a major thread in "Red 2," with the issues of aging and retirement front and center. Even the movie's central intrigues — a long lost weapon of mass destruction and the brilliant scientist who created it — are old. Thank you, Anthony Hopkins, for showing how delightfully devious a villain with memory loss can be.
Screenwriting brothers Jon and Erich Hoeber are back for Round 2 as well, but directing duties have shifted to Dean Parisot. No doubt the hope was that Parisot could do to the action genre what he did to the "Star Trek" universe in the spot-on satire of 1999's "Galaxy Quest." He has, and he hasn't. "Red 2" is much more of a mixed bag than it should have been.
But back to Costco. The legendary Frank Moses (Willis), determined to stay retired this time, is commandeering the cart. He doesn't want Sarah (Parker), the girl he fell for over the phone in "Red," to get caught in any more crossfire. She, on the other hand, is dying for more time in the spy game.
In a very good move, Malkovich's role as electronics-wizard Marvin and his spy-jinx have been ratcheted up, while his crazy has been toned down. Now he's more of a smart, insistent noodge, and the movie is better for it. In fact, if everyone delivered their lines with the rat-a-tat-tat precision of Malkovich, Mirren and Hopkins, the studio might have had a better movie on its hands.
Meanwhile, crazy and old has been reserved for Bailey (Hopkins), a scientist the Brits locked up as a mental case 32 years ago. CIA interest in an old covert operation called Nightshade has resurfaced. Somehow, Frank and Marvin factor in, which once again makes them targets. It's complicated, and the movie spends far too much time trying to explain.
Suffice it to say that in short order, there is an ever widening circle of sharpshooters looking to take them out, including old friend Victoria (Mirren), that classy British assassin whose romance on the run with Russian master-spy Ivan (Brian Cox) continues to sizzle.
The movie does not pull back on the action front — in fact, the run and gun scenes are endless. Agent Jack Horton (Neal McDonough always a good bad guy) is in charge of the CIA dirty work, and newcomer Han (Byung Hun Lee) brings martial arts action to the mix as he decides whether to settle an old grudge against Frank or throw in with him.
But if anything, the sequel is more focused on romance.
Sarah and Frank are working through relationship issues already when Catherine Zeta-Jones turns up as Katja, Frank's sultry ex. Katja's big dilemma is whether to shoot Frank or seduce him, while Sarah's is whether to shoot or strangle her.
Although the romance between Victoria and Ivan heats things up, the one between Sarah and Frank tends to cool things down. Some of the cute-factor of the first — he kidnapped her to save her — has been lost now that they're a couple. Sparks do fly on occasion, mostly when Sarah uses her biggest undercover asset — a kiss that can apparently melt the heart of any villain in any country. It makes Frank crazy jealous. But for the most part, he's just so mellow, and Willis' inherent charm goes only so far.
The "thing" the world needs saving from besides another bad romance is that mysterious weapon Bailey made. To get Bailey out of lock-up and to recover the bomb before it gets into the wrong hands is what keeps everyone on the move. Still, for all the pyrotechnics, you never believe that love, the world or the senior spies are in any real danger.
Follow @BetsySharkey on Twitter and on Google+
'Red 2'
MPAA rating: PG-13 for pervasive action and violence including frenetic gunplay, and for some language and drug material
Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes
Playing: In general release


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As stars age, they often shed their skins, so to speak, casting off expansive shells of dust and gas into interstellar space. A new look at the shell surrounding a type of aging star called a red giant shows that the star's ejected husk carries in its structure the imprint of its formation and subsequent evolution.
Matthias Maercker of the European Southern Observatory and the University of Bonn in Germany and his colleagues targeted R Sculptoris, a red giant star in the southern constellation of Sculptor, with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). The radio telescope complex is already producing preliminary science, although it is still under construction in Chile's high-altitude Atacama Desert. ALMA will eventually consist of 50 widely spaced dish antennas, each of them 12 meters in diameter, plus a compact grouping of 16 additional dishes. As of last month 40 of the 66 planned antennas had been deployed. Data from the myriad dishes can be melded together by a computerized correlator to provide a single high-resolution radio image of an astronomical object.
The peek afforded by ALMA revealed that the shell around R Sculptoris is not spherical, as had been assumed, but has been twisted into a spiral, as depicted in the visualization of ALMA data above. Such spiral structure is thought to mark the presence of a stellar companion, so it now appears that R Sculptoris has an unseen binary partner. Maercker and his colleagues published the results of their observations in the October 11 issue of Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)
The researchers could also infer from the shell's structure a timetable for its creation. R Sculptoris looks to have erupted the shell of material in a sort of stellar convulsion called a thermal pulse about 1,800 years ago. The thermal pulse lasted about 200 years, Maercker and his colleagues have concluded, during which time the star cast off about three times the mass of Jupiter in dust and gas.
—John Matson


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Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Mendelsohn To Paul Weiss
According to a source, Mendelsohn "stands to earn $2.5 million annually." The WSJ notes that this is a significant sum "particularly for a lawyer arriving at firm without a ready list of clients."
The WSJ notes that "Mr. Mendelsohn has overseen a hot field in prosecution in recent years" and that "it has been up to the Justice Department - and specifically to Mr. Mendelsohn - to interpret the law."
The WSJ notes that "corporations are likely to be eager for his inside views on how the Justice Department goes about deciding which cases to investigate and prosecute among the many that it comes across every year."
According to the WSJ, Mendelsohn was courted by several other firms.
10 comments:
- AnonymousApril 13, 2010 at 5:56 PM
Dear Professor Koehler (Michael):ReplyDelete
Thank you for your willingness to apply the Socratic method outside of the classroom.
Do you know whether hemlock has an odor?
I have no doubt that Mr. Mendelsohn has been a dedicated civil servant who has reinvigorated the prosecution of FCPA violators.
Unfortunately, I fear that many if not most large corporations regard bribes merely as a cost of doing business in much of the world. It is important not to forget that bribery is only one form of corruption. Remember that lobbying would be illegal in most countries.
I would like to raise some issues for discussion:
1) What is the likely impact on individuals who while working as government regulators or attorneys know that they have the potential to earn very high salaries in the private sector -- might they not have an incentive not to alienate or be overly strict with their prospective clients at the public's expense?
2) Since the public is the "client" of such civil servants, what fiduciary, ethical and other obligations do lawyers and other regulators have when advising or defending their new clients so that they do not have a conflict of interest to their former client(s)?
3) How can the public have confidence that potential conflict of interest situations will not have an impact on the behavior of government employees?
4) What is the relationship between the monetary value a former government employees bring their new employer that can justify a salary many times their past salaries other than the "contacts" that they made when they were employed by the government on behalf of the public? Are the laws being enforced really so complex that they cannot be "learned" in a relatively short time by most intelligent individuals? Some political appointees move from federal department to federal department -- is the practice of law somehow different or lawyers incapable of learning something new?
5) Should the public be subsidizing the training of lawyers and other professionals who in the future defend similar parties to those whom in the past were regulating or prosecuting? Might those who invested in the former government employees have a moral claim to a percentage of new fees generated?
Finally, query when government officials speak at conferences where the attendees are paying large sums of money and may constitute future employers or clients, does this not present the appearance of impropriety. Should it not be the case that whenever a public official speaks at an event that such event be open to the public free of charge?
These are complex moral issues -- I will pose them to my class tonight?
Best personal regards,
A fellow skeptic
- AnonymousApril 13, 2010 at 8:42 PM
This sort of situation where former government employees later work for the companies they once prosecuted seems to present ethical problems similar to the conflict of interest rules under the ABA's model code of professional responsibility. While there are many ways to distinguish these situations from conflicts with former private clients, there do seem to be similar ethical issues involved. I would not be surprised if this type of arrangement becomes a target for further regulation, whether by the legal profession itself or by the legislature.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 14, 2010 at 8:48 AM
Thanks to A fellow skeptic & Anonymous for raising some excellent questions. I think we need to change the laws so that these government employees must wait at least two years before being eligible to accept employment like this. I am planning to write my senators on this one and encourage everyone else who feels strongly to do the same. The government loves regulating everyone but itself, and it's time for that to change.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 14, 2010 at 9:01 AM
Query how are foreign government officials responsible for enforcing their equivalent of the FCPA, if they have one, and business persons going to react upon learning of Mr. Mendelsohn's personal decision to step down as head of DoJ's FCPA office to join a private law firm where he is likely to make incredible sums of money. With envy? Anger? Amusement?ReplyDelete
Statutorily mandated cooling off period and the use of "Chinese Walls" do not guarantee the public's interest. Mr. Mendelsohn's future employer and prospective client no doubt are aware that he will be able to provide advice that is not in the public domain as to how DoJ reaches its decisions in FCPA matters.
On occasion, on behalf of private sector clients, he will be dealing with friends and colleagues on matters involving millions if not billion of dollars. His counterparts at DoJ will almost certainly know what he received after he left his position. Will his new clients get a better "result" than they would have had they retained another law firm or lawyer. Such clients are likely to have that expectation particularly since his counterparts in the government will gain some appreciation of the market value of their connections and expertise.
Mr. Mendelsohn's personal decision is not likely to have a positive impact on foreign anti-corruption efforts of DoJ or the State Department (including USAID) -- it is likely to reduce the effectiveness of such efforts -- in effect costing the U.S. taxpayer millions of dollars.
One wonders what people at NGOs like Global Integrity or Transparency International think in private about his career choice? Will they have the courage to express their views?
- AnonymousApril 14, 2010 at 10:48 AM
The concern I have relates to the old Andre Agassi -- Nikon commercial that "perception is reality". A US civil servant, goes into the private section and makes more than 10X his government salary. If that happened in any West African country, I think most Americans would perceive that "the fix is in" in some way or another. The amount of money reported that the US governmental employee will receive from his private sector employer is so great to appear unseemly.ReplyDelete
I understand that the former DOJ employee may not negotiate with the government for one year after his or her departure. I also understand that the insight and experience of a former DOJ employee can be of immense assistance(and appropriate use) by a major law firm. I also understand that the former DOJ employee is well within his legal rights to seek employment, at the highest pay rate possible in the publice sector. So while the reality is that he is worth every dime to the law firm, the perception may not be the same.
- AnonymousApril 14, 2010 at 6:27 PM
Thank you for sharing this information. I am not certain how much of an impact his hiring will have, other than on his own bank account. I know these kinds of moves often raise suspicions doubts and questions among different observers.ReplyDelete
I am a -perhaps idealistic- believer that the government and public servants should have nothing to hide, that anything that helps citizens and private entities better understand the laws and agencies that govern them is a good thing. If Mendelsohn gets generously compensated after years serving the public interest in exchange for "insider tips" that should be public knowledge and fully transparent, then good for him.
I am far more concerned about moves in the other direction, and which are often much less publicized. From Goldman Sachs to the Treasury, from Citibank to FINCEN, from GM to the FTC, from PWC to the SEC, etc. I believe these create real conflicts of interest that have an actual (and in many cases quantifiable) adverse effect on public interest.
- AnonymousApril 15, 2010 at 7:24 AM
More than 10X his government salary? By my calculations, its more like 20X! Outrageous and wrong. This is proof that corruption and arrogance have permeated all levels of government and we need serious change.ReplyDelete
Herve, I am puzzled by your comments and that you express concerns about the same thing going on in other branches of government, but not the DOJ? What am I missing here? The DOJ should be held to a higher standard in my opinion.
- AnonymousApril 15, 2010 at 3:43 PM
What is everyone's problem?ReplyDelete
We live in a country where greed is good.
Shouldn't Mr. Mendelsohn after working hard for the government for many years be able to cash in so that he can buy a larger house, several luxury cars, a boat, and stay at 5 star hotels, etc.
Of course, once he is working for a large law firm it will likely pay his country club dues since he'll need some place where to entertain the corporate officers and directors as well as corrupt officials he will want as clients -- has to justify his salary to his new partners.
It is not as if he is depriving his former colleagues of playing golf -- they will still have public courses to use. Frankly, golf is rather boring and provides little exercise. I hear that in some sections of hell it is all one gets an opportunity to do.
I am sure Mr. Mendelsohn's family will be proud of the choice has made. He will have achieved a lot in life. He doesn't have to give any more speeches about the importance of not violating the law at conferences where the food is not very good.
He has provided us a new example of how professionals can rationalize their gaming of the system -- yet few have the courage to call it corruption. Maybe, he may end up leaving all of his wealth to charity or set up a foundation like Bill Gates (who actually created something), but I doubt it.
Why should we be troubled that he makes more money than the President? At least he is not making millions like investment bankers and henge fund managers whose incompetence and arrogance cost the taxpayer billions of dollars?
Perhaps, behavior like his and other former public officials may stimulate some members of Congress to actually represent their constituents, close some gaping loopholes, and actually look out for the public interest.
- AnonymousApril 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM
"Herve, I am puzzled by your comments and that you express concerns about the same thing going on in other branches of government, but not the DOJ? What am I missing here? The DOJ should be held to a higher standard in my opinion."ReplyDelete
I wasn't differentiating between branches of government. Rather about moves from the government to the private sector versus from the private sector to the government.
- AnonymousApril 16, 2010 at 10:02 AM
From the universal tenor of the comments, maybe I can sum up the sentiment: "It smells."ReplyDelete
When analyzing a prospective foreign third party arrangement one always asks the question as to whether or not their is a true "value for money " proposition. If there is no true "value for money" proposition there is a Red Flag that should prompt closer scrutiny.
What is the "value for money" proposition in this hiring. During a time when equity partners are fired for not pulling their weight, what value does he bring to the table to justify the salary? It would have been interesting to be at the management committee meeting to hear that explained. Was it explained with a straight face or with a wink and a nod?
It is sad that, but for Mike Koehler, we are all posting anonymously. That in itself is a telling comment.


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Deciding what to wear at this time of year can be determined by what you can cram into your pockets/rucksack. The Oneten Pioggia Vest is an ideal companion for any ride, as this versatile gilet not only offers great wind protection but is super light and packs down really well.
When I first tried it on, the cut seemed very high at the front. But in face it's an optical illusion, as the gilet has a generous tail. This keeps the worst of the splash off your rear and adds to your visibility with some reflective detail. You also have the option to button the tail up giving the appearance of a normal cut vest.
The material used is described as 'Waterproof and windproof eVent main body fabric for ultimate weather protection, with a superlight polyamide shell'. Actually, the feel of the gilet is of a harsh and thin material. But does it work? Well, yes is the short answer, despite appearing to be something that would be minimally useful. I soon forgot any concerns over the cut. The shape allowed for a snug fit but without being restrictive, and on colder mornings this gilet soon had me feeling comfortable.
Inside the collar there is a strip of soft material to stop any rubbing on the neck and to offer a little more protection where needed. One downside, the zip can prove a little reluctant to move when on the fly, but otherwise the Oneten Pioggia Vest is worth tucking into a jersey pocket. It could make all the difference.
Very light, effective gilet for a warm core when the temperature drops.
If you're thinking of buying this product using a cashback deal why not use the road.cc Top Cashback page and get some top cashback while helping to support your favourite independent cycling website
road.cc test report
Make and model: OneTen Pioggia Vest
Size tested: Medium
Tell us what the product is for, and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?
The product provides an extra layer on really cold days or something you can reach for in an emergency if the weather takes a turn for the worse.
Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?
Made of lightweight material but sufficient to keep you warm and dry. Ideal for ensuring your core is protected.
Well made with some neat additional features such as the high viz elements and the tail for wet weather.
The oneten Pioggia gilet is light, packs up small and performs well.
Despite being light the material proves durable and hard wearing.
Small and compact, allows you to forget your wearing it or stow it in your jersey.
Apart from the slight concern over the cut of the front of the gilet, it is very comfortable.
For the quality of material and suitability for purpose, this gilet represents good value.
Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose
Above and beyond what you'd expect. Despite appearances this gilet will keep you warm and allow you to keep riding.
Tell us what you particularly liked about the product
Small and compact, you can take this anywhere for every emergency.
Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product
The slight concern over the cut and perhaps an easier zip would make this perfect.
Did you enjoy using the product? Certainly did.
Would you consider buying the product? I would, yes.
Would you recommend the product to a friend? I would have no concerns in recommending this to a friend.
Anything further to say about the product in conclusion?
Top notch.
About the tester
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I've been riding for: I ride: I would class myself as:
I regularly do the following types of riding:


text:
in the shadow of the sunsphere
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Welcome to Knoxbloggers.Com!
Knoxbloggers.Com is the official homepage for the Knoxville Blogger's Meetup Group - a Knoxville area group that meets to discuss tools and services available to bloggers to help them blog.
We welcome you to check out the site, and if you're in the Knoxville Area and are interested in blogging, please sign up for an account and join us at the next meeting. Below is a selection of what members are blogging right now!
Member Blogs
ORM talk at CodeStock Open SpacesSubmitted by Michael Neel on Thu, 2008-08-14 22:17.
One thing I'm hearing from a lot of people who attended CodeStock last Saturday is how well the open spaces "track" was. This is one area I can't take any credit for, my only role in planning open spaces was requesting a room from the college; all credit for success goes to Alan Stevens the facilitator.
An Open Spaces conference is explained as the "un-conference" - a very hippy, free flowing conference where the sessions self organize and the topics are chosen by the attendees. This in contrast to a traditional conference of set speakers and topics. Each have an advantage; an open space isn't the best place to get a first look at a technology but once you've used a technology an open space is a great place to discuss with others how it should be used.
Rather than choose one format, CodeStock featured both. This worked out better than I could have imagined because it mixed two camps - the open space people hung out with the "straight laced" conference people. This created a stage for some great conversations with all views represented and an exchange of ideas can commence. Wally McClure was breaking in a new Flip, and managed to capture an ORM discussion for the latest ASP.NET Podcast - I would have loved to have been there, but I was fighting gnats at the time.
More video formats available at ASP.NET Podcast
The Codestock Wrap-upSubmitted by nblevins on Mon, 2008-08-11 12:08.
Codestock has finally come and gone. After large events like this, I am always amazed at the amount of time and energy used to plan and host such an event as opposed to the speed at which the event actually passes by. Two days after the event, I still keep feeling that there is something that I need to be doing in order to prep for Codestock, lol. Nonetheless, I have to say that I had a blast during the entire event. I was introduced to many new ideas, many new people, and simply had a whole lot of fun.
So, here is my experience in a nutshell...
Sessions Attended
I had the privilege to attend 2 sessions at Codestock, both of which were excellent:
Rachel did an awesome job in giving an overview of Dynamic Data. Unlike many of the other demos over the subject, she not only spoke about how to use it / make it work but also added a practical slant to it. Also, Rachel has a very unique and awesome sense of humor, which really made the presentation a lot of fun. Despite the fact that Rachel was having a 'Lisp' problem, I really enjoyed her session. Great job!
I have to say that I am pretty excited about Dynamic Data and I sincerely look forward to start playing w/ some of the new bits released today. Particularly, I am very intrigued by the support for type templating on the website level. Once I saw how Dynamic Data was accomplishing this, I wanted to slap myself for not thinking to do this before hand. Of course, reduction of physical files due to Routing and the use of scaffolding are cool features as well.
My only main concern w/ Dynamic Data is whether or not it will allow me to a-la-carte its features. I am not a huge fan of scaffolding and I think, in a perfect world, I would like to see something of a mix between what Dynamic Data promises and how I use WebForms today. I do not want to be restricted to a narrow approach with my web apps. I will have to blog about this at a later date. :)
Open Spaces moderated by Alan Stevens
This was my first open spaces event and, admittedly, I was a bit skeptical as to how effective this approach would be. After participating in this event, it suffices to say that I am a complete convert. Open spaces is an excellent way to learn new concepts and ideas from one another. I can't think of a precise way to explain open spaces rather than to simply say that it is an open conversation between peers that share mutual respect for one another (usually about a predefined topic). Due to this, you feel very free to present ideas, critique other person's ideas, and learn in the process.
While I was there, we discussed ideas ranging from planning sessions for user groups to why a MacBook is a viable choice for .Net devs to how to handle development needs in a unsympathetic workspace. As you can tell, the range of topics were far and wide, but they were extremely useful in content. Of course, we also had the obligatory Twitter session... ;)
Alan did an excellent job moderating the event, encouraging contribution by all persons in the room while being very mindful of the topic at hand. It seems as if this would be a difficult task, as you would want to make sure the conversation had direction but that it was not inhibited by such direction. Great job, Alan.
Sessions Given
I agreed to take on 2 sessions to present at Codestock. The first session was a revamped session of my Asp.Net Provider speech that I spoke to the ETNUG earlier this year. Even though the presentation was one that I had given quite a while back, it certainly was not dated. One thing that I particularly like about this session is that it focuses more on design principles and patterns rather than any specific technology. To be honest, I simply use the Asp.Net Providers an avenue to look into the concepts of integrating design patterns within your apps and the benefits of doing so.
All in all, the session went pretty well even though I feel that I could have done better. I felt that my main flaw was launching into the session too fast. I kept having to force myself to slow down and not inundate the audience w/ information. Besides that, I spent quite a bit of time reworking my original slides, attempting to take a BBP approach and introducing consistent themes. (I might have gotten a little carried away on the themeing, lol)
My second session was something of a wildcard. I had the privilege of co-hosting a session w/ Mike Neel concerning what the new features in .Net 3.5 SP1. The session title was .NET3.5SP1BETA1BBQ in homage to the increasing tendency to create finer denominations of release status. Considering the fact that we had next to zero collaborative prep time and, in some cases, we were simply hanging on by the seat of our pants, I have to admit that we did pretty good. We made it through the session with only minor organization issues and, more importantly, the session felt more like a running conversation rather than one person rambling on about some topic or another. I think the audience was better served by there being 2 presenters in that they got a good look at what was new, but from two different perspectives.
Other Stuff
Finally, there were quite a few other highlights to my day at Codestock.
First off, I got to meet a ton of tweeple of whom I had yet to meet in person. On top of that, I got to meet a slew of new folk as well as speak w/ some old and dear friends that I had not seen in a while.
After the closing session, some of us went on down to enjoy the Codestock after party. Mike arranged for a live band to play for us by the name of Hanover Fist. They rocked! They reminded me of a blues-y Lynard Skynard and really did an excellent job. IIRC, they just released a new cd, which I will certainly be tracking down soon (as well as a t-shirt, I hope).
In conclusion, Codestock totally rocked. Mike Neel, Wally McClure, and Alan Stevens did an excellent job in organizing the event. Particularly, Mike deserves recognition for just about killing himself in order to make sure all the finite details were in place. Also, Wally of Scalable Development was kind enough to make a huge contribution towards the closing session raffle, increasing the amount of excitement for the event. In other words, thank you, Mike, Wally, and Alan, for making this great event happen.
I left Codestock w/ about 10,000 different ideas and concepts to try and, hopefully, left a few behind for others. All in all, it was an excellent event and I look forward to next year!
Take care.
On a side note, if you live in or around the Knoxville area, be sure to attend the East TN .Net Users Group (ETNUG). We are an organization that meets on the last Tues of every month in order to learn about new technologies, socialize, and just have a good time. It is a great way to meet other developers as well as learn about the latest and greatest of today's technologies.
CodeStock Wrap-UpSubmitted by DylanW on Mon, 2008-08-11 08:21.
I just got around to posting my notes from CodeStock for my coworkers, so I figured I'd post some of the highlights here too.
Mike, Alan, and Wally did an excellent job putting this together. I was surprised that, for a first year conference, we had such a large turnout and yet everything ran really smoothly. (If it didn't run smoothly, they at least did an excellent job of faking a well-orchestrated event.) It wasn't quite as big as DevLink, so we may end up being the MTAC to their AWA*. :)
Behind the scenes, I'm very happy with the commitment to selecting local speakers. I think this is going to be one of the things that sets CodeStock apart, especially as it grows. It shows a commitment not only to the industry in our area, but the people as well. I feel there's a lot more celebrity than there needs to be in the software development world, so a locally-focused conference is a refreshing trend.
Here's a rundown of the sessions I attended:
- 10 Open Source Tools You Should Be Using - Good talk, even though I'm not much of an MVC or TDD guy. Loved the fact that James presented alternatives to each of the applications he discussed. The talk sold me on checking out Castle ActiveRecord for projects where I can't use LINQ to SQL, as well as checking out SQLite if I ever need to write a desktop application with a local data store. A full list of these tools are on James's blog.
- What's This XNA Thing? - I think my coworkers looked at me funny when I said I wanted to attend this session. I haven't touched XNA since I walked through a Pong tutorial in the 1.0 release, but this was a pretty good motivation to look at it again. I don't think Chris has posted slides yet, but most of the resources he listed can be found on the Twin Cities XNA User Group site.
- SharePoint Developer's Survival Guide - If you're doing any SharePoint development, this talk was essential. You can find the slides on Doug's site; there's really too much to cover. (I like the fact that he supported my WSPBuilder bias.) He came from the same angle I used in my SharePoint talk, except developer-oriented instead of more administrator-/manager-oriented: these are the pitfalls, and here's how you avoid them. The most telling thing in his speech: "it takes at least 2 years to make a good SharePoint developer."
- httpModules and httpHandlers - I've written a few handlers, but this speech gave me a better understanding of modules, as well as a lot of other uses for handlers I hadn't considered. Chris posted his content from CodeStock on his blog.
- Much Ado About Testing - Again, I'm not a TDD guy but I am sold on unit testing. I'm also not quite up to speed on concepts like mocking, so this session filled me in quite a bit. Not quite sure I want to switch from NUnit to MbUnit yet, I haven't run into a case where mocks would actually be beneficial to me**, and Watin really sounds too complicated for my purposes right now. But it's nice to know that it's out there.
For any .NET developers who enjoyed CodeStock--make sure you come and support the East Tennessee .NET User Group. ETNUG was the driving force for a lot of the publicity, speakers, and sponsorship; supporting the group can only help make the conference better next year. If you enjoyed the local speakers at the conference, this is the place to get even more (including me, at the end of this month, speaking on SharePoint).
There was also some talk of doing some Open Spaces during one of our future meetings--I don't know whether that will come to pass, but from what I heard about the Open Spaces (I didn't make it to any of the sessions), it would be a great alternative to the typical presentation.
* Translation for non-anime geeks: AWA is a bigger convention than MTAC, but if you're in the area, it's well worth attending both.
** Of course, it shouldn't be any secret that I test my data access.
PostStockSubmitted by Michael Neel on Sun, 2008-08-10 20:32.
Warning: this is going to be a grilled cheese post.
I woke up this morning, amazed there is an August 10th. I mean, I knew there was a full August this year, but for the last two months I haven't given much thought to any date past August 9th, the date of CodeStock. I've pretty much wasted the whole day - slept in, made a run to Sonic, played Rock Band with Cicelie and the girls and made it through another level in Bad Company. I figure (hope) many people will blog about CodeStock, so instead of giving the overall picture, I'll tell you what my day was like.
5:30 am Alarm goes off.
6:15 am I wake up, realizing that somehow I fell back to sleep. I need to be at Pellissippi by 7am and it's a 20 minute drive. The truck isn't loaded with the 4 boxes of shirts, 3 boxes of bags, 2 boxes of books, and many other boxes of giveaways, and misc. needed items.
6:45 am After an amazing display of speed and strength, Cicelie and I are on the road to Pellissippi with a fully loaded truck. I even remembered to get dressed.
7:05 am Glenn Zahn and the RecruitWise are already at the Performing Arts Center (PAC), as well as Gabriel (a volunteer). We unload and begin setting up the registration area. Catering is setting out juice and coffee, I grab a badly need cup. This would be my first of 5 cups of coffee that I grab, take one sit, set down somewhere and can't find it later.
7:30 am Cicelie and Lisa (of RecruitWise) have the registrations down to a science. I keep trying to help, but I'm just making things worse, so I setup the giveaways on stage. I'm also getting a question every two minutes, but I'm delegating tasks as much as I can so my constant distractions don't seem to be a problem. I have an awesome team of volunteers. Thanks Cicelie, Jim, Gabriel, Crystal, and the RecruitWise team.
8:05 am At 7:55 it looked like there was about 20 more minutes of registrations - I underestimated how fast Cicelie and Lisa were, because at 8:00 there was no one in the line. We start only 5 minutes off schedule.
8:20 am My opening over, I hang around the ticket booth. A number of small issues seem to work themselves out. Example, Alan needs power strips for Open Spaces, Wally calls on his way in asking if we need anything - so I tell him power strips. There is something Zen going on, and I'll not dare question it.
8:40 am Scott Spradlin is here from INETA to film interviews on the "making of" CodeStock. I help him setup a T-shirt for a back drop, and then do a short interview. Not thinking of Murphy, I talk about how well planned everything is.
9:00 am The last 20 minutes felt like three hours - that's the speed difference in the day from the morning registrations.
9:30 am Right on time, attendees are in their first sessions. I grab my camera to snap photos of the speakers in action. I fail at getting a shot of Amanda Laucher without her noticing. I also get flipped of by James Bender. I have photos to post later.
10:30 am It occurs to me that offering to help Nathan Blevins fill in for Wally McClure's session has put me in a session right before lunch (also known as the next chance for panic). I fill Glenn in and ask him to lead setting up a "human chain" to direct people to the cafeteria for lunch.
12:00 pm Session over, it went okay but I'm feeling it sucked hard. This is mostly because this was an ad hoc session and I'm used to my highly planned sessions. Having never rehearsed the session together, the handoff's between Nathan and myself flowed almost as smooth as wet cement. The content is good however, and we can turn this into a pretty good talk in the future.
12:05 pm I expected to find a long line of people waiting for lunch, and some catering crisis in the kitchen. What I found was everyone had their lunch and was sitting down eating and having a good time. This was the best execution of a lunch I've ever seen at a community conference - and I had little to do with it. I grab a box and talk to a few people before going back to the open spaces room to eat.
12:45 pm The open spaces room is attracting a lot of people during the lunch hour. I get back to the ticket booth and round up 3 other people to hear out to the after party tents so we can setup tables and chairs.
1:05 pm The running track around the pond at Pellissippi is covered in an amazing amount of crap. All kinds of crap: bird crap, dog crap, duck crap. I see people running on this track all the time and think to myself if running on crap is as healthy as these people think it is. I walk beside the track in the grass.
1:10 pm The tents are filled with about 30,000 gnats. Freaky ones I've never seen before - they look like a mosquito but instead of a sucker for a mouth they have two little fuzzy balls. They don't bite, but no one would eat a hot dot with these guys around. They appear not to have come from the pond around the tents, but from the stack of chairs left in the tents. There are also a few wasp nests under the stairs leading up to the stage.
1:20 pm Glenn and crew will finish setting up the chairs, I'm off to buy an arsenal of anti-gnat weapons of mass destruction. On the way out I run into John Kellar and Brian Prince. John organizes DevLink and Brian organizes CodeMash - the two "biggies" in our region. We joke a bit and then Brian mentions Kentucky Day of .Net is in 3 weeks - both John and I (who will be speakers at the event) are shocked it's so soon. Just like I didn't see past August 9th, John's not thinking past August 22nd and DevLink. I'll call this condition "conference blindness."
2:45 pm I return with my gnat WMDs and launch a full scale invasion with outdoor foggers and citronella candles. I also drop 3 wasp nests before I run out of wasp spray (the kind that shoots a stream). The cans of fogger say they kill wasps, and there are a few wasps that escaped, so I hit them with the fogger. Do not use a fogger on a wasp unless you really want to piss it off. Axiom: if it doesn't kill on contact, don't use it on a wasp.
3:00 pm I call Cicelie to she if she can send out a few volunteers to watch the tents for an hour or so. I have 10 citronella candles burning under two tents and I think it's against fire code to leave them unattended (probably against common sense too). The band will be there to setup at four, and they can come back to the PAC then. She finds someone from RecruitWise (whose name I can't recall) to relieve me. Update: His name is Eric.
3:30 pm Things are quiet from now until closing - I mostly hang around the registration desk and chat with passing speakers. Nathan juggles Microsoft stress balls, and I learn Dave Redding called attendees jackasses, one guy an asshole, and gave my ex-wife beer all during his session. I make note to attend Dave's sessions in the future.
5:00 pm Closing, and raffle off of the goodies. I pretty much just rattle off ticket numbers for 30 minutes, and let people choose their prize in a "first come / first choice" fashion. We picked up so much extra items to raffle off during the day it's crazy - including a Halo 3 Legendary Box Set (the one with the Master Chief helmet) from Brian Price and Microsoft which went second to the MSDN subscription donated by Wally through Scalable Development.
I had five copies of Petzold's Turing book to give away, and was amazed at the level of interest among speakers to win the book. I'm pretty sure one speaker (I won't name them) stole the book off the stage during the raffle. There were some speakers opting not to take anything when they won, letting me draw another number, so a swap could have been done instead of theft. I want to find out the rest of the story - what happened, and was the book really that sought after? It's a great book, don't get me wrong, but it's a little crazy to think it would cause such a commotion.
Update: Got the whole story, no thefts just some mixups, and the Petzold book was really in demand. I guess I did a good sales job holding up the title and talking about my review!
5:45 pm Steve Andrews, Cicelie, and I do room checks to make sure nothing is wrong with any of them and clear out trash. I'm impressed that the rooms need very little cleaning - people took care of the place. I stop by as Scott is finishing an interview and do a short interview on end of the day thoughts.
6:10 pm I arrive at the CodeStock After Party, slightly late. My biggest blunder of the day was forgetting to tell everyone there was food (hotdogs, chips, and drinks) at the party. About 20 people are there, looks like many had left to eat. Hanover Fist put on a great show, and I got up and sang "Oh Well" by Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac. I dedicated the song to my MVC brethren.
7:45 pm The band finishes the last song, and people start heading home or to Alan's "After After" party. I tell people I plan on getting to Alan's around 9:30. I stay behind with Cicelie and my brother Willie to fold up chairs and tables. I thank the band and drive home.
9:30 pm I've been trying to talk myself into going to Alan's party for the last 30 minutes, but I give in. Cicelie, my daughters, and I share some ice cream. I went to bed right after.
Seriously, WTF?Submitted by DylanW on Fri, 2008-08-08 12:10.
Not sure if some new worm or exploit has exploded upon the internet, but I'm seeing some really bizarre hits on my site today. Requests for stuff like:
What is that, an SQL injection attack for SQL Server? Which might be quite the issue if my site wasn't hosted on a Linux server. (Or, quite the issue if I was running on a webhost that hosted SQL Server on the same box as web with no firewall... which I suppose would be its own WTF.)
SharePoint Gotcha: Debugging Code Blocks and Event Handlers (or the lack thereof) in Site PagesSubmitted by DylanW on Fri, 2008-08-08 06:52.
Here's a problem one of the other developers here ran into--if you create your own site pages in SharePoint, you're bound to see an error like this pop up:
An error occurred during the processing of /mypage.aspx. Code blocks are not allowed in this file.
... wait, what?
Yup, that's what it says. You can't use code blocks in ASPX files that are stored in SharePoint. No <% Response.Write("Hello World!") %>. No <%# Eval("Name") %>. As an added bonus, <asp:Button runat="server" ID="MyButton" OnClick="MyButton_Click" /> doesn't even work because it declares an event handler.
That's not really the gotcha here. This is well-documented in Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: check page 81, if you're following along in your books at home. SharePoint has a very good reason for this security setting to be there: users can create and modify ASPX files that are stored within the SharePoint database. So, if you could run arbitrary code within an ASPX file, a user with no access to the server could potentially run malicious code.
So where does that code go? Well, it goes in the *.cs or *.vb code-behind file. That means to declare an event handler, you're going to have to do something like this:
protected override void CreateChildControls(){ base.CreateChildControls(); SaveButton.Click += SaveButton_Click; CancelButton.Click += CancelButton_Click;}
And rather than displaying data in a GridView or Repeater using Eval() or Bind(), you have to give it an OnRowDataBound or OnItemDataBound handler. So that means, rather than doing this:
<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="MyRepeater"> <ItemTemplate> <asp:Literal runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>' /> </ItemTemplate></asp:Repeater>
You do this:
protected void MyRepeater_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e){ // Make sure we have a data item in this row if (e.Item.DataItem == null) { return; } // Convert the data item to its original type DataRowView dr = (DataRowView)e.Item.DataItem; // Find our literal control in the current repeater item Literal NameLiteral = e.Item.FindControl("NameLiteral") as Literal; // If it was found, set its value if (NameLiteral != null) { NameLiteral.Text = dr["Name"].ToString(); }}
I can imagine you're griping already. It's easy to see the security reason for doing this--you don't want users to be able to run arbitrary code on your server. But it's so freaking complicated. (Well, it is until you get used to the idea.) But as I said, that's not the real gotcha here. So what is the point of this post?
The real gotcha here is that this doesn't seem to be a default security setting, at least in the development environments we're using. (Andy's using a VirtualPC image he set up himself; I'm using Microsoft's WSS3 VirtualPC image.) We only ran into this issue after he tried to install a project on the client's server.
I don't think we've figured out exactly what turns on this security setting in SharePoint configuration, but I have found out how you can force your development environment to throw these sort of errors. All you have to do is dig into your development site's web.config file and add the following node:
<configuration> <SharePoint> <SafeMode> <PageParserPaths> <PageParserPath VirtualPath=â/*â CompilationMode=âAlwaysâ AllowServerSideScript=âfalseâ IncludeSubFolders=âtrueâ /> </PageParserPaths> </SafeMode> </SharePoint></configuration>
Once that's done, you can now catch yourself using stuff that's not allowed in ASPX pages before it gets to your client's server.
Happy B.C. DaySubmitted by daryl on Mon, 2008-08-04 01:29.
It turns out that I'm in Victoria, British Columbia for work this week. When I planned the trip (at the last minute), I didn't know that Monday was a Canadian holiday. As one of my American coworkers is here as well, it's really not that big a deal; we'll work in peace without all the usual water cooler chatter about moose and that most riveting sport curling (ok, so hockey is probably the more obvious sport choice, but curling dominated the TV when I was last in town).
I learned today that B.C. Day isn't just a laze-around-the-house holiday but is one that Victoria, at least, does up right. Tonight, the symphony was playing from a barge in the harbor, and tomorrow, Vancouver resident (or native?) Sarah Machlachlan is the headliner for a free concert. I was tired this evening (still on Eastern time) but had thought about walking down to the harbor to hear the symphony. When I read online that they traditionally play the 1812 Overture as part of the event, the deal was sealed (it's a rousing tune that always makes my barnacled old ticker stir a little). So walk down there I did, and I really enjoyed it.
It's just a block from my hotel down to the harbor area. If you follow the road around the perimeter of the harbor, you pass The Empress, a venerable old (I think very old) hotel with walls covered in something green (ivy or something of that ilk). I think a coworker told me during my last visit that the hotel is slowly sinking into the ground. Then you keep walking around until you get to the Parliament building, which is hard to miss because it is outlined in white lights (like some houses at Christmas). The barge or whatever the symphony was arranged on was basically a straight shot out the front door of the Parliament. There were people lining the streets, sitting on the harbor shore, and filling the lawns of those two neat old buildings.
By the time I got down there, it was starting to get a little dusky, and it was neat to watch the tangle of boat masts swaying in the breeze (I won't be so fanciful as to suggest that they were dancing to the music, though for a moment I was tempted). The weird thing is that as I approached, the song I heard was "Home on the Range," and it was followed by "Clementine" and then by a song I recognized and that I heard them announce with "Appalachian" in the title. These all seemed distinctly American to me, so I amused myself for a minute thinking about what a nice welcome party Victoria had thrown me.
I wandered around listening to the music and watching people and generally enjoying the atmosphere. People were dancing to the music and smiling unself-consciously and really having fun, and it was fun to be part of it.
The rendition of the 1812 Overture wasn't the best I've ever heard, but then half the sound was no doubt carried away by the 100 yards between the symphony and me, so maybe I'm not being fair. Toward the end of the song, when cannonfire is appropriate, fireworks were shot off in the harbor, and the pealing of bells could be heard from a belltower sort of between The Empress and the Parliament, and that was a neat addition.
As the concert wrapped up, people started heading back toward downtown (where my hotel is), and I floated with them. A drum and bagpipe group (complete with kilts and big furry hats) was marching in the street and started playing Amazing Grace as I walked away. Just a couple of blocks down from my hotel on the main drag, a percussion group had set up and was playing some really neat, lively stuff that had more people dancing in the street.
It was a neat night, well worth venturing out in spite of my tiredness, and I can't help hoping that some of tomorrow's festivities are evening ones so that I can attend.
Using LINQ to generate HTMLSubmitted by Michael Neel on Sun, 2008-08-03 13:54.
I hate seeing code mixed with markup.
Seeing a template page with
<% if(show) { %> makes me want to claw my eyes out. Seeing
String htmlTitle = "<h1>" + title + "</h1>" causes me to vomit up a little something in my throat.
Mixing code with markup is not a magic chocolate and peanut butter combination - it's a volatile cocktail of vinegar and baking soda waiting to explode your application to tiny Server 500 Error giblets.
The time comes however when we find ourselves needing to generate some well formed HTML in code, and I found myself in just such a position last night adding the agenda to the CodeStock website. (Less than one week away now!)
Background: On the CodeStock site, the speakers and sessions list lives in an XML file. The agenda page has a grid of session times and my task was to fill in each session "cell" with the session planned for that room and time. I wanted to link to the full session and also list the speaker's name in the cell. In the XML I have created Key elements that are used as HTML anchors in a link to a session. It's all very low tech, simplistic goodness. An example of the XML for a speaker:
<Speaker> <Key>Brownell</Key> <Name>Steve Brownell</Name> <Website>http://enthusiasticprogramming.blogspot.com</Website> <Photo>~/Speakers/SteveBrownell.png</Photo> <Bio> Steve is the manager for research and development at AllMeds in Oak Ridge, TN. Steve has been programming one thing or another for over twenty years. AllMeds makes and sells a commercial software product which is an electronic medical record system. We've been .NET based since 2000. AllMeds is a VB.NET shop at heart, but the AllMeds system spans many areas of Windows development. </Bio> <Session> <Key>Hobbled</Key> <Title> The Hobbled: There And Back Again, or Code Automation: how I made it from the presentation layer to the database and back. </Title> <Abstract> Stop writing code, and start writing code that writes code. There's never been more choices to help you automate the creation of the data object layers immediately above the database. Writing class factories and data access classes is boring, time consuming and wastes valuable time with expensive developer resources. This course will examine two current approaches: using a template engine and programming with the CODEDOM. We'll also briefly discuss other ORM techniques like LINQ to SQL Classes. </Abstract> <Level>200</Level> <Technology>VB.NET, C#, LINQ, SQL</Technology> </Session></Speaker>
(Steve was our CodeStock Speaker Idol winner, and I enjoyed seeing System.Codedom in action; something I'll be playing with and posting on in the future thanks to Steve!)
LINQ to XML, and the new "X" classes that come with it make working with XML as easy as it should have always been. Armed with LINQ, I decided that putting <%= SessionInfo("Hobbled") %> was something I could live with (had this been a larger site that needed to live longer than August 9th, I would have opted for a user control <CodeStock:SessionInfo Key="Hobbled"/>). My first LINQ expression looked something like the following:
var info = (from s in speakers.Descendants("Session") where s.Element("Key").Value.Equals(SessionKey) select new { key = s.Element("Key").Value, title = s.Element("Title").Value.Trim(), speaker = s.Parent.Element("Name").Value }).First();
This yields a very useful info object with just the information I need. *If* I was in a hurry, and didn't mind a little vomit, I would follow on with the following:
String hmtl = String.Format("<a href='{0:s}' title='{1:s}'>{2:s}</a><br />{3:s}", new object[] { ExpandURL("~/Pages/Agenda.aspx", info.key), info.title, info.title.Length > 30 ? info.title.Substring(0, 27) + "..." : info.title, info.speaker });
Why do I despise this so much? It's not easy to read, and it can become cumbersome to change. ASP.NET has a collection of server controls just for generating HTML, intended for use in user controls but they are not limited to user controls alone. To generate the html above would look something like this:
HtmlAnchor aHref = new HtmlAnchor() { HRef = ExpandURL("~/Pages/Agenda.aspx", info.key), InnerText = info.title.Length > 30 ? info.title.Substring(0, 27) + "..." : info.title, Title = Title};HtmlGenericControl div = new HtmlGenericControl("div") { InnerText = info.speaker};StringBuilder html = new StringBuilder();using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(html)) { using (HtmlTextWriter hw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw)) { aHref.RenderControl(hw); div.RenderControl(hw); hw.Close(); } sw.Close();}
There are times when working with parts of the .Net framework I have wonder if some Java types didn't design the class. The mess here to render the HTML is one of those times. The lack of a RenderControl that returns a String is the problem - thankfully we now have extension methods to fix the framework, but that's another post. No matter how much I hate markup in the code, I cannot endorse this version over the vomit inducing first solution.
It occurs to me that HTML is (or was once) fundamentally XML, and I can return XML from my LINQ expression. In fact, this is what LINQ is about - not just getting the data you want, but getting it in the format you need. Here is the new LINQ query:
XElement info = (from s in speakers.Descendants("Session") where s.Element("Key").Value.Equals(SessionKey) let key = s.Element("Key").Value let title = s.Element("Title").Value.Trim() let shortTitle = title.Length > 30 ? title.Substring(0, 27) + "..." : title let session = new XElement("a", new XAttribute("href", ExpandURL("~/Pages/Agenda.aspx", key)), new XAttribute("title", title), shortTitle) let speaker = new XElement("div", s.Parent.Element("Name").Value) select new XElement("span", session, speaker)).First();
This may not seem to some as better. I myself have trouble looking at most LINQ expressions, but as I'm learning to Thinq Linq I'm seeing that writing the LINQ expression is where the power lies, not in the syntax. The mental dialog goes something like this:
"Okay, from my list of speakers I want a session where the session's key matches SessionKey. Now, let me grab some fields I need, first the key, then the title which I need to trim off excess whitespace, then let's make a short version of that title since Steve's title is so long - love that title though. I'll need an link tag for the session; set the href and title attributes, and then add the speaker's name in a div tag so I get a cheap line break. I'm really in XML not HTML, so I'll need a root node and a span tag will work without affecting layout, and I'll add the link and div tags as children."
Writing LINQ like this I feel much closer to the problem I'm trying to solve, and not bogged down by syntax. There is still some moments I'm thrust back to code, such as the use of First() to select only one result. I'd like to have a "select first" option in LINQ expressions instead of just the extension methods.
Is this something I'll be using now every time I have this problem? Not sure yet, but it's another "tool in the box" I'll keep around and use when it feels right.
On PresentingSubmitted by DylanW on Tue, 2008-07-29 22:31.
I just finished a presentation tonight at ETNUG called "SharePoint Sucks!" The presentation was my entry into Speakers Idol, where people who weren't selected as speakers for Codestock session could compete for one last remaining session. Didn't win, but it did net me the presentation at the August ETNUG meeting.
Incidentally, for those interested, here are the links I referenced as resources:
- Downloadable WSS books from Microsoft
- 7 Development Projects for SharePoint (PDF)
- CleverWorkarounds.com - lots of good SharePoint articles, including "Why Do SharePoint Projects Fail" series
- EndUserSharePoint.com - "Thinking SharePoint" series
- SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices
- WSS3 Evaluation Virtual PC image
- MOSS2007 Evaluation Virtual PC image
The topic, contrary to its name, was about when to use and when not to use SharePoint. (If you really want to know where the title comes from, go through the comments on some of my SharePoint posts.) It's been quite a while since I've had to present anything, so I've been critiquing the whole experience.
One suggestion I received is to ditch the "Intro to Windows SharePoint Services 3" topic I originally submitted, and go with a continuation of "SharePoint Sucks!" for August's ETNUG meeting. I'm not completely comfortable with this idea, because I don't feel that approach is quite my style.
On the other hand, I have found out that I'm much more comfortable at Q&A and discussion than I am at presenting all my own stuff. I think it's because I like thinking inside the box, so to speak. Q&A forces me to tackle the questions that people need to know rather than trying to do an overview that's simultaneously broad and deep. In turn, this keeps me from overanalyzing details or going off on tangents. Extending the "SharePoint Sucks" talk should naturally lead to better discussion. (Maybe.)
So I'm kind of at a loss as to which way to go for the August meeting right now.
I noticed an interesting side effect after presenting that I'm not sure I like. Preparation for a presentation will usually be stretched out over a few days. So by the time the presentation rolls around, you've been living in this world where your topic is The Most Important Thing Ever. And once it's over and the rush sort of drains out of your system, your priorities correct themselves and you realize just how insignificant your topic is in the larger scheme of things. It almost makes the presentation itself seem silly.
And yes, I know this post is completely breaking the fourth wall in ways good bloggers shouldn't. But that's because it might mess up their space suits.


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Posts Tagged 'risk'
Indefensible or Away from the People
Guarding your heart is a lot like defending a capital, or a strategic city in a game of Civilization or Risk.
In those two games, there are typically two approaches. One involves choosing your boundaries such that there are large walls and as few neighbors as possible such that one can minimize the number of enemies or threats that are on their immediate border. Another strategy in similar games is again to minimize your boundaries, build moats and live high atop in towers or on platforms so as to minimize others' abilities to reach you.
Although these strategies might fare well for games, it's not always well suited for life. Isolation often breeds contempt. It prevents us from being able to understand others. We see life as we wish to see it, but we must also allow others that same opportunity. Yes, it might seem easier to live in isolation, without having to worry about other's choices, but then what would life be? We can live for ourselves. We can live for God or some higher power, but does that not mean living for all of creation, even if we don't always understand it?
The beauty of conflict is that it shows us who we are when things get rough. It shows us what we are willing to put up with or hide away. It's a catalyst for getting us on the right path, whatever path that may be for each individual.
So yes, guard your heart, but allow it to be open enough that when love or kindness comes your way, you are able to accept it without question. Allow yourself to be blessed.


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Peace & Yours in Black 'N Gold,
Many thanks to BR7 (Ron) for the sig and matching avatar
Thanks for the video link.
The begining of the Blieir video brought back great memories of seeing great athletism from the O-lineman pulling on trap plays. I miss the days of the 250 pound athletic lineman.
Cool link. Deb you should add that Steel Curtain link to your discussion on them.
Seeing that video of the Immaculate Reception just never gets old does it !
Nice!! Sure does bring back memories.
"Give me a 6 pack, half hour of rest and lets go play them again....We can beat them."
--Jack Lambert
"They say that when you're the champs, everybody will try to beat you. Well, I'm glad we're the champs, so bring 'em on, bring 'em all on. If we die, we ain't gonna die running. It's gonna be a fight."
--Joe Greene
I loved that Rocky one....he was one of my mom's favorite players and grew up hearing his story of bravery...what he had to overcome just be able to walk again let alone fun. Guess thats whats hard to take with the TO's of the world...these gifted athletes, pampered..spoiled.....and then you have the courage of a rocky bleier
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Young Lace & LA$W - Say Cheese [B Major Music Submitted]
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I was kiting the other day in -25 C weather (no including wind chill, blowing 15-19 knots), and basically froze my face good. I've always resisted using a face mask just because they seem uncomfortable with the condensation that builds up from breathing.
Anyway, I can't do that again, and suggestions on how to protect one face? Any good masks to consider? Or just use a big scarf?


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Williamsburg's Caprices by Sophie Sells a Rare Belgian Pastry
Your daily dose of something sweet.
Caprices by Sophie is a small but beautiful bakery in Williamsburg. Their signature product, the Merveilleux, is a light and airy Belgian pastry made of meringue and whipped cream. It's the second bakery in the last six months that specializes in the treat.
What's the Merveilleux Pastry ($2.75) like? Imagine an old school meringue cookie, then smash it with a hammer, and toss the shards with whipped cream. Then roll that mass in dark chocolate shavings or some other ingredient (speculoos crumble, pink praline, or caramel bits). The result is crunchy, not too sweet, and really unlike anything else you'll find in the city.
Caprices by Sophie also has an impressive line of choux pastries for such a small bakery. I tried their chocolate and caramel and salty-butter flavors ($2.75 each). The caramel salty butter was the better of the two. Both flavors feature a crisp, perfectly baked, choux pastry shell, but the caramel and salty butter has a more pronounced flavor. The chocolate filling is good but just a bit too sweet for my tastes. Other interesting flavors include: lemon curd, rose, pistachio, bourbon vanilla, and Champagne.
Bite-size puffs of choux pastry—sweet Chouquettes and savory Gougères ($.50 each) join the menu as well. They're small, so order a small handful for a couple of bucks.
This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.


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Dems to W.H.: Don't rule out 14th
The White House insists President Barack Obama can't — and won't — use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling.
But a growing number of his congressional allies are urging Obama not to abandon a potentially powerful weapon before negotiations even begin.
Story Continued Below
With Republicans promising another climactic fight over the $16.4 trillion debt limit in two months, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday that if she were president, she would invoke the Constitution to raise the ceiling on her own — with or without permission from the GOP.
"I would do it, in a second, but I'm not the president of the United States," Pelosi said.
Like many other Democrats, Pelosi is eyeing the language in the 14th Amendment stating that the validity of U.S. public debts "shall not be questioned." Prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, have argued that language — added in the aftermath of the Civil War — gives Obama all the authority he needs to break the ceiling.
Realistic or not, the talk underscores growing liberal concern that yet another round of brinksmanship will hobble Washington and the economy — and force Obama into a bad negotiating position — just months after Congress went over the so-called fiscal cliff and then barely averted it with a last-minute tax deal.
Whether Obama could invoke the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit is an open legal question.
But that isn't deterring some Democrats.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said on Friday the Constitution not only allows Obama to bypass Congress on the debt ceiling — it compels him to.
"I think [the Constitution] is pretty clear. He must do something about paying the bills," Udall said. "If Congress doesn't give him an avenue to do that, a leader needs to take a course of action if the bills aren't being paid. That could be devastating to our economy. It could be devastating to our reputation around the world."
The nation reached its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit on Dec. 31, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says his department is currently taking "extraordinary measures" that will only allow the nation to pay its bills for about another two months.
And after caving on tax hikes in the fiscal cliff deal, Republican leaders are promising rank-and-file conservatives that they'll use the need for a debt ceiling increase as leverage to extract major spending cuts, a strategy they successfully employed in 2011. But a government default holds far more economic catastrophic consequences than tax hikes and spending cuts.
The president has insisted that he won't negotiate around the ceiling, calling the threat of default an unacceptable bargaining chip in budget negotiations. The White House has not commented on other options.
But with Republicans repeatedly promising a fight, some Democrats are urging the president not to take the Constitution off the table.
"I'm one of those who thinks the president and the government has a basis for moving forward and not being held hostage by a political party — so whether it's the 14th Amendment or other grounds, I think there are ways that the government has to move forward without being held hostage to political threats," says House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, who sits on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
Nevertheless, the White House says the 14th Amendment is off the table, casting doubt on the legal merits of the strategy. Press secretary Jay Carney stated in December that "this administration does not believe that the 14th Amendment gives the president the power to ignore the debt ceiling — period."
If Obama does try to lift the limit on his own, at least one Republican has threatened a constitutional counter of his own: impeachment.


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COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – It was a one woman show in the rubber game of the three-game series between Tennessee Tech and Morehead State, as Holly Thomas delivered both in the circle and at the plate in TTU's 1-0 victory.
Game three of the series featured a rematch between game one starters Thomas and Kelcey McMurray, with the same result as Thomas pitched her way to second complete game victory in as many days.
Both starters looked sharp through the first four innings, as both teams were held scoreless with a combined five hits. Tech would strike first in the bottom of the fifth as Thomas crushed her first home run of the season to left center to give Tech the 1-0 lead.
Morehead State would not go quietly as it loaded the bases in the sixth with one out. Thomas induced a pair of ground-outs, including a force out at the plate, to maintain the one-run lead.
MSU kept the pressure up in the seventh as it loaded the bases with two outs, using three walks, but Thomas held firm as Kayla Ashbrook flied out to right field to end the game.
Thomas improved to 13-8 on the season, as she gave up just four hits while striking out four. McMurray was saddled with the loss as she fell to 10-10, giving up three hits, including the solo home run to Thomas.
Tech (18-24, 10-14 OVC) hits the road for a trio of non-conference games, beginning Wednesday against Lipsomb. The opening pitch is slated for 5 p.m.


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Q:I just read that America, the richest country in the world, is ranked 17th in overall health. How is this possible? Is it our health-care system? -- Paul H., Chicago
A:Actually, our health-care system recently was ranked 37th in the world (even though we spend more per capita on health care than any other nation), so we're outperforming that statistic. But health care isn't the only problem: The poor health ranking has to do with a combination of factors.
First, not enough people are taking responsibility for their health (almost 70 percent of North Americans are overweight or obese, including 30 percent of children), but if you're reading this, you're probably healthier than most and want to improve on that!
Also, a large number of our population is uninsured (48.6 million), so preventive care is not readily available to many people. Plus, we're more of a car culture than most European nations, where walking, bike-riding and public transportation are more the norm.
And, according to the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine (they did the ranking), Americans' health problems disproportionately affect people 50 and younger, especially children and adolescents.
Infant mortality, teen deaths from alcohol-related traffic accidents and gun-related homicides, plus higher teen rates of AIDS, lower our nation's health ranking. We also have widespread problems with diabetes and drug-related deaths.
There is good news, however. Americans have lower death rates from stroke and cancer, better control of blood pressure and LDL cholesterol levels and lower rates of smoking. And if you make it to age 75 in the U.S., you have a longer life expectancy than the elderly in other nations.
Fortunately, your personal health debits can be fixed!
You can put yourself at the top of the heath rankings by eliminating all trans fats and most saturated fats from your diet, as well as all added sugars and sugar syrups, while adding lots of fresh fruits and veggies, lean protein, 100 percent whole grains and physical activity (10,000 steps a day will do the trick).
And let's add in more access to health care; less access to guns (that aren't designed for hunting); more access to good nutrition; less access to illegal drugs; a little sex education; and a few good neighborhood jobs. That's the formula for a No. 1 health ranking.
Q:I heard there's a new screening test coming for ovarian cancer that uses the fluids from a Pap smear. Is that true, and when can I start getting tested? -- Irene A., Norman, Okla.
A:The test you are referring to is in development and won't be available for a few years. However, you're right to be excited about it.
Researchers are looking at cervical fluids from Pap smears to ID changes in DNA that are signs of ovarian and endometrial cancer at very early stages.
In these initial tests, scientists have spotted 100 percent of the genetic changes caused by endometrial cancer and 40 percent of those associated with ovarian cancer, and so far they haven't seen any false positives. Now they are looking to refine their ID process so they can further increase the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
This approach is a great move in the right direction. Ovarian cancer symptoms typically don't appear until the disease is advanced. But when discovered in its early stages, epithelial ovarian cancer, the most common form, often can be cured.
Currently, women at high risk for either endometrial or ovarian cancer (they have a first-degree relative, such as mother, daughter or sister with the disease) need to have frequent pelvic exams using either an abdominal or a transvaginal ultrasound, plus a CA (cancer antibody) 125 reading.
These are not easy to obtain or completely accurate for early detection, but they're the best we have.
So if you're at risk, Irene, keep getting checked, and let's hope this new test soon gives us the early ovarian and endometrial cancer detection tool that's missing from our scientific arsenal.
Dr. Mehmet Oz is host of "The Dr. Oz Show," and Dr. Mike Roizen is chief medical officer at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. Submit your health questions at www.doctoroz.com.
Why the U.S. is ranked
Q:I just read that America, the richest country in the world, is ranked 17th in overall health. How is this possible? Is it our health-care system? -- Paul H., Chicago


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When my grandmother asked if I'd interview her for a project that the public radio station was hosting in her hometown of Indianapolis, I knew she meant StoryCorps. Naturally, I said yes.
I routinely linger in my car, listening to the StoryCorps excerpts aired weekly on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" day-brightening audio clips of ordinary people reminiscing about their lives. While I'd often thought it would be neat to visit a StoryCorps recording booth with my 86-year-old grandmother, it seemed unlikely we'd get to the permanent studio in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. Then a StoryCorps MobileBooth rolled into town.
The gleaming Airstream trailer, one of two that travel the United States, was a surprisingly comfortable spot for our 40-minute conversation about Grandma's life. We sat at a table with two large microphones in front of us; StoryCorps staffer Yuki Aizawa ran a sound check, and then we began.
As with any oral history project, the key is asking the right questions to engage the storyteller. So before our interview, I consulted StoryCorps' online Question Generator <storycorps.net/participate/question_generator>. typed in our names and our relationship to each other, and the site produced a list of questions about growing up, marriage and raising children, working, war experiences and more. I checked off a dozen questions, then edited and rearranged them. I shared them with Grandma in advance, so we were both comfortable with the direction of our chat.
We talked about her parents, her upbringing, her marriage, her three children. We talked about how she supported herself after my grandfather died. And we talked about her experiences as a "celebrity": You may know my grandmother as Dave's Mom, who puts her son firmly in his place during segments on "Late Show with David Letterman." She described her trips to the Winter Olympic Games in Norway and Japan as a "Late Show" correspondent, and her annual Thanksgiving Day appearances on the program.
Grandma couldn't have imagined her life would take the unusual turns it has. And this 40-minute capsule hardly seems to capture her 86 years. But our StoryCorps session was an important way for us to connect and share. When our interview ended, we received a CD recording, a copy of which will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. What we really walked away with, though, was another fond memory.
Interested in learning more? The StoryCorps Web site offers great resources for gathering oral histories, including a do-it-yourself guide. The site's Question Generator is helpful, even if you don't participate. You also can find dates and locations for both MobileBooths.


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Companies looking for a competitive edge over their rivals have in recent years been making use of a loophole found in US patent law. Normally, Company A will allege that Company B is importing a product that infringes its patent, at which point a court battle ensues, lawyers get rich, and so on. There exists a loophole, however, whereby Company A can also file an injunction with the International Trade Commission, who do not have to abide by a Supreme Court ruling that frowned upon sales injunctions. Obviously, this only works when Company B's product is manufactured overseas and imported into the US, but thanks to globalization, that category is pretty vast.
In these cases, the ITC can ban the importation of Company B's product if it finds patent infringement. In fact, chip maker Qualcomm and a host of other companies have faced the possibility of having imports of their products banned by the ITC. Now Techdirt has found a law review article from Santa Clara University that examines the use of Section 337 of the 1930 Trade Act (the law in question).
The article finds that Section 337 is used as often as not between two US companies, hardly in keeping with a piece of protectionist legislation that was designed to protect US companies from foreign competition. Companies are also simultaneously using legal challenges through the courts and Section 337, and going the ITC route is often easier, as the ITC does not recognize defenses allowable in court.
In cases between a US company and a foreign rival, the ITC is supposed to show neutrality, simply deciding on the facts, although it has been alleged that this is often not the case, potentially in contravention of international trade treaties such as TRIPS.
Could US legislators be spurred into closing the loophole? Perhaps a particularly egregious case between two US companies might result in such an event. I'm skeptical of such an outcome; Section 337 can be painted by defenders as the best kind of protectionism against foreign competition, and in a time of economic hardship, relaxing trade barriers into the US seems more than a little unlikely.


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Case File
Case 1: Religious Prey: Baptist Foundation of Arizona
- The Church
- A Southern Baptist Church -- an oasis in the Arizona desert, a place of comfort to those in crisis.
- The Investment
- The Baptist Foundation of Arizona -- a non-profit fundraiser dedicated to the church. Investors take a leap of faith and believe their money will be secure.
- The Mirage
- But sometimes in the desert there's a mirage. What appears to be true... is just a trick of the eye. Investors in the BFA discover the harsh reality -- their financial security is an illusion.
- The Collapse
- A father loses his daughter's tuition -- a couple their savings. "American Greed" unravels the elaborate Ponzi scheme which left a religious community betrayed and baffled.
Case 2: Medical Scams: Dr. Mikos
- Chicago
- A town where Midwestern charm meets big city greed -- a town where Dr. Ronald Mikos puts down his roots.
- Dr. Mikos
- He's a caring doctor with a sterling bedside manner. His practice is lucrative. But beneath the charm lies a con artist -- a doctor playing the system and making off with more than a million.
- The Scam
- The scam is simple -- Dr. Mikos bills for expensive foot surgeries -- operations he often never performs. The Feds build a case.
- The Murder
- A patient agrees to testify -- but the star witness turns up dead. "American Greed" profiles a million-dollar case of Medicare fraud and murder.


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How to Use the Context
Inquiry Question
The introduction of railroads in Iowa in the late 1850s created opportunities for industry to develop in rural areas. By the early 20th century, Cedar Rapids housed several large agriculture-related industries: meatpacking, cornstarch processing, and oatmeal milling. The railroads and plentiful factory jobs also resulted in significant population growth for Cedar Rapids. Many of these new residents were immigrants, the largest group coming from western Bohemia (now a region of the Czech Republic).
The increasing number of factories producing goods and department stores selling them had a major impact on the labor market between 1850 and 1925. As America's middle-class population grew, so did the demand for servants in their households. Although a middle-class family could not hire a large staff, the ability to hire at least one servant was a badge of status. The "maid-of-all-work" in the middle-class household was responsible for everything from cooking to childcare to laundry.
In the mid 1800s, many housewives hired "help" (often American-born girls) to assist with physically demanding chores. However, as cities and industries began to flourish, local women who worked as house help could easily find other jobs in shops and factories. By the end of the century, immigrants and African Americans increasingly made up the highest percentage of servants in the Northeast and in the larger cities in the Midwest.
Some of these national trends are reflected at the Brucemore estate in the lives of the Douglas family and their servants. The family's cornstarch processing plant benefited from access to railroads, which brought their product to national markets. The wealth they gained provided the family with a 33-acre estate at the edge of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Like other wealthy families living on country estates, the Douglases were able to escape the commotion of the industrialized city. Their leisurely lifestyle depended upon the work of servants.
The lives of individual servants often can be difficult to trace. In some cases, city directories and census records may provide the only source of information. Fortunately, the stories of several servants at Brucemore have been better preserved. These stories can be pieced together through sources like the nanny's diary, photos, letters, account books, and other documents.