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BURLINGAME – Dean E. Vogel, president of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association, issued this statement today about the decision of Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes to pull his AB 5 teacher evaluation legislation late Thursday, which kills the bill for this legislative session:
"California's educators are disappointed that the Legislature missed a great chance to change the state's teacher evaluation system in a way that would have improved our profession and student learning. AB 5 by Assemblymember Fuentes was based on sound research about how you build strong learning communities for students with a comprehensive teacher evaluation system. It's unfortunate that we could not have real conversations about this legislation so all could have understood how the legislation worked. We recognize why Assemblymember Fuentes decided to pull the bill as he could not allow proposed amendments to be voted on without a full public hearing.
"The California Best Practices Teacher Evaluation bill was an opportunity to get beyond the simple test score debate and to develop meaningful teacher assessments based on multiple measures of accountability. Teachers will continue to press for fair reforms like those outlined in this bill. It would have increased the frequency of teacher evaluations and stressed that local educators, parents and administrators know what's best for local students. It would have provided a much needed common framework for teacher evaluations based on standards of professional practice that acknowledge all the responsibilities of educators that contribute to student achievement and school success.
"Criticism about the bill's call for continuing the practice of collectively bargaining for teacher evaluations is misguided. You can't craft a fair and comprehensive teacher evaluation system without including the professionals who are in California's classrooms every day. Assemblymember Fuentes worked diligently with all stakeholders for two years to create a comprehensive package. We thank him for his leaderships on this effort. CTA will continue to press for the rigorous and fair reforms like those outlined in this bill to transform a teacher evaluation system that is currently superficial and cursory, and so contrary to fostering the collaboration we know is necessary to improve student achievement. "
To read more about what is essential to a quality and comprehensive teacher evaluation system, see the CTA Teacher Evaluation Framework.
The 325,000-member CTA is affiliated with the 3.2 million-member National Education Association.
Every child deserves a chance to learn and no child succeeds alone.
© 1999-


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When Christopher Felix went into sales for Bell Atlantic Mobile in 1988, his dad presented him with a study predicting the inevitable doom of the wireless industry.
"My father worked for the FBI, so he was really into researching things," says Felix. "He showed me an IBM case study that said wireless would never take off and would be just something the wealthy were interested in. It was his way of warning me about my career choice."
Fortunately for Felix, both the case study and his father were wrong.
Felix has spent 23 years in the wireless industry. In June, he took over as president of Verizon Wireless Inc.'s Upstate New York region, one of the top regions for the top wireless carrier in the country.
Market research firm IBISWorld Inc. estimated Verizon had more than a 36 percent share of national wireless telecommunications market in 2011, beating out AT&T for first place.
Though it expects Verizon Wireless' share to decrease a bit, market research firm IE Market Research Corp. forecast in a recent report that Verizon will remain the industry leader with more than a 31 percent share of what could be as many as 468 million mobile subscribers by 2015.
For the second quarter, Verizon Wireless posted total revenue of $18.6 billion, up 7.4 percent from the same period a year earlier. The company does not disclose its regional results.
Felix works out of the Verizon Wireless regional headquarters off Calkins Road in Henrietta, with roughly 1,400 local employees under his leadership.
Verizon made a network investment of nearly $158 million in the region last year, pushing its network investment in the region above $1.4 billion since 2000, officials say.
Prior to becoming president of its Upstate New York region, Felix was vice president of the company's federal government sales division, managing sales and customer service for federal government accounts. He also worked in several sales positions for Verizon Wireless' Washington-Baltimore-Virginia region, as well as heading corporate sales in the company's Carolinas-Tennessee region.
"Having all that experience, from indirect sales to in-store sales to B2B sales, is huge," Felix said. "I feel like I've had the best kind of training ground you can have when you move to running a market like this."
On the move
Moving around is nothing new for Felix. With his father in the FBI, Felix says, he moved 11 times before the age of 13. He eventually settled in Virginia, where he attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg and earned a degree in business administration management.
After college, Felix had a short stint as a radio DJ in Harrisonburg, serving as host for a 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. time slot on WQPO-FM. However, after Felix's eventual wife, Kelly, graduated from school, he began looking for a more stable career.
"I was always into music, and it was a job I just came across back then," Felix recalls. "But I quickly realized it was a little tough to support a family as a radio DJ."
Felix says he started working in radio sales to earn more money. From there he moved on to Bell Atlantic, where he sold car phones.
His quota was to sell eight phones a month; now some sales reps can sell eight phones in one day.
"The evolution of this industry has gone beyond realizing a phone is more than just something you can talk on or text on," he says. "It's something people use to manage their business or do credit card swipes or do video surveillance on."
Felix says a big part of the company's growth plan in this region is to build out its 4G LTE-long-term evolution-network. The system provides mobile ultra-broadband for Internet access as well as gaming, mobile television viewing and video conferencing. Felix says a targeted area of growth for the company's 4G LTE is with business-to-business clients.
"(Upstate New York) is as advanced or more advanced than any area I've been in, and I've traveled the whole country," Felix says. "I think what you'll see going forward in this marketplace is the convergence of the tablets and the phones, and the connecting all the products we offer for customers to manage their lives and businesses.
"Anything that a business needs, there's a wireless solution or an outside vendor we can partner with to make it work."
IBISWorld's report shows that companies such as AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. are the biggest competitors to Verizon. Felix says he sometimes finds himself driving around testing his Verizon phone in different areas to see if the service measures up.
"The other carriers are strong as well, but it's tough to beat Verizon in this market," he says.
"Upstate is known throughout our business as being one of the most loyal and vocal markets. The people here let it be known what they want and what they expect. That gives us a good base to work with."
Felix also likes to make unannounced visits to Verizon stores in the region, seeking the same experience a customer would get. That can be tricky, though.
Most stores now have his picture up in the back room to show employees who is leading the company in this region, he says. And Felix's physical stature makes him stand out: He has a shaved head, a goatee and an impressive build-a product of his favorite hobby, powerlifting. Felix won multiple state powerlifting championships when he lived in Maryland.
Yet what might stand out most about Felix is his customer-friendly disposition. He is a three-time winner of the Verizon President's Cabinet award for outstanding sales performance and leadership in customer service initiatives.
Felix says he likes to work closely with employees to help them develop customer service and sales skills.
"I'm pretty hands-on when it comes to management," he says. "I'm going to show you how to do a job, but I'm not going to do your job for you. I want people to be able tell or ask me anything. It's all about serving the customer."
Marquett Smith, who was president of Verizon's upstate region from January 2007 through April 2010, has known Felix since high school. Smith, now vice president of federal government sales for Verizon, says Felix has the personality of a leader.
"I think Chris' background and the skills he brings into the market set him up for success," Smith says. "Chris is also an active father who participates in his kids' lives and whatever they're involved in. He'll be visible to the public not only in regards to Verizon but within the community as well. I think there's a lot of upside to him leading the Upstate New York region."
Felix says one of his goals is to make each Verizon location as inviting as possible. One recent development he is excited about is Verizon's companywide initiative to get rid of formal dress shirts and ties on employees. The policy went into effect Aug. 1.
"That was based on customer feedback," he says. "My goal is to make customers as comfortable and see what I can do to provide employees with what they need to better serve customers."
When he's not at work, Felix says, he enjoys spending time with his family. His two teenage sons are involved in lacrosse, which has excited them about the move to the Rochester area. Felix also enjoys attending football games with his father, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
As for his father being wrong about his career choice, Felix says it has never come up again.
"He conveniently forgot about it," he says. "That was one of those things I could have done an 'I told you so.' But I think at the time I was trying to buy a house and he was helping out. So I left it alone."
Christopher Felix
Position: President, Upstate New York, Verizon Wireless Inc.
Age: 48
Education: BBA, James Madison University, 1987
Family: Wife Kelly; sons James, 14, and Jon, 13
Residence: Pittsford
Interests: Weightlifting, watching football, spending time with family
Quote: "I'm a big believer in your actions. It's not about what you write in an email or what you say in a speech. It's all about what you do."
8/10/12 (c) 2012 Rochester Business Journal. To obtain permission to reprint this article, call 585-546-8303 or email firstname.lastname@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


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Buoyancy Bag, Pillow, 39 x 9
Holt Allen buoyancy bags are made from tough and tested 0.16 in. thick PVC and come in a variety of shapes to fit snugly in your dinghy. Each bag has welded strap loops and a flexible screw cap and nozzle with a slow return valve to aid inflation. Important Fitting Instructions: After checking that there are no sharp points to snag, the bag should be firmly secured to the dinghy by webbing straps passing over and round the bag through the positioning loops. Do not use the loops for actual attachment.
*Tips on Buoyancy Bags: Make sure there are no sharp points in your boat that would snag or puncture the bags (especially check the undersides of any structures). Bags should be attached to the boat by passing webbing straps over and around the bag through the positioning loops on the bag. DO NOT use the loops for the actual load bearing attachment to the boat. Leave your bags slightly underinflated to ensure they do not rupture as the air inside expands on hot days. All dimensions quoted are approximate inflated sizes. Buoyancy is approximate as provided by the manufacturer.
|34.0 kg


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Science Friday® is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Science Friday® and SciFri® are registered service marks of Science Friday, Inc. Site design by Pentagram; engineering by Mediapolis.
|Ira talks with New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin about coverage of climate change, including current hot stories in the field, the shifting landscape of environmental reporting, and the prospects for the coming administration.


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Greg London on April 22nd, 2010
A couple days ago I was so happy with the achievement of redesigning the look of my sign up bonus site. Now, only a couple days later, I know what it's like to be hacked. It's like being raped, almost all the files on my ftp server were compromised. This is 3 sites total including […]
Continue reading about My ftp webserver got hacked with a malicious malware script and how to fix and prevent it


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IDWeek Is Alive With the Sound of Music
If you asked 100 HIV clinicians and researchers what the Von Trapp family has to do with HIV/AIDS, 99 would probably stare at you like you're insane.
The 100th would be Trip Gulick.
Gulick -- more formally known as Roy M. "Trip" Gulick, M.D., a professor of medicine and the chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Weill Medical College of Cornell University -- took the stage at the opening session of the inaugural IDWeek conference to accept the HIV Medicine Association's annual HIV Clinical Educator Award. He then promptly showed the audience of several thousand exactly why he'd earned that distinction -- and in so doing, set a bar (several bars, actually, as well as an octave or two) for medical conference speeches that will be awfully hard to meet.
"When you read, you begin with --" he said, gesturing to the crowd.
The audience, largely confused, sat in silence. A few people recognized the reference and tentatively responded, "A-B-C." Gulick repeated the line; more in the audience responded.
And then he broke into song.
"When it's AIDS, you begin with A-Z-T," he began. What followed was a two-minute, a capella tour-de-force in which Gulick boldly stood at his podium and belted a (mostly on-key) rendition of "Do-Re-Mi," the seminal song from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music:
AZT was first, you see,
ddI was hockey pucks.
ddC: neuropathy,
d4T -- man, that stuff sucks!
3TC was worth a try,
saquinavir -- the first PI,
ritonavir -- too much GI ...
Every FDA-approved HIV drug had its line; when Gulick closed, a few verses later, with "elvitegravir -- don't call it quad / they're not just combos, they're a squad / and that brings us back to A (ZT)," the room erupted into laughter and appreciative applause. (Click here to listen to -- and read the full lyrics for -- Gulick's parody.)
It was an unconventional speech to help kick off a conference that bills itself as a new, unconventional breed of medical science meeting. IDWeek is the love child of four parent organizations: the Infectious Diseases Society of America (which normally held its annual meeting around this time), the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the HIV Medicine Association and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. Its existence is an acknowledgement of our evolving understanding of the manner in which many infectious diseases, including HIV, entangle and interweave throughout a person's life span, and the corresponding need for health care professionals from all areas of the field to develop a better understanding for how those diseases interact. "For HIV clinicians, this conference provides a unique opportunity to learn the latest science on preventing and treating the non-HIV-related infections that affect so many of our patients," said Judith A. Aberg, M.D., the current chair of the HIV Medicine Association. "It's also a way to have the broader [infectious disease] community keep up with the rapid pace of therapeutic advances we have made over this past year."
How successful the conference will be in that regard is to be determined; with conferences of this scale (IDWeek is being attended by more than 6,400 registrants and features more than 1,750 presentations stretched across six distinct-but-overlapping "tracks," or infectious disease subfields, including "HIV-STD-TB" and "Epidemiology & Infection Control"), attendees often tend to focus only on the specific areas in which they already have a professional interest. But it's an effort worth the attempt, particularly as various infectious and chronic diseases factor ever-more prominently into one another's prevention and treatment efforts.
TheBodyPRO.com will follow up throughout this week, as well as the weeks following it, with HIV-relevant highlights from this newest addition to the virology meeting family; stay tuned to our IDWeek coverage home page for the latest additions. Until then, so long; farewell; auf Wiedersehen; goodnight.
Myles Helfand is the editorial director of TheBody.com and TheBodyPRO.com.
Follow Myles on Twitter: @MylesatTheBody.


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Rena Cotsones, Northern Illinois University's longtime executive director of community relations, has a new and exclusive focus: Rockford.
Thanks to a recent appointment made by President John Peters, who calls the Forest City a place with a "unique set of challenges and opportunities," Cotsones is now assistant vice president for regional engagement/Rockford.
Cotsones moves from the Office of Community Relations to the Division of Administration and University Outreach, under the direction of Vice President Anne Kaplan.
"Rena will serve as the university's Rockford-based champion for the engagement of NIU in the region. I am confident Rena's strong regional network, leadership ability and collaborative manner will make her successful in this new role," Peters wrote in a memo to top university administrators.
"I know that many colleges are actively engaged in the Rockford area," the president continued, "and I encourage (them) to work closely with Rena to ensure that we have a full understanding of not only the wide range of existing projects and activities, but opportunities for new ones as well."
"I'm excited to be a part of NIU's continuing commitment to the region," said Cotsones, who has called the Rock River Valley home since the mid-1980s, when she moved there after college to take a reporting job at WIFR-Channel 23 television.
"The NIU-Rockford outreach center and the Zeke Giorgi Legal Clinic are two tangible signs of NIU's investment and commitment to the Rockford area, and there are countless projects from most of our colleges going on in the community," she added. "I look forward to ensuring the university has a more comprehensive understanding of our existing projects, then building on those to enhance NIU's engagement in the Rockford community."
Peters has charged Cotsones and Kaplan to create a comprehensive engagement strategy for Rockford, a blue-collar city still seeking its place in the modern marketplace.
Times are tough everywhere, but nowhere more in Illinois than in Rockford, which has registered the state's highest unemployment rate for 18 consecutive months. The July number stands at 15.1 percent, a point higher than Rockford's June figure.
Only 20 percent of Rockford residents age 25 and older hold bachelor's degrees or higher. The median household income is less than $39,000.
Fortunately, Cotsones brings a rich understanding of Rockford's economy to the table.
She worked as executive vice president of the Rockford Chamber of Commerce before coming to NIU, and has remained active with the chamber as well as the Rockford Area Economic Development Council and the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, where she is the immediate past chair.
"NIU's leadership in the region has been clear for a long time. Several years ago, NIU joined with Rock Valley College, Rockford College and the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford to form HEARRR – the Higher Education Alliance of the Rock River Region, and we continue to work with these institutions and other partners to help the region position itself for success in the new economy," Cotsones said.
"I personally have been involved for two decades in this region," she said, "and I feel fortunate that I will have the opportunity to be even more substantively involved in this new role."
Janyce Fadden, president of the Rockford Area Economic Development Council and an NIU alumna, said the city will welcome NIU's intensified attention and commitment.
"I'm thrilled about the decision. It gives us an opportunity to have a central person to work with – to identify as NIU – and to have NIU penetrate further and bring more of its wonderful assets up here to help our region. We'll move even faster because of the selection of Rena and through the reputation she's built in the Rockford marketplace," Fadden said.
"The timing is perfect. We're a very distressed region," Fadden added, mentioning the July unemployment statistics. "Higher education completion is one of our biggest challenges to overcome in the market. For NIU to step up in times like these and say, 'We're making an investment in Rockford,' is very commendable."


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How Harvey Got His Groove Back
After several years in the wilderness, Harvey Weinstein has come roaring back (if a bit less loudly) into the moviemaking sweet spot, winning raves for The King's Speech, The Fighter, and Blue Valentine. But his bitter war with Disney over Miramax, the crushing blow of losing the company (named after his parents) a second time, and his attempt to build a multi-media empire—all have left their scars. Bryan Burrough learns about the darkest hours of a man who, love him or hate him, may be the last true impresario.
On a chill Sunday evening last autumn, a select group of powerful New Yorkers filed into a screening room at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch slouched in an aisle seat with his wife, Wendi, rising just to accept a hug from Katie Couric. Leveraged-buyout king Henry Kravis sat a row in front of them, managing a weak smile as his rival Steve Schwarzman, clad in a battered barn jacket and worn jeans, eased into an adjacent seat. In the back, painter Julian Schnabel kibitzed with Jamie Rubin and Christiane Amanpour, turning in his seat every now and then to whisper with Debra Winger. In a darkened corner the evening's co-hosts, Julianne Moore, Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Clarkson, and Christine Baranski, huddled together.
By and by the host, Harvey Weinstein, raised a microphone and in a scant seven sentences introduced the film's star, Colin Firth, who introduced the movie, The King's Speech. It was a glamorous evening, and a glamorous film, the kind of night—and the kind of film—that Weinstein once hosted regularly, that is, until his last few years in the wilderness, when he lost millions of dollars and, by his own admission, his love for making movies. Standing in front of the Murdochs and Kravises was the Harvey Weinstein people remember, the Harvey Weinstein whom, despite his infamous temper and penchant for infighting, people missed, the downtown impresario, the indie king, the man who with his brother, Bob, produced some of the best movies of the last 20 years, from Pulp Fiction to Shakespeare in Love to The English Patient. Here was the Harvey many had felt was gone forever.
This, at least, is the public Harvey Weinstein. The other Harvey, the one who has returned to actually making films, is on display a few nights later, sitting in a crowd of nobodies at the Clearview Chelsea theater, on West 23rd Street. The occasion is the first test screening of Submarine, a British coming-of-age movie he took on last September after successful showings at the Toronto Film Festival. The New York audience's reception is a disappointment, subdued at best, sullen at worst, and when Harvey stalks out into the lobby, he barely makes eye contact with the film's director, a young Londoner named Richard Ayoade.
"It's amazing, the humor just doesn't translate," Weinstein fumes to a circle of aides. "In Toronto they were on helium they were laughing so hard. These people, they don't get it. They don't get it. I just don't get it. It's like they need permission to laugh." Weinstein riffs through changes he can make to the film, which will be released sometime this year. Maybe a "place card" to establish the Welsh setting. Maybe toning down some of the heavy British accents. "We'll take down some of the dialogue, like we did in My Left Foot. Anyway, there's a problem with the film. This is the process. I'll fix it."
A moment later he shoots me a look, and a smirk, that pretty much says it all: after all the bad movies and bad decisions and bad, well, everything of the last five years, Harvey Weinstein is finally back.
Love him or hate him, and there are plenty in both camps, Weinstein is first and foremost a creature of New York, a personification of the city's best and worst traits: smart, arrogant, foulmouthed, temperamental, undeniably creative. At the point where Manhattan fashion and film and media and politics intersect, he is simply "Harvey," a single-name icon after all these years. Most nights he can still be seen gliding through downtown streets in his gleaming, chauffeur-driven black Escalade, same black suit as in his heyday, same rumpled white shirt, same sumptuous belly straining at the lowest buttons. But he's not the same Harvey, not really, not after all that's happened. His long climb back, into what appears to be a promising third act, has made him a bit humbler, a bit chastened.
Everyone in the entertainment world knows his story. A middle-class kid from Queens, a onetime concert promoter who emerged with his brother in the early 1990s as the leading maker and marketer of independent films, Weinstein made his name during an unprecedented streak, from 1992 to 2003, when his beloved Miramax studio produced at least one best-picture nominee every year. The contradiction that made him so fascinating was how a man who produced such wonderful films—Trainspotting, Cold Mountain, Good Will Hunting, to name a few—could produce such boorish behavior. In Hollywood, everyone seems to have a favorite Harvey tirade. The time he told The New York Observer he was "the fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town." The time he screamed at Terry McAuliffe, then chairman of the Democratic Party, over some now forgotten bit of political trivia: "You motherfucker! I'll rip your balls off!" (Weinstein denies this happened.)
That was Harvey Weinstein then and, though such outbursts seem rare these days, probably still is. An aide tells the story of a "slight" tantrum he recently threw on the set of a movie filming outside London, after which he apologized for "being an asshole," at which point someone piped up, "Yeah, but you're our asshole, and we're glad you're back." Ask his peers about Weinstein these days and you hear that kind of thing a lot. Where once he was viewed as a spitting, cursing blowhard, today, at 58, Weinstein is often described in warmer terms, as a throwback to the passionate, sometimes vulgar studio heads of yore, such as Harry Cohn and Jack Warner. Having sold Miramax to the Disney Company in 1993, then leaving in a rancorous dispute with its C.E.O., Michael Eisner, in 2005, he was surprised to find much of Hollywood actually cheering him on when he tried to buy back Miramax last year.
"I think just about everybody was rooting for them," says Tom Freston, the former Viacom C.E.O., "because, while Harvey is sort of the anti-Hollywood, underneath all the bluster people really do root for him because he is sort of emblematic of the Hollywood of yesteryear, the big, burly guy who steps on a lot of toes, who does it his own way. It harks back to the reasons many of us got into this business."
"There are still detractors, there are still people who remember the hell," says Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists Agency talent agent. "But, look, everyone needs a healthy distributor for high-end art films because there are, like, two and a half of them right now. These things, these rarefied bets on the art business, have to work or we're all going to be living in a world of superhero movies or three-minute video clips from our retarded cousin in Baton Rouge. The world needs Harvey."
If there is a lesson to be drawn from Weinstein's lost years, it is that hoary old bromide: Be careful what you wish for. Seven years ago, all Harvey and Bob wanted was their freedom—freedom from Disney's smothering supervision, freedom to make the films they wanted, freedom to branch out into the thrilling new world of multi-media. After a solid year of tortured negotiations, every twist and turn of which was chronicled in the Hollywood press, they finally burst free in mid-2005, leaving behind Miramax to start a new firm, the Weinstein Company, a vehicle that would not only let them make their own movies but give Harvey free rein to pursue his multi-media dreams. They would plunge into the Internet and fashion and publishing and television.
With Wall Streeters and hedge-funders tossing around billion-dollar investments like confetti, everyone wanted to be in business with the Weinsteins. And rightly so. During the time they ran Miramax, they had produced hands down the highest-quality movies of the era, for which they were showered with 249 Academy Award nominations and 86 wins, including 3 Oscars for best picture. They had all but created the world of modern independent cinema, and if Harvey's temper and the brothers' incessant squabbling made them unpopular in some circles, they had nevertheless emerged as genuine legends, the last great flamboyant impresarios of a Hollywood slowly being taken over by suburban accountants.
No sooner had they founded the Weinstein Company in a sleek suite of offices above Manhattan's Tribeca Grill than the money came flooding in—more than $1 billion in all, raised for them by Goldman Sachs. Nearly $500 million came from the sale of stock to a slew of gold-plated investors, including Dirk Ziff, Mark Cuban, Vivi Nevo, and Todd Wagner; another $500 million was available in a credit line for the brothers to use however they saw fit. Opening their doors for business in October 2005, Harvey and Bob announced an ambitious slate of more than a dozen new movies to be released in the next year.
There was just one small problem, of which almost no one, least of all their investors, had the first clue:
Harvey didn't want to make movies anymore.
By his own admission today, he was burned out. He had just gone through a difficult divorce from his wife of 17 years, Eve; he married his second wife, the British fashion designer Georgina Chapman, in 2007. But it was the Disney divorce that left the real scars.
"Fahrenheit 9/11—that started it," Harvey says with a sigh, shifting uneasily in a tiny chair as we finish breakfast outside his office. Release plans for Michael Moore's flamethrowing anti-Bush-administration documentary had triggered a long, drawn-out fight between the brothers and Michael Eisner, all through 2003 and 2004. Eisner, worried about political fallout, refused to allow Disney to release the film. Ultimately the Weinsteins forked over $6 million of their own money to buy it back, then released it themselves. The movie earned more than $200 million, making it the highest-grossing documentary of all time, but the struggle took a toll on Harvey. "The whole thing," he says with obvious pain, "it was just disastrous."
Then there was Disney's refusal to allow him to make The Lord of the Rings—too expensive—and its refusal to back a Miramax cable channel. By the time Harvey finally gained his freedom, he wanted to do just about anything except make a film. "I really lost interest in making movies," he says. "I just didn't want to do it anymore. I was interested in everything other than movies, frankly." His ambivalence showed. None of those first Weinstein Company films—The Matador, The Libertine, TransAmerica—earned much money, or notice.
"DreamWorks waited 18 months to start producing, but Harvey didn't want to wait," recalls a former Miramax executive. "He felt if he sat out he would lose his edge. Well, the first movie was Derailed, with Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen, which was pretty bad. Us Jews are superstitious. This was just bad Karma. How do you make your first movie and call it Derailed? It was a bad start."
As the new company began to grow in 2006, eventually hiring more than 200 employees in New York, London, even Hong Kong, Harvey and Bob charted a path that was sharply different from the old one at Miramax. By and large, due mainly to Harvey's burnout, they retreated from actively producing as many movies in favor of having subordinates snap up small, independent films made by others, eventually buying and releasing more than 70 titles between 2006 and 2009. There was a minor hit or two—Harvey's The Reader, with Kate Winslet, and Bob's Scary Movie—but most offerings tanked. More than a quarter failed to earn even $1 million at the box office. Thirteen brought in $100,000 or less.
"I think I took my eye off the ball," Weinstein says. "From about 2005, 2006, 2007, I was out of it. I thought I could oversee movies and have it done for me, so to speak."
What interested Harvey, and took up much of his attention during these years, was a slew of non-Hollywood acquisitions. At Miramax he had already dived into publishing and television production, creating at least one breakaway hit, Bravo's Project Runway. But now, freed from Disney's control and with $1 billion in play money, Harvey was able to indulge his every whim. His first acquisition, unveiled in May 2006, was a controlling stake in a two-year-old Web site called A Small World, which was intended to be a kind of Facebook for the rich. Harvey threw himself into its development, but today acknowledges that he hadn't a clue what he was doing.
"The trouble was I tried to make money" with the Web site, Weinstein says. "That was absolutely the wrong decision. You have to be able to lose money in these things for a long time in order to make a better product. But I was just fascinated by this stuff. I thought it would be fun and have fabulous payoffs. I thought it would take me in a whole new direction. But I was terrible at it. Terrible."
Next up, in October 2006, a stake in Ovation, a cable network devoted to the arts. Four years later, while still alive, Ovation remains a very small operation. Then, in 2007, Harvey unveiled his most aggressive move to date, buying Halston, the fashion house. To outsiders, the motley collection of deals made little sense. But to longtime Weinstein-watchers, there were familiar pathologies at work.
"Harvey believed that Disney held them back from being a broader multi-media juggernaut," a former Miramax executive says, "so in his mind he wasn't content with having just the film side, so he went ahead with releasing all these movies, which he shouldn't have, but he went for the multi-media side, too. The problem was he was like a hungry kid who goes shopping. It was his insatiability. He was a kid with a chip on his shoulder. He needed to prove he could do it, and it turned out he couldn't. It was ridiculous. Halston, Ovation. None of it worked together. None of it had focus."
"Once they split from Disney, there was this sense of liberation, and of euphoria," says James Dolan, the President and Chief Executive of Cablevision and a longtime Weinstein friend. "You have to put it in the context of the economic times. As a country we were pretty flush. Harvey's new company was a beneficiary of that. [Then] he got caught in the same economic downturn everyone got caught in. He went from euphoria to—how do I put it? He got close to getting scared."
"He had a classic case of hopeful expansion, trying to be a one-man conglomerate, which took him away from his real roots and talents, which is a hard-nosed maker of independent films," says Tom Freston. "I think maybe he thought he could pretend to be playing with the big boys, from Halston to television to doing a lot of things that were maybe out of his bailiwick. It appears now that just in the nick of time he's sort of recovering and entering what had been his real specialty, with some Academy Award-level pictures."
"He had been doing the same thing for 20 years," says Vivi Nevo, a media investor and Weinstein backer, "and you know, people lose their sight. They want to get involved in technology and fashion and everything else, which is not your focus, so you take your eye off the ball, trying to find synergy. You are not doing what you are 100 percent good at. It creates some headaches. He tried to go in new directions, and now he is back to reality."
From 2005 to 2008, any number of friends tried to guide Harvey back toward filmmaking. But he had stopped reading scripts. He had stopped going to the film festivals. "When I first got there, in 2008, the focus was not on movies," says Weinstein's baby-faced young president, David Glasser. "Harvey was focused on Internet and fashion and the global media picture. I had expected I would see this unbelievable guy cutting trailers till three in the morning, but he wasn't. He was just in board meeting after board meeting—Six Flags, Halston, all these things. It was a very different company than I expected. And for Harvey, taking his finger off the pulse was not a good thing. I remember a moment where we kind of sat down, and he started saying, 'Look, I know what I need to do.' It was just getting back in touch."
The turning point came during the summer of 2008, as the severity of the recession was sinking in. Business was down. The films weren't selling. Worse, the backbone of the Weinstein Company's cash flow, DVD sales, was collapsing as film-watchers increasingly turned to Netflix and pay-per-view. "The home-video market crashed," Harvey recalls, "and 40 percent of our business got crushed." It was then, as the brothers began assessing their financial health, that they realized how much trouble they were in: they were drowning in debt.
By the summer of 2008 the Weinsteins had gobbled up almost $450 million of their $500 million credit line. The resulting interest payments, $40 million a year, actually surpassed their total overhead. Today, Harvey shakes his head at the memory. "Bob and I had never done debt," he says. "The investment bankers would say to us, 'Debt is cheap money.' No, it's not. Debt can be the most addictive thing in the universe, and it can kill you. You get used to living high off the hog. It was intoxicating. And so in 2008, I just woke up and said, 'This is crazy.' "
"When we got the debt, remember, it was during the boom," says Glasser. "Debt became like a drug, as Harvey says. You get high on it—you can do all these things: I can do more and more. Well, we weren't making our numbers anymore. It wasn't running the way we wanted. Harvey knew the only way to survive going forward was to get rid of this debt."
There was already grumbling among the investors; the company had fallen behind on a $75 million loan from investor Dirk Ziff, who had resigned from the board. The New York press, especially the New York Post, got wind of the company's troubles and began a kind of slow-motion deathwatch, with articles regularly predicting the brothers' imminent demise. Somehow, Harvey saw, they had to rid themselves of the debt. But how? He had read Andrew Ross Sorkin's 2009 best-seller, Too Big to Fail, about the financial panic, and had been impressed by the portrait of H. Rodgin "Rog" Cohen, senior chairman of the white-shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. He asked around, liked what he heard, then gave Cohen a call. It turned out Cohen was a huge fan of Miramax films, and he quickly got to work on a plan to remake the Weinstein Company's balance sheet. "Rog is King Solomon-like," Harvey says. "He got everyone together. He did it all."
Negotiations with Goldman Sachs and the various Weinstein investors would drag on for months, but in the end Cohen forged a surprisingly simple deal that made everyone happy and erased the debt. Goldman Sachs took delivery of more than 200 Weinstein-controlled films and will keep them until their rental income pays off the debt. Once it does, the films will be returned to the Weinsteins. To cope with that lost revenue, they cut their workforce in half, from a high of 225 employees to 109. The re-structuring went so smoothly, David Glasser says, that they have now begun rehiring.
As they fixed the company, Harvey realized it was time to get back to filmmaking. He really had no choice. The company not only needed hit films, it needed to regain its reputation as a purveyor of hit films. Beginning in late 2008, Harvey threw himself once again into the nitty-gritty of producing and buying movies. From this process sprang not only The King's Speech, which won a Golden Globe for Colin Firth as best actor, but also several others now being mentioned as Oscar contenders, including Blue Valentine, The Company Men, and The Fighter. "I learned what I really love is making films, not the film business," Harvey says today. "I want to be on the set, meeting with writers, I want that freedom. I love it now."
All of this—the debt talks, the return to filmmaking, the recurrent predictions of the company's death—was still aborning last winter when, to Harvey and Bob's surprise, a rumor flew through Hollywood: Disney was putting Weinstein's baby, Miramax, up for sale.
The Disney Store
David Glasser heard the rumor first, in November 2009. "I went into Harvey's office and said, 'Miramax is going up for sale, for $1.2 billion. Do we have any interest?' " he says. "I knew it would be a touchy subject. I didn't know how he was going to react. And he was, well, subdued. He took a meeting with some potential partners, but he wasn't the Harvey where, you know, 'We're gonna get this and tear down a wall to do it.' The company meant everything to them. Harvey had closed that door, sealed it shut, and I don't think he was ready to try and get it back until it looked like we could."
Weinstein was torn. It is impossible to overstate what Miramax means to the two brothers, even now. It wasn't just that they had created it and run it all those years. It was that the company was named after their parents, Miriam and the late Max Weinstein; Harvey knew how much it meant to their elderly mother to get it back. Neither Harvey nor his people can publicly discuss the ensuing negotiations, which are subject to a confidentiality agreement. But Harvey will say that his first concern was whether Disney would even entertain his interest. "They won't sell to me," he told Glasser, "because they hate me. If it worked out, and I made the company a success when they couldn't, it would make them look bad."
Weinstein sent in CAA's Bryan Lourd to assess the situation. "So I dragged myself to [Disney C.E.O.] Bob Iger's house, and Bob was fantastic," Lourd says. "He actually wanted Harvey to get it. For all these reasons. It belonged to them, and it still belongs to them. Bob wanted to make that happen." A face-to-face meeting with Iger, Weinstein, and their advisers persuaded Weinstein of Iger's sincerity. By last January, Harvey had convinced his brother they should try to reclaim the company they both considered a birthright. "Bob was understandably concerned about eating the whole thing," Harvey says. "We were just getting healthy again, and to basically double our workload at that point, he thought it was too much."
Even at $700 million, the reduced price it turned out Disney was seeking, the Weinsteins no longer had a fraction of the cash they would need to buy Miramax. From the beginning, it was clear to all involved they would need deep-pocketed partners who would buy the company for them to run; the brothers would make their money via management fees. Last winter Harvey met with a series of potential partners, including Henry Kravis's KKR. He finally cut a deal with Ron Burkle, the Southern California investor. As an aide remembers it, "Burkle looked Harvey in the eye and said, 'If you want this, I want this.' " Fortress, a big hedge fund, signed up to furnish the rest of the purchase price.
"That's when we started to get excited," a Weinstein aide recalls. "I remember Harvey told his mother, and she was just thrilled. Thrilled. She goes, 'Harvey, who should I call? Should I call Bob Iger? If you want to close this, Harvey, I can do it for you.' By the way, if you know Miriam at all, she was serious. Totally serious."
All through February and March, the auction took shape. Disney, to the surprise of many, elected to have its own executives—a team led by Kevin Mayer—handle the process rather than hire a major investment bank such as Goldman Sachs. Only later would this prove a sore point. "If Disney had hired pros to do this, things would have turned out very differently," says one participant. Would-be bidders began slowly examining Miramax's books. KKR, Studio Canal, Lionsgate, and others studied the numbers and decided to pass.
As they did, Weinstein took weeks figuring out how he would incorporate Miramax into the Weinstein Company. The Miramax film library, its principal asset, consisted of 670 movies; together with the 350 or so Weinstein controlled, this would give Harvey more than a thousand films that, with the DVD market fast disappearing, he imagined a partner could help him stream directly over the Internet. He talked to Ted Sarandos at Netflix, Eric Schmidt at Google, and Jeff Bezos at Amazon and found each interested in a partnership, at least in theory.
But the key, as far as Harvey was concerned, was his longtime friend Terry Semel. Now an independent investor, after resigning as C.E.O. of Yahoo, Semel was open to Weinstein's entreaties. Harvey proposed that Semel come aboard to run a combined Miramax-Weinstein, which would at long last free the brothers from day-to-day management responsibilities and allow them to concentrate on filmmaking. In the end, Semel begged off, apparently to explore a possible purchase of the MGM studio.
Harvey forged ahead anyway. After several delays, initial bids were due on April 5. Disney set a floor of $600 million. Most Hollywood analysts valued the studio at between only $480 and $500 million, but Harvey felt his and Bob's intimate knowledge of the library was worth at least another $100 million. Burkle decided to bid the minimum, $600 million. Harvey personally delivered the bid to Disney headquarters, arriving 10 minutes before the five P.M. deadline. Disney's Kevin Mayer told him there had been only one other, by Pangea Media, a partnership between a Los Angeles construction magnate named Ronald N. Tutor and a troubled Hollywood stalwart named David Bergstein, who was the subject of myriad lawsuits with creditors trying to force five of his companies into involuntary bankruptcy. Harvey knew all about Tutor and Bergstein. He climbed back into his limousine, confident, feeling there was little chance Disney would sell to a pair of Hollywood nobodies over the Weinstein brothers.
Around nine a Disney executive telephoned to say a third bidder, a family trio of Israeli-born financiers known as the Gores brothers, had lobbed in a late bid and was being allowed into the auction. Harvey protested that this was against the rules, but it was no use. "That," a Weinstein adviser says, "was our first sign that maybe not everything here was kosher."
Inside the Weinstein-Burkle-Fortress bidding group, the mood the next day was buoyant. Their initial offer was low, it was true, but no one feared Pangea, whose bid was valued around $750 million, much less the Gores brothers, in large part because neither competing bid appeared to be backed by firm financing commitments, as theirs was. Burkle decided to use this as a battering ram and, in a weekend meeting at Iger's Brentwood home, he and Harvey argued that they were the only legitimate bidders and thus should be given an exclusive negotiating window. Iger agreed, and later that week Disney said it would deal only with Burkle and Weinstein for 60 days, during which the other bidders would be idled. The Gores brothers eventually bowed out.
Teams of analysts and investment bankers plunged into the minutiae of Miramax's financial statements, studying how much the company was worth. After almost a month of work, Burkle and Harvey agreed they could boost their bid as high as $625 million. Bob Weinstein, however, remained unconvinced. "Bob thought the price was too high, and frankly feared the workload," says a Weinstein aide. "Harvey told him, 'We're not going to have to go knock on doors selling DVDs—we're going to stream everything over the Net. They'll sell themselves.' " Yet Bryan Lourd too was wary. "The deal Harvey was going to accept, and that Bob was reluctant to accept, I was telling him not to do it," he says. "But Harvey's love for that name was driving it."
After Bob Weinstein reluctantly agreed to move forward, talks with Disney intensified. Finally, in mid-May, after long days of negotiations that left everyone involved drained, the two sides tentatively agreed on a purchase price: $611 million, subject only to the Weinstein group's completion of its due diligence. Harvey was overjoyed. He called his mother and told her the company would be theirs. Then, believing nothing but details remained, he flew off to Cannes to host a fund-raiser, confident that Miramax was within his grasp.
In the final hours, however, a glitch developed. Burkle's people found it and brought it to Harvey's attention. Deep inside Miramax's financial statements, revenues from several films, including Robert De Niro's Everybody's Fine, were still being carried as estimates, rather than actual numbers. In every case, the actual revenue was lower than the original estimate. It was just the latest of dozens of similar problems they had found with Miramax's numbers.
"It was unbelievably sloppy recordkeeping, the kind of thing you just don't think a public company would do," says a Weinstein adviser with a sigh. "You've never seen an asset for sale the way this one was. It was awful. Finding things, it was like a scavenger hunt. It wasn't too worrisome, not at first. So we brought this to Disney's attention, and at that point I think they were frustrated that we kept finding assets with problems. We weren't the easy buyer that was going to write a check and be done. We said, 'Look, there needs to be a [price] adjustment. We need to bring the price down.' People were tired, frustrated on all sides. And Disney took an approach that was just shocking to all of us, which was 'Yeah, O.K., so what?,' and lashed back at us and said, 'You've got 24 hours.' It was just shocking."
It was May 21. Burkle told Harvey he was lowering the bid. The question was how much. Weinstein felt the adjusted financial statements justified maybe a $10 or $15 million drop in the offering price. Burkle, however, felt the number was closer to $50 million, suggesting the group submit a final bid of $565 million. Harvey argued strenuously against this. Privately, he felt that Burkle had grown overconfident, that with no remaining bidders other than the flimsy Tutor group he was using the newfound discrepancies as an excuse to lower the purchase price and save money. "He thinks he can get away with this!" Harvey fumed to an aide. As one of his advisers recalls, "We told Ron, 'You don't know the Disney Company. You can't do this. You don't give Disney a $50 million haircut.' Harvey was worried they would just say, 'Fuck you,' and walk away."
The Weinsteins argued for an offer of $595 million and no less, but Burkle would not be swayed. "Ron was not dishonorable—he was just being tough," a Weinstein adviser says. "He told us, 'They're not going to dismiss the offer. They can always come back to us.' " Still, Harvey was worried, more so when he learned that Burkle had submitted the offer in a letter, rather than via a face-to-face meeting. "Ron and Bob [Iger] should have sat down," says the adviser. "But they didn't." Still, Harvey remained upbeat. After all they had been through, he couldn't believe Disney would shut them out. At one point, he telephoned his mother and said, "We're still going to get it."
Harvey's Third Act
Harvey was in Cannes the next day, where he was scheduled to host his annual fund-raiser to benefit AmFAR, a leading AIDS-research philanthropy. It was a gala affair, held at the Hôtel du Cap, with President Clinton and scores of stars in attendance, including Sharon Stone, Ryan Gosling, Annie Lennox, Robert Pattinson, Eva Green, Josh Hartnett, and the cast of Inglourious Basterds. The evening's high point was Gosling's keyboard serenade, during which he lavished kisses on an actress portraying Harvey. During the auction, Pattinson sold two kisses to the winning bidders' daughters for around $26,000 each. A saxophone autographed by Clinton brought nearly $175,000.
At every break, Weinstein stepped into the wings to caucus with David Glasser, who had a cell phone glued to his ear, fielding updates from Los Angeles. When the news finally came, it was not good. "We have a problem," Glasser said. That morning in California, Disney had responded to Burkle's letter with one of its own, rejecting the $565 million offer and, to Weinstein's dismay, ending the talks altogether. "It was just a massive 'Fuck you,' " the adviser says. Harvey couldn't believe it. He telephoned Burkle, who was arriving in Cannes that night; he couldn't believe it, either. "They're not going to leave you at the altar," he assured Weinstein. "Not at this point."
But they were. In those first hours, and in the days to come, everyone on the Burkle-Weinstein team pelted Disney executives with phone calls in a desperate attempt to reopen the bidding. But Disney would not be moved. As Harvey watched in horror, the company announced it was entering into an exclusive bidding period with Ron Tutor's group, which had put its house in order by marginalizing David Bergstein. Burkle and Weinstein felt sure it was only a matter of time before the Tutor bid fell apart. But it never did. Six weeks later the deal was done—for a reported $660 million. Ron Tutor, of all people, would now own Miramax.
Harvey was shattered. The toughest part was telling his mother. Miriam said she felt certain they would still get it. Harvey said they wouldn't, not now. It was over. Once again Miriam demanded to telephone Bob Iger. The lawyers, however, wouldn't even think about it. (Disney spokespeople didn't return repeated calls seeking comment. A Burkle spokesman declined to comment, but says he has "no problem" with this version of events.)
Behind the scenes, however, the Weinsteins refused to surrender. As Hollywood journalists moved on to other topics, they quietly regrouped on two fronts. The first was a negotiation with the Tutor group; Harvey felt he could forge a partnership to buy Miramax together. "We tried to have a meeting between Ron and Harvey, but Disney found out and threatened to kill the whole deal," says a Weinstein aide. "Disney knows we know where the bodies are buried, and they don't want us telling Tutor." Weeks later, however, Weinstein and Tutor did meet face-to-face. Weinstein left impressed. "Not such a bad guy," he mused. Eventually their talks led to the Weinstein Company's agreeing to "joint-venture" several sequels of old Miramax movies such as Bad Santa, Shakespeare in Love, and Rounders.
At the same time, the Weinsteins brought in two of the country's top attorneys, Bert Fields and David Boies, to confront Disney. From the very beginning, Harvey had argued that the terms of the agreement they had made in 2005, when the Weinsteins left Disney, prevented certain Miramax movies from being assigned to third parties. He had joined the auction process, in effect, under protest. Once Fields and Boies got involved, they realized he had been right about his claim to the backlist films. After several months of negotiations, Disney quietly agreed to a settlement in which it will pay the Weinstein Company $32.5 million in cash, hand over its 50 percent stake in Project Runway, and reduce its share in four jointly owned films, including Scary Movie and Spy Kids, to 5 percent from 50 percent. The $75 million settlement helped Harvey recover from what, by his own admission, was a wrenching defeat.
A number of friends, however, thought it was all for the best. "I haven't cleared this with Harvey, but I'm going to say this anyway: I was not in favor of them doing Miramax, and I think he might be better off without it," says Jim Dolan. "I don't think he feels the same way. But this allows him to focus on the thing he does best."
"I'm actually happy it didn't work out," seconds Bryan Lourd. "It's a much better structure now. It's about keeping his eye on the ball and making good pictures I'd say their prospects are really good. No one should make the mistake of thinking that three or four movies are going to change their fate. And I don't think any of these pictures will. What will change their fate is a disciplined approach to a balanced schedule, with Bob movies and Harvey movies and new directions and new franchises. Those can be built, those will come, out of just doing the work, just the basics of reading scripts, meeting new talent. Harvey was too highfalutin for a while. They're really on track now."
Today, with the financial re-structuring in place, Harvey Weinstein is back to what everyone wants him doing, making and marketing movies. At lunch at Manhattan's Tribeca Grill one frigid day in December, he is sorting through advertisements for The Company Men, a topical drama he is distributing about laid-off executives, starring Ben Affleck and Tommy Lee Jones. "Obama and Hillary Clinton both asked to see it, and I wouldn't give it to them," he says. "Hillary said to me, 'Of all the movies you've made, this one is the most important.' I want Obama to see this movie publicly. This needs a Washington screening with the president of the United States and the secretary of state."
He glances over his sweet-potato gnocchi at David Glasser and Victoria Parker, a V.P. at the company. "Yeah?" he asks. They nod.
Weinstein sighs. A movie that will ask audiences to sympathize with wealthy white men who suddenly find themselves out of work—it won't be easy. Weinstein shrugs; this is all in a day's work. "Tough movie," he says, nodding. "Tough movie. I'm hoping for a miracle."
It wouldn't be the first.
correction: An earlier version of this story misstated James Dolan's title at Cablevision. He is President and Chief Executive.


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Xi criticised the wind turbine manufacturing sector by naming it along with polycrystalline silicon, electrolytic aluminum and silicon steel sectors, among others, for their high levels of redundancy in production capacity, at a conference in December, it has been revealed.
Xi is to replace Hu Jintao as chinese presidentat the National People's Congress in March.
The incoming president said China's industrial sectors with excess capacity have seriously affected efficiency and investment. He warned that they will harm social stability if they go unchecked.
As a result, he added, China must give priority to "neutralising" the excess production capacity.
Industry officials estimate that around half of the Chinese wind turbine manufacturing sector's 30-35GW annual production capacity is currently lying idle. To solve the problem, China needs to merge and close some plants, which may result in rising unemployment and greater pressure on national economic growth.
Turbine manufacturing was first identified as one of nine sectors with excess capacity back in 2009, and the situation has worsened since then.
According to analysts at China International Capital Corporation, China's largest turbine manufacturer Goldwind has expanded annual production capacity to over 6GW, but delivered only 3.1GW wind turbines in 2011 and 2.7GW in 2012.
This is largely due to the fact that the rate at which China is installing new turbines has slowed significantly over the past couple of years.
In 2011, China had 17.63GW new installations, down 6.9% from the previous year. In 2012, China had about 14GW new installations, down 20%.
Excess production capacity combined with tumbling installation rates has seen turbine prices plummet in China. In four years, turbine prices have fallen from about CNY 7,000/kw ($1,125/kw) to just over CNY 3,000/kw ($482/kw).
This cost-cutting has eaten away at profit margins and, as a result, the majority of Chinese turbine manufacturers are expected to reveal substantial losses when they announce their financial results for 2012.
Xi was speaking at the Central Economic Working Conference on 15 December in Beijing.


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The Stone for Flower Bed EdgingStone is really great material for the flower bed edgingbecause stone is lifelong durability and it also gives a more warranted material. For getting the stone, you better ask some creator of the rings or other to make the stone look not like a stone. Then, stone is really good in the way that it comes with strong choice of stone for the process. The disadvantages which come from the stone edging is the effect of the moss which grows over it. The other kinds of stone which are also used for flower bed edging is the concrete. In the level of price, the concrete is greater to be used for creating the flower edging because concrete will surely cost more money that actually, the money should be used for important thing. The concrete hardness is also able to be adjusted according to the choice of stone that you make the. Those are the kinds of the materials that you will surely find when you want to have the great landscape or garden. Each material for the flower bed edging will be adjusted with the new design of new flower so you need to keep. You can depend on the material too so we can create a better day too. The stone and the wood will be great to be used for edging and the most important thing is that you should bring some additional decorations for beautifying it.
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Here is important clue on make Flower Bed Edging. We have the resource for make Flower Bed Edging. Check it out for yourself! You can acquire how to install stone flower bed edging and see the Flower Bed Edging: The Lists of the Best Materials in here.


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English Rugby
Greats set for Hall of Fame honour
ESPN Staff
July 19, 2012
Former Leicester Tigers stalwart Martin Johnson is one of those set to be inducted into the Hall of Fame © PA Photos
Chris Robshaw, Martin Johnson, Pat Lam and Warren Gatland will be among the first names inducted into English rugby's Hall of Fame.
Current Harlequins captain Robshaw, former Leicester Tigers skipper Johnson, ex-Northampton Saints stalwart Lam and one-time Wasps coach Gatland are four of 28 leading lights set to be honoured by Premiership Rugby, the umbrella organisation of the 12 clubs in Aviva Premiership Rugby.
They will be inducted into the first Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame at a prestigious, black tie, charity Ball in aid of Sport Relief at the Hurlingham Club on October 3. In 2012, Sport Relief made a significant contribution to Premiership Rugby's award-winning social inclusion programme Hitz.
The Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame Ball will also celebrate the first 15 years of Premiership Rugby, after its kick off in 1997-98.
"A Hall of Fame to honour the best players and coaches in English club rugby is long overdue," said Premiership Rugby chief executive Mark McCafferty. "We will induct the winners of the Premiership Rugby Director of the Year and Premiership Rugby Player of the Year awards since 1997-98. It is an impressive list."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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Posts Tagged 'christmas gift ideas'
Alien Perfume Gift Sets for your love
Best Alien Perfume Gift Sets for your love
Do you looking some special gift for special women in your life. You came to the right place, because I will tell you something. One gift that that can make her eyes sparkle is an Alien perfume gift sets.
From the time that Alien perfume was first introduced in 2005 women gravitated towards this perfume, they not only loved the sensual and feminine scent of this perfume they also love the compliments they receive. Both men and women respond to this scent in a very positive way, so the Alien perfume gift set may just be the perfect perfume to show that special someone just how sexy and sensual you think she is.
Special Perfume for Special Women!
Just for sexy women
One of the things that makes alien perfume so unique is the blending of some unique scents that result in a subtle and sultry scent that is not overwhelming and can be worn for both day and evening. The scents in this perfume are a mixture of amber, woods, orange blossom, vanilla, and green notes. This mixture seems to convey the essences of femininity with an undercurrent of strengthen. The nice thing about choosing a gift set is that day and the body lotion can wear the perfume spray at night or on those casual outings when women want a light scent.
For many women Alien perfume has become their signature scent which makes giving this gift set not only the ideal choice, but one that shows that special someone that you know what they like and strive to give it to them.
However, you don't have to wait until Christmas to give an alien perfume gift set, this makes a wonderful gift for birthdays, mother's day, or simply just because. It also is a great gift for women to give themselves.
Angel By Thierry Mugler
Try Shopping For Alien Perfume Gift Sets Online
As any woman who loves alien perfume can tell you an Alien perfume gift set is not cheap, but shopping for a gift set online can help you save money. On Amazon are many online stores that offer great discounts and reduced rates on perfumes and perfume gift sets. Choosing some of these stores and doing a little comparison-shopping can result in your get this great perfume for a lot less than you might think.
Wherever you shop for that alien perfume gift set, one thing is sure the person who receives this precious gift will never forget it or the person who sent it to them.
Gift sets ideas by Thierry Mugler