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Sit in a rocking chair on the front porch of the 1861 Farmhouse Restaurant in Valle Crucis and you'll get it. You'll understand why restaurateurs and chefs come here, to the northwest corner of North Carolina, to endeavor the difficult business of fine dining.
From your seat, you see a mountain in the distance. Your eyes trace its outline, rising and falling, against a backdrop of sky. You see how the mountain pushes up behind the original Mast General Store, where visitors stream out of the front door, glass-bottled Cheerwines in hand. Some of those visitors climb into their cars, shoot across N.C. Highway 194, and begin ascending a hill toward where you're sitting. They pull into a gravel parking lot, walk up the steps of the restored Victorian that houses 1861, cross its porch, and step inside to be seated. They're here seeking a meal. But, if we're being honest, they're here looking for more than food.
Visitors come to North Carolina's High Country expecting to experience, if only temporarily, a lifestyle that's rejuvenating. They leave Charlotte and Raleigh behind and head for places perched higher than the tallest buildings in either of those cities — places such as Boone, Blowing Rock, and Valle Crucis. Towns where the landscape is different from anything back home and where the people include new faces.
To understand why visitors come here is to understand why chefs and proprietors do.
Alison Garrett and her husband, Steve, drove past the Hard Taylor House in Valle Crucis several times before they got up the nerve to pull in the driveway and peek in a window. They spotted it for the first time while their oldest son was attending college at Appalachian State University in nearby Boone. The house was beautiful, they thought, settled as it is in a quiet hamlet. But it needed a lot of work.
Still, the Garretts fell in love with Valle Crucis, where they eventually built a summer home. And later, unable to think of a good reason not to stay there year-round, they became full-time residents. That's when they got serious about purchasing and renovating the Hard Taylor House. They began researching its past, considering its potential.
"We read all we could about the home's construction and knew it had a really special story," Alison says.
That story starts with its previous residents, who were influential in the development of Valle Crucis. Henry Taylor, the same man who built the Mast General Store across the road in the early 1880s, built the house in 1861. Well, actually, he built a two-room brick house that his son, Thomas "Hard" Taylor, later added nearly 5,000 square feet to. Think of it as a house within a house because that's what it is.
In the original part, where Henry hand-laid bricks himself, Alison and Steve had to tear through layers of wallpaper, plaster, and drywall before finally exposing the brick walls. They refurbished the home's hemlock wood floors, too. The list could go on, but in all, the Garretts spent two years working on the house before introducing it to diners as 1861 Farmhouse Restaurant in 2010.
Hearing Alison talk about it, the project was a significant investment in money, time, and emotion. "But it worked out, and I really feel like this is where my family's meant to be," she says.
If the High Country is a calling, then Jimmy Crippen received his when he was 29 years old. Although he grew up in Florida, Crippen often spent summers in Boone, where his family owned a farm. As time passed, he developed an affection for the place, the High Country.
He found the town of Blowing Rock particularly appealing. "Blowing Rock has always been a place of refuge and inspiration for the soul," he says.
So he moved there in 1994 to open Crippen's Country Inn and Restaurant.
Located in an iconic blue house on Sunset Drive, the restaurant replaced the Sunshine Inn, which Crippen equates to Blowing Rock's version of the Dan'l Boone Inn and Restaurant. That is to say, a country-cooking haven. "The Sunshine Inn reached the soul of a lot of people's palates," he says, "because at our core, most of us love the familiar foods we grew up on."
Crippen envisioned serving food more experimental and creative than what Sunshine's regulars were used to. When he opened his restaurant, he knew he was taking a risk. "Understand, more complex plates don't always square with what people want," he says.
But understand, too, that Crippen is charismatic and hopeful. If anyone could make a successful push for upscale dining in a mountain town, it's him. And he did just that at Crippen's for 18 years, in which time he worked like a preacher to convert casual customers into reliable patrons.
The restaurant closed this past January to allow Crippen to focus on a new project, Competition Dining Series. The head-to-head chef's challenge travels the state, inviting restaurants to compete in single-elimination battles, cooking with North Carolina-sourced ingredients, until one champion chef is chosen in each of five regions. Crippen came up with the idea several years ago and first introduced it in the High Country in Blowing Rock. He's emceed every Competition Dining event since.
The venue helps Crippen spread the good word about North Carolina food, the restaurants that serve it, and the chefs who cook it.
Chefs from 1861 Farmhouse have competed before, and this year's champion from the Blowing Rock series was Sam Ratchford from Vidalia, a restaurant in downtown Boone.
"Sam's restaurant is just a few blocks west of the very traditional food served at the Dan'l Boone Inn," Crippen says. "But look, the two get along! He's generating a lot of excitement and bringing fresh blood to the culinary scene."
Because Crippen is a promoter of great food in the state, his cell phone contains the number of almost every great chef and restaurateur here. He can immediately find Ken Gordon's number, for instance. Ken and his wife, Wendy, own The Gamekeeper restaurant — the only AAA Four Diamond-rated restaurant in the High Country, and one of only 14 in North Carolina.
The couple met when they were students at Appalachian State University. "At the same time we fell in love with one another, we fell in love with this place, the High Country," Ken says. "After college, we didn't want to move away."
Facing bleak employment prospects, however, they moved around the state to gain restaurant experience. They stopped at places such as the former J. Basul Noble's in High Point, where they worked for about 8 years. While there, Ken applied to culinary school — a dream of his. He only needed a letter of recommendation to get in. But when he asked the restaurant's owner, Jim Noble, if he'd write it, Noble persuaded Ken not to spend money on formal culinary training.
"Jim said, 'You're only going to get in debt. Stay here and I'll teach you everything you need to know,' " Ken says. So he studied culinary books by night and picked the minds of the kitchen staff during the day. All that knowledge prepared the Gordons to return to Boone, where they purchased The Gamekeeper in 2000.
Open since 1987 under a previous owner, the restaurant evolved under Ken and Wendy's stewardship. Game proteins became the centerpiece of the menu, including wild boar, bison, venison, and rabbit.
"Wendy and I worked hard to create a menu that's indigenous to the High Country," Ken says. "We want people to come eat here and feel connected to the place."
About 10 years elapsed between the Gordons' departure from, and their return to, the High Country, where they've always felt most at home. Now they own a restaurant here, yes, but as it happens, their restaurant is a piece of regional history, too.
The 1950s stone cottage that houses The Gamekeeper was once the residence of the founders of Camp Yonahlossee, the oldest camp for girls in North Carolina until it closed in the late 1980s. Today, Ken and Wendy find themselves its curators.
Similar to the Garretts of 1861 Farmhouse, they're concerned with preserving a place because of what it means to the High Country's culture.
Whether a product of providence or coincidence, it seems that culture is being shaped by the hands of the people who love it here, among them, Jimmy Crippen, who remains one of the region's biggest advocates. To anyone who'll listen, he promotes the new restaurant that recently opened in the former home of Crippen's — the New Public House and Hotel.
That restaurant means a lot to him. He knows the chef, Michael Foreman, who helped open it. Foreman is well-known for his other restaurant in Blowing Rock, Bistro Roca, which is located inside a building that also houses the historic Antlers Bar — the oldest continuously serving bar in North Carolina.
With his team of Bistro Roca chefs, Foreman won Competition Dining's Blowing Rock series in 2012.
The night Foreman won, he stood with Crippen and accepted his prize inside the same building that had previously been the Sunshine Inn, which was still, at that time, Crippen's Country Inn, and which would become the New Public House and Hotel.
Foreman stood inside a building that's home to a restaurant, where the dishes served are evidence of the evolution of cooking in the High Country. A restaurant which visitors will come to when they seek to recharge, wanting to share in the lifestyle that attracts the brightest culinary minds.
831 West King Street, Boone
Since Chef Sam Ratchford and his wife, Alyce, opened Vidalia downtown, epicurean folks have only had good things to say. They love the burger topped with two giant Vidalia onion rings and other dishes, including the heirloom tomato salad pictured here.
Bistro Roca
143 Wonderland Trail, Blowing Rock
There's a woodpile out back, but don't mistake this place for a barbecue joint. Sous-chef Seth Parker uses the wood to fuel an oven. And that oven cooks pizzas topped with everything from heirloom tomatoes to goat cheese and guacamole. Pictured here is the restaurant's lobster and crab cakes dish.
861 Farmhouse
3608 N.C. Highway 194, Valle Crucis
Chef Sam Beasley devises the menu at 1861 Farmhouse, where dishes include this appetizer of fried green tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, crumbled goat cheese, and basil pesto. Visit for lunch daily, dinner Thursday through Saturday, and brunch on Sunday.
The Gamekeeper
3005 Shulls Mill Road, Boone
You can eat ostrich (raised in Forsyth County) from Chef Edwin Bloodworth's kitchen for your main course. For dessert, panna cotta, served here with peaches, oatmeal cookies, buttermilk, lemon thyme, and rose hip brown butter.
Jeffrey Turner enjoyed some of the High Country's finest food for this story. He ate a fancy plate of ostrich at The Gamekeeper, and a simple, but delicious, pimento cheese sandwich at 1861 Farmhouse. He is an assistant editor at Our State. His most recent stories for the magazine include "Keeping the Harvest" (September 2013) and "The Church Cookbook" (April 2013).


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Really, Apple? Tech Giant Resists Shareholder's Call for More Diversity
I had to read it twice to make sure I got things right. Apple is formally opposing a shareholder resolution to increase the diversity of its senior management and board of directors. This isn't news just for diversity nerds. It's…
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subset: commoncrawl


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NJHRC provides an online tool for:
- Finding and listing affordable housing
- Helping people with disabilities find housing options
- Obtaining housing information and links
It's FREE and anonymous!
Vacancy information is updated continuously!
Other Information on:
- Foreclosure Prevention Resources
The NJHRC is a partnership of:
- Department of Community Affairs
- Department of Human Services, Division of Disability Services
- New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency


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18K Yellow Gold South Sea Cultured Pearl & Diamond Ring Size P
Pearl Size : 9-10 mm
Pearl Shape : Off Round/Drop
Pearl Colour : Gold
Pearl Lustre : Excellent
13 White Diamonds 0.13ct
If you are not sure what your ring size is, follow the instructions here to find your ring size.
Every pearl is hand selected and crafted into jewellery in such a way to best highlight its attributes or virtues. It's important to be aware that as pearls are natural products, each one possesses its own special characteristics or markings, making it unique. If you would like to know more click here.


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The Blu-ray format has suffered a few surprising glitches at both manufacturing and publicity levels this week after having a generally strong year.
Most notable is that three separate major releases in the past two weeks from dual-format studio Warner Bros. Pictures have seen big enough problems that replacement discs are already being churned out by the bucketload.
First up, the Five-Disc "Harry Potter" Giftset has seen a big problem – namely that HD DVD copies of the fourth film in the series, 'Goblet of Fire', have made their way into the Blu-ray versions of the disc sets.
Soon after it was discovered that some copies of the Blu-ray versions of the much-promoted "Blade Runner" five-disc sets contained not the 'never before seen workprint' as labelled on the back of the set, but rather a mislabeled duplicate of the first disc containing the film's final cut.
Finally, the recently released Blu-ray edition of "Terminator 3" (the HD-DVD version came out last year) has a manufacturing glitch which means that regular playback of the disc is being limited to 1080i output.
The title was the first Warner Blu-ray title to include an 'In Movie Experience' – a technology that's been available on HD-DVD from its launch which is why Warners has been holding off on publishing several titles (eg. Batman Begins, The Matrix) in Blu-ray that they have had out on HD-DVD for months.
In all cases, Warner has set up a dedicated phone line to deal with the issue, and has apparently begun sending out replacement discs. Affected consumers wishing to participate in this exchange program should call 1-800-553-6937.
If that wasn't enough, its now been revealed that select scenes on the "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" Blu-ray disc have suffered from framing problems that wreaked havoc with the film's intended compositions (ie. heads fully visible in the regular DVD version are being cut off in the Blu-ray version). For those seeking a replacement disc, call Disney's customer service line at 1-800-723-4763, and have your name, address, phone number and UPC number ready.
Capping off the bad week the official Blu-ray Disc Association site was apparently hacked on Friday afternoon, redirecting visitors to the official HD DVD site. No one so far has claimed responsibility for the apparent hack.
In good news for the format though, Sony launched Firmware Update v2.10 for the Playstation 3 this week, officially upgrading the game console to a Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player which will enable it to play back discs encoded with "true" picture-in-picture functionality.
In other good news in the high-def format war front, the Samsung BD-UP5000
– the first true combo HD-DVD/Blu-ray player (the earlier LG had limited HD capability) that can play both formats has gone on sale for $799 in various online stores including Amazon and Circuit City.


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Kessler Foundation and UAB Study Aerobic Exercise to Improve Cognitive Deficits in MS
This collaborative study funded by EMD Serono examines the effects of aerobic exercise training as a rehabilitative tool to improve cognitive impairment in people with MS
East Hanover, NJ –October 29, 2018 – John DeLuca, PhD, senior vice president for Research and Training at Kessler Foundation, has received a $95,000 sub-award from EMD Serono, the biopharmaceutical business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in the U.S. and Canada. The award funds a collaborative study with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) titled "Effects of Walking Exercise Training on Learning and Memory Outcomes in Multiple Sclerosis."
Learning and memory impairments are prevalent, disabling, and poorly-managed among individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS). Exercise training may be an effective behavioral approach for managing MS-related cognitive dysfunction. This randomized controlled trial examines the effects of treadmill walking exercise training on learning and memory performance, hippocampal volume, and hippocampal resting-state functional connectivity in people with MS.
"Aerobic exercise may improve cognitive deficits in people with MS through neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by generating new neural connections throughout life," remarked Dr. DeLuca. "We predict that improvements in learning and memory and cardiorespiratory fitness will be associated with increased hippocampal volume and resting-state functional connectivity. The results of this research will lay the groundwork for physical rehabilitation interventions that improve cognitive function in people with MS."
UAB researchers plan to enroll 40 people with MS who demonstrate objective learning and memory impairments. Baseline and follow-up MRI data will be collected by UAB researchers and analyzed by Kessler Foundation researchers.
"This study is the first to examine two different exercise programs as potential treatments for MS-related learning-and-memory impairment," remarked Brian Sandroff, PhD, principal investigator of the study, and assistant professor in the UAB School of Health Professions. "Through this rigorous study, we anticipate we will provide important evidence for the potential role of exercise training for managing learning and memory problems in MS," he summarized.
About the University of Alabama at Birmingham
Known for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, the University of Alabama at Birmingham is an internationally renowned research university and academic medical center, as well as Alabama's largest employer, with some 23,000 employees, and has an annual economic impact exceeding $7 billion on the state. The pillars of UAB's mission deliver knowledge that will change your world: the education of students, who are exposed to multidisciplinary learning and a new world of diversity; service and engagement in the community at home and around the globe, from free clinics in local neighborhoods to the transformational experience of the arts; drive innovation and the economic development of Birmingham and Alabama; research, the creation of new knowledge; and patient care, the outcome of 'bench-to-bedside' translational knowledge. Learn more at www.uab.edu.
About Kessler Foundation
Kessler Foundation, a major nonprofit organization in the field of disability, is a global leader in rehabilitation research that improves cognition, mobility and long-term outcomes, including employment, for people with neurological disabilities caused by diseases and injuries of the brain and spinal cord. Kessler Foundation leads the nation in funding innovative programs that expand opportunities for employment for people with disabilities. Learn more by visiting http://www.KesslerFoundation.org.
Stay Connected
Twitter | http://www.twitter.com/KesslerFdn
Facebook | http://www.facebook.com/KesslerFoundation
YouTube | http://www.youtube.com/user/KesslerFoundation
Instagram | http://www.instagram.com/kesslerfdn
SoundCloud | http://www.soundcloud.com/kesslerfoundation
Carolann Murphy, PA; 973-324-8382; firstname.lastname@example.com
Nicky Miller, 973-323-3683, firstname.lastname@example.com


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For the last several months, we've been looking at house after house. We even made an offer on one house. After firing our agent for other reasons, we sought out the help of some great agents, but at this point, I was beginning to get the feeling I really didn't want to commit in the long-term to Charlotte. With all of the pressure on us to buy in a "buyer's market," I was certain this was the way to go for us, but every time we approached a house, I found my stomach did somersaults. It just didn't feel right – and no matter how cool the house, it wasn't home.
So, now we're on a rental hunt, but are taking it much less seriously and are committed only to the near-term: one year; maybe 18 months. At that point we may reassess or buy something up north and continue renting down here. We'll save that really good, rock-bottom deal for another family who truly wishes to call the Carolinas "home."


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DC Music began in 2008 with one goal in mind…TO INSTILL THE LOVE OF MUSIC IN PEOPLE.
Over the years we have evolved from private music education to a company that is dedicated to seeing future and current musicians succeed by:
- Linking students with the right teachers.
- Sourcing and/or creating platforms for music to be heard.
- Using technology to create opportunities.
- Helping musicians, singers and songwriters navigate the global music industry by placing their music in strategic places for the right opportunities.
- Educating musicians, singers and songwriters about their rights.
For any queries please contact us.


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I'm probably the sort of person that would benefit from direction and structure so I'm going to try and give myself guidelines to follow. If you have ideas that you think would be interesting guide lines, send them along as well. There might be a series of different guidelines separate, distinct ideas/projects or all the guidelines might meld into a long string of guidelines that end in a single series of images with a single cohesive idea. I'm not sure yet.
To kick things off here are the first three guidelines for the first image we make together:
The image must:
1) Identify a simple and central message to communicate.
2) illustrate what is counterintuitive and unexpected about that message
3) have a sense of mystery in the sense that it provides a question without an obvious answer
So here is my first image idea, following these guide lines: A homeless bum opening and peering into a BFI dumpster in a grimy dirty back ally only to find a white linen table and an elaborate Chef Mortimer style meal laid out before him.
The image of a fancy smancy meal all in a garbage can jumped into my head during a brainstorming session about things that seemed counterintuitive, it further developed into the image of a bum looking into a trash heap and finding a full meal. In my head the image fills requirements 2 and 3, but I don't yet know what the central message is that I'm trying to communicate. Leave a comment and help me figure that out.
I hadn't thought much about the Chef Mortimer name I used until now that I'm going back and reading this post. Hmm... it was a complete accident that I offered up that image alongside his name. Maybe somewhere in the intersection of that image and his name is the answer to guideline #1.
Let me know what you think. Leave a comment, write me an email, FB me. Do you have a set of guidelines to follow when trying to come up with a new image? Do you have an image idea that would fill the three guidelines above? Do you have the answer to how my image idea and guideline #1 work together?


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Improved High ISO Performance with Capture One Pro 7
Capture One Pro 7 has introduced a new processing engine giving you quality improvements in a number of different areas – especially for high ISO noise reduction.
The new method for noise reduction brings:
- Greatly improved noise reduction for high ISO images
- Optimized noise settings for all supported cameras to create the best compromise between detail and noise reduction at all ISO levels
- New noise reduction strategy which separates meaningful detail from the noise allowing more sharpening and less noise
- New default values for noise reduction sliders
The image for this post was shot with a Canon 40D. The scene was only lit by candlelight and it was necessary to use ISO 3200 to achieve a good shutter speed even when using a 50mm lens at f 1.8.
JPG out of the camera Capture One Pro 6 Capture One Pro 7
The image to the left is the JPG straight out of the camera. You will notice plenty of color noise in the background and a general lack of sharpness. The center image was processed in Capture One Pro 6. Here, the color noise is well under control but the luminance noise still cause problems. The image to the right has been processed with the default noise reduction settings in Capture One Pro 7. Now, we get a sharp image where both the color noise and luminance noise is well under control.
JPG out of the camera Capture One Pro 6 Capture One Pro 7
Here we see another zoom from the same image. Again, it is obvious to see the improvements from the JPG to the version processed in Capture One Pro 6 as well as the difference from Capture One Pro 6 to Capture One Pro 7. Notice how sharp and crisp the reflection in the Christmas bulb appears in the image processed in Capture One Pro 7. Also notice how well the deep and dark color tones have been cleaned up while all the color tones have been preserved. You can click on the image to see it in full resolution.
New defaults for noise sliders in Capture One 7
As the noise reduction engine has been completely reengineered for Capture One Pro 7, we have also changed the behavior of the noise reduction sliders.
In the Noise Reduction Tool, the Luminance slider and the Color slider now have default values at 50. In the Noise Reduction Advanced Tool, the slider previously known as the "Surface slider" has been replaced by the "Details slider" which also defaults at 50.
Even though the noise reduction sliders by default are set to 50, Capture One Pro 7 will, under the hood, make sure that these values give you a good compromise between preserving detail and removing noise at all ISO levels.
By default, the Single Pixel and Fine Grain sliders will show a value that depends on the camera model and the ISO level.
New default values for sliders in Capture One Pro 7
Creating your own default values for your camera
The Luminance slider and the Details slider now work together. The Luminance slider is used to adjust how much Luminance noise reduction you add to your image overall. With the Details slider, you can then change the balance for a selected level of Luminance noise reduction to retain more micro detail at the cost of showing more noise.
If you generally like a different compromise between noise and image detail than the default settings, you can save a new set of defaults for your camera. These new defaults will then be used at all ISO levels.
To create your own default noise settings, you need to save a default for both the Noise Reduction Tool and the Noise Reduction Advanced Tool.
Are you using the new processing engine for noise reduction?
Remember, if you are looking at images that have previously been processed in Capture One Pro 6, you will still be using the old processing engine by default and you will not experience all the new noise reduction improvements. To use the new noise settings for such an image you can create a new variant. The new variant will by default be using Capture One Pro 7's new processing engine as well as the new noise reduction.
Happy Holidays to all of you!
All the best,
December 20 2012
By The Image Quality ProfessorCategory: Professor Tips Tags: Capture One Pro 7 High ISO images ISO New Progessing Engine Noise reduction noise reduction sliders
Comments (10)
Very interesting to hear an explanation of how specific the settings have to be to deal with nooise form a particulat camera/setting combination.
BTW I think there is a typo in the caption under the first comparative image – the C1 V7 image on the Right is referred to as if it is on the Left.
A small point but may confuse a few people. (Unless it is me who is confuded!)
Many thanks for some great posts.
Grant Perkins
Hi Grant,
Nice catch! We have updated the post.
Happy Holidays!
All the best,
Nice to know. Unfortunately performance (even on very powerfull graphic stations) is very bad. Meybe in some later versions software will be optimized – now even simple exposition or WB sliders doesn't work smooth. Somehow in version 6 or in LR image updates are smooth and 'real time'. I hope, that in later versions of CP1 7, it will be the same…
Hi Maciej,
If you are experiencing problems with Capture One Pro 7, you should contact our technical support team here: http://www.phaseone.com/en/SupportMain.aspx
We are working on a new service release for Capture One Pro 7 and we will continue to improve the software.
Happy Holidays,
All the best,
The current blog states that the Luminance and Colour sliders in the Noise Reduction tool have default values of 50 – however, the default values showing on my version (Mac with Mountain Lion, Capture One Version 7.0.1 Build 64201) are set at 0. The default value of the Advanced Tool Surface Slider is indeed set at 50 as stated in the blog. Will this affect things if I set a new set of defaults for my camera?
Barry Willcock
Hi Barry,
A reason could be that the image you are looking at is a JPG or TIFF file. By default, we do not apply any noise reduction on these files. You will still have the option of adding noise reduction to these files too.
Another reason could be that you have saved the settings as default for you camera. You can reset these defaults in the same dialog where you also can set the the default for the camea.
I hope this answers your question.
Happy Holidays.
All the best,
So if I understand correctly, even if the defaults set to 50, the real power of the noise reduction (with the same 50 value) will be different depending on ISO & camera model?
Hi Sergey,
Yes, you are correct.
The noise reduction tool has been completely reengineered for Capture One Pro 7 and all supported cameras has their own customized noise reduction which means that noise will be removed "under the hood" in a way that is optimized for the specific camera. Then you can use the sliders to fine-tune the noise reduction to achieve exactly the look you want.
Happy Holidays.
All the best,
It is very good in v7, I was shooting in low light last night, ISO 6400 and perfectly usable, http://www.markmullenphotography.co.uk/p275303178/e50037f6e


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On this project I've used the Confetti Background, Polka Dot Pals Toby and the Party Banner Metal Die all from Little Miss Muffet Stamps. I actually colored the image first and knew I wanted to go with a superman cape which means I'd be using bright blues and reds... so naturally, the primary colors came to mind with a bit of green to tone it down. I was lucky enough to find paper that matched! Seriously lucky... since I don't have a lot of bright papers around.
The the rest of the card was put together grabbing things from my desk... some tape-measure ribbon, a clasp, a ticket, and then finally some letter. I had to hold my breath as I counted out the banners to make sure I had enough ... and yep, it's perfect!
I'd like to enter this into the following challenges:
SweetPea Stamps Challenge #1 - for the men/boys
Totally Paper Crafts Challenge #174 - let's hear it for the boys
Crafty Ribbons Challenge #51 - birthday boy
Hanna and Friends Challenge #175 - birthday
Ladybug Crafts Ink TLT Challenge - birthday


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__Bit Player __
Why let vinyl and vacuum-tube snobs seize the acoustic high ground? Sharp's SM-SX100 amplifier samples sound waves at 2,822,400 times per second - 64 times faster than CDs, giving a far broader reproduction range. The 100-watt amp then assigns a single bit to each tiny sonic slice to represent the wave's change in height. This encoding strategy produces a digital stream that fits the source almost perfectly, and eliminates the need for shielding and other analog-amp convolutions. Plus, the SM-SX100 is smaller than its analog competition and uses half the power.
__SM-SX100: $14,999.95. Sharp Electronics: (800) 237 4277, www.sharp-usa.com. __
__Snappy Hooker __
The original twitch-finger handheld game? Fly-fishing, of course. SuperFly Designs' sturdy, lightweight flybox looks sharp, works great, and fits nicely in the palm or the pocket. The translucent acrylic shell lets you survey your flies - super-organized in the rippled polyolefin foam interior - even when the lip's clamped tight to seal out water.
__SuperFly flybox: $24.99. SuperFly Designs: +1 (415) 922 1163, www.superflyfish.com. __
__Leverage __
Designer Richard Sapper set the standard for a posh workspace with his perfectly balanced Tizio desk lamp. Now he's made a desktop computer to match. IBM's NetVista X40i tucks the processor behind the 15-inch flat-panel display, eliminating the tower unit, and puts it all on a cantilevered stand with a modest footprint that measures just 16 by 10 inches. CD and disk drives slide down neatly from beneath the screen; the wireless keyboard can go anywhere you want. The X40i includes built-in speakers, seven USB ports, and two PCI slots.
__NetVista X40i: $1,899. IBM: (888) 746 7426, www.ibm.com. __
__Generation Next __
Northwest Power's proton-exchange-membrane system is a generator killer. In goes conventional fuel like methanol, propane, or natural gas. Out comes water, heat, and electricity. The key to the PEM system is feeding purified hydrogen, filtered through a palladium alloy membrane, into a stack of individual fuel cells - boosting the power rating and producing thermal energy. When used for both power and heat, the system is four times as efficient as a regular generator and virtually pollution-free. Northwest is placing the first units in homes this summer; you'll have to cool your jets a bit longer before you can buy your own.
__PEM system: $5,000. Northwest Power Systems: +1 (541) 383 3390, www.northwestpower.com. __
__Fully Baked __
Ed Freige managed engineering teams at Silicon Graphics, but left last year to pursue his own wide-ranging product ideas as part of Eddie's Great Adventures. First up is Spudster, a slick molded-polycarbonate baked-potato cutter that eliminates the anguish of burned fingers. One swift push on the easy-clean guillotine and your steaming spud - naked or wrapped in foil - is ready for dressing, its thermal energy melting butter, not your skin. Freige's planned product number two: a speedboat that transforms into a luxury cruiser - definitely not small potatoes.
__Spudster: $4.95. Eddie's Great Adventures: +1 (650) 303 4409, www.spudster.com. __
__Out of Sight __
The RDC-7 looks deceptively like an old 110 camera when you fold down its 2-inch color monitor, but this Ricoh's more than meets the eye. As a still camera, the RDC-7 takes shots at 3.34 megapixels, which internal interpolation tricks can boost up to 7 megapixels. Its 3X optical zoom, with 1-cm macro capability, can focus on mountains or grains of sand. As a scanner, the Ricoh captures documents as monochrome TIFF files. As a videocam, it records AVI video and can feed live NTSC/PAL to the Video Out port. Meanwhile, the RDC-7 also works as a pocket voice recorder.
__RDC-7: under $1,000. Ricoh: (800) 225 1899, www.ricoh-usa.com. __
__Altitude Adjustment __
Fear of flying is perfectly rational after you've had a toner cartridge explode during an ear-popping ascent. Hewlett-Packard designed its DeskJet 350CBi with mobilized ink cartridges that can endure the pressures of frequent travel. The 4.3-pound printer spits out five black-and-white pages per minute at 600 x 600 dpi, giving you up to 485 pages to a cartridge. Full-color pages print at two per minute at 600 x 300 dpi, providing up to 155 pages per ink cartridge. An infrared port supports cable-free connecting, and the 30-sheet feeder lets you simply set up and go.
__DeskJet 350CBi: $299. Hewlett-Packard: (800) 552 8500, www.hp.com. __
__Thin Client __
If you're ready for true digital discipline, Vivonic's Fitness Planner tracks every calorie your body consumes and burns. Use the PC software (included) to tailor a fitness regimen to your schedule and goals. Then load it via serial cable into the handheld planner, and begin logging all eating and exercise on the touchscreen. Clip the Planner to your belt, and its internal pedometer will even determine roughly how far you walk. Using a database of calorie values, the device gives you the skinny.
__The Vivonic Fitness Planner: $229. Vivonic: www.vivonic.com. __
__Wunder Bar __
When you're ready to get the night rolling, wandelBar turns any room into a Eurostyle club. The five-piece furniture system revolves around a 20-foot inflatable lounge that seats 20 and glows from within. Twin media carts make room for turntables and video projectors, while the beverage trolleys (below) supply cocktails. Between gigs the portable partytechture collapses, latches together, and transports easily.
__wandelBar: $25,000. activ8 media & design: +49 (89) 3072 7701, www.wandelbar.com. __


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We offer a wide variety of hair salon services with the help of trained and experienced staff. We offer variety of latest haircuts, hair spa and other beauty services.
We have a broad range of hair care packages as well, which are specially designed to treat hair related difficulties, although nurturing hairs from roots. The hair care professionals style the hairs in such a way that it looks shinier naturally. After availing our hair care services you can say goodbye to your hair problems.
You can use several hair coloring ways according to your age and personality. You can take the help of our hair experts as well. In our saloon we use latest, ammonia free hair colors for entire hair stylist services that consist of streaking, creative hair coloring, global hair coloring etc.
At Craze Unisex Salon, We are dealing with cosmetics treatments for men and women. We specialized services in hair care, beauty care and skin care. Strands salon provides various services for men and women. Our salon provides services to customers keeping in mind the personal hygiene and beauty. At Strands each treatment is customized to your skin requirement so that no matter what your skin type you emerge with soft, supple skin and a glowing complexion. At our salon each service fulfils the needs of customers as it is designed keeping the trends and beauty of a person. All treatments at Strands use only professional products from well-known brands. In our salons, we use a tremendous variety, quality and sought after International brand names. So you can choose your packages and service according to your needs.
Skin Treatments & Services provided by Craze Unisex Salon aims to look up the wellness of your skin. We have a team of professionals who examine your skin type and proceed towards the therapies only after a thoughtful conclusion. We focus on the problems like acne treatment, wrinkle treatment and under eye dark circles and make use of best products to give an appropriate outcome. We feel beautiful only by making you gorgeous because here your looks are in safe hands.
At Craze Unisex Salon, we offers a complete range of Pre-Bridal packages for you on your special day!
Look extremely Gorgeous and stunning with our range of skin care facials and beauty packages modified to suit All skin types and also purify and rejuvenate your senses with our range of revitalizing and energizing treatments.
Copyright © 2016 Craze Salon
by shrilekha.com


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Requisition Management
Create requisitions quickly and easily by using templates or by creating new requisitions from scratch. You can then route requisitions for approval according to your designated hierarchy.
Cyber Recruiter is a web-based recruiting software that is designed to help Recruiters, HR professionals and Hiring Managers manage applicants during the recruiting and staffing process. This easy to use online recruitment solution is designed to help fill open positions faster and more efficiently. Cyber Recruiter streamlines the entire candidate management life cycle process, and can be configured to meet your company's specific recruiting requirements.
For any recruiter, the greatest challenge is sifting through hundreds or even thousands of resumes to determine which applicants are potential candidates for open requisitions. Cyber Recruiter allows you to quickly and accurately search and organize resumes; perform full resume text searching; save common searches for easy one-click access in the future; search batches of resumes by degree, major, position desired or skills defined in your skills tables and route resumes with one click to pertinent hiring managers or other recruiters.
Create requisitions quickly and easily by using templates or by creating new requisitions from scratch. You can then route requisitions for approval according to your designated hierarchy.
Link to your company's career website and post openings, along with gathering applicant information. Push qualified applicants to your Hiring Managers for faster decision making.
Coordinate calendars, schedule interviews, receive immediate feedback from Hiring Managers with custom interview evaluation forms. In one step, Recruiters can quickly expedite the entire process.
Seamless integration of online applications with your corporate website to gather candidate data that is vital to your recruiting process, this includes position specific screening questions.
Route ready to hire candidates using configurable routing and smart emails to assist you with offer details and approval. Notify applicants electronically and include new hire documents.
This highly configurable, paperless automated ATS can be maintained purchased as an on-premise or SaaS delivery model is the perfect recruiting software for your company.
Designed from top to bottom with the notion of always remaining flexible, offering many options for configuring your work environment.
Automatically post all job positions to your company's career page, as well as the ability to upload openings to leading job boards, like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and HotJobs.com
From HR information systems to payroll/accounting software to background screening services, the possibilities for integration are endless.
Danielle Griffis
Recruiter, Inland Imaging
We can send 50 applicants an e-mail at one time with just a click of the button, You can communicate with people so easily. I love Cyber Recruiter.View Success Story
Jody Schubert
Human Resources Manager, Creare
We are very pleased to have a state-of-the art system that instills confidence and matches our company's reputation as a cutting edge technology firmView Success Story


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Don't worry about the price!
Benny Boyd's Price Guarantee:
Barrels of fun!! Priced below NADA Retail!!! This versatile Vehicle is available at just the right price, for just the right person - YOU*** Where are you going to stumble upon a nicer 1500 at this price? Nowhere, because we've already looked to make sure. Optional equipment includes: Engine: 5.7L V8 HEMI MDS VVT, Quick Order Package 26R Lone Star (Regional), Transmission: 8-Speed Automatic (8HP70), Trailer Tow Mirrors & Brake Group, Anti-Spin Differential Rear Axle, 9 Alpine Speakers w/Subwoofer, Trailer Brake Control, Single Disc Remote CD Player, Rear Window Defroster... Benny Boyd was built with one mission - Provide amenities to guarantee customer satisfaction before, during, and after the sale of our great cars, trucks, and SUVS. At Benny Boyd, we believe in integrity and giving the customer a good value for their hard-earned money. Stop by and give us a chance to share our experience and inventory with you in a no-hassle, state of the art auto environment. Please confirm the accuracy of the included equipment by calling us prior to purchase.
*Although every reasonable effort has been made to insure the accuracy of the information contained on this site, absolute accuracy cannot be guaranteed. This site, and all information and materials appearing on it, are presented to the user "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title or non-infringement. All vehicles are subject to prior sale. Price does not include applicable tax, title, and license. Not responsible for typographical errors.


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Bravo for Brian and his Spirit of Ability
On Friday, April 25, BraunAbility and Ally Financial paid a visit to a suburb on the north side of Dallas, Texas. The Colony High School is a high school not quite like any other in the United States for two key reasons: one, there is a special young man by the name of Brian Bravo who attends the school, and two, their school is the very first recipient of the Ralph W. Braun Spirit of Ability Award.
On that sunny afternoon, the Bravo family received a rear-entry Dodge minivan from BraunAbility and Ally Financial. The donation was inspired by the Bravo4Brain fundraising efforts that the school had started to help Brian and his family. Bravo4Brian is a fundraising effort that has collected over $30,000 for the Brian Bravo Trust Fund since December. This incredible feat won Colony High School the first ever Ralph W. Braun Spirit of Ability Award.
Brian Bravo has paralysis from an accident that occurred in 2005. The accident took the lives of some of his family members. His father, Jose, raises Brian now, and the pair use a sedan to travel. The Colony High School basketball team has taken Brian into their family, with Brian now serving as the team's assistant coach. He has yet to miss a game or practice.
The team's coach, Cleve Ryan, helped establish the Brian Bravo Trust Fund to help get him and his father more adequate mobility equipment.
"The van, the extra monetary support, the rallying around a family who needed it — none of that would have happened without the first person saying, "Maybe we could do something...", said Greg Kiser of BraunAbility. "Ralph Braun, our founder, lived that same spirit when he built the first motorized scooter and first wheelchair lift. He built an industry and proved just one person can make a difference, and we celebrate people who do the same."
This isn't even all of the donations. The local Mobility dealership, United Access, is installing floor locks for Brain's chair for free, and will pay the first year of insurance on the vehicle. Huffines Dodge/Chrysler has offered to donate a maximum care coverage extended warranty on the vehicle.
Ralph Braun taught us that it just takes one person and one idea to change the world around you. We celebrate and pass on Ralph's legacy through the Ralph W. Braun Spirit of Ability Award, given to an individual or group who has made a difference in the lives of people with physical disabilities. Coach Cleve Ryan and Colony High School have more than lived up to that ideal.


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Website Fined $110 Million
Bitcoin Site Fined $110 Million for Money Laundering, Owner Arrested for Hacking
Bitcoin site – BTC-e one of the oldest digital currency exchanges. On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said a $110 million fine against BTC-e for facilitating crimes. A separate $12 million fine against its owner, Alexander Vinnik. A series of criminal charges, including conspiracy and money laundering, against him after snatching him up in Greece.
BTC-e is base in Russia and has long serve as a forum where users can exchange traditional currencies for bitcoin. The domain name of btc-e is seize by the US government.
The agencies claim BTC-e, which was founded in 2011, blatantly ignored "know your customer" laws in order to cater to a criminal customer base. They even hosted message boards buzzing with illegal activities. According to a Justice Department press release:
Instead of acting to prevent money laundering, BTC-e and its operators embraced the pervasive criminal activity at the exchange. Users openly and explicitly discussed criminal activity on BTC-e's user chat.
The charges against Vinnik also accuse him of helping to orchestrate the hack of Mt. Gox. It is the most popular digital currency exchange, but shut down in 2014. following a after a massive series of mysterious robberies.
Wednesday's news comes as a reminder that, even as mainstream investors like hedge funds and venture capitalists rush to acquire digital currencies. Many of the currencies core users are still criminal networks.
August 11, 2017. As for BTC-e, a message from its Twitter account says the site will be down for five to 10 days. though many on social media are speculating its gone for good.
Quick update December 21, 2017. Until now btc-e is still close. The members that have cryptocurrencies in the site still don't know if their money would be return. If you open the site btc-e.com the logos of the US government can be seen.


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The fever of FIFA World Cup 2018 has captured the world for nearly a month. With France and Croatia qualifying for the final on Sunday, the biggest sporting tournament is at its climax. The World Cup has garnered audience from around the globe including fans from India. Even though India has not been a part of the World Cup but following of the sport has been immense in the nation. It was once again proven when Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan and industrialist Mukesh Ambani were spotted at the World Cup semi-finals along with their families. Chairperson of the Indian Super League, Nita Ambani and son Anant were also present at St. Petersburg Stadium.
The same match also saw Amitabh Bachchan with son Abhishek enjoying the encounter. Bachchan Jr. took to social media to express his excitement on the semi-final.
"#FraBel #worldcupsemifinals Congratulations France!" wrote Abhishek Bachchan on his Instagram post along with a with a picture with his father.
Both families have been associated with sports in India. Both are closely involved with the Indian Super League (ISL). Abhishek Bachchan is the owner of the Chennaiyin FC club while Nita Ambani is the Chairperson of the Indian Super League.
The Ambanis are also owners of the Indian Premier League franchise Mumbai Indians.
France defeated Belgium 1-0 in the first semi-final of the tournament on Tuesday while Croatia defeated England 2-1 to book the finals berth. The final between France and Croatia will be held at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on Sunday.


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Welcome to the IRIS website, a dedicated social support network that is only available to users of the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust Recovery Support Service.
IRIS is here to help you feel better. We'll support you with tools and tips to help you cope, making it even easier to get through those tough times in future. We know that asking for help is not always easy, but IRIS is a safe and trustworthy space to where you can choose the right support for you.
- This website provides a peer-to-peer support network and website to help people with complex needs who may struggle with managing intense emotions, with painful histories or difficult relationships. It also provides information for clinicians and for carers and families.
- It's available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is moderated on a daily basis a team made up of clinicians from the Recovery Support Service and ex-users of the service who have recovered and want to share their own experience of what was helpful for them. The moderating team will look to guide and support you when you become a member of the site and check in daily to offer their help and advice when needed.
- If you are a Facebook, or other social network user, you will probably find the support network fairly easy to navigate around as it looks similar. If you are new to a social network environment do not worry as there are others on the site who will guide and help you along as you get used to the way it works.
- It is important to note that this is not a crisis service and should not be used in such a way. The local crisis services and other support organisations can be contacted through our website and will be part of your agreed care plan with the Trust.
By becoming a member you are accepting our terms and conditions aimed at keeping you and all the users of this site safe and secure.
Note: IRIS is very new, and the developers are keen to make you feel that it is YOURS. So, please do make suggestions and let us know what you want to help make this a meaningful resource for you. One way to do this is to go to Forums (via the Support Network) and post your suggestions there. Or, if you know anyone involved with IRIS, let them know.


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Anonymous tea party insiders indicate the party is recovering quickly from its recent defeat, with exciting notions for more shutdown and debt ceiling crisis into the new year
The defeat was accompanied by a thrilling revelation, as though a cloud cracked open and Robert E. Lee himself spoke.
They had gotten it all backwards. They were not the new "American Revolution" in which they were crossing the Delaware like George Washington.
This notion was understandable, and after all history is so confusing. But the enemy in 1776 was the British monarchy ruling over America.
Now the enemy is . . . the American elected government representatives.
This revelation poured over them like syrup onto pancakes at your local Jumbo Pancakes place downtown.
They weren't revolutionists. They were reactionaries.
America had moved forward to a pluralistic society with modern safeguards such as unemployment insurance and social security-or, in tea party language, "socialism."
The answer? Return to a decent past and re-establish the old order.
Right away the tea party gave itself a new name--The Royal Tea Party (or Royalty Party).
The program:
People should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Now, if those bootstraps are already pulled up and handed to them on a platter via inheritance that's due to their superior genes and circumstances and place in the social system.
The richest people in the society--"the royalty" of the current day--should run it. Governing will take place according to the rights of the superior, and the wealthy by definition are superior.
Meetings and planning will take place in some of the wealthiest estates--or "palaces"--in the country.
Tea bags will be replaced with gold-colored crowns.
All members will be monarchs and should behave accordingly as rulers and arbiters of the good and the right.
Selected tea party members (Mr. Cruz was mentioned as a possibility) will assume the role of court jesters in full costume. They will wear this costume at all times, as with speaking to the media and congress.
A new motto for the party's basic principle is being developed, with the following getting high enthusiasm at this time:
Si non vincere nos devastantem (If we don't win we destroy everything).


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Gangsters Gamblers Geezers Watch Online Free in HD
Quality: WEB-DL (High)
Language: English
Server#1 HD
Server#2 HD
1h 43min | Comedy | 23 September 2016
Plot: Gangsters, Gamblers and Geezers is story about two lovable losers, Krish and Lee who get fired from their call centre jobs. After spending all their money in a crazy month of partying, they have no money to pay to Olu, their Nigerian landlord. Olu gives the boys 48 hours to pay their rent or else 'things will get biblical'. With the clock ticking, the boys are forced to embark on an adventure that sees them get involved with two warring London gangsters, a gang of money laundering gypsies, a terrorist gang, a cross dressing dwarf and much, much more! A series of misunderstandings lead to Krish and Lee being named the most dangerous men in Europe, with the Mi5 and Scotland Yard hot on their tails. The boys need to find a way to escape the mayhem and find the money to pay their rent. After numerous ups and downs, the boys get their money and their dream girls and learn an important lesson that it is hard work as opposed to elaborate 'get rich quick' schemes that get them everything they want in the end.
Ratings: 4.7/10
Directors: Amar Adatia, Peter Peralta
Writers: Amar Adatia, Christine Edwards
Stars: Rahul Kohli, Jessica-Jane Stafford, Richie Campbell
more information


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Re-regulating the Financial Sector
The financial system, measured by assets, profits, contribution to GDP, stock market capitalization, employment etc, has expanded rapidly since 1990. For example, global financial assets were about 50 trillion in 1989 and increased to about 200 trillion by 2007, during the same period financial depth increased from 200% of world GDP to 400% in 2007. The financial crisis has raised a plethora of issues, many of which are inter-twined. There have been failures on all fronts – market failures in the form of financial firms innovating new instruments while neglecting risk management practices, credit rating agencies failing in rating assets without much thought to risk, private auditors not checking Lehman Brothers' assets and liabilities, government failures in the form of central bank keeping interest rates low in the run up to the crisis, and government entities such as Fannie and Freddie involved in mortgage lending and making enormous losses, and failure by regulators for not checking the books of financial firms such as Lehman Brothers that were moving toxic assets of the balance sheets, and last but least the financial economists who failed to foresee to crisis. There is plenty of blame to go around but one thing is clear: State ownership of financial firms is back. After decades of rising foreign ownership of banks (shrinking state ownership) in almost all regions, except the Middle East and South Asia, the trend could be reversed especially in the developed countries.
The crisis has shifted focus from foreign private ownership to some state ownership, from micro to macro prudential regulations, to re-assessment of deposit insurance, lender of last resort, and implicit guarantees, to consumer protection and taxpayer protection, from mark to market accounting to mark to funding, to revamping of credit rating agencies, to crisis in corporate governance and questioning of remuneration in financial firms, and to strengthening of supervision. These and a number of related issues of interest to policy makers are discussed below.
Given the large set of issues arising from the crisis, the major challenges facing countries are essentially two: (i) Government entities which are subsidizing directed credit (e.g. Frannie and Freddie in USA; similar type of 'chaebol [1]' lending to industrial firms triggered the Asian crisis of 1997); and (ii) universality of too big to fail entities, where systemic important firms, often politically powerful conglomerates that are controlled by elites, have to be bailed out, which in turn leads to the moral hazard problem, where the large entity is considered worthy saving at all costs, including use of lender of last resort facilities from the Central Bank and tax payers money from the Treasury. The too big to fail entities also then knowingly max-out on leveraged lending (40 to one in case of USA) and 'gamble' on financially innovative instruments (e.g. mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps in case of USA). The large entities also have the political clout to suppress regulations and/or evade regulations. Successful regulation requires that the regulator should have information on exposure to systemic risks. Too big to fail institutions were exposed to CD swaps (e.g. AIG in USA) and we knew little about its exposure. The reason is that there is data on a firm by firm but there is no agency that can put it all together. But policy makers and politicians are reluctant to address these two problems head on. Instead the focus on a large set of problems, as detailed below, and obfuscate the issues.
Early Response to the Financial Crisis. Policy makers understood early-on that the current global downturn was far from your normal garden-variety recession. The central banks were the first to react, while commercial banks were curtailing credit sharply in the face of global deleveraging – interest rates were cut dramatically, emergency liquidity provision was stepped up, limits to deposit insurance were expanded, and special credit lines were set up for use by troubled banks.
The size of governments expanded overnight. Several crisis-affected and crisis-prone countries directly supported their financial sectors by injecting funds to recapitalize banks, insurance companies and investment banks, especially those deemed 'too big to fail.' The International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff estimate that advanced G-20 economies spent about 3.5% of their GDP in such financial support. Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine also took similar steps.
Is the financial crisis over and could it happen all over again? National supervision and regulatory systems were inadequate to manage transnational institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, Citibank, AIG, Dexia Bank among others. Yet, national authorities have to pay more attention to risk taking, limit leveraging, tighten capital regulation, and attend to liquidity supervision as well as supervision of complex cross-border financial institutions, and improve transparency of transactions. Very little has changed in terms of regulating the US and European financial system. If anything, the US financial system has become even more concentrated around Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, AIG, Citibank and a few others, transparency in transactions has not much improved, and financial firms are continuing their merry ways of the past. Many of these large financial firms have received large bail-outs and could still go under. Directed credit to housing is still continuing. Many countries are in a state of denial about the likelihood of another run on financial firms in advanced economies.
National policies are leading to economic and financial fragmentation and working at cross-purposes with global policies. The crisis has revealed deficiencies in international coordination (e.g. weak IMF surveillance of advanced economies and lack of enforcement authority). Yet global solutions are needed to regulate capital flows, rein in financial firms and conglomerates to prevent systemic and global risks, ensure higher international standards of credit rating agencies (as needed for Basel II implementation), and to eliminate inconsistencies in national legal frameworks. There is talk of creation of 'a global college of supervisors.'
Incentives. If there is one thing that all economists – right, left and center – agree on, it is that incentives matter. But in the US and UK particularly, incentives contributed to short-termism and financial excesses. Financial firms instead of managing risks and efficiently allocating capital put more effort and resources in politicking and state capture. In return, ex-post, one can say that they got a good rate of return because
- They got 'self-regulation' which implied a de-regulatory framework that trusted the financial firms to monitor and regulate themselves on the rationale that they had a lot of money at stake and self-interest and self-preservation will be a powerful incentives for 'peer pressure' to check the excess. What the believers in self-regulation such as Alan Greenspan did not understand was that self-regulation combined with an implicit state guarantees such as deposit insurance and tax-payer bailout in case of systemic failure only encouraged firms to aim for short-term profits to maximize their bonuses. This was the underlying reasons as why financial firms were charging fees for every financial transaction, including fees for withdrawing your own money through an ATM machine. De-regulation let them privatize profits but implicit guarantees by state let them socialize their losses. The result was that even during 2009 when they were bailed out profits were unprecedented and bonuses were quite high. Moreover, the bailouts were on generous terms with AIG and others not having any hair-cut and get a dollar for dollar when their 'toxic assets' were worth less than sixty-six cents to a dollar.
- To generate more profits, the financial firms needed large volumes, which comes with higher leverage ratios and this led to higher risk-taking and financing against lower quality assets. They got to be too big to fail as they could combine regular banking with investment banking as financial firms could make money both by lending to individuals and corporations and by under-writing and trading in risky assets, while charging fees for every financial services. So financial firms made money and got bonuses if the stock markets went up or if stocks went down and if lending expanded rapidly. This too good to be true environment let them go wild in innovating new financial instruments, such as mortgage backed securities, and grow into large financial firms.
Implicit Guarantees and Role of Government. The state acts as a lender of last resort and there is an implicit guarantee for banking safety nets, such as deposit insurance and liquidity provision and capital injections when needed. For example, during recent crisis, the US, UK, and Euro area governments pumped in $14 trillion or 25% of world GDP in the form of deposit insurance, asset purchase, contingent liabilities, debt guarantees and capital injections. The cost of default insurance is higher for some G-7 governments than for McDonald or Campbell Soup. The budget risk for government solvency comes from the banks and financial firms because of this 'moral hazardous' problem. Therefore, the state needs to be an active player in regulating the financial sector, particularly risk-taking and banking safety net because its only solvency is tied to the health of the financial sector1. For example, during 2008-09 the FDIC in US has used up $54 billion from its coffers and has only $3 billion left to bailout depositors in case of bank failures. As a response to crisis, Australia and New Zealand introduced deposit insurance schemes, and over 40 countries expanded the coverage of this insurance. Governments set up these privileges to protect depositors and banks, not to protect hedge funds and private equity funds. Meanwhile, the banking system has been becoming more concentrated – in 2000, the top five largest banks had about 8% of global bank assets but by 2008, the largest five had about 16% of assets. In US as well, 2009 saw fewer large banks than prior to the crisis so the 'too big to fail' problem has been exacerbated during this crisis2. The state may say 'never again' when bailing out banks but the bankers know that they can game the state.
Too big to fail. The bank-centered financial system was questioned during the Asian crisis because crony-capitalism was under pricing risk. Market-based Anglo-Saxon model was propounded as a better model for stability, accountability, and governance. This 2008 crisis has raised once again the role of the financial sector relative to the real sector and that while banking needs will increase there is no seamless transition to a bank-less market based financial system. Large cross-border financial institution needs regulation. This will need definition of systemic importance or what is too big to fail
The size of its assets or deposits, the complexity of its activities, its role as a counterparty in derivatives or some other measure could be a workable definition of systemic importance. Systemic importance would involve (i) a large bank dominating in financial markets and payment systems; (ii) inter-connectedness if firm is dominant player in the inter-bank market, derivative markets etc. The issue is how to contain the inter-connectedness and discourage 'too big to fail' institutions. Large inter-connected institutions are encouraged all over the world, often because of efficiency gains. The mega-institutions are politically powerful and take excessive risks that propagate throughout the system. Large increases in capital ratios commensurate to their contribution to systemic risk or leverage ratios that apply to the entire conglomerate rather than individual bank and intensifying their prudential oversight should be considered to discourage mega-companies which may be too big to fail but may also be 'too big to save' by taxpayers.
In case of a failure, there should be procedures and methodologies in place. Common equity holders should take losses, others such as creditors and providers of debt capital should also share in losses. Emerging Markets face the additional problem of managing capital inflows.
Policy responses should focus on (i) how to reduce the probability and suspect of failure of a systemically important financial firm; (ii) making the financial system better able to deal with such a failure. This would need (i) higher capital and liquidity requirements for systemically important firms; (ii) contingent capital in case of failure; (iii) legal structure and business model link to capital requirement in case of complex or not; (iv) self-will transparency in information about its own "demise" plan; (v) moving all over the counter derivatives markets onto an electronic exchange trading platform; (vi) separate out traditional banking business which supports the real economy from the investment banking. There are some practical issues in doing this, so a transitional hybrid approach may have to be followed; and (vii) stopping unregulated firms that developed special investment vehicles which collaterized assets which were illiquid and risky.
Financial Regulatory Paradigms. Whatever the underlying causes of financial crises in developed and developing countries, the most fundamental problem is the widening gap between financial intermediaries' assets and liabilities. For example, the housing prices declined steeply during the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis in US and Europe, and led to the subprime crisis, which was exacerbated by high leverage ratios and liquidity demands. How can regulation avert or minimize the losses arising from future financial crises.
Three regulatory paradigms coexist in the financial world today. First, under the agency paradigm, the managers of financial intermediaries (agents) intentionally or unintentionally take risks as they focus only on private benefits and costs and not on the impact on society (i.e. externalities are not considered). The market failure here is that managers would be betting with someone else's money, be it the money of principal depositors or tax payers because there are implicit or explicit guarantees. In the case of subprime crisis, the managers who originated special investment vehicles and credit default swaps to distribute risks had no skin in the game. They were the masters for all the profits and not liable even for one percent of the risks. The solution is for agents to bear the burden of the risks and align the incentives with potential losses arising from the managers' actions. Risks should be priced and supervisors/securities commission should serve as 'crime police' to prevent abuse.
Second, under the collective welfare paradigm, the managers have difficulty in understanding the internal workings of modern finance (e.g. the quantification of securitization and associated risks). Here the managers of most financial institutions engage in a behavior that is opportunistic to them but detrimental to the society. There is a 'free-rider' problem in all collective actions. As such, there is a certain amount of 'systemic herding' behavior and the 'financially innovative' instruments are marketed as the best thing that happened to the world since the 'sliced bread.' The solution is to internalize the externalities but pricing of this possible 'wide-spread failure' is like insuring against a 100—year flood. It is a rare tail-event or 'black swan' event.
Third, under the asymmetric information paradigm, at the level of whole financial system, information on solvency situation of financial intermediaries and their management is of value to depositors and investors but this is kept out of public domain. Informational asymmetry limits rationality to one of bounded rationality. Moreover, there are insufficient incentives and penalties on owners of financial firms and banks, their board of directors and supervisors are likely to raise moral hazard problems that result in non-performing loans and bank failures. The financial system is an 'elite club' that tends toward 'oligopoly' in its structure as potential entrants are kept out because of informational barriers and there is a need to limit competition so as to have larger profits and limit risk. Information is a public good and the regulatory agency should push for full disclosure, tame the excess creativity and profits, and limit the oligopolistic structure.
The bottom line is that the three paradigms lead to different policy prescriptions, which are often inconsistent. No matter which paradigm the financial regulators appear to be operating in, the fundamental problems of tail-risks, free-rider, informational asymmetry and Knightian uncertainty about unknown-unknowns remain to be addressed. Systemic risk can be minimized by limiting regulatory arbitrage but imposing same regulations on all financial firms that take deposits or borrow in the market place. Intermediaries should not be regulated differentially. Unregulated firms should be allowed only to borrow from regulated firms. A liquidity tax should be considered that penalizes short term borrowing or lending, not penalize the mis-matches as is commonly proposed. The 'herding' behavior has to be contained by counter-cyclical prudential norms that central bank fine-tunes depending upon the circumstances in each country at that time.
Limiting Leverage. Leverage allows firms to do business beyond a direct investment of its deposits or own funds. One dimension of leverage is when a firm's assets exceed its equity base as firms borrow to acquire more and more assets with the aim of increasing their return on equity. Economic leverage is the use of an implicit or explicit guarantee (which does not show up in the firm's balance sheet) to expand business and that loan guarantee may or may not lead to a contingent liability in the future. Embedded leverage is when a firm holds a security or exposure that is itself leveraged. One way to calculate leverage is the ratio of Tier 1 capital over adjusted assets, where Tier 1 capital is (equity + reserves – intangible assets) and adjusted assets is equal to total assets – intangible assets. The leverage ratio can be used as a macro-prudential and micro-prudential indicator.
Banks' leverage ratios tend to rise during boom times and falls in downturns (procyclical). The reason is that banks manage leverage by expanding their business, which involves borrowing during boom times, when monetary policy is loose, and lending to achieve higher profits. When monetary policy is tight, banks contract their balance sheets. Leverage ratios could be monitored by Central Banks and managed in an anti-cyclical approach. The leverage ratio has its shortcomings as it does not distinguish between different types of assets, and is too focused on balance sheet. It does not detect embedded leverage. Moreover, it has to be used along with other macro- and micro-prudential indicators.
Credit Rating Agencies. A credit rating agency provides an informed opinion on the creditworthiness of a financial debt issue or issuer. Each credit rating has its own methodology and in some countries they are treated as free as financial journalists to opine. The credit agencies are not regulated but financial regulators have depended on them extensively in assessing capital requirements or securitization exposure of financial firms, identifying investments (e.g. mutual funds), evaluating credit risks of assets, and disclosure requirements for rated firms. Credit rating became indispensable for new financial instruments, while at the same time, the issuing firm was paying for or working in collusion with the credit rating agency to improve the rating of the new instruments to an investment grading. Moreover, Standard and Poor and Moody dominate the US market. The concentrated structure, the subjective but critical ratings, and the conflict of interest in the issuer-pays model contributed to inability of rating agencies to foresee the sovereign debt crises in Latin America, the accounting/financial problems of Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, Bear and Stearns, Lehman Brothers or any of the major corporations that went under in recent years.
The originate and distribute model of risk dispersion were all given investment grade, including AAA rating to mortgage backed securities, and failed to predict the default of structured debt and default swaps. Several flawed instruments were upgraded leading to financial excesses while the going was good, and the subsequent downgrading when the crisis hit in 2008 only made the crisis worse.
Policy responses warrant that the privilege of credit agencies be re-thought, introduce more competition in ratings and make them liable for their ratings, and stop the use of issuer-pays model. There is a need for a global supervisory agency that could establish global standards for rating agencies and for bringing in global competition in rating agencies, but the tension between a global regulator and a national regulatory body should be resolved with the host country having authority to over-ride the global regulators.
Optimal regulation. The financial systems need a thorough over-haul. While over-regulation may have some adverse affect on financial innovation, self-regulation has been globally damaging and the costs have far exceeded the benefits of financial innovation, and under-regulation may not avoid future systemic crises. Politicians in both advanced and emerging markets have been captured by the financial sector and this problem needs urgent attention. Governments should encourage financial firms to self-insure among themselves and not rely on state or central banks for liquidity provision or bail-outs. Rules and criteria when the government intervenes in abnormal times should be made clear. Government should move towards risk-based deposit insurance premia, and encourage co-insurance and re-insurance among the banks. A large number of changes as detailed below are discussed and debated.
Macro-prudential regulations. Until the crisis, capital ratios of individual banks are assumed to be adequate for the stability of the entire financial system. But in an inter-connected and leveraged financial world, selling of an asset because it is deemed risky by one financial firm may be good for that firm but if all firms sold the 'toxic asset' around the same time, the price of this asset will plummet and lead to wide-spread liquidity problems, losses, and heighten the uncertainty in the system. A macro-prudential approach is needed to look at risky assets taking into consideration the existence of liquidity risks, market risks, credit risks, insolvency risks, and other forms of risks. The recent crisis has shown that market discipline is not a defense against macro-risks. During booms, securitization appears to help improve the safety of financial firms, and most financial firms show good assets and strong balance sheets but when crises follow the booms these very firms have bad assets and bad balance sheets. For example, in March 2010 it was revealed that short-sellers in September 2008 were worried about the Lehman Brothers book-keeping, who were parking their bad assets with mutual funds while showing good assets on their books. In this case, market players knew more than regulators, but neither the market players nor the regulators were able to assess the macro risks. Therefore, differentiation of good versus bad banks and good versus bad assets is very poor.
The G-20 meetings of March 2009 recommended that during booms capital buffers be built so that during busts these buffers can be drawn down. For example, financial stability committees that exist in a number of countries could recommend that capital requirement ratios be kept relatively low during bad economic times but increased to twice as much during periods of a boom. Similarly, mismatches between maturity of assets and liabilities can be regulated through capital requirements. The Geneva report of 2009 recommends that a two-year asset that cannot be posted with the Central Bank should be matched with a two-year liability. Any mismatch should be prone to increase in capital ratios, over and above the boom-bust capital requirements. It is hoped that stacking of capital requirements would prevent systemic failures.
Financial Policy should be mandated first to deal with credit booms. Given the limitations of monetary policy, such as interest rate increases in dealing with booms, prudential and administrative measures may be better targeted and less-costly. For example, minimum regulatory capital requirements should be increased during booms and lowered during downturns. Similarly, limits on sectoral loan concentration, tighter eligibility and collateral requirements for booming sectors, limits on foreign exposure etc could have been deployed to contain risks associated with credit booms and busts.
Booms and busts are inherent to the financial world, and the aim is to moderate the risks during the cycles using micro and macro prudential regulations, as well as other measures such as strengthening supervision. Supervisors need to focus on both micro and macro analysis and oversight, work more closely with Central Bank regulators, and be more proactive in restricting specific firms that are lending too much against housing or properties or other risky assets.
Another regulation that is being discussed is the introduction of mark to funding accounting to complement the current mark to market or fair value accounting. In a liquidity crisis, the market price of assets fall more precipitously below the present value and this triggers the need for capital requirement. Under mark to funding approach, a weighted average of market price and present value of asset could be used, with funding institutions proposing the value of the weights. This may moderate the risks to the financial system.
Furthermore, the interaction between macroeconomic policy and financial sector should be improved. In every country, macroeconomic and financial stability is generally separated. While macroeconomic policy is focused on low inflation and high growth, financial sector is focused on bank-by-bank supervision of formal sector banks. Past crises and the current one again show that shadow financial and non-financial sector (e.g. investment banks, hedge funds, housing societies, government-secured enterprises etc) carry large risks connected with credit growth, leveraging and asset prices. Several prudential measures are needed to deal with these set of issues. In addition, the macroeconomic policy is concerned with corporate sector and how it finances the investment spending, including the public private infrastructure. Monetary theory and policy is concerned primarily with credit channel as the transmission mechanism. Such an approach is based on past thinking of credit rationing and crowding out among competing demands of public and private sectors. Meanwhile, the financial system has become too innovative and revolutionized investment financing mechanisms. For example, the private investors are interested in maximizing their profits but this is not taken into account in defining the objective function of the Central Bank.
Financial Innovation presumes that it will improve financial intermediation and these will be welfare improving while keeping risks low. Greenspan's 'self-regulation by private sector' because the private financial firms have a lot at stake to lose and will do the correct thing for their own self-preservation. This approach of self-regulation resulted in de-regulation and under-regulation in domestic and international financial markets which led to high exposure by the tax payers and resulted in higher costs of bail outs.
The troubles of several American financial firms in 2008 was partly due to financial innovation where in new instruments were created under the 'originate and distribute' model and where the originator had no stake in the newly created instrument once it was sold. Therefore one of the recommendations is that there be a regulation requiring the originator of any securitized assets or cash flows to retain a sizeable fraction of the equity tranche or first-loss tranche of the securitized instrument. Volcker recently said that the only great financial innovation that occurred in recent decades is the innovation of ATM machines, and that too it is more a 'mechanical innovation' and not a financial innovation.
Quants and Risk Models. Following the October 1987 stock market crash, the value at risk (VaR) was introduced as a risk management tool. In early 2001, stress-testing methods gained momentum as the IMF introduced it in a number of countries. Market failures abound while dealing with risk. For example, there is "disaster myopia" where drivers slow down just for enough time period to watch an accident, and once the accident scene is passed, they drive along and very soon the memory of the accident fades away and soon they would be driving at high speed. In other words, the financial disaster of 2008 will soon be forgotten and financial firms will be back to their old tricks and continue to under-estimate risk.
In recent decades, the mathematical whiz kids (called "quants') were dominating the financial markets. The quants were in an elusive quest for universally unseen patterns in the financial markets and they felt that their mathematical prowess only can discover this hidden patterns. By 2004, they were giddy with exuberance as they had tamed 'financial volatility' and made the financial system a smooth, humming machine that works like clockwork, that is a deterministic system. This sentiment is also reflected in the Great Moderation speech by Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, in February 2004. Financial volatility was conquered and there was a Goldilocks Economy – neither too hot nor too cold. The efficient market hypothesis was totally believed by the quants and their models could completely predict the future, just like in physics. But then, human behavior is hard to model. Men and not machines and that is why some of us gravitated to economics. The result of this delusion in not understanding the difference between models and reality was that there was an underestimation of the risks and dangers of possible breaking of asset bubbles. The quants made assumptions that were not valid and they had no respect to Mandelbrot's work on fat tails at the edges of the bell-curve and paid no heed to possible occurrence 'black swan' events. As Warren Buffet wrote to Berkshire Hathaway Fund stakeholders in 2009, "beware of geeks bearing formulas.'
Risk management is about avoiding the mistake of betting so much money that you can lose it all. Therefore, risk models are based on many assumptions and generate results based on the data inputs provided into them. Banks too excessive risks and the events of 2008 identified serious deficiencies in risk models, which was categorized as Philip Jorian (2009) as (i) known-knowns, where all known information about factors affecting risks are incorporated and only bad luck brings about losses; (ii) known-unknowns, where there are model-risks because of ignoring important risks arising from not knowing much about volatility , mark-to-market risk as has happened in the 2008 crisis and credit default swaps (CDSs) that protected the mortgage backed securities were exposed to very different risks in reality, while in modeling both were assigned the same risk because one was an insurance for the other; (iii) unknown-unknowns, where the events are beyond the scope of most scenarios, such as Lehman Brothers' collapse because they did not know the counterparties risks to the counterpart – also called Network Externalities. Risk management needs experienced people who can effortlessly have back-ward looking risk measures and move toward forward-looking scenarios.
End notes:
1. As Haldane (2009) details, over the past century, in UK, capital-asset ratios have fallen steadily from 25% of total assets in 1880 to about 6% in 2000 and for US the capital ratio fell from 17% in 1880 to 4% in 2008. Liquidity ratios have also decreased from 30% of total assets in 1968 to close to zero now. Therefore, the banking systems in US and UK are becoming more risky for the states while returns received by banks was closely to 30% and volatility of returns has also increased since 1970.
2. Haldane (2009) points out that the largest bank has over 3 trillion dollars in assets while the largest hedge fund operates with $40 billion in assets, and hedge funds are small, specialized, with high entry and exit compared to the banking system.
Haldane 2009. The State of Banking, Bank of England.
Jorian, Philip. 2009. Risk Management Lessons from the Financial Crisis. European Financial Management Journal.
World Bank, FPD Crisis Response Policy Briefs, 2009-10.
LAC Crisis Briefs, various.


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I've talked about the language system in Brick Inventions for quite some time now, so I want to use this post to explain how it works.
Let's start at the beginning. After several months of development, I saw that people from many different countries liked the game and I knew that it would be impossible to translate the game into all those languages (especially since I'm only one person). So I created a system, which would allow users to create their own language files besides the official ones that can also be shared with other people.
The SystemLet's have a look into the system. If you start the game for the first time, it will create a new folder in "C:\Users\<User>\AppData\LocalLow" called "BrickInventions". This folder contains 3 important folders:
- Maps (Which contains all your sandbox maps, each map stored in a file)
- Inventions (Contains all your inventions)
- Languages
(The game is still in development, things might change until release)
For those of you that are not familiar with .xml-files, such a file consists out of opening tags like <string> and closing tags </string>. These tags can have attributes like "id", which is in this case used to identify where the text should be displayed in the game. Between and opening and closing tag, there can be other tags or just text (that will be displayed in the game).
If you want to create a new file, just copy one of the "official" ones in the folder, open it, and change the text between the <string> tags. The game will automatically check if the file is valid and you will be able to select the language in the options menu. There will be a more detailed description about how to do it one the game is out, this should only be an overview. Since editing such an file can be difficult, I'm also thinking about creating a simple website or tool which is basically a form that you can fill out and it then creates the file for you.
I'm also thinking about changing the system form xml to csv which would be a bit more convenient to edit I guess? Tell me what you think about it :)
Current Game ProgressI've already tweeted yesterday that there has been much progress with the game during this week - I first started to work on the sound system and the sound effects, which are (almost) finished now. Then there was another fun play testing session, which also showed some problems that I fixed afterwards. During this process, I also added level-numbers to the podium of producers and other buildings in the multiplayer, which gives a better overview. After that, I gave the sandbox map a new, better environment as well as a completely new skybox.
Currently, I'm working on the Singleplayer levels, which is, besides the Steam integration, one of the last two parts of the game that are not finished yet. There will also be a new video, in which I will introduce the multiplayer mode.
That's all for now, exciting weeks lie ahead!


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Parts can only be downloaded in RSDOC format using this built-in library. If you're looking for other file formats, look for the product at rs-online.com or alternatively on the TraceParts online website (you will need to register there first).
Which formats can I download models in?Follow
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Worth noting
• Gardenhire said he'd like to have Mauer catch each of the Twins' new pitchers at least once or twice before the regular season begins, which is why Mauer joined Pelfrey in a Triple-A game in Sarasota and will be behind the plate to catch right-hander Vance Worley on Friday.
Gardenhire said it's not imperative that Mauer do so, as he's already seen them all during bullpen sessions, but he'd prefer that work to come in games, as some of those situations can't be replicated elsewhere.
"We'll see how it all works out," Gardenhire said. "I don't want to kill Joe Mauer leading up to this thing, either, but I want him to see them."
• Gardenhire said he will wait for pitching coach Rick Anderson to tell him when to start using his relievers on back-to-back days in preparation for their regular season workload. But he didn't expect that to happen until the final three or four days of Grapefruit League play.


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