text:
There are people who think of J. M. Coetzee as a cold writer, and he might agree, or pretend to agree. "If he were a warmer person he would no doubt find it all easier: life, love, poetry," he writes of himself in his memoir "Youth." "But warmth is not in his nature." The protagonist of Coetzee's new novel, "Diary of a Bad Year" (Viking; $24.95), is, like his creator, an aging South African novelist resident in Australia, who muses at one moment that his father surely thought him a selfish child "who has turned into a cold man." His art, he laments, is "not great-souled." It lacks "generosity, fails to celebrate life, lacks love."
Yet this is the cold air just beyond the reach of a fire. Coetzee's chaste, exact, ashen prose may look like the very embers of restraint, but it is drawn, again and again, to passionate extremity: an uneducated gardener forced to live like an animal off the South African earth ("Life & Times of Michael K"); a white woman dying of cancer while a black township burns, and writing, in her last days, a letter of brutal truths to her daughter ("Age of Iron"); a white woman raped on her farm by a gang of black men, and impregnated ("Disgrace"); a recent amputee, the victim of a road accident that mangled a leg, helpless in his Adelaide apartment, and awkwardly in love with his Croatian nurse ("Slow Man"). Coetzee seems compelled to test his celebrated restraint against subjects and ideas whose extremity challenges novelistic representation.
The excessiveness of witnessed cruelty produces a corresponding excess of shame. In "Disgrace," for instance, David Lurie is locked in a bathroom by the intruders while they rape his daughter. Lurie is a disgraced academic—he had an affair with a student and has lost his job—but his real disgrace begins after this episode. He starts helping out at an animal clinic run by a friend of his daughter's. He cannot get used to seeing the countless numbers of dogs put down and then cremated; he will cremate the animals himself rather than watch the workmen casually breaking the legs of the corpses to make them fit better into the furnace. Why does he do it? It is not rational. He does it, he decides, for himself: "For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing." In Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello," the title character, an august Australian novelist, argues that the daily slaughter of animals is morally comparable to the Holocaust. When a college president wonders if Costello's vegetarianism is born of moral conviction, she explains that it "comes out of a desire to save my soul."
In Coetzee's work, emotions like shame, guilt, and disgrace surge beyond rational discussion just as cruelty surges beyond bearable depiction. And here, in his latest novel, another novelist protagonist gives voice to a feeling of unbearable shame, this time at the Bush Administration's connivance at torture:
Their shamelessness is quite extraordinary. Their denials are less than half-hearted. . . . The issue for individual Americans becomes a moral one: how, in the face of this shame to which I am subjected, do I behave? How do I save my honour?
Later, this protagonist asserts that if he heard that some American had committed suicide "rather than live in disgrace, I would fully understand." He can understand because "the generation of white South Africans to which I belong, and the next generation, and perhaps the generation after that too, will go bowed under the shame of the crimes that were committed in their name." A Finn, hearing Sibelius's Fifth Symphony for the first time, nearly a century ago, he argues, must have felt pride that "one of us could put together such sounds, proud that out of nothing we human beings can make such stuff. Contrast with that one's feelings of shame that we, our people, have made Guantanamo."
The central characters of both "Elizabeth Costello," which appeared in 2003, and "Diary of a Bad Year" are novelists, and novelists in the act of dispensing strong opinions. Elizabeth Costello has been giving public lectures, which are reproduced in the novel; the protagonist of Coetzee's new book has been asked by his German publisher to contribute to a volume of essays that will gather the "Strong Opinions" (this is its proposed title) of six prominent contemporary writers. Many of the protagonist's essays are reproduced in the novel we are reading. Naturally, the reader wants to make Coetzee's novels confessional, to claim these opinions as his rightful children. But Coetzee explicitly complicates the question of his paternity, so that these books read less like confessions than like books about confession.
Lest that sound dry, it should be said that "Diary of a Bad Year" is an involving, argumentative, moving novel: if not quite "great-souled," then deep-souled. Coetzee smudges the traces of his authorial DNA by using a framing device that both hints at and disavows connections between the novelist protagonist and the actual writer. The South African novelist at the center of the new book is teasingly called "Señor C" by his neighbors, but he is by no means identical to J. M. Coetzee, who was born in South Africa in 1940, taught at the University of Chicago before moving to Australia, and won the Nobel Prize in 2003. Señor C is six years older than the Nobel Laureate, often writes elegantly and sometimes a bit demotically ("Most scientists can't write for toffee," he claims at one point), and expresses regret that people think of him not as a novelist but as "a pedant who dabbles in fiction." Distinguished he may be, but he feels obscure, overlooked, worn out. Stockholm has not, apparently, called. He lives in an apartment block in Sydney, where he meets Anya, an attractive young neighbor who is currently unemployed but used to be a receptionist in "the hospitality industry." Like the elderly Nathan Zuckerman, he is uselessly afflicted with desire, and smothers his lust by asking Anya if she would like to type up the "strong opinions" he has been speaking into a Dictaphone. After a formulaic demurral—as in bank-heist movies, the last important addition to the team always spends a scene resisting—she agrees. Anya calls him Señor C because, it seems, she had thought that he was a South American novelist. Señor C's strong opinions are divided into thirty-one brief chapters, with titles like "On intelligent design" and "On Guantanamo Bay." They are a confounding mixture of the banal, the extreme, and the scintillating. Inevitably, his attacks on George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Guantánamo, though righteous, have a slightly overinhabited quality, as if too many other people had been squatting in their public rooms. Coetzee, I suspect, wants us to reflect on the differences in rhetoric between public and private ideas. A passage like the following, from a chapter entitled "On terrorism," sounds like a bull with a bullhorn, and is very different in tone from the more feline Coetzee, who would surely rather have his claws pulled than commit to print the phrase "It's déjà vu all over again":
Well, what do we see today, in 2005? Not only the re-emergence of old-fashioned restrictions of the baldest sort on freedom of speech—witness legislation in the United States, the UK, and now Australia—but surveillance (by shadowy agencies) of the entire world's telephonic and electronic communications. It's déjà vu all over again.
Broadly, the intellectual and political persona of Señor C, as we can decipher it, is left-leaning, subversive, cynical, anarchic, and preternaturally sensitive. He is no great lover of democracy (would history be much different, he asks, if elections had been decided by the toss of a coin rather than by majority vote?); he dislikes the pro-Bush government of John Howard; he is shamed by Guantánamo, by torture; he defends the cinematic representation of pedophilia by adult actors young enough to pass as children; he argues in favor not quite of intelligent design but of enlightened deism. "An intelligent universe evolves purposively over time, even if the purpose in question may for ever be beyond the grasp of the intellect," he writes. "One might want to give that intelligence the handy monosyllabic name God." Like Elizabeth Costello, he seems to quiver with shame and abhorrence before the carnage of animals raised for food: a chapter entitled "On the slaughter of animals" describes the kitchens we see on television cooking programs as if from the estranged eye of the non-carnivore. The neat little pile of raw meat on the counter must look "much the same as human flesh (why should it not?)," he writes. "So, to the eye unused to carnivore cuisine, the inference does not come automatically ('naturally') that the flesh on display is cut from a carcass (animal) rather than from a corpse (human)."
These essays are always interesting, and some are dazzling. The last of the strong opinions, "On the afterlife," is a beautiful piece of argumentation in which Señor C probes at the Christian notion of Heaven and Hell, and at the idea that the self continues to exist as itself after death. If there is no proposed continuity between the self on earth and the self in Heaven, he says, then it is incoherent to suggest that good behavior on earth will be rewarded in paradise—such rewards can mean nothing to us as we understand them now. But, if there is a continuity between selves, then how will Heaven avoid replicating earth? This is even more acute if one believes in Hell:
Either the soul in hell has a memory of an earlier life—a life misspent—or it has not. If it has no such memory, then eternal damnation must seem to that soul the worst, most arbitrary injustice in the universe, proof indeed that the universe is evil. Only the memory of who I was and how I spent my time on earth will permit those feelings of infinite regret that are said to be the quintessence of damnation.
"Diary of a Bad Year" takes a daring form: Señor C's essays occupy the bulk of each page, more or less, but running beneath them, like the news crawl on a TV screen, are what read like short diary entries by Señor C and by Anya, which offer a running commentary on the developing relationship of employer and employee, and which convey the plot of the novel, such as it is. So a typical page is segmented like the back of a scarab beetle, and the reader must choose to read either one narrative strand at a time or one page at a time and thus two or three strands simultaneously. In practice, one does a bit of both—a gulp of essay, a snatch of diary—and the broken form usefully, but relatively painlessly, corrupts any easy relation to innocent continuity.
Coetzee wants to interrupt the usual smoothness because, in part, he wants to remind us of the provisionality, the unfinishedness, of ideas as we encounter them in novelistic form. The diary excerpts in the lower parts of the page function as the rebellious downstairs of this intellectual mansion: it is where we witness Anya and her boyfriend, Alan, who voted for John Howard, mocking the embarrassing seepage of the liberal bleeding heart. To them, and especially to Alan, a hard-nosed financial consultant, this elderly writer is out of touch, an old fart, an unworldly mandarin. Anya begins to chafe under his rule, and cheekily corrects his English; perhaps she, then, is the source of phrases like "The rest is history" and "It's déjà vu all over again." She resists his sensitivity to collective shame, proffering a clean, modern individualism: "As long as it is not your fault, as long as you are not responsible the dishonour doesn't stick to you." Alan, meanwhile, has discovered that Señor C has a large bank account, and that the money is pledged to the Anti-Vivisection League of Australia. He has designs on the money. This narratological downstairs is also the place where Coetzee has Señor C remind us that his opinions do not necessarily represent his deepest thoughts (and, by extension, that we should avoid any attempt to lead them back to Coetzee). "Tread carefully," he says to Anya. "You may be seeing less of my inmost depths than you believe." And later: "I should thoroughly revise my opinions, that is what I should do. I should cull the older, more decrepit ones, find newer, up-to-date ones to replace them. But where does one go to find up-to-date opinions? To Anya? To her lover and moral guide, the broker-man Alan? Can one buy fresh opinions in the marketplace?"
In truth, one reads the top section of each page with mounting excitement, and the bottom two sections rather dutifully. The properly postmodern qualifying of Señor C's opinions ("I should thoroughly revise my opinions") has a slightly academic explicitness, a self-conscious legibility, as did that moment in Coetzee's last novel, "Slow Man," when the novelist Elizabeth Costello suddenly entered the amputee's life and he started uttering obviously allegorical protests to her: "You treat me like a puppet. . . . You treat everyone like a puppet. You make up stories and bully us into playing them out for you." Coetzee's deliberate complications can seem a little simple here, and it hardly helps that Anya and Alan are uninteresting caricatures. As "Slow Man" also demonstrates, one of the difficulties of this kind of allegorizing may be that, even as the novelist is being self-conscious about his own fiction, he writes up his experimentalism in the most rudimentary and conventional kind of "realism." Anya confides to her diary such things as "Three years together and still Alan has the hots for me, hots so hot there are times I think he is going to burst." In regard to Señor C, Coetzee seems to have given a lot of thought to the question of who is speaking whose words, and for whom; but no such thought seems to have been spent in regard to Anya's voice and audience. As a result, the relationship between her and the old novelist is a good deal less absorbing than that between the protagonist of "Slow Man" and his solidly real, thick-waisted Croatian nurse.
Besides, Coetzee does not really need this subplot. The dynamism of the book is intellectual, and the real drama is at the top of the page. Coetzee is devoted to Dostoyevsky, and "Elizabeth Costello" made clear that part of that devotion has to do with what the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin called the "dialogic" nature of Dostoyevsky's arguments. Bakhtin noted that it is impossible to infer from the novels what Dostoyevsky believed, because no single idea ever gains authorial dominance. Instead, ideas, like the characters themselves, are in constant circulation and mutual qualification. It is how Dostoyevsky the ardent Christian was able to argue against himself, awarding Ivan Karamazov the most devastating petition against conventional Christian belief ever mounted in a novel. Coetzee is interested in how we profess ideas, both in life and in novels. We tend to think of ourselves as intellectually stable, the oaken pile of principle driven reassuringly deep into the ground. All the Presidential-campaign cant about "values" testifies to this; to flip-flop is to flop. But what if our ideas are, rather, as Virginia Woolf imagined consciousness: a constant flicker of different and self-cancelling perceptions, entertained for a moment and then exchanged for other ones? Imagine a fervent Christian, who has always believed in the afterlife. One night, waking in terror, he realizes, for only a second, but absolutely, that there is no afterlife. The terror passes, and the next morning he reaffirms his public vows. He does not succumb to doubt. Still, the question remains: what has happened to his orthodoxy? If it has not been cancelled or refuted by the nightmarish doubt, does it now contain, like a trapped smell, the ghost of its opposite?
This is what it might mean to "novelize" an idea, to make an idea a kind of character, with a character's inconsistencies and illogicalities and unreason. When, for instance, Señor C compares the pride of Finns hearing Sibelius to the shame of we who have helped create Guantánamo, he establishes an opposition with which he confidently ends his essay: "Musical creation on the one hand, a machine for inflicting pain and humiliation on the other: the best and the worst that human beings are capable of." But is this meaningful opposition? Music may be the best of which we are capable (though why not, say, penicillin?), but it is not clear that Guantánamo, for all its horrors, is the very worst. And one is hardly the reciprocal of the other. Music, being non-referential, tends to inflame our irrationality; we can be blinded by the glare of its sublimity, and spurred to entertain "ideas" that wither in the cold silence of day.
The second part of "Diary of a Bad Year" records the private ideas and responses of Señor C—what he calls his "gentler set of opinions." These are more passionate, more fragmentary, and more irrational than his public utterances. One of them, "On J. S. Bach," begins:
The best proof we have that life is good, and therefore that there may perhaps be a God after all, who has our welfare at heart, is that to each of us, on the day we are born, comes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. It comes as a gift, unearned, unmerited, for free.
But this is barely an idea; it is a spasm. At such moments, with the help of Coetzee's sensitivity to the uneven flow and counterflow of ideas, we can glimpse a mind moving among thoughts, some of them solid and argued for, some specious, some thrilling but fleeting, others irrational but suggestive. And, despite all the postmodern games, we glimpse, of course, not just Señor C's but also J. M. Coetzee's mind at work. This, he seems to say to us, is what it means for a novelist to entertain an idea.
Unlike the philosopher, the novelist may take an idea beyond its rational terminus, to the point where the tracks start breaking up. One name for this tendency is the religious, the realm where faith replaces reason. Coetzee has always been an intensely metaphysical novelist, and in recent years the religious coloration of his metaphysics has become more pronounced. David Lurie and Elizabeth Costello offer a kind of general atonement for the shame they feel before their fellow-animals. "Slow Man" enacts a kind of religious correction of its maimed protagonist, the cannily named Paul Rayment. Wounded in a bicycling accident, he is helpless until the nurse, Marijana, begins caring for him. He falls in love with her, and lavishes on her and her family all kinds of assistance, financial and otherwise. Marijana barely thanks him. The novel seems to teach Paul that true charity expects nothing in return. Paul himself says that "Would Jesus approve?" is the question he puts to himself: "That is the standard I try to meet." Señor C seems to share Elizabeth Costello's neurasthenic tenderness toward the suffering of animals; and his sense of shame—as a South African; as an Australian, "the most abject of the so-called Coalition of the Willing"; and as a human animal—is essentially original sin deprived of a nameable theological origin.
The pieties of current criticism are supposed to forbid one to inquire about Coetzee's relation to this strain of theology. We are warned that it is naïve to confuse author and character, even when—especially when—that character is also a novelist. But if Coetzee's novels deflect such inquiries, they also invite them, not least because of the provoking extremity, even irrationality, of their ideas. In the last entry of this novel, "On Dostoevsky," Señor C writes:
I read again last night the fifth chapter of the second part of The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter in which Ivan hands back his ticket of admission to the universe God has created, and found myself sobbing uncontrollably.
It is not the force of Ivan's reasoning, he says, that carries him along but "the accents of anguish, the personal anguish of a soul unable to bear the horrors of this world." We can hear the same note of personal anguish in Coetzee's fiction, even as that fiction insists that it is offering not a confession but only the staging of a confession. His books makes all the right postmodern noises, but their energy lies in their besotted relationship to an older, Dostoyevskian tradition, in which we feel the desperate impress of the confessing author, however recessed and veiled.
There is a chapter in "Diary of a Bad Year" entitled "On Harold Pinter," in which Señor C discusses the playwright's Nobel Prize speech, "a savage attack on Tony Blair for his part in the war in Iraq." In one sense, Señor C says, it was a mistake, for, when a writer speaks "in one's own person—that is, not through one's art—to denounce some politician or other," that writer embarks on a war he is likely to lose. Still, he concludes, what Pinter did "may be foolhardy but it is not cowardly. And there come times when the courage and the shame are so great that all calculation, all prudence, is overwhelmed and one must act, that is to say, speak."
It is tempting to hear behind these words one Nobel Laureate discussing another; but, of course, Coetzee has not himself abandoned all calculation, even as he praises Pinter for doing so. He is not speaking here but writing about speaking. Coetzee's own Nobel lecture was not a speech but a story—an allegory involving Defoe and Robinson Crusoe, about the writer's relationship to his characters—that might easily have appeared in the pages of "Elizabeth Costello." Still, there is something finely imprudent about his passion here; a rent has been made, a cry is heard. In these times, even writing about speaking is a kind of action. ♦


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Pergamon Museum
The Ishtar Gate © Paul Mannix
The huge Pergamon Museum has three main departments: the Antiquity Collection, the Islamic Art Museum, and the Middle East Museum, that house parts of reconstructed monumental buildings transported from excavation sites in foreign lands, or faithful replicas thereof. The Antiquity Collection contains the Pergamon Altar from the second century BC, as well as the Market Gate of Miletus from Roman antiquity. The main attraction in the Islamic Art Museum is the Mshatta façade originating from a Jordanian desert palace. The Middle East Museum houses the Ishtar Gare and the Procession Way of Babylon, as well as the throne room façade of Nebuchadnezzar II.
This museum is consistently ranked by visitors as one of the top attractions in Berlin and it is extremely special to visit all the ancient sites preserved in its halls. Everything feels enormous and although many of the exhibits feature reconstructions rather than originals everything feels extremely authentic. There is a free audio guide available which is hugely informative.
Address: Am Kupfergraben 5, Museum Island
Website: www.smb.spk-berlin.de
Transport: U-Bahn and S-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse; tram M1, M4, M5, M6, or 12; bus 100, 200 or 147
Opening times: Daily 10am to 6pm, until 8pm on Thursday.
Admission: €12 (adults), €6 (reduced).

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Continuing his strong start to the '11 EWC season Frenchman Pela Renet claims two impressive podium results in the competitive Enduro 2 class while Swede Joakim Ljunggren ups his pace to grab a five/four result in Enduro 3With hot weather, dusty, rocky terrain and two days of punishing racing the second round of the '11 Enduro World Championship turned out to be every bit as demanding as the season opening GP of Spain. But there was one notable difference that for many made the event the toughest yet this season – a hugely challenging, all natural, extreme test. Playing a key roll i n deciding the final finishing order in all classes the extreme test at the GP of Portugal took no prisoners, with even the smallest of mistakes proving costly.
One rider who learned all too well just how important it was not to make mistakes on the extreme test was super fast Frenchman Pela Renet. Making a superb start to his '11 EWC campaign in Spain, Renet again delivered the goods in Portugal claiming a two/three scorecard and making life extremely difficult for eventual day one E2 class winner Johnny Aubert. Just 20 seconds behind the former E2 world champion going into the final test of the day, Renet came unstuck on the final extreme test but nevertheless managed to hold onto a well deserved runner-up result.
'I'm really happy with the way I performed on the first day,' explained Pela. 'I only made two mistakes and finished on the podium in second. Before the last extreme test I was just 20 seconds behind Aubert, which I was really pleased with, and despite my mistake I still got the runner-up position. It was a tough day but my bike was great and to finish second was fantastic.'
Fast and consistent again on day two Renet battled for the runner-up position, but frustratingly also made a mistake on the final extreme test. Falling in the exact same place as on day one Renet saw a second runner-up result slip from his grasp as he was overtaken by countryman Antoine Meo. Although managing to hold onto third Renet was understandably disappointed at having not managed to repeat his impressive day one result. 'I had a great fight with Meo and Guerrero on day two but again in the final extreme test I made a stupid crash, in exactly the same place as day one. Before the final test I was six seconds ahead of Meo so to finish behind him is a little disappointing, but third is not so bad. It's been a great start to the season. I am fighting with the riders at the top of the E2 class and I hope I can continue doing that for the rest of the year.'
With the rough and rutted enduro test and technical extreme test frustrating many riders, for Swede Joakim Ljunggren it was exactly what he had hoped the Portuguese event would bring. Making things difficult for himself following a fall on the Friday night Super Test, Joakim got stuck into things on day one and after a largely cautious opening lap was soon working his way up the results sheets. 'It's been a good weekend for me, despite the bad start when I crashed during the Super Test on Friday night. I think that was still on my mind at the start of the first day because I was a little tense on the enduro and motocross tests and didn't ride as well as I should. But the extreme test was really good for me and I was able to take back some of the time I lost. Then when the enduro test started getting rougher I got faster there too. I was seventh before the last extreme test and finished the day fifth, which I was really happy with.'
Intent on improving his day one result while continuing to enjoy the tough conditions, Joakim pushed hard throughout the second day and helped by impressive performances on the extreme test placed just one position off the podium in a creditable fourth.
Husaberg's second official Enduro 3 class rider Oriol Mena once again battled through the pain barrier as he secured two point scoring rides despite riding with multiple fractures in the little finger on his left hand. Finishing with seventh and fifth place results Oriol, like Joakim, was pleased with the way his weekend turned out.
'It's been a good race, not too difficult but certainly not easy,' explained the Spaniard. 'The extreme test played a big part in deciding the results at this race and on day one I made a big mistake on the final lap. My finger was much better than in Spain, so I was able to push harder throughout both days. Day two was better and I'm happy with my results.'
One Husaberg Factory Team rider who didn't enjoy such a good weekend was Enduro Junior class rider Mathias Bellino. Well aware that sooner or later his lack of extreme test experience would get the better of him, in Portugal he struggled to match his impressive results from the season opener. 'It wasn't the greatest of weekend for me, which after such a strong start to the championship is a little disappointing. I just couldn't get into the enduro test on day one and I found the extreme test really hard. The motocross test was fine, but the extreme was a real shock.
'On day two I was leading after two tests but then in the extreme test I lost 20 seconds and dropped to around 15th. I had two more crashes in the enduro test, did some damage to my bike, and had a lot of work to do. It was a difficult day. I did manage to win the motocross test on the second and third laps but I was only able to finish seventh. I knew that I would need some time to get used to extreme tests but I just didn't take good lines this weekend.'
Enduro World Championship 2011
Grand Prix of Portugal – Day one
Enduro 2
1. Johnny Aubert (KTM) 55.46:01; 2. Pela Renet (Husaberg) 56.19:72; 3. Cristobal Guerrero (KTM) 56.41:61; 4. Antoine Meo (Husqvarna) 56.42:04; 5. Ivan Cervantes (Gas Gas) 57.27:62; 6. Simone Albergoni (Husqvarna) 57.48:48; 7. Sebastien Bozzo (Kawasaki) 58.17:83; 8. Hans Vogels (Husaberg) 58.37:21; 9. Jeff Goblet (Yamaha) 58.48:49; 10. Antoine Basset (Yamaha) 58.55:23… 12. Aaron Bernardez (Husaberg) 59.19:75
Enduro 3
1. David Knight (KTM) 56.31:93; 2. Mika Ahola (Honda) 56.36:12; 3. Christophe Nambotin (Gas Gas) 56.40:40; 4. Seb Guillaume (Husqvarna) 57.47:51; 5. Joakim Ljunggren (Husaberg) 58.00:70; 6. Marcus Kehr (KTM) 58.02:56; 7. Oriol Mena (Husaberg) 58.23:24; 8. Jordi Figueras (Gas Gas) 58.38:94; 9. Mark Tarkkala (Husaberg) 58.50:11; 10. Juan Perez (KTM) 58.57:83… 13. Jakob Morhed (Husaberg) 1.00:25.79
Enduro Junior
1. Antti Helsten (KTM) 57.45:99; 2. Mari Roman (KTM) 58.20:91; 3. Benoit Fortunato (Yamaha) 58.23:23; 4. Jeremy Joly (Honda) 58.23:63; 5. Romain Dumontier (Yamaha) 58.24:02; 6. Victor Guerrero (Yamaha) 59.01:22; 7. Henrick Lindholm (Honda) 59.21:46; 8. Johan Carlsson (Beta) 59.35:10; 9. Luis Oliveira (Yamaha) 59.38:99; 10. Edoardo D'ambrosio (Honda) 59.40:34… 14. Alfredo Gomez (Husaberg) 1.00:21.81; 17. Mathias Bellino (Husaberg) 1.00:32.88
Enduro World Championship 2011
Grand Prix of Portugal – Day two
Enduro 2
1. Johnny Aubert (KTM) 54.39:62; 2. Antoine Meo (Husqvarna) 54.47:84; 3. Pela Renet (Husaberg) 54.50:46; 4. Cristobal Guerrero (KTM) 54.52:29; 5. Ivan Cervantes (Gas Gas) 55.29:51; 6. Simone Albergoni (Husqvarna) 56.19:11; 7. Antoine Basset (Yamaha) 56.27.98; 8. Oscar Balletti (Beta) 56.43:75; 9. Sebastien Bozzo (Kawasaki) 57.02:96; 10. Jeff Goblet (Yamaha) 57.06:94… 11. Hans Vogels (Husaberg) 57.15:32
Enduro 3
1. Mika Ahola (Honda) 54.24:38; 2. David Knight (KTM) 54.41:49; 3. Christophe Nambotin (Gas Gas) 54.47:18; 4. Joakim Ljunggren (Husaberg) 55.57:68; 5. Oriol Mena (Husaberg) 56.23:26; 6. Marko Tarkkala (Husaberg) 56.56:75; 7. Alex Salvini (Husqvarna) 56.57:34; 8. Alessandro Botturi (Gas Gas) 57.04:08; 9. Jordi Figueras (Gas Gas) 57.37:05; 10. Fabio Mossini (Beta) 57.57:87… 13. Jakob Morhed (Husaberg) 1.00:06.49
Enduro Junior
1. Antti Helsten (KTM) 56.11:98; 2. Jeremy Joly (Honda) 56.47:32; 3. Victor Guerrero (Yamaha) 56.57:45; 4. Romain Dumontier (Yamaha) 56.58:30; 5. Jonathan Manzi (KTM) 57.12:61; 6. Calle Sjoo (Honda) 57.20:59; 7. Mathias Bellino (Husaberg) 57.26:64; 8. Johan Carlsson (Beta) 57.32:44; 9. Mario Roman (KTM) 57.35:72; 10. Edoardo D'ambrosio (Honda) 57.41:35… 16. Kalle Svensson (Husaberg) 58.58:87; 18. Kevin Benavides (Husaberg) 59.14:60
Flying High: Pela Renet on his way to a superb double podium result in the E2 class
Second best: Renet was a deserved runner-up at the end of the opening day
Rocky delight: Joakim Ljunggren was one of only a few riders who enjoyed the extreme test
Charging hard: The Portuguese enduro test became rough and rutted
Tough times: Mathias Bellino found the extreme test tough but once again excelled on the motocross test
2011 Enduro World Championship Update
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Dave Eero Remes finishes 2-1 on Rd. 3 and 4 of the E1 world championship KTM Enduro factory rider Eero Remes of Finland wrapped up a good weekend on Sunday winning Round Four of the E1 World Championship to go one better than his second placed podium on Saturday. Rounds 3 and 4 were held in Val de Cambra in Portugal.
Thomas Oldrati, the team's Italian rider also claimed a fifth and fourth finish for valuable championship points. Remes is close behind leader Juha Salminen in the overall standings, trailing the powerful Finn by 15 points.
The younger KTM riders were also strong for the Portuguese rounds with Antti Hellsten of Finland claiming victory on both days in the EJ class to complete a perfect score of 100 points for the four rounds so far held. KTM supported rider Jonathan Manzi of Italy finished fifth on Sunday but also won the Youth Cup category.
E1 Rd. 3 Saturday
1, Juha Salminen, Finland, Husqvarna
2, Eero Remes, Finland, KTM
3, Rodrig Thain, France, Honda
4, Matti Seistola, Finland, Husqvarna
5, Thomas Oldrati, Italy, KTM
E1 Round 4
1, Eero Remes, Finland, KTM
2, Juha Salminen, Finland, Husqvarna
3, Rodrig Thain, France, Honda
4, Thomas Oldrati, Italy, KTM
5, Fabien Planet, France Sherco
E1 Standings after Rd. 3 and 4
1, Salminen, 97 points
2, Eero Remes, Finland, KTM, 82
3, Thain, France, 74
4, Thomas Oldrati, Italy, KTM, 65
5, Gaultier, 56 and 4
EJ Rd 3 Saturday
1, Antti Hellsten, Finland, KTM
2, Mario Roman, Spain, KTM
3, Benoit Fortunato, France, Yamaha
4, Jeremy Joly, France, Honda
5, Romain Dumontier, France, Yamaha
Youth Cup Rd. 3 Saturday
2, Jonathan Manzi, Italy, KTM
EJ Rd 4 Sunday
1, Antti Hellsten, Finland, KTM
2, Jeremy Joly, France, Honda
3, Victor Guerrero, Spain, Yamaha,
4, Romain Dumontier, France, Yamaha
5, Jonathan Manzi, Italy, KTM (also wins Youth Cup)
EJ Standings after Rd. 3 and 4
1, Antti Hellsten, Finland, KTM 100 points
2, Joly, 76
3, Jonathan Manzi, Italy, KTM, 68
4, Guerrero, 64
5, Bellino, 58
EW Rd. 3 Saturday
1, Ludivine Puy, France, Gas-Gas
2, Lala Sainz, Spain, Honda
3, Blandine Dufrene, Gas-Gas
4, Heike Petrick, Gemany, KTM
5, Sandra Gomez, Spain, Husaberg
EW Rd 4 Sunday
1, Ludivine Puy, France, Gas-Gas
2, Laia Sanz, Spain, Honda
3, Blandine Dufrene, France, Gas-Gas
4, Geraldine, Fournel, France, KTM Freeride Concept
5, Marion Gimbert, France, KTM
7, Heike Petrick, Germany, KTM
9, Carmen Segura, Spain, KTM
EW Standings after Rd. 3 and 4
1, Puy, 100 points
2, Sanz, 88
3, Dufrene, 80
4, Gimbert, KTM, 60
5, Petrick, KTM 60
Successful weekend for Eero Remes in Portugal Remes in action on the tough Portugese track Solid results for Thomas Oldrati Back to back wins for Antti helsten in EJ
Dave Johnny Aubert returns to winning glory in Portugal in E2 class KTM Enduro Factory rider Johnny Aubert came out this weekend and silenced any doubters with two overwhelming wins in Round 3 and 4 of the E2 World Championship in Vale de Cambra in Portugal, proving that he is a real professional and able to put the team's bad start to the season behind him and get on with the job of winning races.
Brimming with confidence, Aubert went out and did it all again on Sunday on a track that was, according to team boss Fabio Farioli, very difficult. "There were a lot of bumps today and there was a lot of soft terrain," he said.
Aubert's teammate Cristobal Guerrero of Spain, who, like the Frenchman rides the KTM 350 EXC-F had a strong weekend with a podium third on Saturday and a fourth place on Sunday.
E2 Results Round 3 Saturday
1, Johnny Aubert, France, KTM
2, Pierre-Alexandre Renet, France, KTM
3, Cristobal Guerrero, Spain, KTM
4, Antoine Meo, France, Husqvarna
5, Ivan Cervantes, Spain, Gas-Gas
E2 Round 4
1, Johnny Aubert, France, KTM (back-to-back wins from Aubert in Rds. 3 & 4)
2, Antoine Meo, France, Husqvarna
3, Pierre-Alexandre Renet, France, Husaberg
4, Cristobal Guerrero, Spain, KTM
5, Ivan Cervantes, Spain, Gas-Gas
E2 Standings after Rd. 3 & 4
1, Meo, 90 points
2, Renet, 80
3, Cervantes, 76
4, Albergoni, 64
5, Cristobal Guerrero, Spain, KTM 58
7, Johnny Aubert, France, KTM 50
Johnny Aubert returns to his winning ways Good weekend for Cristobal Guerrero
Dave The injured Knighter still the KTM E3 hero in Portugal David Knight, who injured his hip in Round 1 of the E3 World Championship in Spain last weekend made an amazing comeback this weekend to ride through the pain to score a 1-2 for the two competition rounds in Val De Cambra in Portugal.
And get through Sunday he did. Knighter came home in second place after another courageous ride where a lot of the race he had to stand up on the pedals, certainly no easy task given his injury. His weekend rides garnered him 47 championship points, but above all sent a signal to his opponents that he is still in the business of winning E3 races. He now has a chance to rest up until the next round of the competition set for Italy in a month's time. Taddy Blazusiak, who injured his thumb last week in Spain did not race this weekend.
E3 Rd 3 Saturday
1, David Knight, Britain, KTM
2, Mika Ahola, Finland, Honda
3, Christophe Nambotin, France, Gas-Gas
4, Sebastien Guillaume, France, Husqvarna
5, Joakim Ljunggren, Sweden, Husaberg
Taddy Blazusiak did not start (injured thumb from rounds 1 & 2 in Spain)
E3 Rd 4 Sunday
1, Mika Ahola, Finland, Honda
2, David Knight, Britain, KTM
3, Christophe Nambotin , France, Gas-Gas
4, Joakim Ljunggren, Sweden, Husaberg
5, Oriol Mena, Spain, Husaberg
E3 Standings after Rd. 3 and 4
1, Ahola, 97 points
2, Nambotin, 84
3, Ljunggren, 65
4, Mena, 63
5, Tarkkala, 60
7, David Knight, Britain, KTM , 47 points
Tough and talented - David Knight rides through the pain to finish 1-2 at Portugal DAvid Knight in E3 action
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Join David Rivers for an in-depth discussion in this video Tracking changes and conversations, part of Office 2013 New Features.
Here's a new feature in Word 2013 you might enjoy if you're accustomed to tracking changes while editing documents, especially those you might be collaborating with others on. We're going to work with this filed called, No Obstacles Home Recipes Tracking. Next, we'll go to the Review tab here and click Track Changes. Now, that turns it on and just to the right of this button you'll notice the default is called Simple Markup. This is the new feature. It's kind of an uncluttered way to show markup on your page as you're tracking changes.
Let's click the dropdown and you'll see some standard defaults from previous versions like All Markup. Let's start there. With All Markup selected and Track Changes on, let's make a change to our document here in the title where it says, Essential Veggie Recipes for the No Obstacles Kitchen, let's change it to from. So, we'll double-click for, and we'll type in from, and you can see what happens. We're seeing all of the Markup. We're seeing what was deleted, what's strike-through; we're seeing what was inserted. As we hover over this, we see some information about who did it and when.
And now if we change it to this new feature called Simple Markup, it's more of an uncluttered view. We see the change here, but the only thing that's changed on our page as far as an addition is over here in the left-hand side, this red bar indicating that a change was made on this line. As we hover over that red bar, we can see a message indicating we need to click it to show the track changes. So, when we do that, we see those changes, just as though we had All Markup and you can see it actually switches to All Markup.
And now we'll go back to that bar, which has changed from red to gray, click it again to hide. Notice that here on the Ribbon, we're switched back to Simple Markup. And that's not just for tracking changes, but any other markup like comments from the previous lesson, for example. Let's just scroll down to the next page. There's a letter to the customer, and as we scroll down it's an uncluttered view but markup is appearing over here in the left-hand margin. There's that red bar indicating something changed here. To see what it is, we just click. Okay, it changed from thanks to thank you, and then we'll click it again to hide it.
So, that's a new feature called Simple Markup that allows you to unclutter your page as your tracking changes, but still be able to know where those changes are being made.
- Exploring the new user interface
- Using the bookmark feature
- Inserting online video in Word documents
- Editing PDFs in Word
- Filtering records using the timeline in Excel
- Exploring new slide transitions in PowerPoint
- Creating web apps for SharePoint or Office 365 with Access
- Inserting online pictures with Publisher
- Embedding files in a OneNote notebook
- Connecting to social networks with Outlook


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It was a joy to be together Sunday night! Vaneetha blessed ALL of us with her God-honoring, faith-infusing testimony. For those who were unable to attend, please be sure to give it a listen. You will be fed and encouraged. "The suffering caused by shattered dreams must not be thought of as something to relieve if we can, or endure if we must. It's an opportunity to be embraced; a chance to discover the highest blessing God wants to give us: an encounter with Himself. At the end of our shattered dreams is God's presence, and God's presence is the very best present."
Please click here to LISTEN.


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The elementary orchestra program at Ramsey begins in 4th grade. These orchestras are an important part of the training of a string player. They learn to follow a director, keep an internal beat all together, learn to rehearse as a group, to listen and play rhythms against other rhythms at the same time, and orchestral bowings and posture. All 4th and 5th grade string students particpate in orchestra.
3611 20th Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN 55407
Telephone: 612.668.4550 | Fax: 612.668.4560


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Hunting is a longstanding metaphor in the movies. From the great explorer films of the early years such as The Lost World and King Kong, through to westerns, and later classics such as The Deer Hunter and White Hunter Black Heart, directors have used nature and the chase to depict man confronting his inner self, wrestling with his wild ego and his civilised id.
The latest of these is The Hunter, an Australian film set entirely in one of the last great wildernesses, Tasmania. Not to be confused with Steve McQueen's last film of the same name (although I'm sure echoes are intended), it's based on a book by Julia Leigh, the writer who made her own debut as a film-maker at Cannes in 2011 with the neo-feminist erotic curio Sleeping Beauty. Thankfully, where Sleeping Beauty was all cold, hard stares in airless rooms, The Hunter, directed by Daniel Nettheim, is glorious in its widescreen, weather-lashed treatment of the great outdoors.
Willem Dafoe, an actor we see all too rarely in lead roles, is superb as the titular hunter, hired by a dubious biotech corporation to track down the Tasmanian tiger, a fox-like creature thought to have been extinct since the 1930s. It is unclear what Dafoe's character does for a living. He has all the traditional film hallmarks of an assassin and we're clearly supposed to think of him as such, one in the mould of Edward Fox's Jackal perhaps, or Jean Reno's Léon, with loner tendencies and precision instruments. I was even reminded of George Clooney's recent gunsmith in The American.
However, arriving in a small logging town in Tasmania, Dafoe assumes the alias of Martin David, and claims to be sent from "the university" as part of a field study into the behaviour of Tasmanian devils. After a hostile reception at the local pub, where he's told "we don't like greenies around here", Martin finds lodgings at the ramshackle house of another university researcher, Jarrah Armstrong, who has been missing for months. Jarrah's wife, Lucy (Frances O'Connor), lies comatose with grief and barbiturates in her bed while her two children, Sass and Bike, run almost feral around the wooden building and its muddy outhouses.
Martin sets about restoring power and water to the dwelling, necessitating more contact with the children than we feel he would like. Soon, though, he's off into the hills to track his prey, assisted by a kindly enough neighbour called Jack Mindy (Sam Neill) who has taken it upon himself to look in on the Armstrong children regularly.
En route to the forests, Martin and Jack encounter environmental protesters – the "greenies" – and loggers, workers on practically the only industry in the island's interior. It might be said, particularly by Philip French if he were here, that these two factions are at loggerheads…
From then on, the film steadily develops, opening out at the same time as Martin catches sight of the magnificent wilderness stretching before him. The first half-hour is all about the set-up but as soon as we see the vast range of mountains and rainforest, nature takes its own course and the film unfurls as Martin opts to journey on alone.
Nettheim, working with the impressive cinematography of Robert Humphreys (whose work I first noticed on the 2004 Cate Shortland film Somersault, which introduced the world to the actor Abbie Cornish), hones it into an existential-crisis film: a story about the loneliness of the long-distance hunter, about man against the elements and his own feelings of mortality.
Sabotaged traps and a gunshot drive Martin to thinking he is not alone on his trips; meanwhile, each return to the Armstrong house brings him closer to the children and the revived Lucy, all of them inextricably linked to the environment. There's a particularly memorable moment when Martin gets the generator going, and Bruce Springsteen's I'm on Fire rings out around the loudspeakers that hang from the large trees outside the house.
Ultimately, however, the real action of the film is between the hunter and his prey. "It's better off extinct," says Lucy of the tiger. "If it's alive, people will always want to find it and hunt it down." Thus the beast becomes a symbol of something larger, something lost and intangible. Despite all its careful details, the film also has a sparse, allegorical quality that allows for mystery and interpretation. For a mercenary like Martin, this tiger represents faith or even love, as well as being a sad signifier of man's disregard for his environment.
Nettheim leaves us tantalised. The climax builds brilliantly, with Dafoe's craggy face gradually becoming part of the rocks and trees, his sinewy, prowling presence increasingly animalistic and instinctual. What will this man do? The hunter becomes the hunted, as so often in movies, but Dafoe's behaviour is ultimately unpredictable and never altogether admirable or redemptive, such that I was reminded of his great role as the upmarket New York drug dealer in Paul Schrader's 1992 film noir Light Sleeper.
One of this year's most memorable films, containing one of the best performances, The Hunter is a piece that creeps into the viewer's soul. It is dank and clammy, with ice in its heart, but it is also beautiful and painful, its emotional climaxes hitting home like precision bullets.


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Here's a few kickboxing related items as fans get ready for this weekend's action. Krush and Mix Fight Championship are the two big cards of the weekend, and don't forget to check our schedule for upcoming events.
Kickboxer: Retaliation
It's hard to believe that the first Kickboxer movie came out nearly thirty years ago. I watched that movie in the theaters as a teen and really enjoyed the plot and fight scenes. It was like a Karate Kid redo with a Muay Thai theme. Jean Claude Van Damme moved on to bigger films, and the Kickboxer franchise continued for a few movies with lesser known actors playing the leading role.
The Kickboxer franchise was revived a couple of years ago. Van Damme returned as a trainer/mentor type named Master Durand, and Alain Moussi assumed the role of kickboxer Kurt Sloan. In the latest installment, "Kickboxer Retaliation", Kurt Sloan has to battle a 400-pound behemoth in an MMA match after being unjustly imprisoned in Thailand. Some big names from the fight game have roles in the film, including Mike Tyson, Roy "Big Country" Nelson, and Glory heavyweight champion Rico Verhoeven.
"Kickboxer Retaliation" will be available on demand and in select theaters on January 26.
Dennis Alexio. Van Damme's brother in the first movie was played by none other than Dennis Alexio. Alexio is a full-contact kickboxing legend, who also competed in pro boxing and only lost twice in an illustrious career. Some of his bouts were telecast on cable, including Showtime, and Alexio was dominant over his competition in the 80's and 90's. Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Australia's Stan "The Man" Longinidis were the only men to beat Alexio. Longinidis fought in early K-1 events and Wilson is another full contact kickboxing legend who later acted in a number of action films and commentated for the UFC. Sadly, Alexio had some problems outside the ring after his retirement, and was sentenced to prison.
Saenchai Update
The Glory star and Muay Thai legend will fight in Thailand Saturday.
Indian kickboxer returns to ring after fight with cancer
Finally, a nice story on an Indian kickboxer who overcame cancer to return to the ring. Girish Gowda was diagnosed with cancer last year, but battled back against the disease and won a national title in New Delhi, India. The story can be read here.


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Operating Costs
We are passionately dedicated to our children and are committed to developing an infrastructure that will ensure that our funds are directed to programs and services that will assist children in their battle against cancer.
In 2019 the Kids with Cancer Society hopes to raise $2,468,000 in support of the 50 programs and services provided to children with cancer and their families. The operating costs are estimated at 12% and will include salaries, and general administration costs. We do not solicit telephone donations or participate in telemarketing.
How does the Kids with Cancer Society maintain low costs?
We keep a small staff (we only have 4 full time employees), a large volunteer base, and our goal is to obtain products and services through donation whenever possible.
How does the Kids with Cancer Society decide what programs and services to fund?
By working with our parents, and through close communication with the medical team who treat children with cancer, the Society is able to identify priorities and fund only programs that will have the greatest impact.
Do other organizations provide the same or similar programs and services?
All programs and services initiated by the Kids with Cancer Society are designed to either enhance or create new opportunities while at the same time ensuring that there is no duplication or overlap of resources and services.
Where does the Kids with Cancer Society receive its funding?
- Corporate donations
- Individual donations
- Employee donation programs
- Memorial donations
- Cash sponsorships
- In-Kind sponsorships
- Community Events (such as golf tournaments, head shaves, school bike-a-thons, dinner/silent auctions)
Community participation in our 3 signature events:
- Beaded Journey Gala
- Tour of Hope
- Revving up for Kids
Note: We do not participate in telemarketing.
What is the Kids with Cancer Society's Charitable Registration number?
It is 88640-1397RR0001.


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Wedding Car Hire can help make your wedding day truly special...
There is nothing like starting an event in a truly grand manner. And which event could be more exciting and memorable than the day of your marriage. Weddings Cars for Hire is certainly one of the ways of adding grandeur, charm, and even an element of surprise and excitement to your wedding day. When it comes to hiring a wedding car, the choices are endless. You could go in for anything from classic cars, vintage cars or modern luxury saloons right though to American classic cars, stretched limousines, buses and coaches, not to mention horses and carriages. Wedding Car Hire London will not only bring tremendous joy to the faces of the bride, groom, friends and family, but it will also make these moments truly memorable. With their plush interiors and spectacular exteriors, wedding cars can certainly make your wedding day very special.
Weddings: Hiring wedding cars can be a great way to surprise your bride. Imagine the astonishment on her face and twinkle in her eyes when a chauffeur driven vintage car, or limousine perhaps, stops in front of her house to drive her to the church. After all, there's something very romantic when the bride steps out of a gleaming wedding car for the final time before she marries the man she loves. It feels like a fairy tale coming true and definitely adds that special something to the occasion.
And there's no question that the bride is the most important person on any wedding day but there are plenty of other people to consider. Wedding Hire Cars services can also be used for transporting the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, and other family members and friends. They can also show up in style when travelling in wedding cars such as a Mercedes, Rolls Royce or Bentley for example. Choosing these sorts of wedding cars is an excellent opportunity to please close family and friends.
Wedding Car hire is the ideal way to ensure the safe and punctual arrival of the bride and groom to both the wedding and reception venues. But it can also make the perfect wedding gift. Apart from the fact that they can travel in style, the journey from the wedding to the reception is the first chance that the married couple will get to have a true glimpse of each other and have that first intimate moment. What could be better than sharing it in the car of their dreams.
There are many companies that offer Wedding Car Hire services but the key thing is finding the right one. And this is where Wedding Car Shop can help. If you complete one simple enquiry form you will receive competitive quotes from a variety of independent wedding car operators near you. You can then select which ones you like without necessarily having to contact a whole number of companies first, saving you a good deal of time and hassle. All you have to do is click on the heart to start...♥


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Thanks to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's Restore the Canopy Project, the City of Chicago Heights' first Great Tree Giveaway of 2018 was another success! Exactly 50 Pin Oak saplings found new homes last week.
Visit Metropolitan Water Reclamation District for more information on the Restore the Canopy Project, and visit the city website for more information on upcoming events.


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UNESCO commissioners visited Villa Tugendhat on Wednesday the 10th of February 2010. Dr. Tamás Fejérdy and Dr. Gábor Soos from the UNESCO secretariat, accompanied by the director of the Brno City Museum PhDr. Pavel Ciprian and head of the Villa Tugendhat workplace Ing. arch. Iveta Černá and representatives from the company Unistav a. s., had a tour of the building and were acquainted with the upcoming time schedule for the renewal work.
Simultaneous events
2010 Renewal of the House
Villa Tugendhat is closed to the public as of 1st of January 2010 and is undergoing complete renewal work which is planned for approximately two to three years. read more
2010 MONUMENT RENEWAL of the Villa Tugendhat started with the signature of the agreement
The City of Brno has started the reconstruction and restoration of the Villa Tugendhat. The agreement on this topic was signed on 25 January 2010 by the Mayor of the city of Brno Roman Onderka and the... read more
2010 Exhibition Jan Vaněk 1891-1962. Civilized Housing for Everyone
A second showing of the exhibition Jan Vaněk 1891-1962. Civilized Housing for Everyone will take place in the main building of the City of Prague Museum at Florenc from the 3rd of March up until... read more
2010 The Exhibition Traces of Adolf Loos in Brno
The exhibition Traces of Adolf Loos in Brno will take place in the Brno City Museum in Špilberk Castle from the 19th August to 31st October. This exhibition and publication project will thematically... read more
2010 The Book - In the Footsteps of Adolf Loos in Brno
The book "In the Footsteps of Adolf Loos in Brno" was ceremonially christened two times in December 2010. This publication was released on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the birth of... read more


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VIEW THE MOBILE VERSION of www.arborday.ca
Origin of Arbor Day
Arbor Day Readings
Arbor Day Celebrations
Arbor Day Programs
Tree Species
Studies of Trees
New England Trees
Sweet Gum
=Habitat and Range.=--Low, wet soil, swamps, moist woods.
Connecticut,--restricted to the southwest corner of the state, not far
from the seacoast; Darien to Five Mile river, probably the northeastern
limit of its natural growth.
South to Florida; west to Missouri and Texas.
=Habit.=--Tree 40-60 feet high, with a trunk diameter of 10 inches to 2
feet, attaining a height of 150 feet and a diameter of 3-5 feet in the
Ohio and Mississippi valleys; trunk tall and straight; branches rather
small for the diameter and height of the tree, the lower mostly
horizontal or declining; branchlets beset with numerous short, rather
stout, curved twigs; head wide-spreading, ovoid or narrow-pyramidal,
symmetrical; conspicuous in summer by its deep green, shining foliage,
in autumn by the splendor of its coloring, and in winter by the
long-stemmed, globular fruit, which does not fall till spring.
=Bark.=--Trunk gray or grayish-brown, in old trees deeply furrowed and
broken up into rather small, thickish, loose scales; branches
brown-gray; branchlets with or without prominent corky ridges on the
upper side; young twigs yellowish.
=Winter Buds and Leaves.=--Buds ovate, reddish-brown, glossy, acute.
Leaves simple, alternate, regular, 3-4 inches in diameter, dark green
turning to reds, purples, and yellows in autumn, cut into the figure of
a star by 5-7 equal, pointed lobes, glandular-serrate, smooth, shining
on the upper surface, fragrant when bruised; base more or less
heart-shaped; stalk slender.
=Inflorescence.=--May. Developing from a bud of the season; sterile
flowers in an erect or spreading, cylindrical catkin; calyx none; petals
none, stamens many, intermixed with minute scales: fertile flowers
numerous, gathered in a long peduncled head; calyx consisting of fine
scales; corolla none; pistil with 2-celled ovary and 2 long styles.
=Fruit.=--In spherical, woody heads, about 1 inch in diameter, suspended
by a slender thread: a sort of aggregate fruit made up of the hardened,
coherent ovaries, holding on till spring, each containing one or two
perfect seeds.
=Horticultural Value.=--Hardy along the southern shores of New England;
grows in good wet or dry soils, preferring clays. Young plants are
tender in Massachusetts, but if protected a few seasons until well
established make hardy trees of medium size. It is offered by
nurserymen, but must be frequently transplanted to be moved with safety;
rate of growth rather slow and nearly uniform to maturity. Propagated
from seed.
1. Winter buds.
2. Flowering branch.
3. Sterile flower.
4. Fertile flower.
5. Fruiting branch.
=Platanus occidentalis, L.=
Buttonwood Sycamore Buttonball Plane Tree


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Standard ergonomic qualities of Spec-Ops weapons is not always suitable for different missions and doesn`t have much fonctions as user wish. RIS forend is the solution of this problem. You may attach differend devices, which increases weapon`s capabilities and will influence well bothly at characteristcs and ergonomy.
This RIS-Forend is designed especially for 9A-91 SMG and allows to mount tactical grips, flashlights,lasers and a lot of other accesoires on it. You may place inside an AEG battery(within the sizes 72 mm x 25 mm x 15 mm).
1.Rails allow to attach different accesoires.
2. You can place inside an AEG battery(within the sizes 72 mm x 25 mm x 15 mm).
3.High quality.
1.Forend: high-durable polymer.
2.RIS rails: steel with additional lining.
150 gramm.


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Habakkuk 3 New Living Translation (NLT)
Habakkuk's Prayer
3 This prayer was sung by the prophet Habakkuk[a]:
2 I have heard all about you, Lord.
3 I see God moving across the deserts from Edom,[b]
8 Was it in anger, Lord, that you struck the rivers
12 You marched across the land in anger
16 I trembled inside when I heard this;
(For the choir director: This prayer is to be accompanied by stringed instruments.)
New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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Chicago's leadership and firepower will be tested by battle-hardened Red Bulls
Major League Soccer's postseason kicks off on Wednesday night as the third seeds in the Eastern Conference the Chicago Fire host the sixth-seeded New York Red Bulls. Jason Davis breaks down the opening act of the knockout round, and assesses how each club can reach the conference semifinals.
Chicago Fire
The Fire have the league's best finisher in 2017 in Golden Boot winner Nemanja Nikolic, a stout and heady central midfield and a pair of attacking full-backs who flood opposing defenses by playing high up the field. All of those things make them dangerous when the form is good and all of their considerable assets are healthy. The Fire are particularly potent on the left side with David Accam and Brandon Vincent -- the former is a goal and assist threat and the latter is among the best providers in the league from the full-back position. The Fire use a team approach for goal creation.
If Dax McCarty isn't responsible with the ball and/or Bastian Schweinsteiger is unavailable to help in the midfield, the Fire are exceedingly vulnerable to the counterattack. Playing their full-backs high has obvious consequences; if and when the ball is turned over, Chicago's center-backs will find themselves overwhelmed. Set pieces are a problem. On the attacking end, a cold day from Nikolic can spell trouble without another trustworthy goalscorer on the field. Accam is dangerous, but he hasn't put the ball in the net since August.
Why they'll win
Home-field advantage and the high pressure Chicago will apply to the Red Bulls' undermanned back line stand out as the reasons it'll take care of business in the first knockout game of the MLS Cup playoffs. It's been a long time coming, and the energy around the Fire should help provide the type of atmosphere Toyota Park hasn't seen in years. Veteran leadership from McCarty and (perhaps) Schweinsteiger stands Chicago in good stead ahead of a visit by a perennial playoff team. The Fire won't be overwhelmed by the moment or the stakes.
New York Red Bulls
Playmaker and goalscorer, specifically. The Red Bulls have the best No. 10 in the league in Sacha Kljestan and an elite goalscorer in Bradley Wright-Phillips leading the way on the attacking end of the field. When things are clicking, the Red Bulls are extremely difficult to stop, throwing numbers forward out of a three-back system. What chances Wright-Phillips is unable to finish, a host of Red Bulls are usually on hand to convert. The numbers on the season aren't spectacular, but things have improved since a shift in formation midway through the year.
Set pieces, set pieces, set pieces. The Red Bulls aren't just below average when it comes to stopping their opponents from restarts, they're spectacularly bad. Over the course of the season, that's a weakness they've been able to overcome, but with the margins down to nothing in a single-elimination playoff game, giving up a set-piece goal could be a back-breaker. The longer they're forced to chase the game, the better the chances are that the Fire will find a chance to break out and create counterattacking chances. In other words, New York needs to avoid giving up free kicks and corners.
Why they'll win
The Red Bulls are rested after Jesse Marsch rotated his team in their final regular-season match on Sunday. The Fire will have the energy of the crowd behind them, but New York is a confident and battle-tested team that should be able to weather the storm. Kljestan's performance will have a big say in the ultimate outcome, and it's incumbent upon his teammates to find the midfield maestro in pockets of space between the Chicago lines. If Kljestan's central-midfield partner Felipe can do the heavy lifting, the Red Bulls will have enough of the ball and enough composure to spring an upset.
Jason Davis covers Major League Soccer and the United States national team for ESPN FC. Twitter: @davisjsn.
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A report released Wednesday from ABI Research said handsets with GPS will continue to grow thanks to attractive new smartphones and the spread of location-based services.
The new report, titled "GPS-Enabled Handsets," said GPS-enabled phones are expected to hit 240 million units in 2009, an increase of about 6.4% from 2008. Analysts, cell phone companies, and industry watchers expect the overall mobile phone market to decline 4% to 8%.
"As the quality of positioning technology in handsets improves and the cost of including it declines, GPS location technology will approach the status of a standard device feature," said senior analyst George Perros in a statement. "We are approaching the point where location awareness will be synonymous with smart devices, a point where personal navigation, social spatial knowledge, and location-specific contextual information will be assumed handset capabilities."
High-profile handsets like Apple's iPhone 3G, Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s T-Mobile G1, Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)'s BlackBerry Bold and Storm, Palm's Pre, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK)'s N Series all have GPS capabilities, and so will most of the popular smartphones moving forward. The report said the annual shipping rate of smartphones with GPS will increase by 19% through 2014.
The report also said one of the main drivers of growth will be applications and services that take advantage of a user's location, a market that is expected to balloon into a $13.3 billion business by 2013. ABI makes special mention of Google's Android
Sunday, January 25, 2009
240 Million Smartphone GPS Devices in 2009
Survey - Smarphones platform capture 50 percent of all GPS use
Glenn over at Anything Geo has a survey started on Sunday the 25th January and I would ask you to add your vote.... Currently Garmin is out used over Trimble 2:1 and smartphone GPS is 3x the use over Trimble and Garmin combined?
Some interesting early results from a poll we recently launched asking what kind of GPS people are currently using for work… seems Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Garmin are at the top of the responses so far. You can respond to the poll question HERE
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Recent GPS Info from IMS
Market research in poorly defined emerging markets is frustrating as well as expensive. GPS is of interest to me and IMS Research, a supplier of market research and consultancy services on a wide range of global electronics markets, follows GPS and the market place forces that influence the general marketplace. IMS and others create any number of great reports that can be bought that can help explain trends and situations within sectors of industry. The many-paged reports can also cost many thousands of dollars but if they confirm and refine hard to establish market organization, trends, and likely competitive factors, they are well worth their fees. If you can not afford the full report, the same companies tend to release via press releases enough detail to understand the macros. (Whew - that disclosure behind)...
I went looking through their press releases to see what sort of insight they were sharing. I found several interesting teasers that make even more sense when arranged together? I have tried to weave their content from several "report teasers" to flesh-in how the general GPS market place is moving. GPS that once was the domain of many tens of thousand of dollars for a system that in current mass-application chip terms is now more accurate and may fetch on a several dollar fee. As GPS has passed from its military use to land survey and now to the millions if not soon billions massive new opportunities are emerging. Essentially not only is Nokia likely the world's number one camera integrator and quickly becoming the world's number one GPS integrator. And that simple reality has more or less diminished Kodak, killed Polaroid, and shifted the fortunes of established GPS chip designers to new comers.
What comes next is content from the several report links from IMS press releases merged to form I believe an interesting story?
With media attention currently focused on GPS-enabled cellular handsets and PNDs, the potential of emerging vertical markets for GPS and location services are going unnoticed by many.
A bumper Christmas market is set to make GPS the hottest new feature in the cellular market. Taking the huge CDMA GPS market aside, GPS-enabled handsets are set to greatly outnumber PND shipments in 2008.
GPS chips and other location technologies are being included in markets such as laptops, digital cameras and game consoles. Tom Arran, Market Analyst at IMS Research covering these GPS markets, said "GPS is a hot technology at the moment and collectively these markets represent huge potential. The non-cellular GPS market is set to increase over 6 fold. However, GPS is not infallible and its proliferation is bringing indoor performance to the fore".
How all this potential is to be effected by macro economic factors is yet unknown although there are some trends that likely are part of the forcast .
In the new report, "WW Market for GPS/GNSS in Portable Devices", the GPS market is forecast to increase by over $200 million between 2008 and 2009. IMS Research Analyst, Tom Arran, states "2008 was the breakout year for GPS in mobile phones. In 2009 GPS will begin to penetrate into a range of vertical markets, such as cameras, laptops, UMPCs, sporting equipment and first responder radios. This will help to drive shipment growth of over 25% YoY".
Despite a significant increase in revenue in 2009, IMS Research believes that the best is yet to come. Arran goes on to say "2009 will not be booming year for GPS in portable devices. Looking beyond the current economic turbulence, IMS Research is forecasting the overall market for GPS to demonstrate a 21.2% CAGR between 2008 and 2013.
"There is still a lot of untapped potential and the GPS market needs to mature before breaking the 500 million units per year barrier. One of the more general issues is poor performance in challenging environments. GPS manufacturers need to start seriously considering hybrid location in their offering.
OEMs in these markets can use GPS to differentiate their product, while also drive new service revenue streams. Furthermore, location is emerging as a key component of future offerings from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Intel, Mozilla and Ericsson. This will enable a host of new services across all key vertical markets, which in turn will further drive the uptake of GPS".
While cellular shipments are set to outweigh PND forecasts for 2008, IMS Research believes that talk of a saturating PND market are premature. "Despite the huge success of PNDs, there is still a comparatively small installed base of users, leaving plenty of market upside. Both of these markets will continue to grow concurrently in the medium term, but importantly, they are not independent. Already, companies such as NiM, Telmap and TeleNav are seeing increasing subscription numbers for their cellular sat-nav services. Clearly this is at the expense of the PND market.
Each vertical market has its own requirements, technical and cost limitations, services and opportunities. There are now a myriad of ways to implement accurate location technologies, via GPS or otherwise. IMS Research believes that companies will require a variety of different GPS, connectivity and indoor location technology combinations to address these markets effectively.
In the camera market, IMS Research has felt for some time that geotagging is set to be the next big trend. Already, online communities like Panoramio are hosting over 2 million photos which have been 'geotagged'. Embedding location technologies on cameras brings a more user friendly version to the masses, driving uptake. Arran added, "I think we will see this eventually being adopted across the whole camera market, from holiday makers to professionals. New compact cameras such as the Nikon P6000 have GPS inbuilt whilst SLR cameras have had external GPS devices since 2006. However, cameras have limited space, size and cost margins, while TTFFs must be almost instantaneous for geotagging. Looking beyond existing GPS designs, innovative approaches from Geotate (software GPS) and Air Semi (dynamic, continuous GPS) are purpose built".
>> This is an interesting graph from IMS. It traces three estimates of smartphones and feature rich handsets. The intersection of two or three elements of successful geotagging, mapping, location, and imagery seems increasingly liley. My guesstimate would be that all touchphones will come featured to make geotagged imagery and that the large portion of the non-touch smartphones will all so make geotagged imagery. In the graph each line is 200 million "new" units per year. That signals in 2010 there will be some 300 million new units of smartphones and possibly as many as 100 million touchscreen smart phones.>>
Touchscreen-equipped mobile handsets sales have been building steadily for over a year now, and a new report from IMS Research forecasts that growth will become even stronger. Although there were fewer than 30 million touchscreen phones sold in 2007, IMS Research expect that number to increase to over 230 million by 2012.
There are numerous signs that touchscreens are poised to significantly increase their presence in the mobile handset market. Recent reports and announcements from the three largest mobile phone manufacturers have highlighted a trend in the increased production of phones using touch technology. In July, LG revealed that it had sold 7 million touchscreen handsets. This announcement came just five quarters after LG launched its very first touchscreen mobile phone. Showing similar success, Samsung recently released the Instinct, a full touchscreen handset, through Sprint. Just one week after the launch, Sprint announced that the Instinct had already become the best selling EV-DO device in the carrier's history. Not to be outdone, Apple reported selling 1 million of the new 3G iPhone handsets in just the first three days of its release.
According to IMS Research analyst and report author Femi Omoni, "The original iPhone was the catalyst that created this huge market interest in touchscreen phones. The fact that it was not only popular with consumers, but also helped drive data revenues proved how important touchscreen handsets can be. Now all of the network operators and handset anufacturers want a piece of the pie."
The impressive growth that IMS Research is predicting will not be driven solely by the smartphone segment either. According to the IMS Research report Touchscreens & Input Technologies for Mobile Handsets, touchscreens will increasingly penetrate the much larger feature phone segment. In fact, Nokia just announced that its initial foray into the touchscreen market will be targeted at the "volume market" because that segment of the population is the largest consumer of mobile phones.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
GPS Manufacturers Face a Rapidly Changing Market... GPS Phones th
GPS World's OEM Insights — January 2009
"In all, about six to eight major retailers accounted for the majority of GPS/PND sales last year...."
2008 started out sunny and warm as I remember. We all said goodbye to 2007 and a holiday buying spree that exceeded all expectation. With a new year of windfall profits behind them, GPS manufacturers, their shareholders, analysts and investors were confident 2008 would be even better. There were two types of disasters in 2008, however: no. 1 (self inflicted) was created by poor management, over valuation, and lack of insight. The second disaster can be attributed to the general economic market collapse of 2008In the professional .land use products market, mentioned early, companies suffered setbacks as their main business of productivity solutions targeted the slumping construction, mining ,and utility infrastructure segment. Trimble was seen to tumble in the disaster no. 2 scenario. Although times were tougher, the companies key executives tended to spend a lot of time fine tuning their own compensation packages and stock programs while facing some early heat this year about the reasoning behind the stock repurchase plan, which was used to prop up the stock price. But they know the value of being low key and that accounts for a lot these days.According to a select group industry watchers, times will be tough for the PND. "This PND space is absolutely going in the crapper," said Jeff Evanson, an analyst at Dougherty & Co. Evanson sees several factors leading to a "dramatic slowdown" in PND sales, including a lack of innovation in PND products for holiday season, signs of market saturation, and competition for consumer spending.


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Originally Posted by Donatello
I put the links to the battles if anybody is interested.
Yes, i am interested. Also would serve as an archive of the battles.
Thanks Donatello
Nopo.s819 World 498 (iOS) aka StaleBread
In existence since 2015 January
Sertai ASEAN Force jika faham ayat ini. https://www.facebook.com/groups/495394470641302/
Jangan lupa memperkenalkan diri
Forum Rules


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I was looking forward to paying off my vehicle early next year. Until I found out that I have $2,800 worth of repairs that need to be done after sinking $1,000 into it. I only have $1,200 left to pay on it.
So at this point I've decided to get a used "new to me" vehicle.
It's interesting to me that the first time I bought a vehicle I paid $600 for a '95 Altima (bought in 2009) and bought it outright. Then that one died and I got a car loan for a $9k '04 Sorento (bought 2012) that I had to get a co-signer for because my credit was so bad.
The reason that I'm getting a new vehicle is that I've had it for a little over four years. But I've only driven it a little over two years (I was in Afghanistan and Korea). I've already sunk about $2k into it during this whole time. The clutch is about to go out, I need new oil valves, and the carrier bearing is basically spinning in place. So I'm getting a newer vehicle.
So I've gone through the process of getting a new loan. Pre-approval from my bank so I have buying power. I've already walked away from one place which I never have an issue with. I have found that I dislike negotiating, so I'm getting my vehicle (2011) from CarMax. Did you know that it can take up to 28 days to request a vehicle from across the nation?...
Also you have have 5 days to return the vehicle in the same condition that you received it. So that's enough time to get a mechanic to look at it, and I suggest finding shops that do a pre-purchase vehicle inspection.
Thankfully, when this vehicle comes in, my payments will only go up less than 40%. But I'll do what I did last time I had a six-year loan. Send at least $5 extra a month but I actually paid it weekly to hit that interest. I would have paid off the current loan at less than five years. But I think I will throw a little bit more this time.
I'm hoping that this vehicle will check out and that I will not have any issues for several years.
Tip: even if you are pre-approved for a particular amount doesn't mean that you should use the whole amount. Just because you're approved for it, doesn't mean that you can actually afford it.
New Car Loan
I was looking forward to paying off my vehicle early next year. Until I found out that I have $2,800 worth of repairs that need to be done after sinking $1,000 into it. I only have $1,200 left to pay on it.
4 Responses to "New Car Loan"
November 6th, 2016 at 05:54 pmGood luck. Sounds like a wise more.
November 7th, 2016 at 07:18 amDefinitely a good tip to spend what you'd prefer to spend rather than whatever the bank say you can spend. Good luck with the new car!
Petunia 100
November 7th, 2016 at 05:43 pmIt's really good to hear from you!
What is the current status of your credit card debt? You might be better off not paying extra on the car and continuing to hit the credit card debt as hard as you can instead.
November 13th, 2016 at 03:07 amThank you LAL and VS!
Hey Petunia,
I have two credit cards left to pay on with a total of approximately $9k. I'm paying more than double on one card and the minimum on the other. I want to get the lower amount gone first. My parents have actually stated that they will pay it off (I didn't ask them to, they offered) and they will pay off one of the student loans that I have as well. I've decided that I will continue to pay on the card along with them paying that to get it down faster. So the cards will be hit harder anyways.
According to the math, my payments will be equal to about $230 a month but I'll be paying $250 a month to get it down more. This means my payments will only be about $55 more than what it is currently. Also my auto insurance increased and I will be getting a lower one with better coverage in Feb (waiting for 3 year accident to fall off).


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This photograph of President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara is described by the U.S. National Archives:
President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara attend a Cabinet meeting on February 7, 1968, the beginning of Johnson's turbulent last year.
Image online, courtesy the U.S. National Archives, via the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.
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— PSEG Nuclear's Hope Creek reactor here is operating at reduced power today after a pump shut down, a spokesman for the plant's operator said.
One of the reactor's two water recirculation pumps tripped off-line at 3:19 p.m. Thursday, according to
Joe Delmar.
The pumps recirculate water to the reactor and help control the amount of power the reactor generates, according to Delmar.
The reactor recirculation pumps are part of electricity production and separate from the safety-related core cooling water system.
At this hour
is operating at 55 percent of its full capacity.
Workers attempting to find the cause of the pump shutdown, Delmar said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates the operation of the country's 104 reactors, has been notified of the incident, officials said.
Hope Creek is one of three nuclear reactors operated by PSEG Nuclear at its Artificial Island nuclear generating complex here.
The other two reactors —
— are operating at full power.
The three reactors here comprise the second largest nuclear generating complex in the United States. They produce enough electricity to power three million homes.
PSEG Nuclear is part of Newark-based


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ofLink to Photo album for La Basilica here.
It is impossible to overstate the cultural influence of the Virgin Mary in an otherwise macho Mexico, she was exported by the uber macho Catholic Spain in the form of the dark skinned Virgin of Guadalupe. The lovely story is that she appeared on this hillside to a poor peasant Juan Diego, impressing her image upon his cloak in a cascade of roses.
The site is also near the former temple to #Tonantzin, an Aztec mother goddess, possibly Mother Earth. In a sense the Virgin of Guadalupe now carries the lineage of #FeminineEnergy at this site. The original cloak of #JuanDiego is now housed in the current Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. You can see La Virgen from any point in the circular interior, and you can ride 2 moving sidewalks installed directly below and behind the altar, crane your head back and gaze way up at her from below. (See video clip at the end of this post!)
The cloak is the original source image of the billions of copies and impressions of the Virgin de Guadalupe now in existence. Juan Diego has suffered perhaps the biggest copyright infringement in history. 😊
Built between 1974 and 1976, this Basilica replaces an older one that was sinking, and is still standing and still sinking nearby. Much of Mexico City is built on ancient landfill of the lakes that used to surround it, for a variety of reasons many old buildings are tilting as the ghost of the old lake tries to reclaim them.
The new Basilica can accommodate up to 10,000 people and has a circular floor plan so that the image of the Virgin can be seen from any point within the building. The area is colloquially known as "La Villa". If you haven't been, you might be surprised that the location is a good bit north of El Centro.
However, its very easy to get there- it has its own Metro stop, and if you take the bus you'll get a great visual tour of street life. Also, every taxista, uber driver or even a small child can point you in the direction of #LaVilla. Don't drive unless you have to, like everywhere else in Mexico City the traffic is thick, limited parking is available but challenging.
source: me and wiki
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A man who lives in the cutesy Cotswold village of Bibury in Gloucestershire has been having a bit of a hard time of it recently, as locals have decided his bright yellow Vauxhall Corsa is an eyesore -- and have been telling the owner this via the medium of vandalism.
Owner Peter Maddox has had the word "MOVE" scratched into the paintwork of his car and some windows of the vehicle have been smashed, as locals try to convince him to move the thing to pretty up the village and stop apparently ruining the photographs of tourists with his yellow lump.
But it's still there and the cavalry is coming. Fellow yellow car owner Matty Bee is organising a solidarity cruise later this year, and is asking other owners of yellow cars to join an all-yellow car convoy to the site in a show of support, perhaps while listening to Coldplay on their stereos.
The cruise is scheduled for April 1st, with over 50 yellow vehicle owners already pledging to attend. Bee told the BBC: "...we'll be having a celebration of anything yellow and showing solidarity and support as well for Mr Maddox and the yellow cars." [BBC]
Want more updates from Gizmodo UK? Make sure to check out our @GizmodoUK Twitter feed, and our Facebook page.


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Saturday, 27th August 2016 | 7:15 – 9:30PM
Can hunger and malnutrition be solved by pushing for more production-oriented policies? Is there more than enough food in the world for all or is the problem accessibility and economic inequality? Moreover, will excessive production bring us to a very dangerous dilemma regarding resources scarcity, loss of biological diversity and eventually ecosystem failure?
Food systems have never been a popular subject in climate change negotiations, despite the very complex relationship between the two. How to develop an ideal food system that is healthy for people, sustainable for the environment and friendly toward climate change may be the only viable system for the future. Further for a sustainable future a "right to food" has to be understood as a vital part of how state's address this issue.
These are the issues that will be raised by Dr. Hilal Elver who will be in discussion with Haris Gazdar.
Dr. Hilal Elver is a research professor and global distinguished fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara and a fellow at UCLA Law School's Resnick Food Law and Policy Center. Her most recent book is Reimagining Climate Change (co-edited with Paul Wapner 2016). She is also the author of numerous book chapters and articles in academic journals on topics ranging from Global Justice, New Constitutionalism, Secularism, women's rights, water rights, environmental security, climate change diplomacy and food security. She was appointed Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food by UN's Human Rights Council in May 2014.
Haris Gazdar is a Senior Researcher at the Collective for Social Science Research. He has contributed widely to social science research and social and economic policy debates in Pakistan and elsewhere. He has taught as well as conducted academic research in the UK, India, and Pakistan. Besides his academic and consultancy assignments, he has worked on an honorary basis as adviser to research programmes, government and non-governmental organizations. Gazdar leads the Pakistan research team for LANSA (Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia) and is a member of the Consortium Steering Committee.
When: Saturday, 27th August 2016
Where: The Second Floor (T2F)
Time: 7:15PM – 9:30PM
Entry: Free! (Donations are appreciated)


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Grant assistance for Cultural Grassroots Project (GCGP) is meant to facilitate cultural exchanges and deepen friendship and mutual understanding between Japan and developing countries by providing non-profit organizations of those countries with support for procurement of equipment and construction of facilities to promote culture and higher education.
any type of non-profit organizations which are active at the grass-roots level in developing countries including:
- non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
- local authorities,
- research & higher education institutions.
Under certain conditions, governmental institutions may also be eligible for assistance.
Priority areas:
- GCGP directly supports the promotion of culture and higher education at the grass-roots level in each country, while also serving as cooperation which encourages understanding of and cultural exchanges with Japan.
- Currently, one of the priority area of GCGP is sport fields as a part of the "Sport for Tomorrow" initiative.
Available Funds
The grant amount per project, in principle, is up to 10 million yen.
Implementation Period
The implementation period of the project is one year after the signing date of the grant contract.
Eligible Countries
Countries eligible for GCGP are selected from ODA eligible countries and regions specified by the DAC list of ODA recipients. See here


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Subscribe to Engineering Impact, the weekly newsletter for managers of software teams.
This week: Methods to eliminate bad hiring, the inside scoop on GraphQL, how to identify what's blocking your team, software developer workflow
Methods to Eliminate Bad Hiring
Puzzles, quizzes, and artificial assessments are the worst. That's because puzzle performance has zero correlation with job performance.
Luckily there's a better way. Eric Elliott proposes some practical steps to identify good coders, and interview strategies that work. This excellent post provides a framework for how to how to assess resumes (along with warning signs of poor performance), and a list of high-value approaches to interviews.
The inside scoop on GraphQL
GraphQL is going to be a big deal in 2017, so watch these talks (or pass them on to your engineers). Apollo shares the inside scoop on GraphQL with speakers from Google, Facebook, Shopify, Github, Credit Karma, Concur (SAP), Conde Nast, and more.
If your team is building apps, GraphQL may be what you're looking for to speed up feature development. And it's not necessarily a huge investment. Github was able to get v1 of their GraphQL API up and running in a few weeks—and as the talks show, companies large and small have quickly seen benefit.
Identify What's Blocking Your Team
When you're working with a complex system like an engineering team, how do you isolate the bottleneck that's holding your team back?
Tiago Forte shares how Microsoft used the Theory of Constraints to produce dramatic improvements in productivity. Get a 5-step framework to help you do the same, and be confident you're improving the right thing.
Re-booting Our Issue Tracker to Focus on Priorities
It is common for engineering teams to use their issue tracker to store a backlog of nice-to-haves and and ill-formed ideas. When we realized that was creating noise and slowing us down, we decided to do something about it.
Travis Kimmel shares how we prioritize work here at GitPrime. Engineering teams that value speed, autonomy, low communication overhead, and engineer happiness will want to check out this priority-driven development strategy.
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Learn More About Mental Illness
The above link will take you to the Online Information and Referral database which contains all mental health resources in Tarrant County. This database is maintained by Mental Health America of Tarrant County which has provided a link between individuals and the mental health services in our community for over 50 years.
Internet Resources


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to the Memory Jewels web site.
When a loved one passes away, the sense of loss and grief can be overwhelming. We remember the qualities of that special person, the unique characteristics that made them the person they were the person we loved. In no small way, they will always be with us, part of who we are today because of their influence and love in our lives. Now with Memory Jewels, you can have an affordable, lasting and beautiful memorial by transforming your loved ones cremated remains into a brilliant sparkling gemstone.


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Best Coach Friendly Welcome 2018' Award from the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK for World of James Herriot
World of James Herriot, Thirsk continues to punch above its weight in tourism Awards following the presentation of 'Best Coach Friendly Welcome 2018' by the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK (CPT).
The CPT award was presented by Simon Smith, CPT's tourism and coaching executive at the British Tourism and Travel Show to Ian Ashton, managing director of World of James Herriot.
Ian Ashton said: "This is the first time we have received an award from the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK and we are delighted. It is thanks to the many coach companies and group travel operators that bring their guests to World of James Herriot and Herriot Country who recognise how our small team is focussed on a great visit for their guests."
The attraction continues to develop relationships with both domestic and inbound group visitors and works in partnership with other Herriot Country Tourism members including the Wensleydale Railway (The Herriot Country Line), and Classic Lodges Hotels. All three partners were exhibiting at the British Tourism and Travel Show with their 'Heritage, Herriot and Hotels' package as part of Welcome to Yorkshire's Herriot Country. This group package offers 'better than group rate' prices when booked collectively and is proving a popular option amongst operators.
World of James Herriot has seen exponential growth in visitor numbers that has now reached 35,000 per year, up from 18,000 when the attraction was initially converted to a private business in 2012.


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Head On Collision Sends Four To The Hospital
KSCB News - May 13, 2010 12:00 am
Main Street between Tenth and Twelfth in Guymon was closed for about an hour yesterday evening after a head on collision resulted in four people being transported to the hospital.
Guymon Police and Fire Department were called to the scene shortly after 5pm. A Navy Blue Mustang had collided head on with a White Chevrolet Impala.
According to a report in the Guymon Daily Herald, the Mustang, driven by John Ledbetter of Guymon, was traveling down Main Street at a rate of speed that was believed to be more than the speed limit. The Mustang was over the turning lane, crossing the yellow line into oncoming traffic.
Eyewitness John Spain stated that he was forced to veer almost off the road in order to avoid collision with the Mustang. Spain explained that he was watching in his rear-view mirror when he saw two other vehicles having to avoid the Mustang.
Ledbetter reportedly collided head-on to the Impala driven by Annie Seymour of Guymon. Seymour's vehicle had two female passengers. Both vehicles were then forced halfway onto a nearby yard and the side of the road, blocking traffic.
Ledbetter, Seymour and her passengers were all transported to Memorial Hospital of Texas County. As of press time, their conditions could not be released. An official police statement or report was also not available.