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If Iraq is the model for how to defeat an insurgency, NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan have a very long road ahead.
HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan - The CH-47 helicopter carrying Gen. John Craddock and his aides banks sharply, and the machine gunner positioned by the open rear door strains in his harness. The kaleidoscope below rolls from the verdant greens of the Helmand River basin to brown scrublands and then the bleached-white desert. Soon, the CH-47's shadow is joined by those of a Marine Cobra gunship and an armed Huey helicopter. They are escorting the supreme commander of the NATO alliance into one of the most isolated outposts in the global war on terrorism. It is the very heart of Taliban territory.
The helicopters touch down in a stinging swirl of sand and dust at Forward Operating Base Dwyer. The compound is little more than an encirclement of concrete barriers and concertina wire serving as a firebase and ground-combat headquarters for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Helmand province. Craddock emerges from the chopper to shake hands with marines clad in full body armor, their faces dripping with sweat. They seek relief from the 120-degree heat in the shade of their lean-tos. Inside the mess tent, where visitors are briefed, dust chokes the air.
Isolated and forlorn, FOB Dwyer sits west of the crossroads town of Garmsir. Though life may be miserable on this flat patch of land, the location has this to recommend it: unobstructed fields of fire separate it from the Taliban insurgents who are using rocket-propelled grenades, suicide bombers, and massed infantry in increasingly bold attacks on U.S. and NATO outposts and bases. At FOB Dwyer, there is no sneaking up on Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson and the rest of the men of 1st Battalion, 6th Marines.
The soldiers of the U.S. Army's 503rd Infantry Regiment were not so lucky. On the night of July 13, an estimated 200 Taliban insurgents nearly overran their outpost in mountainous east Afghanistan; the assault left nine U.S. paratroopers dead and many more wounded. On August 18, Camp Salerno near the Pakistan border repulsed an attack by as many as 10 suicide bombers backed by infantry. On the same day, a force of approximately 100 Taliban insurgents ambushed an elite French-led reconnaissance patrol, killing 10 paratroopers. It was the deadliest day for French troops in 25 years.
Those attacks and a rising number of roadside bombs and suicide bombers help explain why 2008 is on pace to become the deadliest year in Afghanistan for allied forces since the Taliban was toppled in 2001. In the past three months, more foreign troops have been killed and wounded in Afghanistan than in Iraq. That fact reflects the success of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, as well as a strategic shift by a Qaeda-enabled insurgency of Islamic militants who find safe haven in neighboring Pakistan. The impact of those sanctuaries is evident in larger-scale and more-sophisticated Taliban attacks, including a mass prison break in Kandahar province in June that freed hundreds of imprisoned insurgents, and the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed 41 people.
In the midst of Afghanistan's warm weather "fighting season," Helmand province in the south has earned a reputation as a hotbed for the resurgent Taliban. Canadian forces responsible for this area in NATO's Regional Command South have suffered more than 90 casualties since deploying here in 2006, leading Ottawa to threaten to withdraw its troops unless reinforcements arrived this year. Commanders thus sent the 2,500 marines of the 24th MEU to Helmand to shore up a shaky alliance. In many ways, the marines' experience in nearly six months of counterinsurgency operations in the province is a microcosm of the fitful progress, intermittent backsliding, and mounting challenges that have come to characterize the wider Afghan war.
"These marines have taken the best practices of counterinsurgency doctrine and applied them, and they've shown once again that if you just provide people with security, they will get on with their lives," Craddock tells a reporter accompanying him on a recent trip to Afghanistan. A cerebral general with a quiet intensity, Craddock knows better than most, however, that security is just the initial prerequisite in the holistic strategy of development, jobs, and governance that creates the virtuous cycle of any successful counterinsurgency. From the beginning, operations in Afghanistan have lacked the coordination and international commitment to sustain that cycle.
"We can get the security piece perfect," Craddock concedes. "But if the Afghan government and army aren't ready to step in and help hold and rebuild, it will all be for naught."
He notes, for example, that NATO has promised more training teams for the critical task of mentoring Afghan army units, but member nations have stubbornly failed to deliver on their commitments. "Shame on them," Craddock says. "Corruption is still tearing at the fabric of the Afghan government, and that also has to change. So I fear we are losing momentum in Afghanistan. If we don't turn things around soon, we'll start slipping backwards."Clear, Hold, and Hope
Lt. Col. Kent Hayes knows all about the blood, sweat, and excruciating effort needed to lay the initial security piece of the counterinsurgency puzzle. The rangy executive officer for the 24th MEU explains that the Marines' original plan to act as a roaming strike force in Helmand had to be torn up after the first battle with the Taliban. The enemy unexpectedly stayed and fought fiercely for more than a week rather than relinquish Garmsir. An estimated 400 insurgents died. Marine commanders immediately realized that the town was a critical resupply and logistics hub for insurgent operations throughout the province.
"Our original mission was to act as a quick-reaction force for the ISAF commander in Kabul so he could throw us at any escalating crisis in this area," Hayes says. But Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, understood the strategic importance of Garmsir and instead ordered the marines to stay in the town and implement a classic counterinsurgency operation of "clear, hold, and build." Hayes says that his troops are "not normally in the business of owning ground, but I guess you could say we've rented Garmsir for a while."
After clearing the town of insurgents, the marines held it by establishing routine neighborhood patrols to keep the Taliban at bay. The MEU's civil-affairs unit reached out to the district governor, tribal sheiks, and local imams in Garmsir and the surrounding region, organizing the first shura -- or traditional governance council -- that the area had seen in three years. Local leaders were empowered to pick and prioritize development projects.
With improved security, the Red Crescent humanitarian organization moved in with aid for 1,400 displaced families. The marines, using their own money from the Commander's Emergency Response Program, launched small reconstruction projects: digging wells and repairing irrigation canals; delivering medical services; rebuilding damaged homes; even buying a new speaker system for the local mosque.
The Afghan Civilian Assistance Program, which the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development support, started longer-term projects.
Within weeks, an abandoned bazaar reopened and was swarmed with shoppers. By late summer, nearly eight weeks had passed without the 24th MEU having a single contact with Taliban insurgents, whom the locals were increasingly willing to identify for the marines.
Hayes is unequivocal in naming the key to the 24th MEU's success in Helmand province: "It's a real simple concept -- we learned during this mission that the best way to combat this type of enemy is to mass forces and stay. We actually replaced a small British force that was spread thin trying to cover too much ground with too few troops. Instead, we flooded a town that was strategically important to the enemy with overwhelming forces. That's the way you can win this kind of fight -- with boots on the ground."
No Staying Power
After two tour extensions, however, the 24th MEU is scheduled to leave Afghanistan this month. Until the Pentagon can follow through on recently announced plans to deploy an additional 4,500 troops to Afghanistan early next year -- still well short of the 10,000 urgently requested by U.S. commanders here -- there are no fresh U.S. or NATO units to take the place of the marines. That fact highlights an inconvenient reality: NATO and the United States remain chronically short of troops and equipment in Afghanistan. Taliban commanders understand that, too.
Heavy pressure from the U.S. to squeeze additional forces out of NATO at last spring's Bucharest Summit netted only about 2,000 troops; and badly needed helicopters donated by the Czech Republic are still languishing in that country because NATO lacks the money to transfer them to Afghanistan.
The plan now is for the 24th MEU to pass along the mission of "holding and building" in Garmsir to the Afghan army and the national government in Kabul. Yet Afghanistan's 63,000-man army is woefully inadequate to sustain security gains in a country of 30 million people, a majority of whom are illiterate and live at subsistence level.
Six years after taking power, a weak central government in Kabul struggles to extend its control beyond the capital. Afghanistan has few roads and some of the most challenging terrain in the world. Government corruption is so pervasive that one knowledgeable Afghan official in Kabul privately estimated that government employees siphon the equivalent of $5,000 per Afghan citizen from the pool of international aid each year. Afghan's 79,000 national police, meanwhile, are better known as shakedown artists than law enforcers.
"A year ago when I was here, there was a lot more optimism that the country was moving in the right direction," says retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a decorated combat veteran and West Point professor who accompanied Craddock on his recent trip to Afghanistan. "Now there's this sense of concern and surprise among NATO and Afghan officials that the enemy has gotten much stronger and better equipped, and is willing to take on their forces. I don't think the situation here will yield a disaster in 2009, but it's getting worse and violence is skyrocketing. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"
The situation in Musa Qala, another town in Helmand province, may foreshadow what could occur in Garmsir when the U.S. Marines leave. After capturing and holding Musa Qala for much of 2007, the Taliban was ejected by the Afghan army earlier this year. What happened next was sadly indicative of the lack of follow-through that has so often marred operations in the Afghan war.
"After we recaptured Musa Qala, the government was very slow to start any reconstruction, and there are still no new schools or hospitals or clinics," Gen. Mohammad Zaher Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said in an interview. He pointed out that unemployment is actually worse in Musa Qala today than when the Taliban controlled it. "In some cases, the Taliban have even convinced the locals that they governed better," he said, because the insurgents don't have the bureaucratic red tape that the government has and, for all their brutality, aren't as corrupt or open to bribes as are underpaid Afghan government officials and judges. "So, yes, it's very important in these operations to show people that it's the Afghan government that will step in and make their lives better."
The failure to do so was painfully obvious to McKiernan. "There is some governance and development finally beginning to take hold inside Musa Qala," the general explains. "But when you travel just a few kilometers north or south, you run into the presence of the Taliban again."
A Sense of Siege
The NATO flags arrayed outside ISAF headquarters in Kabul flew at half-staff during a reporter's recent visit. In the early years of the operation, flags were lowered for three days to mark the death of any NATO or allied soldier. But casualties mounted so quickly this year that headquarters' staff was forced to shorten the commemoration period to one day. June was the worst month of the war for ISAF soldiers: 49 were killed in action.
The rising toll partly reflects the allied forces' decision to take the fight to the Taliban in areas where the insurgents previously roamed free, such as in Helmand. ISAF officials point out that 70 percent of the violence is still concentrated in about 10 percent of the country's southern and eastern regions.
After more than $120 billion in investments by the international community over seven years, ISAF officials can cite some impressive achievements in Afghanistan, among them school construction and a rise in student enrollment from 1 million to 6.5 million, including 2 million girls formerly denied an education under the Taliban. Eighty-two percent of Afghans now benefit from basic health services versus 8 percent in 2001. The "ring road" connecting many of the country's far-flung provinces with the capital is nearly completed.
Yet officials concede that the Taliban has grown stronger. The spike in allied casualties is partly the result of the Taliban's using more asymmetric attacks -- suicide bombings, roadside bombs, kidnappings, and assassinations, the signature techniques honed by al Qaeda in Iraq and other Iraqi insurgents.
This development squares with intelligence indicating that Islamic extremists once drawn to Iraq are now flocking by the hundreds to Pakistan's tribal areas, where Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants are thought to be hiding. Al Qaeda is known to provide training, equipment, and suicide martyrs to its old allies in the hydra-headed Taliban insurgency, itself a "syndicate" of loosely affiliated Pashtun clans, subtribes, and terrorist groups.
Flush with hundreds of millions of dollars from taxing poppy and opium traffickers, and free to recruit in the Pashtun region's ubiquitous madrassas, or Islamic religious schools, the Taliban faces few attacks in Pakistan other than an occasional strike by a U.S. Predator unmanned aircraft, such as the one that killed four Islamist militants on September 4, and an occasional cross-border raid similar to the controversial operation by U.S. Special Forces on September 1 in south Waziristan that killed as many as 20 people.
Pakistan vehemently criticized that operation as an infringement on its territory. After its own brief offensive in the tribal areas in late August, Pakistan announced the suspension of all military operations against the Taliban and Islamist militants for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in early October.
"Overall, the Pakistan military has significantly reduced its level of activity near the border, which we think is connected to the informal cease-fires that the civilian government has reached with insurgents in the tribal areas earlier this year," said ISAF spokesman Mark Laity. "As a result, we're seeing many more insurgents crossing over from Pakistan than in the past."
Of equal concern, U.S. military intelligence analysts perceive a new Taliban strategy behind the bands of insurgents infiltrating across the border and establishing cells in the villages and towns around Kabul. Their suspected purpose is to undermine the Afghan government and sow fear through high-profile terror attacks. The mujahedeen fighters exploited a similar strategy against the Soviets and their puppet government in Kabul in the 1980s.
A series of spectacular attacks -- an assault by Taliban commandoes on the swanky Serena Hotel in January that killed eight; an assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai in April; the Indian Embassy bombing in July; the killing of four International Rescue Committee aid workers in August -- has begun to create a sense of siege in the capital. The Taliban is "working very hard to establish footholds around all the major approaches to Kabul," said a U.S. intelligence officer. "We think they mean to stay and fight through the winter."
Civilian Casualties
U.S. and coalition officials are also dealing with the blowback from a series of errant allied air strikes such as the one on August 23 that, according to the Afghan government and the United Nations, killed more than 90 civilians. The ISAF disputes those figures but has reopened an investigation into the bombing. That incident followed a July 6 air strike that killed 27 civilians at a wedding party, most of them children and women, including the bride.
A number of analysts blame the ISAF's liberal use of airpower in part on its effort to compensate for a lack of troops on the ground. According to the U.S. Institute of Peace, allied forces have dropped an average of 80,000 pounds of munitions a month in Afghanistan since June 2006, compared with an average of 5,000 pounds in 2005. Largely as a result, civilian casualties have skyrocketed 68 percent in the past year.
Taliban propagandists seize upon the civilian deaths. The incidents also erode public support for the coalition's presence and exacerbate tensions between the ISAF and the Afghan government, which complained bitterly on September 1 after Western troops reportedly killed three Afghan children and wounded seven other civilians in an errant artillery strike.
"Whenever there is an incident with civilian casualties, Karzai's phone just lights up and his office is overrun by tribal elders screaming about foreigners killing the Afghan people," said a senior NATO official in Kabul, acknowledging that the Afghan government has begun to demand ultimate authority over allied air strikes.
On a recent evening, McKiernan arrives in his office for a late-night interview. With a sigh, he sinks his athletic frame into an armchair, the strain evident on his drawn face. As ISAF commander, McKiernan tracks the big picture in Afghanistan, and he has identified three critical "imperatives" for succeeding in Afghanistan: improving the capacity of the Afghan government and security services; bolstering the will and commitment of the NATO alliance and other allied nations; and denying the Taliban uncontested sanctuary in Pakistan.
"Look, I've been a soldier for 36 years, and I want to be absolutely adamant about one point -- we're here to win. Failure is not an option in Afghanistan," he says. "I know that may sound like a cliche, but it's true. I'll also tell you the Afghan people are worth fighting for. The vast majority do not want to see the Taliban re-emerge back in power. So we will win, and the insurgency will lose. How long that will take, and how much suffering will occur before we reach that point, well, I can't answer that question."The Ticket Home
At Kandahar Air Base in southern Afghanistan, a Dutch colonel escorting a group of recent visitors steers carefully on the blacktop to avoid old Soviet land mines that drift along with the mud during the rainy season. He points to surrounding hills from which Taliban insurgents still fire rockets at the base. Thankfully, the rockets are notoriously inaccurate.
"One hit about 20 meters in front of my door last week," the Dutch officer volunteers. "Rather than explode, it just showered the front of my barracks with gravel."
Kandahar, once home base for the Taliban, remains especially uneasy. After the daring prison break here on June 13, which freed an estimated 350 Taliban prisoners along with hundreds of common criminals, the insurgents mined roads and destroyed bridges leading into the city. Hundreds of Taliban then amassed in the Arghandab district just to the north. For a while, Afghan government and NATO officials feared that the Taliban was poised to launch an all-out assault to retake Kandahar.
What happened next was a rare bright spot in what has been a gloomy fighting season in the Afghan war. Using its own Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters, the Afghan Defense Ministry deployed Afghan army reinforcements from Kabul and elsewhere to Kandahar. In just days, and with limited ISAF help, they routed the Taliban. U.S. officials say that the Afghan army is now taking the lead in 70 percent of operations in eastern Afghanistan.
These nascent successes underscore, however, that U.S. and allied commanders came late to the realization that creating viable Afghan security forces is their ultimate ticket home. A multiethnic army serves as a critical foundation for societies, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, that are torn by ethnic divisions and insurgencies. Yet the responsibility for training, equipping, and mentoring the Afghan army and police was initially assigned piecemeal to individual NATO nations. Precious years were lost.
"Unlike Iraq," Azimi said, "where more than a hundred thousand U.S. troops were deployed and tens of millions of dollars devoted to training their security forces, in Afghanistan there was a gap of two or three years after the fall of the Taliban where no one really focused on the Afghan army." Afghanistan's population of 30 million is larger than Iraq's, but its modest 63,000-man army (with 80,000 authorized) is dwarfed by Iraq's army of more than 580,000 soldiers. "Given our present security problems and geographic challenges, it's pretty clear that we simply do not have enough soldiers," Azimi said.
By nearly all accounts, the situation began to change for the better after the United States in 2007 assumed overall control of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan and greatly increased the resources and personnel devoted to training and mentoring Afghan forces. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has approved $17 billion for the effort, with plans to essentially double the size of the Afghan army to 120,000 troops.
War by Consensus
Despite the increased U.S. contribution and the growing consensus on the need to build an Afghan army as quickly as possible, American commanders remain frustrated by NATO's failure to deploy the promised number of Operational Mentor Liaison Teams ("Omelets" in NATO-speak). These 12-to-19-person training teams serve as a vital link between forward-deployed Afghan army and police units and ISAF support such as airpower, medical evacuation, and resupply. The inherent danger of their mission was driven home in June when 18 police trainers from the Security Transition Command were killed in action. It was the worst month of the war for the command.
Some NATO member states such as Germany now refuse to allow their OMLTs to accompany Afghan units into combat in the volatile southern and eastern parts of the country. Others have failed to field the training teams altogether, apparently because of the financial costs. The result is a shortage of 20 mentoring teams and 2,300 trainers.
"As we've tried to generate these training and mentoring teams that NATO nations agreed to supply, we've fallen flat on our faces," Gen. Craddock, NATO's supreme allied commander, admitted. "I've talked at every meeting of the North Atlantic Council [NATO's governing body], and at every foreign ministers council. At one [meeting] I brought a big cup and labeled it 'Contributions,' and I reminded all the defense chiefs that their respective heads of state agreed to meet this requirement, so where is your bid? And I didn't get anything! So yeah, I'm frustrated."
Privately, European officials respond that the United States was so distracted by Iraq in recent years that it was slow to realize that the situation was deteriorating in Afghanistan. Sometimes governments in Europe have also moved cautiously in increasing support for a war that is widely unpopular with their citizens and has proven surprisingly bloody for nations that thought they were joining peacekeeping operations.
"When NATO agreed to expand its control to southern Afghanistan in 2006, no one really anticipated the difficulty of the fighting," said one European official in NATO. "Maybe we were in denial, but this has been a culture shock for a lot of us." American officials were frustrated when the alliance had 35,000 troops in Afghanistan but only 8,000 troops in the volatile south, he said, and they are still unsatisfied with NATO's 52,000 troops in Afghanistan and 22,000 in the south.
"The curve in troop deployments keeps going up, the number of nations contributing forces has increased, and national restrictions on troops are slowly being relaxed," the official said. "So we're heading in the right direction, but the progress has admittedly been slow and painstaking."
Untamed Border
The towering mountains of the Hindu Kush and the warlike Pashtun tribes that inhabit them have witnessed more than their share of fighting over the centuries, from the retreat of Alexander the Great's armies 2,000 years ago to the massacre of nearly the entire British garrison in Afghanistan at the Grandamak Pass in 1842 to the humiliation of the vaunted Soviet military in the 1980s.
Today, it is the United States and the Western alliance that are trying to tame the "Durand Line" border that separates Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was drawn up in 1893 by Britain's colonial government in India but never recognized by local tribes. A visit to a lonely outpost at the mouth of the Khyber Pass suggests that the fate of not only Afghanistan but also Pakistan, and ultimately the wider war against al Qaeda and the Islamic extremists drawn to this region, may hinge on the outcome of the current border campaign.
The Khyber Border Coordination Center sits in the shadows of the Hindu Kush next to the remnants of an old mud fort. During the visit to its modern tactical operations facility, a reporter observed officers sitting at computer stations, monitoring flat-screen televisions that broadcast video from unmanned aerial drones. At their fingertips are satellite phones, tactical radios, and ordinary cellphones. What is unique, however, is the array of national uniforms inside the center, where teams of Afghan and Pakistani army officers work, eat, and live together, alongside their NATO counterparts.
"This outpost represents a historic event. This has never been tried before," says U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Milley, deputy commander of NATO's Combined Joint Task Force-101, which is responsible for eastern Afghanistan. As he speaks, Afghan and Pakistani officers fidget and eye each other uncomfortably. "We're trying to build mutual confidence and trust between the officers of two countries who have never had much of either," Milley says.
Because of its unusual nature, the center has no direct operational mission in the effort to interdict insurgents. Instead, the hope is that the center will facilitate regular intelligence-sharing across the border so that information can move up each nation's chain of command. Milley concedes that the arrangement at the coordination center -- the first of six planned joint border outposts -- is very much a work in progress.
"I'd say our military-to-military coordination with the Pakistani side is good, and I talk to my counterpart on the other side of the border every day. But it's not perfect," Milley tells a reporter. "The Pakistani Frontier Corps soldiers are all locals, so they know what is moving on their side of the border and what people are up to. I'm fairly confident that when they see bad guys moving, they'll let us know most of the time. Will they let us know all the time? No."
But trying to exert minimal control of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistan border with only a handful of joint border outposts shows that the relationship between these traditional rivals remains antagonistic. Privately, U.S. intelligence analysts say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate still attempts to wield influence inside Afghanistan by maintaining close ties to elements of the Taliban insurgency, and both U.S. and Afghan officials have accused the directorate of supporting the terrorists who bombed the Indian Embassy in July.
In the meantime, the Combined Joint Task Force-101, anchored by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, tries to detect and interdict insurgents spilling out of the countless valleys and gorges of the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan. That "valley-to-valley fight," they say, is made all the more difficult by tribal, ethnic, and clan relationships so complex that people in a single valley can speak as many as seven Pashtun dialects. The nearly impenetrable tribal dynamic has worked against any application of the "Anbar model" used in Iraq, which allowed U.S. commanders to reach tactical alliances with tribal sheiks willing to turn against al Qaeda.
"That tactic of making alliances with certain tribes and clans to fight against others was used by the Soviets, and people in Afghanistan have a bad memory of it," says a senior Afghan officer. "It's a discredited concept here."
Meanwhile, as long as the syndicate of about 14 terrorist and insurgent groups that make up the Taliban and its allies operates freely on the other side of the border with Pakistan, commanders of the joint task force know they will essentially have to fight a rearguard holding action.
"The border remains one of the most important strategic operational issues I confront, because there is infiltration from every significant sanctuary on the Pakistani side," Milley says.
Increasingly, the Taliban is using newly constructed roads to hasten its movement toward Kabul, and to conduct ambushes that disrupt development projects and interdict allied supply lines. In June, for instance, Taliban forces set fire to a military supply convoy of 50 trucks just 40 miles south of the capital, killing some 40 local contractors. Ninety percent of U.S. goods to Bagram, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, come overland by road on an eight-day journey from Pakistan's Karachi port through the Khyber Pass.
"Roads are fundamental because the Taliban knows that people will use them to move products to market and break the insurgency's grip over their lives, and roads also connect the Afghan government to the people," Milley says. "Another of my top priorities is securing the Khyber Pass road as the main east-west axis, which like all roads in Afghanistan leads to the capital. And Kabul remains the center of gravity in this country."
Ungoverned Spaces
After the briefing at the Khyber Coordination Center, visitors sit down to a traditional Afghan meal that the local officers prepared. They smile at Gen. Craddock, who had come from halfway around the world. Asked his impression of the border campaign briefing, Craddock's answer reflects the military knowledge that insurgencies that enjoy uncontested sanctuary have rarely, if ever, been defeated.
"Look, this is the Hindu Kush, and there aren't enough soldiers in anyone's army to seal this border off completely," he says. "But we do need to control major access points and make it as difficult as possible to cross illegally." More important, Pakistan has to be persuaded to increase pressure on insurgent safe havens, he adds.
Top U.S. military officials forcefully insisted on that when they met with their Pakistani counterparts on August 26 aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean.
"We already know that when insurgents can just roll back into a safe haven whenever we pressure them, that's just a terrible situation," says Craddock, recalling one of the primary lessons not only of counterinsurgency warfare but also of the 9/11 attacks. "The ungoverned spaces where no legitimate authority exerts control breed trouble for us. We know that."
Lifting off from the Khyber Pass outpost, Craddock's helicopter followed the green ribbon of the Kunar River west toward Kabul. Only a short flight away in the other direction was the most dangerous ungoverned space of them all -- the mountain area in which Qaeda terrorists have surely regrouped and where Osama bin Laden is likely hiding. He and his top associate, arch terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, have lost many fellow jihadists in the seven years of fighting that has raged since 9/11. But their strategy of trying to lure the United States and its allies into a protracted fight on their home turf -- and their dream of repeating the victory they won over the Soviets -- remains very much alive.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Doug Salamanca and Freddy Ruiz of Doug & Freddy duo(see in this blog) recorded under the group name of THE MEMORIES the sides...
-Darling It's Wonderful/Itty Bitty Girl. Old Sound Records-1962.
Anyone have these two sides?.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
THE MEMORIES (Old Sound Records)
Posted by Whitedoowopcollector at 8:03 AM
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The C-130, with tail number 4704, underwent Periodic Depot Maintenance last August 8 at a British Aerospace facility in Mojave, California. Upon completion of maintenance, the C-130 left California October 14 and made stopovers at Hawaii, Wake Islands, and Guam in the Pacific before its arrival in the country. (photo : Timawa)
MANILA, Philippines - A newly refurbished C-130 Hercules cargo plane arrived at the Villamor Airbase in Pasay City yesterday from the United States, enhancing the capabilities of the Philippine Air Force (PAF).
PAF spokesman Col. Miguel Okol said the C-130 is now being maintained by the 220th Airlift Wing and will complement the lone C-130 plane in the Air Force inventory.
"This will increase our capability to help in the government's national development initiatives as well as mitigate the effects of national calamities by providing lift to supplies and emergency response teams to stricken areas," he said.
The C-130 with tail number 4704 was sent to a British Aerospace facility at Mojave, California last Aug. 8 for periodic depot maintenance. The maintenance works cost P190 million and was funded through foreign military sales.
"The PAF has been responsive and was able to airlift supplies and equipment to our countrymen with a single C-130 during disasters and calamities; now with another one we will double that capability," PAF chief Lt. Gen. Lauro dela Cruz said.
Okol said the crew of the cargo plane made stopovers at Hawaii, Wake Island and Guam.
After the maintenance checks, 220th Airlift Wing deputy chief Col. Jose Mirandilla Jr. and his crew consisting of Lt. Col. Ramil Oloroso, Maj. Michael Edrik Encarnacion, Capt. Ian Dexter Danes and Capt. Merrito Quijano immediately prepared for departure last Sunday.
Okol said another C-130 plane undergoing maintenance in the country is expected to become operational by the first quarter of 2013.
"With only one (C-130), we did a lot. With three, we can definitely do a lot more to serve our countrymen," he said.
The government has promised to provide the military the necessary equipment and assets to enable it to perform its mandate.


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News, Tips & Tricks
Emirates Skywards has released their redemption chart for award flights on Alaska Airlines. Rates ranges from 15,000 Skywards miles for intra-state economy class award tickets to 65,000 miles for First Class Award tickets between the U.S. or Canada and Mexico. More details can be found here
IHG Priority Club's new reward night redemptions come into effect today. As I mentioned previously about 30% of their 4,200+ hotels will go up in points requirements while another 30% will go down and the remainder will stay the same. Gone are the redemption rates by brand and in is a category based reward chart like most of the other major hotel players. The good new is that if you are planning to book a reward night at hotel that has gone up, you have until March 18 to redeem at the old rates. To compare redemption rates, visit PriorityClub.com to see the new rates while utilizing this amazing chart put together by Loyalty Lobby of all the old rates.
Starwood Preferred Guest is 'enhancing' their Cash+Points redemption as of March 5. The good enhancements are that Category 1 and 2 hotels worldwide are now included instead of just U.S, Canada and Asia Pacific plus the addition of Cash+Points options for upgraded rooms and suites. The bad enhancement is that the rates for Cash+Points are increasing! An increase is never good but SPG has not increased these rates in quite sometime and overall they still represent a very good value (vs great value before!). Details of the changes can be found here. Here are the new and old reward charts for Cash + Points:
|Cash + Points as of March 5, 2013
|Cash + Points until March 4, 2013
Meanwhile Wyndham Rewards has increased the amount of points required for free nights at some of their hotels by extremely large amounts. For a more indepth look at this change please see this post by Mommy Points.
Marriott Rewards has officially published their new Elite Lifetime Status requirements on their site.
Travel Deals
Fairmont Hotels is offering 20% off for Fairmont stays Worldwide (plus an additional 5% if you are a Fairmont Presidents Club member, free to join!) Simply book an Everyone's an Original Rate before January 31, 2013 12PM EST for stays up to April 30, 2013. Oh and by the way this rate earns Double Miles with 7 of Fairmont's airline partners
Bonus Offers
Carlson Hotels Club Carlson
- 6,750 Bonus Gold Points and save up to 20% when you rent a Budget vehicle for 3 or more consecutive days at participating locations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. More... Until Dec 31, 13
Czech Airlines OK Plus
- 50% OK Plus Miles Discount on Reward Ticket redemptions to/from Prague*: Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Bucharest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Minsk, Rome, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, and Warsaw. More... Feb 1 - 28, 13
- 50% OK Plus Miles Discount on Reward Ticket redemptions to/from Prague*: Barcelona, ??Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Kosice, Madrid, Minsk, Milan, Odessa, Stuttgart and Warsaw. More... Until Jan 31, 13
- Double OK Plus Miles and save up to 33% of on all Hertz rentals Worldwide. More... Book by Jan 31 for rentals until Jun 30, 13
Iberia Plus
- Double Avios when you rent with Avis in Spain. More... Until Mar 15, 13
- Triple Avios when you rent for 3 or more days in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Spain and USA. More... Book by Feb 28 for rentals until Mar 31, 13
- Double Avios and save up to 33% of on all Hertz rentals Worldwide. More... Book by Jan 31 for rentals until Jun 30, 13
- Double Avios when you rent with Europcar in Spain. More... Until Feb 28, 13
- Double Avios for prepaid Atesa rentals in Spain. More... Until Feb 28, 13
- Quadruple Avios when you rent for 5 or more days at any Sixt location Worldwide. More... Until Feb 28, 13
Scandinavian EuroBonus
- 3,000 EuroBonus points for stays of 2 or more nights in a suite at participating World Hotels Worldwide. More... Until Mar 17, 13
Southwest Rapid Rewards (on FrequentFlyerBonuses.com only)
- Double Rapid Rewards Points for eligible stays at participating Country Inns & Suites, Radisson Blu, and Radisson locations in the United States. More... Until Mar 31, 13
United Mileage Plus
- Quadruple Mileage Plus Miles per stay at La Quinta properties in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. More... Until Feb 28, 13
Vietnam Airlines Golden Lotus Plus (on FrequentFlyerBonuses.com only)
- Double Golden Lotus Plus Miles for flights between Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi and Vientiane or Luang Phrabang. More... Until Mar 15, 13
Virgin Australia Velocity Rewards (on FrequentFlyerBonuses.com only)
- Elite Status Credit when you redeem your Points for a Reward Seat with Virgin Australia. More... Until Jun 30, 13


text:
Lotus Cat Just Juicy Chicken Stew Can 5.3oz
Lotus Just Juicy brings your furry friend savory stews right to their food dish! Both healthy and tasty, your cat won't be able to resist.
Key Benefits
- Each can is hand packed in California
- Made without grains, a common allergy trigger for cats
- Taurine is added to support normal vision, digestion, heart muscle function, and to maintain a healthy immune system
- This wholesome cat food is formulated with omega fatty acids to promote healthy skin and a soft coat
- Made with high-quality animal proteins plus vitamins & minerals, and vitamin E to support a strong immune system
Chicken, Chicken Broth, Potato Starch, Calcium Lactate, Chicken Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols and Citric Acid), Carrots, Monosodium Phosphate, Agar-Agar, Potassium Chloride, Salt, Taurine, Magnesium Oxide, Calcium Carbonate, Choline Chloride, Betaine, Zinc Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Niacin, Vitamin E Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Sodium Selenite, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin A Supplement, Riboflavin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Calcium Iodate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid.
Caloric Content
2.5 oz Can: 1,005 kcal/kg, 5.3 oz Can: 1,005 kcal/kg, 150.75 kcal/can


text:
Quick Hit Las Vegas Slot
This online slot is the 3rd slot of the quadrilogy of Quick Hit slots created by Bally Games. If you have played any of the other 3 slots, Quick Hit Black Gold, Quick Hit Platinum or Quick Hit Pro, be sure to try your luck on the Quick hit Las Vegas slot as the fun, excitement and payouts just get better.
Quick Hit Las Vegas is set against the backdrop of the infamous city that never sleeps, Las Vegas. This slot brings you everything that is Las Vegas, the lights, the winnings the skyline and the casino chips.
Slot Symbols And Betting Options
Quick Hit Las Vegas is a 5 reel, 30 payline video slot that brings you symbols like a Roulette wheel, the Quick Hit logo, the Wild symbol, 2 martinis and playing card symbols form 10 to King.
Bally Games has pulled out all the stops when it comes to betting totals, and the betting amounts are versatile and suitable for any player's needs. Quick Hit Las Vegas offers a minimum bet of 30c per payline, and escalates to a maximum bet of 450 coins per payline.
Wild Symbol
Besides all the lights and the jingles you might start to wonder what all the fuss is about, but the bonus features of Quick Hit Las Vegas will definitely impress you.
The Wild symbol can replace most symbols on a reel in order to complete a winning combination. The Scatter symbol and the Quick Hit logo is the exception to this rule, and cannot be replaced by the Wild symbol.
Scatter Symbol
If you manage to land 3 or more of the Scatter symbols in one spin, the Free Games bonus feature will be activated. The Scatter symbols are limited to reel 2 to 4. This bonus feature also comes with a multiplier that will apply to the total bet relating to the triggering spin. Quick hit Las Vegas offers a very lucrative bonus round, seeing that you could multiply your bet by as much as 2000 times, if you manage to land 9 scatters within a single spin. You have a better chance of success if you play the maximum active lines on each spin.
In the Quick Hit Las Vegas bonus game screen you will be presented with 20 tiles. Now you have to select random tiles until you have selected 3 of the same kind. These 3 matching tiles will reveal how many free spins will be rewarded to you, and you will also get an additional bet multiplier, ranging from 7 to 25 times your bet amount.
Game Interface
The Quick hit Las Vegas slot has been designed in a very user-friendly manner with easy navigation and an information tab so players can familiarise themselves with the game and how to play it. The traditional roulette comes with merry music and a lot of lights like you would only get in Las Vegas. You can however adjust the background music to your liking or turn it off completely. The arrow keys are easy to use to adjust your bet amount up or down, as well as increase or reduce your number of active paylines.


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THERE was good competition from processors, butchers and farmers at the monthly Mount Pleasant market yesterday.
Landmark Fawcett Mount Pleasant principal Colin Fawcett said there were less stock at hand compared to the pre-Christmas sale, with 865 sheep and lambs yarded and 202 cattle.
"The sale was pretty solid on sheep and lambs, and the same for cattle," he said.
"I'd say it was fully firm to slightly better than the pre-Christmas sale.
"The sale was well-attended by a good spread of buyers, with sheep and lambs attracting store buyers as well as the trade.
"With the cattle, there was pretty good competition on all types."
Two vendors topped the lamb market at $160 – G Howson, Cromer, with a pen of 21 and AK&SA Day, Nairne, with a line of 11.
Regular vendors Hearnden Farms, Keyneton, sold 23 lambs at $158.
The hogget section was topped by H Persic, Angaston, with a line of six at $132.
FR&FJ Dennis, Mount Pleasant, made the highest price for wethers with six at $120.
In the cattle section, heifers made to $1040 for two Poll Herefords from CM Bond, Walker Flat. The second-highest price was $1000 for three Murray Greys from DG Carter, Eudunda.
Steers topped at $1220 for a Murray Grey from Semmler Bros, Lyndoch.
All making $1200 for their steers were SJ&RJ Dohnt, Eden Valley, with two Angus, CM Bond, with two Poll Herefords and KH Rattei, Springton, with an Angus.
Two sellers made the top price for cows at $1280 – BW&AF Schild, Lobethal, with a Murray Grey and SB&R Vivian, Mannum, also with a Murray Grey.


text:
In a recent interview with CNBC Television, Mike Novogratz, notable Bitcoin [BTC] influencer, listed out how the situation for Bitcoin [BTC] had changed over the last two years and how the introduction of new altcoins affected its valuation.
On the show, Novogratz was asked whether new emerging coins posed any threat to Bitcoin [BTC] in terms of valuation and popularity. Novogratz explained that back in 2017, every virtual asset in existence proclaimed to be the next big virtual currency. In response, an enormous supply was created collectively. The limited 21 million BTC did not matter since there were so many other options. This eventually led to the collapse in price as many altcoin projects flustered.
In the current situation, the validity of different coins had more clarity and Bitcoin [BTC] prevailed as the popular store of value. He emphasized that in this particular space, nobody else stood a chance as Bitcoin [BTC] was in itself, a complete project. It did not need to relatively improve more than other coins since it had already established its superiority.
He added that new institution-backed crypto assets (e.g., JP Morgan coin) currently entering the market actually helped the value of Bitcoin [BTC] for "there was no competition in their lane."
Additionally, Novogratz added that people should be investing only 2-3 percent of their net worth in Bitcoin. He said,
"You should only invest the amount of money that you can afford in Bitcoin."
Mike Novogratz also believes that it is incredible how quickly Bitcoin evolved in the last 10 and half years, as people had created something that was worth more than $140 billion in market value, at press time.
Source: ambcrypto.com


text:
Ahmed Vâsıf Efendi (ca. 1730-1806) was born in Baghdad and, after working with several private libraries of local magnates, he served as secretary of the serasker Abaza Mehmed Paşa. He was captured by the Russians in 1771, during the Hotin campaign. After his liberation he entered state bureaucracy (1772) and played a role in various diplomatic endeavours, including the negotiations for the peace of Küçük Kaynarca. Upon his return to Istanbul, he directed the revival of Müteferrika's printing press; in 1783 he was appointed vakanüvis (and again in 1789-1791, 1793-1794 and 1799), and then served in various posts, among which being an ambassador to Spain in 1787-1788. In 1805 he became reisülküttab.
Apart from poetry, geography and other minor works, Vasıf's main work is his court chronicle, Mehâsinü'l-âsâr ve hakâikü'l-ahbâr ("The charms and truths of relics and annals"). He also wrote an account of his embassy to Spain (sefâretnâme); most probably he is also the author of "Sekbanbaşı risalesi", composed just before his death (see Kemal Beydilli, "Sekbanbaşı risalesinin müellifi hakkında", Türk kültürü incelemeleri dergisi 12 (2005), 221-24). In an earlier age, his political views were expressed in his Risâle ("Essay"), incorporated in his chronicle (Ahmed Vâsıf Efendi, Mehâsinü'l-âsâr ve hakâikü'l-ahbâr, ed. Mücteba İlgürel, Istanbul 1978, 150-152).
Copyright 2015 © IMS Forth. All rights reserved.


text:
We tried to find a scary movie for Halloween through the site Headweb.com a VOD enterprise where Aurore once worked.
Among those we could stream for free - as she has a bonus she hasn't used - we finally decided for this one - Man in the attic - a 'Jack the Ripper'-story with another Jack as actor: Jack Palance.
Not at all a bad film even if it worked with some psychological clichées, like the man who from different reasons is morally upset by dancing- and singing women, displaying their legs and underwears to the audience.
Normally the stories about 'Jack the Ripper' leaves the viewer in the dark (not only in the cinema auditorium) but concerning who the man actually could have been, the doctor of Queen Victoria or other high society men etc etc.
In this film it seems as a clear case where we get to see 'the Ripper' and see how the love for a woman changes or rather changes him into another person.
It becomes a mix between the original story about 'the Ripper', 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and 'Beauty and the Beast'.
Finally he disappears under water in the Thames but is he really dead or not?
Director: Hugo Fregonese.


text:
Ulster Orchestra - Rustioni Conducts Mahler's Resurrection
Daniele Rustioni - Conductor
Ruby Hughes - Soprano
Kai Rüütel Mezzo - Soprano
Belfast Philharmonic Choir
Mahler Symphony No. 2 Resurrection
Gustav Mahler wanted his Second Symphony to exceed any known format – and he also wanted it to tackle the key questions of existence. It is one of the largest symphonies ever written, in terms of forces, length and harmonic scope.
In the first movement Mahler wrestles with funereal thoughts. In the second, we glimpse his masterful skill for nature-painting, while the third is best-known and celebrated for that apocalyptic crescendo known as the 'death shriek'.
In the fourth, we are presented with what is at heart a lied, an art song, and its text is drawn from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a poetic collection to which the composer returned repeatedly during his career.
Finally, in the apocalyptic fifth movement, the chorus and soloists combine in a tremendous hymn on the theme of 'resurrection' – the rebirth of the individual into immortal triumph.


text:
When we lived in Alaska, a small horse stable was located on the outskirts of the Air Force base. We'd have to pass it everyday, as we drove in toward the neighborhoods. Alyssa was mesmerized. She and Ron would identify which horses were out in the pasture. As winter approached, the horses spent a little more time in the barns. So when Ron dropped Michael off at Tiger Cubs, he and Alyssa would go to the stables and talk to the horses for that hour. Sometimes they'd talk to the owners, sometimes they'd bring carrots or apples or sugar cubes.
Alyssa was shy around people, but not around horses. She'd walk her tiny self – she was all of about 4 years old – up to the stalls, and pet those enormous horses. Ron would hold her up and she'd rub their faces, speaking softly to them. They'd talk about different horse breeds and how they looked and acted. Soon the owners came to know them, and they'd share stories about their horses. We thought about how nice it would be someday, to own our own horse farm.
So when the Air Force took us to California after Alaska, we knew we needed to find a horse farm. We couldn't buy one, but we sure could hang out at someone else's! We wanted to find riding lessons for all of the kids; Ron decided he wanted to learn too. He found ManMar Ranch near our home. ManMar was interesting because it was a breeding ranch for the UC Veterinary school. We found a riding instructor named Miss Shirley. She was from England and wanted everyone to learn English instead of Western. Being a HUGE John Wayne fan family, that did not sit well. Miss Shirley explained that it was a better way to learn. Less leather between you and your horse, means you will be able to read each other better. So that's what we did. And we decide to learn something, we immerse ourselves. Ron and the kids would offer to help the ranch owner, Liz, with whatever she needed. She had stable hands, but they had a lot to do. Soon, my kids were moving horses from one field to another, bringing them into their stalls for the night, helping with feeding, chatting with owners. When one of the mares was about to have a foal, Liz called us to come up and watch. A miracle in the barn – without a doubt!
The UC Vets let the kids look through microscopes, talked with them about injuries, and explained artificial insemination. They all learned about the dangers of getting too close to the hormone-raging stallions, as well as the mares who were used solely for breeding. They were referred to as the Crazy Mares. I guess you would be too if you were pregnant most of your life! This happens in the horse racing world. Expensive race horses cannot run the risk of a problem pregnacy. So the Crazy Mares do all the work, so to speak.
Liz had shared her horses with us. First it was Pepper (For Dr. Pepper), then it was Louie. Finally she wanted us to try to ride Gilley. He was a Standard bred bay colored horse who had not done well on the track. He was fast, but he was easily spooked at the gate. While that's no good for a race horse, it's not that bad for a family horse. Ron and Michael spent many days there helping them build a covered riding arena, learning how to break in horses – all to barter with Liz, work for boarding costs for Gilley. Liz loved her horses. So when Alyssa clearly loved them too, they were connected. She even hosted a birthday party for Alyssa out at the ranch, letting all of her friends climb onto different horses and go for a ride.
Katie's interest in horses faded. But Michael, Alyssa and Ron continued their horse love affair. So when the Air Force was ready to move us back to Texas, we decided we had to have a ranch! Boarding costs
alone made it sound like a good idea. But really, it was clear that we were bringing more animal interests into our lives. We already had a parakeet, a turtle, a dog, a cat, a guinea pig and some tadpoles that would never morph into frogs (I'll save that story for another post!) So we bought 16 acres on a hill northwest of Wichita Falls, in a community that was just a dot on map: Thornberry. Before long, we acquired 2 more horses, Dolly and Cimarron.
But we also acquired chickens, ducks, guineas, guinea pigs, goats, cows, a donkey, a bull, cockatiels, parakeets, feral cats and guard dogs. We built a chicken coop and raised chicks. We learned how the light affects the egg production and how to keep chickens safe from coyotes and bull snakes. We wrote stories about the animals and the various adventures and mysteries that happened on the ranch. The kids bought a breeding pair of cockatiels and started a cockatiel business. They trained the birds so theycould be handled and hand-fed and sold the babies to other families. They helped with the birthing of calves, trimmed hooves on goats, and even buried a much loved cat that we had brought with us from Alaska. They bottle-fed kittens that had been abandoned in a neighbor's barn. They learned how soft a donkey's nose is and how stubborn a bull can be. They entered their dogs in 4H competitions, even winning some of them! They learned about horse tack and temperaments. We bought materials to build stalls and run fencing. The kids shared their information with other "city kids" who had no idea we had only just left the 'burbs ourselves. We met other horse owners in the ranches nearby. Alyssa even delivered Girl Scout cookies by horseback! Our kids knew what was safe and what was important on the ranch.
We stayed on our ranch in Thornberry for 5 years. We learned so much there! Alyssa was a late reader and didn't retain many math concepts. But she could spot a Thoroughbred and tell you all the difference between a Buckskin and a Palomino. She knew her tack and her horses. It really made me smile to look out the kitchen window and see her pull her horse, Dolly, over toward the hot tub or the fence gate. She'd climb up so she'd be tall enough to hop onto the bare back of the horse. Then she'd ride laps around the house, down the driveway, and around the fence lines. It gave her a confidence that would see her through many of the obstacles she'd face later in life. Our "pets" taught all of them that animals need their human to do a lot of hard work – every day. If it was cold and windy, they still had to be fed. If it was raining, someone still needed to close up the chicken coop door.
I'm sharing these stories for a couple of reasons. For one, this is what following our passions looked like. Ron noticed Alyssa was interested in horses in Alaska and found a way for her to see one up close. Connecting all the dots is something you can see clearly when it's retrospective; but while you're living it, you simply have to step toward the interest and see where you go. These steps led to a 10 year adventure with animals – for the whole family!
But also I'd like to give you a glimpse to what "learning naturally" looks like. The lessons are bigger. They're richer than worksheets. They are real life. My kids learned that if you love something, it's within your grasp… even if you have to shift some priorities to get it. People might look at you funny saying, "You're going to do what? A real ranch?" But anything is attainable if you walk through the steps to get there. That is so much more important to learn than long division or reading by 8.
In spite of – or more likely *because of* – this nontraditional approach toward learning, my kids did learn to read and to write.
Michael (almost 23) got a degree in Journalism and is a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Katie (21) is studying at a film acting conservatory in New York city.
Alyssa is completing her cosmetology program, ready to start her career at 18.


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Here's how much it costs to make an iPhone 7
It's important to preface this entire piece by saying that Apple CEO Tim Cook once said that these types of estimates are never 'anywhere close to being accurate,' and that they are typically 'much different than the reality.'
That said, the iPhone 7 is more expensive to manufacture than last year's 6s — headphone jack be damned.
The total cost of the build, according to data from IHS Markit, adds up to $219.80. Once you factor in labor costs, estimated at $5 per phone, the total build runs $224.80 for the base model, 32GB iPhone 7. The company claims that this is an increase of $36.89 per unit, as opposed to the $187.91 iPhone 6s base model from last year.
With the base model phone running $649, this gives Apple an expected profit of $424 for each device sold, a 189 percent markup. Of course, this doesn't factor in outside costs, like research and development, marketing or events.
All told, per-device profit is probably much lower than the $424 estimate and these estimates could be wildly inaccurate anyway. But, it's always fun to peek through the looking glass.
iPhone 7 Materials Costs Higher than Previous Versions, IHS Markit Teardown Reveals on IHS Markit
Read next: LG's more powerful G6+ doubles the storage and adds a high quality DAC
Corona coverage
Read our daily coverage on how the tech industry is responding to the coronavirus and subscribe to our weekly newsletter Coronavirus in Context.
For tips and tricks on working remotely, check out our Growth Quarters articles here or follow us on Twitter.


text:
Hundreds of spin-outs and minor accidents were reported across the Tri-State, and sanitation employees and road crews are working around the clock to spread salt and sand in an effort to keep drivers and pedestrians safe.
Preparing for a worst case scenario, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency and closed state government offices. Dozens of schools were closed across the region.
RELATED: AccuWeather Forecast
Despite the wintry mix, New York City schools remained open, as accumulations in the city were minor before the snow switched over to freezing rain.
Still, officials were preparing for a messy evening commute and urging everyone to use mass transit if possible.
The Department of Sanitation has 2,400 people working, with 695 salt spreaders and 1,000 plows on the roads or at the ready.
In New Jersey, the snow also created slick conditions and prompted the state to institute a commercial vehicle ban as officials try to limit any possible mess on the roads.
There are a slew of crews on standby, with 700 sanders and salters rolling into action.
"We're prepared, not only with our own crews but our contract crews, to the extent we need them for salting and plowing," the Department of Transportation said in a statement.
There is also a fear that icing will lead to downed trees and power lines, increasing the likelihood of outages.
"Overall, we want all residents to be safe," Murphy said. "Again, please use common sense and caution out on the roads."
Conditions were also very messy throughout the Hudson Valley, with Orange County seeing the brunt of the storm.
Accumulations were expected to be higher to the north and west of the city, with the possibility for 3 to 6 inches compared to 1 to 3 in the city and along the coast.
There was moderate snow totals on Long Island, where many children were enjoying a day off from school.
Parents agreed with the districts' decision, especially considering the likelihood for icing conditions.
If you are flying Tuesday, check with your carrier before you head out. There are hundreds of flight delays and cancellations at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports.
* Follow us on YouTube
* More local news
* Send us a news tip
* Download the abc7NY app for breaking news alerts


text: Step 1 of 2 0% Your browser does not support the photo selection. Please use the following selectionStandardLegacyPlusClassicFinchPeanutMiniSolution 200Seed BusterMega 600Select your feeder*Standard -#1057Legacy -#1082Plus -#1024Classic -#1015Finch -#1016Peanut -#1052Mini -#1055Mega 600 -#1114Solution 150 -#1017Solution 200 -#2004Seed Buster -#1020Suet - #1106 Name* First Last Email* Enter Email Confirm Email Telephone*Place of purchase* Sign me up for your biweekly Digest of Bird News! Opt-in Send me other news, exclusive deals, offers and more! We would like to hear from you. Please leave us your comments. To request assistance or parts please continue to use the Help form. Who we are Customer Support Our Commitment Visions & Responsibilities Photo contest Instructional videos Backyard sanctuary Bird feeding tips Store locator Buy online Reviews Comparison table Suet Standard Legacy Classic Plus Finch Peanut + Mini Seed Buster Pole adapter Weather guard Squirrel Solution 200 Squirrel Solution 150 MEGA600™


text:
and shitler says i only do what i say i'm going to do 3% of the time.
because this is my second try at this link-up over at from my grey desk and i think that makes me semi-successful.
so here they are:
1. this swing. oh god, my swing. where i will read.
2. i got my paws on the newest gillian flynn book. for the love of everything in the entire world - go read every single book by her right now (which is just the three so it shouldn't be too daunting of a task).
3. i have two more cantaloupes at home. which i plan on massacring this weekend.
with my mouth.
4. how can you not love him?
5. that my weekend will be filled with this:
catch you on the flip.
ghost ride the whip.


text:
RE: Evaluating both sides of OR?
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:13:36 -0400
Message-ID: <780ED3FC819241BB94F0103B8637FA70_at_KenPC>
From 10g (maybe 11g) oracle optimizes the OR function behind the scenes by choosing which side is more likely to be true and evaluating it first and it will not evaluate the second condition if the first condition is true.
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]
On Behalf Of Steve Bradshaw
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:26 AM
To: adar666_at_inter.net.il
Cc: ORACLE-L
Subject: Re: Evaluating both sides of OR?
Just tried this out on Oracle XE - seems to depend on the order of the statements.
If I did the ":v1 is null" check first, works fine, if I did the "f(:v1)" the function is invoked (and hits the raise_application_error).
SQL> create table test_t
2 (a varchar2(10)
3 ) ;
Table created.
SQL> create or replace function TEST_F(P_1 varchar2) return varchar2 is
2 begin
3 if P_1 is null
4 then
5 RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20666, 'DOH!'); 6 end if;
7 return(P_1);
8 end;
9 /
Function created.
SQL> insert into TEST_T values ('a') ;
1 row created.
SQL> insert into TEST_T values (null) ;
1 row created.
SQL> set serveroutput on
SQL> edit
Wrote file afiedt.buf
1 declare
2 L_VAR varchar2(10) := null;
3 begin
4 for each in (select NVL(A,'*') A
5 from TEST_T 6 where (L_VAR is null or TEST_F(L_VAR) is null)) loop 7 DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(each.A);
8 end loop;
9* end;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> edit
Wrote file afiedt.buf
1 declare
2 L_VAR varchar2(10) := null;
3 begin
4 for each in (select NVL(A,'*') A
5 from TEST_T 6 where (test_f(L_VAR) is null OR L_VAR is null)) loop 7 DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(each.A);
8 end loop;
9* end;
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-20666: DOH! ORA-06512: at "TEST.TEST_F", line 5 ORA-06512: at line 4
SQL> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Yechiel Adar <adar666_at_inter.net.il> wrote:
I seem to remember that oracle is evaluating both sides of OR in where clause.
select a,b from c where a =1 and (:v1 is null or function(:v1) = b);
Is the function activated when :v1 is null?
-- Adar Yechiel Rechovot, Israel -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Thu Apr 16 2009 - 11:13:36 CDT


text:
M – 1 Visa
The M-1 visa classification is reserved for the student who intends to pursue a vocational, non-academic program (other than a language training program) in an established institution in the United States. Examples of vocational study are training programs for health care technicians, machinists, dental hygienists, and other, similar pursuits.
- Ability to demonstrate bona fide student status with nonimmigrant intent and strong ties to the home country
- Acceptance for study at an established vocational or other recognized, nonacademic institution
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Electric Toothbrush Travelling Conundrum Solved
I am sure most of you have seen a travelling toothbrush holder much like the one pictured above (photo via Amazon.com). Anyone who went to overnight camp probably used one of these or something similar to stow their toothbrush in their cabin and keep it sanitary. For years and years whenever I went on a trip anyway I would put my toothbrush in my toiletry bag safely contained in one of these plastic holders. Then my dentist gave me one of them new fangled 21st Century toothbrushes with all sorts of different aspects from the traditional toothbrush I'd grown up using. It looked all sorts of awesome and kept my teeth nice and pearly white. Amazing, right? Right, until the time came when I needed to travel with it.
I was getting ready to head out on a trip and was getting my toiletries all in their bag when it came time to pack my toothbrush. I pulled out one of my trusty travel toothbrush holders and tried putting my new toothbrush in but it was too long. Ruh-roh! What to do, what to do? Well, for a time I came up with some various solutions out of necessity. I would wrap tissues or toilet paper around the head of the toothbrush before I stuffed it in my bag or I would put it in a ziploc. The problem with those, however, were that I was wasting a heck of a lot of toilet paper or tissue every time or when I used the bags my toothbrush – often last to be packed as I brushed my teeth right before I left – would be still damp and sit in a plastic bag, sealed in its dampness which just doesn't sound all that sanitary. (I can be a bit of a germaphobe/neat freak sometimes.)
Then, I found this beautiful invention one day when I was meandering through the camping section of a big box store – I think it was Canadian Tire – but I bought these particular ones today at Camp Connection (located at Lawrence & Bathurst in Toronto). No longer did I have to wrap my toothbrush in tissues or put it, damp, into a sealed bag. If you look below at the bottom picture you will see it even has air holes for just the eventuality of the toothbrush being freshly used when you need to pack it away.
It is absolutely beyond me why I have never, ever seen this item being sold in a pharmacy right next to the travel soap dishes & mini reusable travel shampoo bottles they sell. In those very same sections they sell the toothbrush holder pictured above but this seems like a much better solution to me. One size pretty much fits all – although honestly, it was a bit of tight fit getting it onto my electric toothbrush but fit it does and that's all that matters to me. Check out the picture below and see how it looks on my electric toothbrush – told ya it fits pretty much any toothbrush! Also, you can better understand how exactly it works. I actually let one of my brothers use my last set on a trip he took and never got it back which is why I was in the market again for these guys.
Lewis N. Clark Toothbrush Holder Red via http://www.amazon.com/Lewis-N-Clark-Toothbrush-Holder/dp/B000SKX8IS/ref=pd_sbs_sg_6
September 6, 2011 at 3:14 pm
September 16, 2011 at 3:41 pm
February 27, 2013 at 5:41 pm


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FROM JASON'S REPLENISHED BOOKSHELF — Take heart, the banana-hammocks shown on the cover are never actually described inside the book. Or if they were, I repressed those memories.
No, what gets top priority description-wise in Philip Jose Farmer's Inside-Outside is the vicious, artificial world of Hell, where humans and demons suffer side-by-side.
It's a cavernous and barren dessert domain, revealed mid-novel to actually be (spoilers here, folks) the hollowed inside of an asteroid where souls are imprisoned more or less as laboratory animals at the whim of a highly-advanced alien race.
In many ways, it's a pre-treading of Farmer's Riverworld Saga — not a re-treading, because he published Inside-Outside seven years prior to To Your Scattered Bodies Go. It also seems to foreshadow the route writer-director Alex Royas would take more than two decades later in Dark City (1998).
Farmer gets credit for being a master of American science fiction, but in my mind he's not so much a crafter of great stories as he is a crafter of great fantasy settings. A good 80 percent of Inside-Outside is spent tromping through the bowels of Hell and meeting its challenges, not actually getting answers to the teleological puzzles the netherworld presents.
This is where Farmer succeeds: His version of the afterlife is like the third panel of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights brought to life. It's debased. It's surreal. It's pain and doubt and vice at every turn.
But it's also a tangible world ruled by its own peculiar physical laws, not some protoplasmic spiritual dimension, even though there are unearthly monsters a-plenty.
Corporeal though it is, Hell is lavished with religious iconography. I mentioned the demons; there is also a baffling and perhaps ghoulish Christ figure, stone idols, sewers filled with Inferno-esque denizens, the curse of eternal life through resurrection from the dead, machine-made "souls" reminiscent of Scientology's so-called thetans, and (for all intents) omnipotent alien "gods" with their own agendas.
As well as Farmer creates his environment, he doesn't do a terrific job of sculpting characters. There's nobody to like in this novel. We have a protagonist, sure, but he's a spiteful, violent, selfish brute. Jack Cull is not really a hero, although technically you could probably say he's on a hero's quest.
Cull is looking for hope, but by book's end he does not find it — in fact, he finds the opposite, that he is doomed to help his masters subjugate other races to a grinding, pathetic Purgatorio for their own supposedly "ethical" but still very, very flawed reasons.
And it's all due to a big mistake. With a big twist in the final 10 pages (again, spoilers), we find that Hell is not really the afterlife… Cull and everyone else are alien-made souls who have never lived, and who were injected with false memories of time on Earth. The planet has long since been destroyed by nuclear war, and there will never be more human babies born in which Cull and his companions' souls may be placed.
Which makes for a fun trip down the peroverbial rabbit hole.
It's a good read for atmosphere, if nothing else. And at just 169 pocket-sized pages, it's a quick read (I think I buzzed through in five or six hours). That's not bad for $1 spent on the spinner rack at my local Half Price Books.


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|Here's a "before" pic. Plain ol' feet-less cabinets. :)
|Here's what we purchased. They were unfinished when we bought them and I primed them and put a couple of coats of Heirloom White spray paint on them. We got them at Lowes for about $5.99 each.
|They were a tad short for out cabinets, so my hubby added these little spacers to the tops.
|Next, we just fit them under the cabinet. The spacers are completely hidden, so I didn't have to paint them.
|These are the nails he used to secure them to the cabinets.
|Here's the worker man himself nailing them to the cabinets.
|Here's the nailer he used. This was a black Friday purchase a few years ago. :)
|And here's the finished product! It really didn't take any time at all and I think it makes a big difference in how they look.
|Here's another "before" shot...
|And an "after." So simple and inexpensive. I love those kinds of projects!
Hope y'all have a great day!
I'm joining these parties: Wow Us Wednesday, Works For Me Wednesday, Sunday Showcase Party, Amaze Me Monday, Grace At Home, Flaunt It Friday, Weekend Wrap Up Party, Friday Flair, Inspire Me Tuesday, Homework Wednesday, Tuesdays At Our Home, Sundae Scoop, Serenity Now, From My Front Porch To Yours, Evolution Of Style Blog


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Houston Dynamo 0, Sporting Kansas City 1 | 2018 MLS Match Recap
Sporting Kansas City snapped a five-game winless streak, thanks in large part to a 16-year-old.
Gianluca Busio, the third-youngest player to start an MLS game, assisted on the game's only goal from Diego Rubio as SKC picked up a 1-0 road win over the shorthanded Houston Dynamo in a chippy Western Conference matchup between slumping sides Saturday at BBVA Compass Stadium.
The Dynamo played down one man for most of the game after Alejandro Fuenmayor was shown a straight red card in the 14th minute for a clattering hit on Busio's head. Houston manager Wilmer Cabrera was then ejected at halftime for arguing with referee Chris Penso in the tunnel, and the Dynamo went down two more men deep in stoppage time when Darwin Ceren and Alberth Elis were both shown red cards.
The Dynamo still had chances, particularly on a 62nd-minute look from Elis, but saw their own winless streak extend to five.
- 74' – SKC – Diego Rubio Watch
Three Things
- THE BIG PICTURE: It probably took SKC longer than they would have liked to take advantage of playing up a man but any road win against a Western Conference foe is a good one. The Dynamo, meanwhile, will not only have to deal with their third straight loss but also the fallout with so many ejections for the next MLS game — which, perhaps, makes their upcoming U.S. Open Cup semifinal match vs. LAFC even bigger.
- MOMENT OF THE MATCH: It looked like the Dynamo might be able to escape with a point, until Busio had a nice little flick of Graham Zusi's pass right to a streaking Rubio, who put it away for his fourth goal of the year.
Gianluca Busio on his first start for #SportingKC: "On my first MLS start, getting a game winning assist is really a big step for me, and it's a great feeling to help the team win." #HOUvSKC pic.twitter.com/rwcQF1DIKE— FOX Sports Kansas City (@FSKansasCity) August 5, 2018
- MAN OF THE MATCH: Ilie Sanchez and Matt Besler put in strong shifts to help preserve the shutout but let's give this to the kid, huh? On top of his assist, Busio also had a screaming shot glance off the post and provided a lot of youthful energy for a team that needed a boost.
Gianluca Busio will save us all.https://t.co/HtZqdw28TU— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) August 5, 2018
Next Up
- HOU: U.S. Open Cup – Wednesday, Aug. 8 vs. LAFC (8:30 pm ET)
- SKC: Saturday Aug. 11 at LAFC (10:30 pm ET | TV & streaming Info)


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While most of the amazing animal rescue stories we share feature dogs and cats – these aren't the only furry friends who need forever families! At Brother Wolf Animal Rescue, two baby rats, Beulah Bell and Miss Brisby, are waiting for their new best friend! The two remind their caretakers every day what intelligent and wonderful animals rats really are – and they are more than ready to be their adorable selves in their new forever home.
Both Beulah Bell and Miss Brisby are just three months old.
As their caretakers assure, they are "playful, sweet, and very curious" – that is, perfect little rats.
The cute pair is looking for the best possible forever home …
And, hopefully, they are not going to wait much longer.
Animals of all shapes and sizes sometimes end up in need of human help – and, fortunately, there are organizations determined to provide them with exactly that. Beulah Bell and Miss Brisby have all their lives ahead of them and they cannot wait to spend them surrounded by great care and love.
If you are interested in being the one to adopt them, email [email protected] for more details. To learn more about Brother Wolf Animal Rescue, click here.
All image source: Brother Wolf Animal Rescue/Facebook


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Individual and group medical insurance coverage that offers you the again-up to get you and the workforce back up on your ft as soon as possible. Whether you are fearful about an experience someone you recognize has had or you want entry to a particular hospital or quicker entry to a specialist, there are a selection of health insurance coverage products and policies to select from which should assist to fulfill your necessities.
During the public remark period, which closed on on September 30, 2015, the Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming submitted adjustments to their respective EHB benchmark plans abstract paperwork.
Certificate of insurance: Sometimes referred to as a membership certificate, a certificate of insurance is the documentation you obtain out of your insurer which summarises your cover. For any questions regarding waivers, enrollment, or some other insurance coverage concerns, please electronic mail the Insurance Office or name us at 209.946.2027. In some instances, the insurance coverage firm might even refuse fee outright for providers obtained out of network. The Small Business Health Options Program Marketplace – also identified merely as SHOP – helps small companies present well being protection to their workers.
In certain cases, taxpayers might qualify for an exemption from the penalty if they were unable to acquire insurance coverage attributable to financial hardship or other situations. Among different things, Form 1095-A studies the full month-to-month well being insurance coverage premiums paid to the insurance coverage company you chose through the Marketplace. Please click here to view a whole record of the authorized entities that provide, underwrite, administer or insure insurance coverage products and services. Health insurance can take many different forms, however there are some common features all through the market which allow you to establish what you can be coated for. This is because there are special health insurance plans just for school college students.
You ought to inquire about the details along with your health insurance provider earlier than leaving house. IPT – Insurance Premium Tax: Insurance Premium tax is the tax levied on general insurance premiums if living throughout the UK. If your health insurance coverage policy from your home country is not recognised in Germany, you'll have to sign up for protection in Germany.


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This was one automated phone call I received not with annoyance but a thrill. The stumbling computer-generated words relayed welcome news: tomorrow between 12.30 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. my new refrigerator would be delivered to my home in "Monrovia, Caw." Such poetry! Not just a new refrigerator: a real refrigerator! Because of uncertainty as to my future, not knowing whether I'd stay long in this small house I'm renting, I had endured the last five months since May, when I moved in, with a 2.8-cubic-foot mini-fridge. This is like having R2-D2 as your best friend. It's a dorm-room fridge, good for keeping the beer and liverwurst and mustard. I do a modest amount of cooking and had increasingly struggled to make do with this compact fridge. The tiny freezer compartment wouldn't preserve leftover mac and cheese; it's so disappointing to open up your presumed dinner and find mold. And the cooler needed to be reorganized with every new Rubbermaid storage container. I spent a lot of time squatting before the little pint-sized thing, always forgetting the door lacked a self-closing tendency and instead, being stupidly pendulous, would swing all the way open and smack into the nearby jelly cupboard.
Afterwards, hoisting myself once again to a standing position, hoping I never needed to look for something to eat while I happened to be suffering from patellar tendonitis or a pulled hamstring or sciatica, I'd tell myself this was a good way to get in my deep knee bends. Calisthenics and capers! Why, yes, indeed, I was getting along just fine chasing the head of lettuce that rolled out with every opened door, dementedly meandering across the kitchen. Finally I stopped buying Iceberg lettuce. Romaine doesn't meander. But it's too tall; it had to be angled beneath the middle shelf, which was the first of two wire racks that got dislodged from their tracks with the slightest bump. Boston lettuce is short enough to fit in the lower tier but doesn't make high-volume, high-satisfaction salad. Outta lettuce? Yet another trip to the market is required. Oh, and time to buy more orange juice and milk: the shallow door pocket encouraged the pairing of rapidly depleted pints.
Have you tried living without ice cubes? Do you realize what a luxury it is to have ice on hand? Not even automatic icemaker ice, just manual ice for drinks, for the Champagne bucket, for rubbing on burned fingers, for putting in a plastic bag and applying to a sprained shoulder like when I went down on my mountain bike in August. Even the dog enjoys playing with the occasional ice cube. And how about a lighted refrigerator compartment? Five months with the mini-fridge led me to conclude that it's a phenomenal step forward for civilization to have a real door handle instead of a grip-it-and-rip-it indentation on the side of the door. Same for having a self-defrosting freezer instead of needing to unplug and empty out every six or eight weeks in order to extricate the one thing that will in fact stay frozen in this minuscule freezer compartment amid the dense buildup of frost: a pound of peas.
Meat? I had to throw out a rib-eye steak.
A real refrigerator allows me to buy gallon-size containers, to buy two bags of frozen lima beans when they're on sale, to throw a whole turkey behind either of the doors. A mini-keg of beer, a pitcher of lemonade, a large bottle of water, a layer cake sprouting candles, a ham, a gaggle of rhubarb, a haggle of leeks, a pride of Swiss chard, a flagon of vodka (I don't drink vodka), oodles of noodles: everything will fit! And the sculpted commodious door pockets with soft and grabby nonskid plastic and gently curving bumpers to protect against the out-of-control caroming brisket, the enclosed butter tray with clear cover, the cheese-and-meat drawer and the crispers with adjustable ventilation—all in this basic Frigidaire that I selected at Best Buy—combined to suggest most seductively the squalid excess of which I would soon be partaking.
Romero and another dude showed up early, at twelve o'clock noon, to deliver the fridge, doing a bit of setup right there in the street before harnessing themselves to the appliance and waddling along, climbing the stairs, passing through the gate and along the sidewalk in front of my neighbor's cottage. (There are four structures on this half-acre lot.) The first attempt to enter my own house was repelled by the screen door's strike plate, which Romero removed with my screwdriver. And when he popped out the pins from the main door's hinges, I got my tub of grease and coated them because they had been squeaking.
Here's why I hate customer satisfaction surveys. When the fridge was put in position and plugged in, Romero handed me a card with an Internet address, saying, "If you can give a ten on each category, it would be great." The new-car salesman who sold me the 2000 Honda Odyssey that I still drive said the same when he handed me a similar card. Wait, you're asking for a perfect score? I just shitcan surveys like these. Here's hoping my selfishness (often commented upon by friends and relatives) doesn't keep Romero's kids from attending the University of Nebraska of their dreams. Besides, there are a couple of scratches in my $500 box of steel's thin coating of white paint, and in all honesty I'd have to mention them.
Soon after the delivery team left, I headed down to Target for ice cube trays and a bin, and to Home Depot for disk magnets to take advantage of the unlimited display space. The magnets allowed me to put up some leftover campaign buttons from 2008. So the Frigidaire has solved more than one storage woe.
Yesterday I set the mini-fridge out on the front porch for pickup by Vietnam Veterans of America. My last sight was of its ugly little compressor in the back. I imagine the mini-fridge's future in a room on Skid Row, where it is stocked intermittently with malt liquor (sorry, no forty zips) and old unwrapped slices of pizza. Meanwhile, as the VVA driver loaded it onto his truck, teetering a bit during the clean and jerk, an imbalance in my life was corrected.


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Philip Uhl
Phil was born in Toledo, Ohio, but grew up on the shores of Lake Erie in southern Michigan. He started painting at age 7 and sailing as a teenager. He moved to Hawaii in the early 70's after serving as a Vista Volunteer in Milwaukee. He sold his paintings on the street until he convinced Pan American Airways to take him on as a non-paid consultant in 1978. Phil's job was to travel to the world's major yachting centers and give multi-media presentations featuring his sailing photographs from the new Pan Am Clipper Cup Series in Hawaii. The purpose was to convince the world's best sailors to attend the event.
By the mid 80's, Phil's photographs could be found on the covers and pages of most of the world's best sailing publications. Meanwhile, he had added video coverage of yacht racing events to his list of capabilities. He and his San Francisco based partner, Leslie DeMeuse, started Channel Sea Television, CSTV was responsible for the worldwide television coverage of Hawaii's KENWOOD CUP SERIES. After that, the Kenwood Corporation took over the sponsorship of the Clipper Cup from Pan Am, as well as, the TV coverage of the biennial TRANSPAC Race.
In 1986, Phil was chosen by Sail America, to work with Dennis Conner and "Stars and Stripes" to document their successful challenge to win back the America's Cup from Australia. In 1991, he signed on as the director of Television coverage, for Bill Koch and the America 3 Foundation's 1992 winning America's Cup team. In 1995, in the same position, he provided the footage seen by millions around the world, as they followed the history making effort of the America 3 Women's Team, the first ever to compete in the America's Cup. For the 2000 America's Cup in Auckland, Uhl co-produced a series of AC programs that aired on New Zealand TV during the event. In 2012 Phil's entire America's Cup archive (The UHL COLLECTION) became part of the William I Koch Collection, the largest archive of America's Cup images and artifacts in the world.
In 1992, Phil began experimenting by creating art on a Macintosh computer. Since then he has been at the forefront of the digital art movement, combining high technology with traditional techniques to create fine art. In 2006, Roy E. Disney asked Phil to serve as Coordinating Producer for the movie "Morning Light" released by the Walt Disney Company in 2008.
While primarily self-taught, Phil studied Graphic Design at the Dayton Art Institute, and Printmaking at the Art Students League in New York City. He has received numerous fine art, photographic, design, and video awards, including an EMMY from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. His biography appears in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in American Art. Over the years, his photographs, original prints, video programs, and paintings, have been shown in numerous exhibitions including major events at the Honolulu Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the National History Museum at the Smithsonian.


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he Discovery Institute is the primary think-tank for the Intelligent Design movement. What can we determine about this organization based on its funding, personnel, and research record?
Here's a link to this content on Digg:
Here's the original "Wedge Strategy" document:
http://www.antievolution.org/features... (HTML version)
http://www.antievolution.org/features... (pdf version)
For more about the Discovery Institute:
Video clips used are under Fair Use sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A
Clips are short, illustrate a point of argument for educational purposes, are by nature published interviews in the public forum of YouTube, and do not affect the livelihood of the Discovery Institute or its members or fellows.
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USS HARRY S. TRUMAN, At sea (NNS) -- Two young Sailors from the German Frigate Hessen (F221) were transported via helicopter to the dental department aboard USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) for emergency dental care May 26.
Hessen's senior dental officer, Cmdr. Jutta Gohr, contacted her American counterpart, Cmdr. Jorge Graziani, and informed him of a root canal re-infection and impacted wisdom teeth that required treatment. They agreed that the Sailors should be transported to Truman for specialty care.
Truman's dental department consists of five dental officers including an oral surgeon and 15 dental technicians. Within the seven treatment rooms, the dental team performs everything from preventive to reconstructive and emergency dental care.
Capt. Zachary Berry, the carrier strike group oral surgeon, performed the removal of the impacted teeth. Berry, who typically performs 2-4 surgeries a day, specializes in oral and maxillofacial surgeries, severe facial infections and facial trauma.
"The demanding work we do in the Navy and the importance of safe operations requires that everyone be focused," said Berry. "When pain gets to the extent that it disrupts your life and impacts your ability to focus, you cannot do your job safely or effectively."
According to Lt. Heinz Moeller, the German liaison officer embarked aboard Truman, the smooth evolution demonstrated the strike group's ability to respond rapidly and showcased the high level of integration throughout the carrier strike group.
"We are grateful that Truman was able to provide care for our Sailors," said Moeller.
Graziani, who performed the extraction on the non-restorable tooth, commented on the professionalism of all parties that came together to make the operations a success; the Hessen leadership, Helicopter Squadron 7 for transporting the Germans, Truman flight deck crew for getting the flight deck ready on short notice, the dental department, and the supply department for providing overnight rooms and meals.
"The coordination from everyone involved was very efficient," said Graziani. "It was a true team effort. We gave them the same level of care we would give our Sailors."
After the surgeries the Sailors were provided post-operative pain medication and antibiotics before returning to Hessen. According to Moeller they are recovering well and have no post-surgery complications.
The Truman carrier strike group includes commander, Carrier Strike Group 10, Truman, Carrier Air Wing 3, commander, Destroyer Squadron 26, the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60), and guided-missile destroyers USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81), USS Oscar Austin (DDG 79), USS Ross (DDG 71) and the German Frigate FGS Hessen (F221).
For more news from USS Harry S. Truman, visit www.navy.mil/local/cvn75/.


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The Fast ForWord program develops and strengthens memory, attention, processing rate, and sequencing—the cognitive skills essential for learning and reading success. The strengthening of these areas result in a wide range of improved critical language and reading skills such as phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, decoding, working memory, syntax, grammar, and other skills necessary to learn how to read.
For more information, click here for sd41 program.


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Monthly Archives: November 2013
Affirmations to Super-Charge Your Life
Affirmations can be a supportive tool in you forming the life you want. It is NOT magic. They only work if you feel that they are possible for you. Even remotely. A good exercise to do is to "pretend" that … Continue reading
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KD launches the Beach collection. You can shop the full collection including the above Taba suit and new colour Xevea Dress. Whether you are going to St Kits or St Ives, Marbella or the Maldives this collections has everything you could need for your vacay!
We spoke to our KD Girls and asked them what they wanted in their dream holiday trunk, the collection reflects their wants and wishes. From soft floaty cover ups to nautical style stripe trousers.
When you wear your KD Beach items don't forget to share it/style it/wear it. We love to see how you wear yours!


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Center-Authored Papers
Filters: Author is Haned, H [Clear All Filters]
DNA commission of the International Society of Forensic Genetics: Recommendations on the evaluation of STR typing results that may include drop-out and/or drop-in using probabilistic methods.. Forensic science international. Genetics. 6(6):679-88. Abstract. 2012.
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Indium Corporation will feature Indium11.8HF-SPR solder paste – a new no-clean, Pb-free solder paste designed to meet the current and future fine feature printing requirements of mobile manufacturers – at productronica India 2018, September 26-28 in Bengaluru, India.
Indium11.8HF-SPR specifically addresses customers' needs for a high-performance solder paste with Type 5 powder. This new solder paste delivers unprecedented stencil print transfer efficiency on the broadest range of processes, while maintaining industry-leading reflow performance.
Indium11.8HF-SPR benefits:
- Halogen-free per IEC 61249-2-21 test method EN14582
- High-transfer efficiency through small apertures
- Long stencil life (>12 hours)
- Eliminates hot and cold slump to inhibit bridging and solder beading defects
- Avoids the potential for HIP and graping defects with a unique oxidation barrier
- Reflows in both air and nitrogen
Indium Corporation and MEL Systems and Services Ltd. (MELSS) will share a booth in Hall 3, Booth PA15.
For more information about Indium Corporation, click here.