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Sirius XM Stock Appears To Be Making a Move
With the earnings call only two days away, Sirius XM appears to be making a strong move to the upside. Likely, the move is more technical than anything. The range between 40 cents and 60 cents is a "no-mans-land" and gives the stock a window to move through with relative ease, with strong support at about 40 cents, and the first real resistance at 60 cents.
Typically these stocks have not responded well to conference calls. It seems that no matter what the news is that there has always remained enough question marks that the equity has found a way to sell off after the call. Time and time again we have seen a pre-earnings run up in what seems to be a sentiment that THIS will be the quarter where everything gels.
The next logical question is whether the Liberty stake in the company will give people the confidence that they are seeking as to the direction of the company. So far Liberty has made some bullish statements. This is good, but it needs to be combined with clear direction from Sirius XM in this call.
I have oft been critical of the fact that without guidance and without a clear understanding of how the merger synergies will pan out that investors simply have many questions. With the financing issues well under control, it is, in my opinion, important that the street get a good sense of the road map to success for Sirius XM Radio.
The handful of analysts that still cover the stock are looking for a loss of 2 cents on revenue of $647 million. In my opinion, the revenue will not meet those expectations. Even with the addition of higher priced packages, the slowed car sales and structure of some OEM deals will bring the revenue line down.
I stated in our Q1 preview, the subscriber number will be negative. This is due to slightly higher churn combined with fewer gross additions. Watch for the company to concentrate on the adjusted EBITDA and whether they are on pace for $300 million in that metric for the full year.
In my opinion, for the stock to maintain and keep any gains, there needs to be a clear path on guidance and what investors can anticipate from Liberty. The continued troubles in the OEM channel will continue to make offering guidance difficult, but it is something that is needed. Investors, the street, and analysts need to be able to build models and understand how all of the various metrics tie out. Unless there is a core understanding of the metrics, confidence can not grow.
Seeing the stock appreciate on technicals is one thing. Seeing it improve on performance and metrics is another. At this point, investors want more than technicals to drive and influence the price per share.
Position – Long Sirius XM, No Position Liberty


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Proposed Legislation
In the 82nd legislative session, three bills were proposed calling for the elimination of tuition set asides.
- Senate Bill 298 was sponsored by Senator Jeff Wentworth
- Senate Bill 444 was sponsored by Senator Dan Patrick and cosponsored by Senator Brian Birdwell
- House Bill 587 was sponsored by Representative Tim Kleinschmidt and cosponsored by Representative Tan Parker
In the 83rd legislation session, bills were again introduced to eliminate tuition set asides.
- Senate Bill 431, sponsored by Senator Dan Patrick
Unfortunately, none of these made it out of committee. We hope that, with quickly growing support from student and parents across Texas, we will be successful in the upcoming 84th Texas Legislative Session.


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Roth v. Noralfco, LLC, No. 10-2524 (3d Cir. 2011)Annotate this Case
Plaintiff was unloading a railway tank car filled with sulfuric acid when its chemical contents exploded, spraying across his face and chest and inflicting severe burns. He sought damages under the common law, but the district court held that his lawsuit was preempted by the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act, 49 U.S.C. 5101–5128. The Third Circuit affirmed. The Act expressly preempts any common law requirement about the design of a package, container, or packaging component qualified for use in transporting hazardous materials in commerce. The tank car at issue is a container qualified for such use, regardless of whether what plaintiff was doing constituted transport or his employment status at the precise moment of his injury.


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The other day I took my lady love out for dinner — we wound up at Jason's Deli, which used to be one of our favorite fast-food joints. And there …Read more
Published again!
My second short story appears in the January 2017 issue of the online magazine Lorelei Signal. You can read it, for free, by clicking here. This one tells about the …Read more
Of Shelterbelts and Sagebrush
The windswept plains of western Oklahoma during dust-bowl days and the skies over war-torn Japan in 1945 may not appear to have much in common, but appearances can be deceiving. …Read more
C'mon in, the water's hot!
Well, I've finally jumped into the self-publishing pool and am now waiting to see what it'll feel like after the initial shock. I've uploaded the first fiction I've felt adequate …Read more
Of Friendly Feral Felines
My wife Joanne and I are cat people. Very few weeks have elapsed in the past half-century without at least one feline member in our family. At one time there …Read more
Random Ramblings
This page is the entry point to my random ramblings about almost anything. The photo above was taken a bit southeast of Panmunjom, Korea, in June of 1953, inside my …Read more


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Fishing FanCam: Smart HD Camera for Anglers0
Here is a smart camera that allows you to see whether fish are interested in your bait in real time. The Fishing FanCam broadcasts live video to your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. You can save video and control the stream using the app. The device has a WiFi signal of 100 meters. It has a built-in microphone too.
➡ More handy iPhone & iPad accessories and add-ons
The battery life lasts up to 2 hours. You can record video to a Micro SD card. The project is currently on Kickstarter.
You may want to see:
*aff links used in some articles to fund our operations. Please look at the disclosure link to see our policy.


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It was almost as if Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey knew a five-overtime game against Louisville was coming.
The No. 25 Fighting Irish watched videos of great boxing matches before their marathon win over No. 11 Louisville on Saturday night. Brey talked to the players about going deep into a match — and now the Irish players know what that feels like.
"I talked about it being a 15-rounder and taking punches and being put on the mat," Brey told The Associated Press. "At the fourth or fifth timeout I said, `Has there ever been a 20-rounder?"
The Notre Dame players were skeptical of Brey's analogy, but that was before the game lasted over 3 1/2 hours.
"We're like, 15 round matches, that doesn't happen," Notre Dame forward Jack Cooley said. "And then we played five overtimes. So that's how it went."
The game was the longest in Notre Dame history and the longest in Big East regular season history. Watch clips from the marathon matchup in the video below.


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It has been more than 10 years since Pixar introduced us to Mike, Sulley, and the other lovable characters in Monsters, Inc. It came out years before I had children, yet still I saw it and fell in love with it. I've been waiting not-so-patiently in the ensuing decade for a sequel, and finally some details about it have been released.
They've actually been kind of trickling in over the past couple of months. So far we've seen the logo (or at least working logo) and know the title: Monsters University. As far as the plot, it seems to be more of a prequel than a sequel as it focuses on Mike and Sulley back in their college days. Here's the summary from The Disney Blog:
In the original they were an inseparable pair, but that wasn't always the case. When these two mismatched monsters met at school they couldn't stand each other. "Monsters University" unlocks the door to how Mike and Sulley overcame their differences and became the best of friends.
Monsters loose in college? So much good fodder there!
Billy Crystal and John Goodman are both back in their roles, and Jennifer Tilly will be back as Celia. I'm craving popcorn just thinking about it. Sequels are tricky, but I choose to believe this one will work. It has to!
It's not going to open until June 21, 2013, after being pushed back from November 2012 (boo!), so we have awhile to wait, but at least we know they're working on it. The good news is if you haven't yet introduced your children to the original, you have plenty of time to do so and get them excited about this sequel/prequel ... so they'll go and see it with you.
Next milestone to anticipate -- trailers. Here's to hoping they somehow work in Boo!
Are you excited to see the sequel to Monsters Inc.?
Image via YouTube


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By: T.R. Slyder, email@example.com, AndyDisco on Twitter
You know how it goes. It starts with sexual bending, it leads to a rear-ending, and winds up as a happy ending. I've seen it a hundred times.
No word yet on if this affects the arbiter bibendi.
That's how I roll.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


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Bisphenol-a, or BPA, can be found in most food and beverage containers. Mainly used in the production of plastics, such as water bottles, sunglasses and computer cases, the chemical has been blamed for accelerating puberty; increasing the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in adults; and harmfully affecting brain development and behavior in fetuses and young children. Still, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says BPA levels in American products are safe. Several states, however, disagree.
Since 2009, a handful of states have passed laws banning BPA in consumer products. Minnesota and Connecticut became the first states to pass legislation banning the chemical. Minnesota's law prohibits BPA in spill-proof cups and baby bottles, while Connecticut's law includes a ban on its use in cans, jars and reusable food and beverage containers. In 2010, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Wisconsin banned BPA from young children's products. Also in 2010, Vermont and Washington state passed similar but more aggressive legislation that bans BPA in sports bottles, and reusable food and beverage containers.
Although the FDA acknowledges that some recent studies demonstrate a correlation between BPA exposure and health complications in young children, the agency also cites uncertainties with some research methods. While the FDA is in the process of reviewing additional BPA-related studies, federal officials have yet to declare any bans on the chemical's use in consumer products, and currently recommend that families not worry about the chemical's presence in products.
Even before this wave of state BPA bans, some governments had already taken steps to remove the chemical from products. In 2008, Canada became the first country to ban BPA in baby bottles. Chicago followed suit in 2009 by banning the sale of baby bottles and spill-proof cups produced with traces of BPA.
However, not all states have been successful in passing such laws. Last year, bills to ban BPA failed to gain Senate approval in California and Oregon. Ivy Sager-Rosenthal, campaign director at the Washington Toxics Coalition, blames the chemical industry. "The chemical industry is really good at questioning the science around BPA," she says. "And they're really good at using their industry experts to confuse the issue." Some arguments against such bans also question the availability of alternative, BPA-free products. According to Sager-Rosenthal, certain states have answered by initiating programs to identify or develop safer alternatives.
More states are expected to ban the chemical from consumer products this year, but advocates hope to see action taken at the federal level instead. "Eventually Congress is going to have to act and find a national solution," says Sager-Rosenthal. "Not just for BPA and baby bottles, but for all chemicals in products."


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We use exclusively SSDs on our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform and we've eliminated all HDDs on our production servers so as to provide outstanding loading speeds for every aspect of our services - files, e-mails and databases. This way, all of the content which you upload to your cloud hosting account will be accessible very fast. To boost the overall performance of the Internet sites hosted on our end even more, we also use multiple SSDs which work exclusively as cache - our system saves routinely accessed content on them and upgrades it without delay. We employ this type of a setup to guarantee that resource-demanding Internet sites will never affect the performance of the other websites hosted on our platform and that way all other websites can also take advantage of the speed which the SSD drives provide. What's more, due to the fact that the load on the main drives is reduced, their lifespan shall be longer, that is one more guarantee for the security and stability of your data.
SSD with Data Caching in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you want speed and fantastic performance for your websites, our semi-dedicated hosting accounts shall be a very suitable solution because they are created on a cloud platform which uses SSDs for all aspects of the service - email addresses, databases and files. That way, every site that you host here will load fast. Just like other providers, we also use SSDs for caching, but since all storage drives are solid-state ones, you can take advantage of the high performance all of the time and irrespective of the nature of your websites. The caching drives are used for load-balancing and all the frequently accessed content is copied on them, which both decreases the load and guarantees the fantastic performance of all Internet sites that load directly from the main drives. The lifespan of the latter will also be increased as there'll be significantly less reading and writing processes on them.


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More on:
This week brought yet more prison terms for yet more Chinese dissidents. As the Washington Post reported,
Chinese writer and activist Li Tie was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "inciting subversion," his family members said Thursday. Li is the third high-profile dissident handed a lengthy term in the past few weeks....Like two activists sentenced last month, Li was prosecuted for essays he posted on the Internet demanding greater democracy. The convictions indicate that the government in Beijing sees online treatises — and the followers they might garner — as a serious threat to China's political and social stability.
On Dec. 26, a court in Guizhou province sentenced a veteran human rights campaigner, Chen Xi, to 10 years in prison. Three days earlier in Sichuan province, activist Chen Wei was sentenced to nine years. Both were convicted of "inciting subversion of state power." Another activist, Zhu Yufu, was charged this week with the same crime after he posted a poem online titled "It's Time," which urges the Chinese people to stand up for their freedoms.
Many Western observers see China as a mighty fortress, growing in economic and military strength, yet its own rulers see a handful of bloggers as "a serious threat to China's political and social stability." The so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011 is a reminder that the Chinese rulers are right: regimes that appear absolutely solid from the outside can not only appear but actually be rotten and weak when viewed from the inside. When I served at the National Security Council I had numerous opportunitiues to observe Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak. While academics and analysts were certain that the regime in Egypt was stable (and Secretary of State Clinton called it stable, presumably on the very best advice available to her, just two weeks before Mubarak fell) it was striking to me that Mubarak never regarded it that way. All he needed to see was a small bread riot in some town no-one had ever heard of, and he was spending millions on greater food subsidies to lower the price of bread. He knew very well that his regime lacked legitimacy and ruled by force alone.
And that is what the Chinese rulers know as well. They jail men and women for ten years for posting an essay on the internet because they are well aware of the tenuousness of their hold on the minds of the Chinese people. Their communist training has taught them that a revolution that appears impossible before it takes place will be considered historically inevitable once it has happened--and their knowledge of Chinese history has taught them that political change is indeed possible. The lesson for us is not to regard tyranny as China's inevitable and permanent state, and instead to continue to support the desire for freedom that is so evident there.
More on:


text: Roll over image to zoom in Pink Leatherette Passport Holder Leather | Laser Engraving Size SKU Approx. H × W × D Wt. (lb) Qty Price NA 410033 5-1/2" x 4-1/4" x 1/16" 1.0 $29.00 Please specify the quantity of product(s). We do not have sufficient stock quantity for your order. Please Live Chat or Call us at 1-888-779-8803 for assistance. Print Add to Wishlist ADD TO CART & PERSONALIZE VIEW FULL DETAILS X


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Camera / Laser optical inspection technology identifies and removes defected products from the production line
Read our latest news and Twitter feeds.
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Some of you may remember a post I did back in December about a tower defense style game called Orcs Must Die! Well, #2 released today on Steam and so far it's been just as fun as the first.
They've added the usual new stuff…more monsters, more traps all new maps (this time in dwarven mines). However, they've also added a co-op mode, which I haven't tried yet. You can play as the War Mage from the first game or as the Sorceress, the exiled villainess from the end of the first game.
Here's their website, if you're interested in learning more.
Update: Had a chance to try co-op mode and it is insanely fun. They also have a new 'Endless' mode you can play. Endless Mode + Co-op = A special kind of awesome!


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December 14, 2017
MHA Today is provided as a service to members of the Missouri Hospital Association. Additional information is available online at MHAnet.
In This Issue
MHA Urges Prosecutors To Use New Law To Curb Workplace Violence
MLN Connects Provider eNews Available
Missouri's Health Ranking Falls In National Survey
CMS Selects Random Sample Of Hospitals For Chart Abstracted And HAI Measures Validation
OQR Times Newsletter Available
state and federal health policy developments
Staff Contact: Jane Drummond
As part of its initiative to address hospital-based workplace violence, MHA is urging prosecutors to employ a new law enhancing criminal penalties for assaults on hospital workers. In a letter sent to every prosecutor with a hospital in his or her jurisdiction, MHA provided information on the rising number of violent incidents within health care facilities and asked that these crimes be appropriately evaluated and charged under the new statute. The letter is part of MHA's efforts to raise awareness of and create zero tolerance for workplace violence in the hospital setting.
Back To Top
Regulatory News
the latest actions of agencies monitoring health care
Staff Contact: Andrew Wheeler
Updates to MLN Connects Provider eNews were issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. eNews includes information about national provider calls, meetings, events, announcements and other MLN educational product updates. The latest issue provides updates and summaries of the following.
Quality and Population Health
Staff Contact: Leslie Porth or Daniel Landon
The United Health Foundation issued its annual report on state health rankings, along with a summary and chart pack. For 2017, Missouri ranked No. 40, a fall from the state's 2016 ranking of 37. Missouri-specific information is available both in the report and online.
Back To Top
Staff Contact: Sherry Buschjost
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program selected the random sample of hospitals for the validation of chart abstracted and healthcare-associated infection measures for the fiscal year 2020 annual payment update determination. The quarters included in FY 2020 inpatient validation are third quarter 2017, fourth quarter 2017, first quarter 2018 and second quarter 2018.
CMS will select an additional sample of up to 200 targeted hospitals in April/May of 2018. CMS will include all hospitals that fail validation for the FY 2019 payment determination and a sample of hospitals meeting other targeting criteria as outlined in the FY 2014 IPPS/Long-Term Care Hospital PPS final rule. CMS will notify all targeted hospitals of their selection, validation requirements and deadlines for FY 2020.
Back To Top
Staff Contact: Sherry Buschjost
The December OQR Times quality reporting newsletter has been released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Back To Top
The number of flu cases so far this year has more than quadrupled when compared with that of a year ago. As of Nov. 25, there were already 1,545 reported cases of the flu throughout Missouri, compared with 379 at that date in 2016.
Source: The Joplin Globe


text: Sergiu Luca was a Romanian (some would say American) violinist and teacher born (in Bucharest) on April 5, 1943 (Heifetz was 42 years old.) He is best known for having been the first to record the Bach unaccompanied violin works on a baroque violin. That recording is an early example of one of the causes he championed. The desire for playing (and learning to play) on original (authentic) instruments took off after that, especially in England, where the Academy of Ancient Music and the English Concert were founded. He began his violin studies at age 4 and entered the Bucharest Conservatory at age 5. His family moved to Israel when he was 7 and he made his public debut as a soloist with the Haifa Symphony when he was 9. Prior to coming to the U.S. to study under Ivan Galamian at the Curtis Institute (Philadelphia), he studied in London (with Max Rostal) and in Switzerland. He is one of a handful of prodigies whom Isaac Stern helped bring from Israel to study in the U.S. - Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Shlomo Mintz are three others. None of them ever returned, except to play concerts or participate in music festivals now and then. Luca made his American debut playing the Sibelius Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1965. He played it again later that year with the New York Philharmonic (February 13, 1965), though he only played the first movement of the concerto. It was for one of Bernstein's Young People's Concerts - he was 21 years old. I do not know why but he did not play with the Philharmonic ever again. In contrast, over the years, Zino Francescatti soloed with this orchestra more than 50 times – so did Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, and Isaac Stern. Luca made his New York recital debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in November, 1969. For many years afterward, he concertized in Europe, Latin America, Israel, Japan, and the U.S. Luca founded the Chamber Music Northwest festival in Portland, Oregon (1971-1980), and the Cascade Head Music Festival in Lincoln City, Oregon (about 60 miles southeast of Portland) (1985–2006.) He was one of the first artists to speak to audiences from the stage prior to concerts. In 1983, he became a violin professor at Rice University, a job from which he never retired. He was forty years old. He was also director of Houston's Texas Chamber Orchestra from 1983 to 1986. In 1988 he founded the Da Camera Society of Houston (1988-1994) – some say it was his most ambitious project. Until now, I had never heard of it. He also had a hand in starting the Context chamber group (in 1995) in Houston, which was dedicated to performances on period instruments. I should note that these quoted dates vary by as much as a year (in both directions) from one source to another. For instance, in one source, Luca's tenure at the Texas Chamber Orchestra is given as 1982-1987. In another, those years are given as 1983-1986. He recorded with Context on the Zephyr label, but also recorded with several orchestras and chamber ensembles on Nonesuch and other labels. He also recorded works, such as the Mozart Sonatas, for violin and piano. In the mid 1970s, he began his forays into authentic baroque performances. Although by appearances he was very involved in original instrument performances, he plainly stated several times that he wanted to embrace as large a repertory as possible and be immersed in all styles and musical ideas. An audio recording of his playing Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata is at YouTube. Luca's favored instrument was the Earl of Falmouth violin by Carlo Bergonzi (1733); however, he also owned a large collection of violins, including ones by Sanctus Seraphin (1733), Antonio Stradivari (1713 – the Wirth Stradivarius), Nicolaus Sawicki (1829 – Paganini considered Sawicki a genius), Stefano Scarampela (1909), and Isabelle Wilbaux (2008 – Canadian luthier.) He was quoted in The Houston Chronicle (by Tara Dooley-July, 2008) as saying, about violins, "They are sort of a human thing that is somewhere between something alive and something that is inanimate." Luca died on December 6, 2010, at age 67.


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It's been a while since I've done a recipe on this blog, and ThorNews comes through with one just in time! This mouth-watering dish comes from the cold waters off Norway and is stepped in ancient Norwegian culture. I've never had "skrei" cod, but it sounds pretty delicious, and this fish is culturally associated with the colorful history of the stockfish trade that I did a series of articles on in November 2014. Any bit of authentic Norwegian culture is of interest to me, so click on the full article at ThorNews for the full recipe.
(Photo: godfisk.no) Now is the peak season for «Skrei» cod, and in February and March millions of cod migrate from the Barents Sea and into the waters of Nordland and Troms counties in Northern Norway to spawn.
Many Norwegian families are enjoying traditional Skrei for dinner, and the white delicacy is enjoyed boiled (often served together with liver and roe), fried or baked in the oven.
This recipe is from godfisk.no, a website run by Norwegian Seafood Council, where you can find many excellent fish recipes.
Pan-fried cod with sour cream sauce that melts on the hot fish, potato and carrot is a traditional Norwegian dish. In this recipe, Skrei is served with fennel that puts a special touch to the taste.
(Serves 4)
Source: Pan-Fried "Skrei" Cod with Fennel and Sour Cream Sauce


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Regarding the Homewrecker
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, lend me your hats! I am about to share with you the best Pyro melee weapon in existence! Is it the Axetinguisher? The Powerjack? Perhaps the Back Scratcher? Nope. It is none other than the Homewrecker. "WHAT!" You may exclaim, "The Homewrecker is the most broken Pyro unlock in history. It's a pain to Spies, and completely worthless otherwise." Yep. And that's why it's a perfect side grade. Related posts: Minuscule asymmetries in official maps that make a difference Curse of Sudden Death! Arena! Why the CnD deserves some love Why you really, really… [Continue Reading]Read more


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This week saw the passing of one of the most intimidating wrestlers I've seen over the past few years, but because he never worked for WWE or TNA it's hardly been reported.
Bison Smith was one of the many wrestlers I saw during the heady days of The Wrestling Channel here in Britain. A physically imposing specimen with his massive build and Mohawk haircut, Smith was competing in Japan for Pro Wrestling NOAH.
I have to admit that I never really paid much attention to NOAH back then, and I only began to follow the promotion sporadically when A-Merchandise sent me a few English language DVDs to review. These reviews included their tour to Britain in 2008. The big man impressed the hell out of me in matches against the likes of Mohammad Yone, and Mitsuharu Misawa.
Although he'd had some success on the Indie scene in America for me Smith really came to prominence in 2009 when he debuted for Ring of Honor. He was booked perfectly as the monster heel, interrupting matches and destroying jobbers while also targeting their top star, former World Champion Bryan Danielson. It was later revealed that he'd been brought in by the returning Prince Nana.
Smith died of a heart attack this past Tuesday in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was just 38 years old.
Whenever I saw Smith I used to wonder just how he'd fare in the big leagues. Given his size and skill I always thought that he'd fit in perfectly as the all-destroying, all-conquering monster.
Sadly we'll never know if that would have ever happened. Smith may not have been one of the best known wrestlers in the world but he certainly made this writer sit up and take notice.
Rest in peace Bison.


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"The 500-Mile-Per-Gallon Solution," by Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 24 March 2005, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-max24mar24,0,114126.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions (from South Dakota Politics).
Max Boot joins Tom Friedman's Geo-Green strategists.
While high oil prices aren't much of an economic drag, they cause real harm
In absolute terms, today's prices are still half of the 1970s peaks, and the U.S. economy has become much less dependent on petroleum since then. (Computers run on electricity, not gasoline.) But imagine what would happen if Al Qaeda were to hit the giant Ras Tanura terminal in Saudi Arabia, where a tenth of global oil supplies are processed every day. Prices could soar past $100 a barrel, and the U.S. economy could go into a tailspin. As it is, high oil prices provide money for Saudi Arabia to subsidize hate-spewing madrasas and for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
(Max is more concerned about Iran than I am, but even here he has a good point. Iran must develop a normal economy, and high oil revenue will warp that process. Anyway…)
Neither Congressional Democrats nor Congressional Republicans seem interested in a real solution
Both Democrats and Republicans know this, but neither party is serious about solving this growing crisis. Democrats who couldn't tell the difference between a caribou and a cow grandstand about the sanctity of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even though 70% of Alaskans are happy to see a bit of drilling in this remote tundra. Republicans, for their part, pretend that tapping ANWR will somehow solve all of our problems. If only. A government study finds that, with ANWR on line, the U.S. will be able to reduce its dependence on imported oil from 68% to 65% in 2025.
Green environmentalism alone won't help, because of Rising Asia
How to do better? Biking to work or taking the train isn't the answer. Even if Americans drive less, global oil demand will surge because of breakneck growth in India and China.
The solution is structural… reduce the need for oil, everywhere, permanently.
The Middle East, home of two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves, will remain of vital strategic importance unless we can develop alternative sources of automotive propulsion and substantially decrease global, not just American, demand for petroleum. An ambitious agenda to achieve those goals has been produced by Set America Free, a group set up by R. James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney and other national security hawks.
They advocate using existing technologies — not pie-in-the-sky ideas like hydrogen fuel cells — to wean the auto industry from its reliance on petroleum. Hybrid electric cars such as the Toyota Prius, which run on both electric motors and gas engines, already get more than 50 miles per gallon. Coming soon are hybrids that can be plugged into a 120-volt outlet to recharge like a cellphone. They'll get even better mileage.
Happily, even South Dakota has a role to play
Add in "flexible fuel" options that already allow many cars to run on a combination of petroleum and fuels like ethanol (derived from corn) and methanol (from natural gas or coal), and you could build vehicles that could get — drum roll, please — 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. That's not science fiction; that's achievable right now.
What's stopping us? Twelve billion dollars.
There is, of course, a catch. Moving to hybrid electric cars won't be cheap. Automakers would have to retool their wares, gas stations would have to add alcohol-fuel pumps, parking lots would have to add electric outlets. Set America Free puts the price tag at about $12 billion over the next four years. It sounds like a lot of money, but it could easily be financed by slightly raising U.S. gasoline taxes (currently about 43 cents a gallon), which are much lower than in Europe and Japan. Higher taxes could also be used to encourage more domestic oil exploration and production, given that petroleum will never be entirely eliminated as an energy source.
I would rather spend twelve billion now than continue maintaining Saudi-Occupied Arabia.


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[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She pulls the VW Bus up outside the house. For once there is no loud music playing–no bad techno, no Southern rock, no metal. In fact, there is no music playing period. There's barely any sound, thanks to the fact that Sarita is a good enough mechanic to keep the vehicle in tip-top shape. She parks it at the curb and a cigarette but goes flying out the window before the Strider slips out, shutting the door behind her.
She looks tired. She's holding it together, because she didn't know Asha as well as her packmates. The ripping of someone out of the pack link was traumatizing, to be sure. But she didn't lose it like Sinclair, and she kept her chin up as best she could. The others knew Asha. Sarita didn't, she was just the woman's pack-sister for a blink of time. But still, it's not easy for her and the slight glassiness to usually-vibrant eyes as well as the circles underneath attest to that.
She lights up another cigarette and, looking around, she makes her way toward the door.
[Amy] The house looks different with lights on. The porch light reflects off of a shiny new door handle, and the living room lights are on behind makeshift sheet curtains.
Amy opens the door when Sarita gets there, looking unsure but mustering a slight smile. "Hey…"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Hey." She gives a faint smile of her own and moves to hug Amy, on instinct. She stops herself though, looking uncomfortable once she has. "Uh…sorry." She chews on her lip a little.
[Amy] She looks… better. The dark circles are still under her eyes, but the sunburn is better and her skin has stopped peeling. Even more notably, she seems to be sober. She takes a partial step back when Sarita tries to hug her, though it may be as much to let her sister in as anything.
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] Whatever the reason, she takes the attempted embrace as the reason why. She ducks her head and slips inside, taking a drag off the cigarette. "Electricity, huh?"
[Amy] "Yeah…." She looks uncomfortable, moving over to the air mattress that's covered with a blanket and standing in as furniture. "You okay?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She shrugs and runs a hand through her hair, taking a lean against the wall near the air mattress/ "The rest of them are pretty fucked up. Kate has her guy to keep her good, Lukas has Danicka and keeping us straight. Sinclair broke down." She shrugs. "It's not good. I'll….I'll live."
She leans her head back against the wall and looks at Amy. "You?"
[Amy] "Why did you do it?" She settles in on the air mattress, leaning to the side to get the ashtray and a pack of cigarettes.
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Fuck." It sounds almost like she's supplying the word as a reason, for a moment. She shrugs and looks off to the wall. "I fucking panicked. You gotta understand, I had just gotten to the god damned Broho and was talking with some chick who's name I don't even remember right now about the kinfolk hunting bullshit. Then all of a sudden Hunter's there smelling like gasoline and screaming at the top of his lungs before he pops into the Umbra. I had to practically talk the fucker down off the Umbral ledge of the roof long enough for Kate to do a Truth of Gaia so we could get to the bottom of things, and then Lukas cleanse him."
She shuts her eyes. "Then I spent half the God-damned night following him around until I lost him because he was popping in and out of the Umbra, and spent the other half trying to find him. I had no idea if he was going to go suicidal, Amy. And I thought the same might happen to you. So I fucking panicked."
She shrugs and opens her eyes again, though they stay on the ground. She takes a drag off her cigarette. "Doesn't matter. It was a stupid fuckin' plan anyway that even if it wasn't a horrible thing to do, would never have worked."
[Amy] She's very calm, eyes flickering away now and then as Sarita speaks. "Why did you think he was going to go suicidal?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "I just…" She chews on her lip. She has no idea what to say here. She fidgets, eyes looking to the door for a moment like she wants to flee, and she rubs at an eye with the heel of her hand.
"Amy…" It's a plea, sounding almost like a lupine whine.
[Amy] "Why?" She sounds patient, taking a long drag of her cigarette and talking through the smoke. "What's with the gas smell? What made you so worried about what Defiance was doing all of a sudden?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Please, don't." She shakes her head, hands wrapping around her waist. "It was how he died. Can you just let it go there? Please?"
[Amy] "I know how he died."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She looks up suddenly, eyes widening. "You kno–" And then she pauses, and blinks. The surprise…no, the stun…is obvious on her face.
"You know." It's said in a slower tone, and she frowns as she looks away. "I get it." A nod. "You wanted me to know what it felt like. What you went through."
[Amy] "He told me. Not everything yet, but the general idea. I just wanted to see how far you would take the lie, is all. It doesn't have anything to do with punishing you. I understand"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] A little shake of her head. "I should have been up front with you. I'm sorry."
[Amy] "No. You know me better than that. You knew what might have happened." She takes another drag from the cigarette "Just sit the fuck down, hey?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She hesitates, almost like it might be some kind of trick, before she gives in. She crosses over to sit carefully down on the air mattress, slumping a little once she does. "Still. I'm sorry."
[Amy] She leans in, shoulders touching now. "Me too. For all of it. Everything is different now, if we want it to be or not."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "How do you mean?"
[Amy] "You've got your pack. The loft and everything. That's where you should be. I've got…you, sometimes. Hunter sometimes. I need to figure out what to do the other times."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She looks down at her knees. Her jaw sets, and when she speaks, it's quiet. "Please don't."
[Amy] "Don't what?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "I need you in my life, Amy." She swallows hard, breathing slowly and deliberately. "Not in a, 'we'll see each other a couple of times a week for coffee and talk about our day' kind of way. You're my fucking sister, Amy. I need you as much and even more than the people who are in my fucking head every fucking minute of the god damned day."
[Amy] "This was our house, Sar. I don't have a goddamned thing left of him but his coat and like, five days that we had here. That's it. I know it's selfish as fuck, but I need to be here right now. I'm not ready to let go of what those couple days were like with him and Hunter before everything went to shit."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "I get that. I'm not saying…" She squeezes her eyes shot and shakes her head. "I just refuse to let you drift away from me. I will not let that happen."
[Amy] "Nobody's saying it's going to." She seems to be using that phrase a lot lately, for a variety of things.
"We've got some shit to figure out. Not just you, either. I mean, I up and left. Not like we both don't have shit to make up for, you know?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "I get it. It…" She shrugs and opens her eyes, taking the last drag of her cigarette and crushing out a full trail of ash in the ashtray before she lights up another one.
"I freaked out at first, but I got over it. You gotta do what you gotta do, right?"
[Amy] "Yeah. Exactly. You did what you had to do, too. I can't be pissed at you any more than I can be pissed at Hunter."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She gives a little shrug. "So, how's this gonna work then?"
[Amy] "Are you going to move into the loft, pretty much? Be with your pack?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "I don't know." She shakes her head. "No, I don't think so. I mean…we have the room in the loft." The 'we' is tangible. "And I've been staying there since you left and now, with Asha….you now. But I'd always planned on still getting us a place when you…" She trails off. "Maybe I'll just keep the spot in the Broho, or get my own place. I don't know…I haven't much been thinking of living arrangements."
[Amy] "I'm probably not going to want to be here forever." Forever isn't as long as most people think. Isn't that what she said earlier?
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She nods a little. "We'll…take it day by day, I guess. Figure out what works for us, right?" She tries for a smile, and fails miserably. "We're the play it by ear kind."
[Amy] "Don't be mad at me for this. Please? I can't explain why I have to stay here."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "I understand why, Amy. I'm not mad. I totally get it." She takes a slow breath. "I'm sorry for everything. I really am."
[Amy] "Me too" She gives a sideways hug. "Do you want to stay here tonight?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] It's slow, the crack in the dam. It starts with the touch from Amy, and it draws a slow breath with just a hint of a catch in it. It's not going to break, not now. Maybe not tonight. But it will. "Yeah. Yeah, I…I should get back, but…I can't right now. Maybe I'm terrible, but…I can't."
[Amy] "Just stay. It's safe here."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] A little shake of her head and a dry, mirthless smile. "There is no 'safe,' Ames. We both know that. We never played with a safety net…the problem was, we just never fell before now."
[Amy] "We haven't done a lot of things before now."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Ain't that the fuckin' truth." She sighs and wipes at her eyes. There isn't anything there, but she feels like there should be. "Do you have anything to drink here?"
[Amy] "Cold beer in the now working fridge. Everything else is at the hotel."
And there's the stab of guilt.
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] Thanks to everything compounding on itself, for once she doesn't read Amy like an open book. Instead she just sighs. "Fuck. Pot it is, then."
[Amy] "You got it in here, or do you have to go to the van?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "I got it." She pulls a bag out of her pocket. "I thought, if nothing else, I could give you some so you wouldn't have to go get your own if you…you know."
[Amy] "If I wanted to stop thinking?" She gives her a strange smile, pulling out her phone and sending a quick text.
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] She shakes her head. "If you just wanted me to go."
[Amy] Her phone goes back in her pocket, and she leans into Sarita again. "You're stuck with me. Different than before, but still."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] A sigh. Another crack. "Ain't no bein' stuck about it. Ain't no one else I'd rather be stuck with."
[Amy] "It's going to happen to you one of these days, you know. It better end up better though."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Yeah, right." She snorts. "You remember that Fang cop Derek?"
[Amy] "I think so. Kind of blond?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Yeah." She nods. "That's who I'm attracting like Spanish fly at the moment."
[Amy] "So what's wrong with that? Neither of us are going to wind up with our own tribe."
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Have you ever seen a stray fucking puppydog following behind you with the big, pathetic wide-eyed, 'please take me home with you, p-p-p-p-please'?" She rolls her eyes. "What do you think I would do to someone like that?"
[Amy] "What's the worst that can happen?"
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "He's a police officer, I'm a fucking drug dealer. Just consider that for starters." She shakes her heads. "He's sweet, but there is a certain level of pathetic to it and I would want to take a few bottles of valium after I broke him."
[Amy] She laughs a little "Yeah, but the irony is priceless'
[Sarita Ecos de la Risa] "Yeah, not gonna happen. And what's worse is that I already gave him the let-down and he hasn't given up." She starts to roll a joint. "If he starts stalking me, we may have to have a talk."


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Technology & Combat Characteristics
The Gale Strike is a strengthened and redesigned version of the Strike, and based on its pilot characteristics, it is adjusted into a close combat machine. Its shoulders mount improved version of the propulsion system used in the Aile Striker, greatly improving the suit's maneuverability and giving it powerful thrusts in forward and side to side movements. The new location also grants the propulsion system a wider range of movement, and allows the Gale Strike to make irregular maneuvers that normal MS cannot do. The suit's name is a reference to it slicing opponent while moving in an irregular, high speed manner, like a "gale" force wind sweeping through the battlefield.
The machine's height and weight were increased a little due to the use of revised drive systems in the leg joints. They grant the joints faster response time, but overuse of the joints can cause heating issues that affect their durability. To solve this problem, new knee armor with slits are fitted onto the legs. In the atmosphere, the slits allow for the joints to be air cooled, while in space, the slits function as heat radiators. The sensors and computers in the suit's head also have their performance improved, but this caused their size to increase, and as a result a miniature peltier cooling device was used for heat dissipation instead of the original Strike's gas cooling slits. Thus, Gale Strike does not have any mouth slits.
Besides the head-mounted "Igelstellung" 75mm multi-barrel CIWS guns and "Armor Schneider" combat knives, Gale Strike is also armed with a pair of "Wing Saw", serrated swords that can also support the suit's aerial maneuvers. If required, the suit can use the same model of beam rifle as the original Strike as its ranged weapon. Like the other Librarian's MS and the original Strike, it can utilize the Striker Pack system. The suit is most often seen using the Shield Striker. Shield Striker is a modified Aile Striker, the wings and large thrusters are removed, while the smaller thrusters and beam sabers are repositioned and a shield is mounted on a mobile arm at the top.
- "Igelstellung" 75mm CIWS
- Mounted in the Gale Strike's head are two "Igelstellung" 75mm multi-barrel CIWS guns. These light projectile weapons are used to intercept missiles and the like, or to prevent enemy mobile suits from closing in.
- "Armor Schneider" Combat Knife
- Stored in holsters mounted on the elbows, these are the same knives used by the Strike Gundam.
- Wing Saw
- Stored on Gale Strike's hip, these serrated swords have anti-beam coating and a data-gathering functionality similar to the katana of the MBF-P05LM Astray Mirage Frame. If the blade is unable to cut through an object, the frequency at which the saw blade vibrates can be altered, increasing its cutting power and even enabling it to cut through even Phase Shift Armor. Other than being a weapon, the Wing Saws also support the suit's aerial maneuvers. When stored on the hip, they can function as support wings. When handheld, they can be used to control air flow and for Active Mass Balance Auto-Control (AMBAC) purposes.
- 57mm High-energy Beam Rifle
- The same beam rifle as used by the original Strike. As the Gale Strike is specialized for close combat, it rarely uses this ranged weapon.
- Beam Saber
- Mounted on the Shield Striker, the pair of beam sabers are the same as those used by the Aile Strike.
- Shield
- The same type of shield as used by Strike. Mounted on an articulated support arm at the top of the Shield Striker, it does not need to be handheld, allowing the Gale Strike to wields it weapons with both hand. The shield is mainly for protecting the suit's rear, and can be used for flight control.
Special Equipment & Features
- Hardpoints for Striker Packs
Gale Strike was first deployed alongside Replica Red Frame to battle Lowe Guele and his MBF-P02 Gundam Astray Red Frame. When it was Gale Strike's turn to battle Red Frame, MBF-P03R Gundam Astray Blue Frame 2nd Revise suddenly appears and ND HE was forced to retreat. Later, ND HE was dispatched by the Supreme Librarian to accompany Rondo Gina Sahaku and his MBF-P05LM2 Gundam Astray Mirage Frame 2nd Issue. During their journey to find Gai, Gina figures out that ND HE is a Carbon Human clone of Gai; ND HE was then attacked by Gina. Gale Strike was able to battle Astray Mirage Frame 2nd Issue to a draw before the fight was interrupted, first by Canard then by Gai. While Gina has his rematch with Gai, ND HE battles Canard. Although Gale Strike managed to land several blows on Dreadnought H, the latter brushed aside the attacks easily due to its nuclear engine. Sensing that he could not win the battle, ND HE surrenders and later guided Canard, Gai and Lowe to Librarian's base.
Notes & Trivia
- The first published art of Gale Strike (as seen above) shows it with a blue "mouth" plate but it was later changed to a typical white Gundam plate.
External links


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Uh Oh: Gay Dude Gets Beat On For Exposing This Dude Allegedly On The Down Low! "Yea I Sucked His D*ck"
Gay dude gets beat up for exposing his alleged fling with another dude.
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The Strength of Water
The debut feature film from acclaimed Maori writer Briar Grace-Smith (Nga Puhi) and kiwi director Armagan Ballantyne premiers at Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Set in a rural Maori community in the Hokianga region of Northland in Aotearoa (New Zealand), The Strength of Water is the story of Maori twins Kimi and Melody, who are forced apart when a mysterious stranger arrives in their small town.
The film features Nancy Brunning (Crooked Earth, When Loves Comes) and a cast of locals. The project was developed at the Sundance and Binger workshops.
Let My Whakapapa Speak
In a world where hundreds of indigenous languages are dead or facing extinction there is a bright, shining hope: Kohanga Reo, Maori "language nests".
Veteran filmmaker Tainui Stephens documents the ground-breaking indigenous educational movement, and the woman behind it, in a feature documentary screening at ImageNative, the Toronto native arts festival.
Kohanga Reo is based on the simple but powerful principle of totally immersing pre-school children in native language and values. After 25 years, the program is recognized worldwide as a turning point for revival of Maori language and culture and an inspiration for language survival programs worldwide.
The model has been replicated successfully in other native communities, including Hawaiian Punana Leo.
Let My Whakapapa Speak
16 Oct 08, 1:00PM
Al Green Theatre
Let My Whakapapa Speak – On Maori Television
They are the two magic words in the story of how a struggling Maori language was pulled back from the brink of extinction: 'kohanga reo'.
Rain of the Children
Tuhoe Country Docu-drama
Kiwi director Vincent Ward (Map of the Human Heart, What Dreams May Come) revisits his 1978 documentary, about a Maori kuia, in his latest feature.
In Spring One Plants Alone was Ward's second film – a verite portrait of Te Puhi, an 80 year-old woman caring for her schizophrenic adult son in rural Urewera.
30 years later Ward returns to the scene to re-envision her story as a cursed Tuhoe princess.
The 2008 version is a personal docu-drama, narrated by Ward, melding dramatic re-enactments with original footage.
The cast includes Once Were Warriors alumnae Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison and Taungaroa Emile.
Rain of the Children premiered at Sydney Film Festival.
Rain of the Children trailer
A Tale of the Tuhoe
could give Maori on both sides of the Tasman a new insight in to their past
Vincent Ward unveils latest long-term labour of love
New Zealand Herald
Australian-based Maori performed a passionate powhiri on the red carpet
Vincent Ward's ghost story
Sunday Star Times
epic act of "director's cut" reworking
Wairoa Maori Film Festival
Little Town – Big Films
Wairoa Maori Film Festival
Matariki Queen's Birthday Weekend
30 May – 2 June 2008
The tiny town of Wairoa (population around 4,000) on the East Coast of Aotearoa's North Island opens its third Maori film festival with tributes to indigenous film pioneers, classic features, and a feast of international and local native films.
The festival features films by Maori film elders Barry Barclay and Don Selwyn, who died during the past year.
Opening night kicks off with the kiwi comedy classic Came a Hot Friday, starring Maori comic icon Billy T. James (1948-1991) and Don Selwyn (1936 – 2007) in an early acting role.
Audiences will see rare screenings of Barry Barclay's feature documentary The Neglected Miracle, exploring indigenous genetic conservation initiatives around the world, and episodes from his landmark television series Tangata Whenua.
Recent dramatic features include Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo's Four Sheets to the Wind, Taika Waititi's Eagle vs Shark and Peter Burger's The Tattooist, alongside older work such as Sam Pillsbury's Crooked Earth and Gaylene Preston's Ruby & Rata.
Closing night feature is Geoff Murphy's classic Utu starring Anzac Wallace and the late great Wi Kuki Kaa.
Short film programs include Pollywood 08, a collection of shorts by Pacific Islander filmmakers, A Little Bit of Black Business from native Australia, Maori Short Films, and the Matariki Short Film Collection, an eclectic mix of seven indigenous shorts from Aotearoa, USA and Australia.
Wairoa Maori Film Festival goes on the road to Auckland, Wellington and Taumaranui later this year.
World Indigenous TV Conference
Maori TV's Julian Wilcox pitches WITBC
Maori Television hosts the first gathering of global indigenous TV executives in Aotearoa 26–28 March 2008. The World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference (WITBC) kicks off in Auckland with three days of presentations by broadcasters from Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Taiwan, United States, Australia, Wales, and Aotearoa.
WITBC '08 inaugurates an international association of indigenous TV broadcasters and presents its first lifetime achievement award.
Maori TV launches its new Maori language channel, Te Reo, to coincide with the event.
PIs MIA @ WITBC
NZ: Pacific representation 'misses out' at indigenous media conference
26 Mar 08
Just two Pacific Islands will be represented at the opening today of the world's first indigenous television network conference.
Fiji and Hawaii are the only delegates from 22 Pacific Island states and territories at WIBTC 08 …
Registration costs at the conference are around NZ$1600, raising barriers to Pacific Islanders already facing high airfares from remote communities."
Barry Barclay Death
1944 – 2008
Kiwi film-maker Barry Barclay dies
Stuff 19 Feb 08
Prominent New Zealand film-maker Barry Barclay – the first Maori to direct a feature film – has died of a heart attack aged 63.
Filmmaker Barry Barclay dies
TV One 19 Feb 08
The New Zealand Film Commission says Barclay played a major role as a passionate advocate of indigenous voices telling their own stories.
Kua hinga te totara, te kauri …
The mighty trees of the forest have fallen.
Barry (Bazza) Barclay passed away last night in Opononi, Hokianga.
The last of my mentors (and the first) is gone!
Aue … they are such big shoes we can never fill.
My first ever job on a feature film was Barry's and what a crazy ride that was. He was a mentor for me too. Haere, haere, haere e te matua, hoki atu ki o mātua tipuna …
JOSIE McCLUTCHIE
Barry's mana'o greatly influenced how we approached and spoke about documentary-making (we don't "take" anyone's picture; they give it to us). Because of him we even write up our release forms and clearances differently (who really owns the images on tape?).
Memorial 2007
American Indian producer/director Phil Lucas and Maori actor/director Don Selwyn were pioneers in the native film movement.
Both were prolific filmmakers and teachers who broke new ground and mentored the next generation of talent.
1932 – 2007
Post your tribute for Phil here.
1936 – 2007


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What Happens When Your Bamboo Gets White Spots on It?
Thinkstock/Comstock/Getty Images
A relatively problem-free plant, bamboo is used in both landscape design and as a houseplant. It is an evergreen perennial that grows quickly and can spread to cover a large area. Bamboo can be infested by scales and spider mites, with both pests causing white spots.
Controlling these pests is not difficult, but it is important to the survival of your bamboo.
Bamboo Pests
Scales and spider mites are the most common pests of bamboo, according to the University of Kentucky. Scales are small insects that attach themselves to a plant and feed on the sap in leaves and stems. Soft scales are covered in a protective coating of waxy filaments that look like white cotton. These immobile insects can look like fuzzy white spots on your plant. Hard scales are also immobile but are covered in a hard shell. They can look like scabby white spots on leaves and stems. Spider mites are members of the arachnid family and also feed on sap. They are very small, round-bodied pests that can be difficult to see.
Feeding by scales can cause yellowing and wilting of plants. Plants may look unkempt and their growth may be stunted as well. Extreme infestations can cause the death of all or parts of a bamboo shoot. Plants weakened by scale feeding may also be more susceptible to secondary infections by viruses or fungi. In addition to the damage they do while they feed, scales excrete a sticky substance called honeydew that attracts a black fungus called sooty mould.
Spider mites cause a white stippling on leaves as they feed. As they continue to feed and their feeding spots merge, leaves turn yellow or bronze and drop off the plant. Extensive infestations can cause death. Spider mites can also coat the plant in a fine webbing that attracts dirt and mould. This webbing is more unsightly than it is dangerous.
Cultural Control
Knock spider mites off plants with a strong jet of water from a hose for outdoor plants or a spray bottle on the stream setting for houseplants. Scales can be wiped off with a damp rag. Predatory mites are available at some garden centres and can provide chemical-free control for a spider mite infestation. Pruning out heavily infested leaves or shoots can help prevent either pest's infestation from spreading.
Chemical Control
Chemical control of scales can be difficult since they are covered in protective coatings. Time applications of insecticides at egg laying or as immature scales are emerging. Immature scales, called crawlers, are not yet protected and are more susceptible to insecticides. Spider mites can usually be controlled with horticultural oils or insecticidal soaps. If severe infestations require harsher chemicals, miticides are available. If you purchased predatory mites, avoid the use of chemicals as they will kill predatory mites too.


text: Navabrindavanam.in contains information about the great saints. Navabrindavanam is a holy place where brindhavanam's of gurus of Ragavendra & followers of madhavaacharya. brindhavanam generally means saints & great rishis are living after their life. Navabrindavanam is a nice place, which is located at Anegundi, near Hampi, Karnataka. India. There are nine saints in this Brindavanam.Navabrindavanam is best hampi tours & travels information find the tourist guide in hampi,tourist spots in hampi,visiting places in hampi.


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For those who are party to the resistance in any way, it is helpful to be armed with knowledge about how the republicans' plan to launch a PR campaign against the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA), also named Obamacare.
On 12/ 7/16 Wendell Potter penned an article about his thinking on this subject, on his own website, "Repeal Obamacare? GOP Should Be Careful What They Wish For."
"For years, Republicans have been condemning Obamacare and vowing to repeal and replace it. Now that they'll soon be able to do that, they're like the dog that caught the car: Now what?"
"I'd be willing to bet a month's worth of premiums that this is what's happening right now: The best PR pros money can buy are quietly developing strategies to help Republicans deal with two different scenarios, neither of which many of them gave a second's thought to before the election, and both potentially catastrophic for the Republican brand. To say nothing of the health and well-being of a whole lot of people."
"Under the first scenario, the US health care system is imploding. Which is exactly what will happen if Republicans repeal the law and either delay replacing it until after the next election, as some lawmakers seem to favor, or replace it sooner rather than later if the replacement is based on ideology-driven ideas that even some conservative health policy experts know could do more harm than good."
"That's the worst-case scenario. The plan being developed by the PR pros is all about how to shift blame away from Republicans when they unwittingly set off health care Armageddon."
"The other, more likely, scenario: The PR shops will help Republicans convince the public they've repealed and replaced the law when all they will have done is tweak it to the satisfaction of a few lobbyists — in particular, lobbyists for the health-insurance industry. So much for draining the swamp."
"The challenge for House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be convincing the rank and file (and, for that matter, President-elect Trump and his transition team) that repealing and replacing the law as they promised on the campaign trail would be political suicide. That might not be easy. What I learned when I testified before Congress during the health care reform debate seven years ago was that lawmakers' understanding of how health insurance works in this country is not based so much on reality as it is on what they've been told by the corporate lobbyist or partisan think tank "fellow" they hold in highest esteem."
"I also learned that more than a few conservative members of Congress place a greater priority on reducing government spending than on expanding coverage. To them, the term "health care is a human right" is just a big-government-loving lefty slogan. Their preferred term is "individual responsibility."
"Take Senate Finance Committee chair Orrin Hatch, for example. As Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew Altman noted in a recent Wall Street Journal column, Hatch is on record as saying that "conservatives cannot allow themselves to be browbeaten for failing to provide the same coverage numbers as Obamacare…We cannot succumb to the pressure to argue on the left's terms."
"The problem for Hatch and other like-minded Republicans is that the Obamacare replacement ideas they keep proposing would lead to such a destabilized health insurance marketplace that tens of millions of people, including millions who voted for Republican candidates last month, would no longer have access to decent and affordable coverage. That would not be good for the Republican brand. Individual responsibility only gets you so far."
"The replacement ideas most often put forth — "allowing" insurers to sell coverage across state lines, establishing high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions and encouraging more people to enroll in health savings accounts — make for good sound bites, but they simply won't keep most of the 22 million Americans who've gained coverage under Obamacare from being forced back into the ranks of the uninsured. What's more, those ideas not only are not new, they've been proven to be of little benefit to anyone except the healthiest and wealthiest among us, as Sabrina Corlette, who heads Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms, pointed out in recent commentary."
"The reason Republican leaders have called in the PR pros is because of what they undoubtedly have been hearing from my former colleagues in the health insurance business: If they rush to repeal Obamacare and think they can replace it with a plan based on those ideas, they'll have a PR nightmare on their hands in no time flat. And it won't help to postpone the replacement for a couple of years. The uncertainty created would lead insurers to abandon the Obamacare exchanges well before two years had passed."
"As that reality sinks in, party leaders will draft legislation that will be based on the insurance industry's wish list and try to sell it as making good on their repeal-and-replace campaign promise. Among the items on that wish list: allowing insurers to once again charge people in their 40s, 50s and 60s far more than younger people for the exact same coverage, letting them once again take the status of an applicant's health into consideration when pricing their policies and making it legal again for them to sell inadequate or even worthless coverage to gullible Americans."
"You might recall that Trump and other Republicans have said that they absolutely will get rid of the Obamacare provision that makes it illegal to remain uninsured — which most people don't like — but that they absolutely will keep the Obamacare provision that makes it illegal for insurers to refuse to sell coverage to people with pre-existing conditions — which most people love. You can be certain that more than a few of my former colleagues are explaining why that won't work, just as they explained it to Obama and congressional Democrats back in 2009. Obama had campaigned against the individual mandate but agreed to it after insurers told him what had happened a few years earlier in Kentucky and Washington state. Lawmakers in both states passed laws requiring insurance companies to accept all applicants regardless of their health, but didn't pass an individual mandate. They quickly reversed course, however, when the number of older and sicker applicants far outnumbered the younger and healthier ones. That's what creates the dreaded "death spiral" that sends health insurers running for the exits."
"All this is to say that repealing and replacing Obamacare (which Republicans are loath to admit was modeled after a plan developed years ago by fellows at the conservative Heritage Foundation) is much easier promised than accomplished. And it's why the busiest people in Washington these days are the spin doctors."


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January, Chicago's Hottest Month of the YearSubmitted by Dr. Joseph Hecht on Mon, 01/05/2009 - 11:17pm
I love baseball newsy days in January. I love roster moves. You can see that I don't even mind listening to a baseball guru or two.
Fox's Baseball analyst, Ken Rosenthal was on WGN Radio's "Sports Central" show hosted by David Kaplan tonight. For those not able to listen, here's a summary of his take on all things recently swirling in Cubsville. He takes on Milton Bradley vs Lou Piniella (a dangerous mix). Could these two ever be as lovable as Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson in the 2003 film, Anger Management? Somehow, I just can't see LouPa getting Bradley to sing, "I Feel Pretty".
Plus a bit more on the shrinking odds to acquire some guy named Jake.
On to the details, after the jump...


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Home > Legal News
Legal News 01/2017 (Page 8)
Trump fires top government lawyer who defied immigration orderWASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump fired the federal government's top lawyer Sally Yates on Monday after she took the extraordinarily rare step of defying the White House and refused to defend new travel restrictions targeting seven Muslim-majority ... (Jan 31, 2017, Reuters)
Trump fires top US govt lawyer over travel ban defianceWashington (AFP) - An embattled Donald Trump fired his government's chief lawyer for refusing to defend his controversial immigration orders late Monday, deepening a political crisis engulfing his presidency. In a caustic statement, Trump's White House ... (Jan 31, 2017, Yahoo News)
Lawyer is sanctioned $250 for flinging coffee toward opposing counsel during depositionA federal magistrate judge in Oakland, California, has sanctioned a lawyer $250 for flinging iced coffee toward opposing counsel during a deposition, and then downplaying her responsibility for the incident. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu imposed the ... (Jan 31, 2017, ABA Journal)
Former Nixon lawyer predicts Trump presidency 'will end in calamity'John Dean, the lawyer the FBI described as "the master manipulator of the cover-up" in the Watergate scandal, took to Twitter on Monday night to describe Trump's statement on Sally Yates, a Barack Obama appointee serving as acting attorney general, ... (Jan 31, 2017, Politico)
Mob lawyer mentored Trump Labor pickLabor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder began his career fighting the agency he may now lead on behalf of one of the most notorious mob lawyers in the country. Today, Puzder is CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns the burger chains Carl's Jr. and ... (Jan 31, 2017, Politico)
Man convicted of rape, sodomy, can sue lawyer for taking $25k for filing motionsThe Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that a man convicted of rape and sodomy can sue his appellate attorney. The inmate claims the lawyer's firm took $25,000 from him to file motions the lawyer knew had no chance at succeeding. The Alabama Supreme ... (Jan 31, 2017, AL.com)
Nixon Lawyer Warns of 'Calamity,' Calls Trump's Statement on Firing of Acting AG 'A New Low'Even the "master manipulator" of the Watergate's cover-up is appalled by the way President Donald Trump dispatched his acting attorney general. John Dean, who earned that moniker from the FBI in 1974 after he served as White House counsel to Richard ... (Jan 31, 2017, Foreign Policy (blog))
Gulf Breeze lawyer suspended for embezzlementA Gulf Breeze attorney who in December pleaded guilty to 13 felony offenses has been suspended until further order. Richard Michael Colbert, 55, of Gulf Breeze was admitted to practice in 1987, but will be suspended until further notice according to a ... (Jan 31, 2017, Pensacola News Journal)
Lawyer: Deadly Fire-Extinguisher Beating Was Self-DefenseA defense lawyer says a woman acted in self-defense when she fatally beat her husband with a fire extinguisher inside their New Jersey home. Burlington County prosecutors say 42-year-old Laciana Tinsley is charged with murder and a weapons offense in ... (Jan 31, 2017, ABC News)
California father, 12-year-old daughter stuck in Africa following Trump travel ban, lawyer saysIt was a trip that was supposed to reunite a long-separated family, but a San Joaquin Valley man has found himself and his 12-year-old daughter effectively stranded in the Horn of Africa following President Trump's recent travel ban. Ahmed Ali, a U.S ... (Jan 31, 2017, Los Angeles Times)
On the Bright Side, Lawyers Are Suddenly PopularIt's impossible to be a member of the bar and not know Shakespeare's quote from Henry VI: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Or the endless jokes: How can you tell when a lawyer is lying? His lips move. Why did God invent lawyers? So ... (Jan 31, 2017, The American Lawyer)
Lawyer claims lobbyist is de Blasio's 'consultant' in fed probeA lobbyist whose ties to Mayor de Blasio are under scrutiny from the media and federal prosecutors is no longer "an agent of the city" — he's a "consultant," a city lawyer argued Tuesday. The lawyer, Jeffrey Dantowitz, argued emails between Jonathan ... (Feb 1, 2017, New York Daily News)
Volunteer Lawyers Have Descended on Major Airports After Trump's Immigration OrderAt JFK, where lawyers helped win the first of the rulings Saturday night, the round-the-clock work began with attorneys typing on laptops on the airport floor. Now they sit at a cluster of cafeteria tables, and law students have toiled alongside ... (Feb 1, 2017, TIME)
Tennessee lawyers, scholars debate Trump Supreme Court pickThe president's primetime pick Tuesday to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court may consider issues including a battle over Tennessee's controversial abortion measure, which is now in the appeals pipeline. Legal analysts and scholars in the ... (Feb 1, 2017, The Tennessean)
Lawyer: NJ extinguisher beating self-defenseWILLINGBORO - A defense lawyer says a woman acted in self-defense when she fatally beat her husband with a fire extinguisher inside their New Jersey home. Burlington County prosecutors say 42-year-old Laciana Tinsley is charged with murder and a ... (Feb 1, 2017, Asbury Park Press)


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We met Yishai in a very stylish, expensive Manhattan bar and restaurant with sky-high prices. He's a handsome Israeli man, partial to dark suits, and according to Sue Whatley, our ear on the street, the subject of mafia jokes. Ron Levy seems to take particular pleasure in murmuring that he never speaks ill of Yishai because he doesn't want to sleep with the fishes.
The night we arrived, Gary and I were to meet Yishai at a very fancy restaurant where Gary surprised me by knocking back several large gin and tonics, while I drank a few beers. Yishai didn't drink alcohol, and had an apologetic air, as if it were unfortunate that the world forced us to think about money all the time, but what was there for it? The evening was pure socializing, and we barely discussed business. He is a classical pianist, and seemed to have a protective attitude toward his wife. We exchanged a lot of platitudes about family values. When we parted, I felt like we had gone into business with a very serious man who had favored me with his most charming aspect. He wore his gentility like a protective suit for navigating the dark waters of sexual finance.
The next morning, Gary and I walked to a building not far from our hotel. Yishai met us in an upstairs office where he said they were opening up some new space to accommodate rows of computer desks. In a large, sparsely furnished conference room, Yishai and two assistants, a couple of former Mossad guys, gave us a presentation that projected live feeds from a high-speed Net connection on a big screen. They provided us with detailed statistics about our site that amazed me with their specificity and abundance. Type-ins were cascading into those magical six letters like rain into a mountain lake, a lake of pure liquid cash. It was dizzying. It was exciting. It was partly mine, and everyone acted like I was a co-owner of a very desirable asset.
But in the midst of the exhilaration, a dark tinge invaded my mind, and grew deeper as the hours passed surfing the Net on the enormous browser in Yishai's Manhattan conference room. The big screen shimmered with the energy of millions of minds cascading in from everywhere, colliding with the images and words that populated Sex.Com. From our digital vantage-point, online humanity appeared as a vast throng of eyeballs speeding through a functionally infinite universe of colors, images, text, and video. The statistics Yishai provided showed nearly a million hits daily, sorted by the equivalent price per click being charged to each of the short list of buyers, some of whom were in for $50,000 per month.
The statistics also told a dark story. Although the site was nominally under our control, we were still selling traffic to the same people who had been buying traffic from Cohen, except for Jordan Levinson, whom Gary had insisted on dropping at once, rejecting Yishai's entreaties on his behalf. The largest advertisers were Wired Solutions, Yishai himself, and Ron Levi, who had been buying traffic from Cohen through a straw man when we took over the domain. They were all running the same gross-out contest that had evolved during the Cohen days, a race in which graphic artists competed to find the lowest common denominator of human desire. Was it a fresh face receiving a rain of semen from a rigid penis all over her innocent face, splattering her eyes, and cheeks, matting her lovely young hair with slime? Perhaps it was a short video clip of an anal sex routine accelerated just a bit and pinched into a three-second loop. There were so many ways to say the same thing, and Sex.Com was the only place pornographers could say it to the whole world, without restraint. Yishai believed in Cohen's stupid, direct approach, and feared any attempts to improve on it. Although Ocean Fund press releases had once crowed about a website "a thousand pages deep," Cohen had actually kept the website to one page, with six banners costing fifty-thousand dollars each, and a single row of text links that sold for between six and nine-thousand dollars apiece. The one-page banner-farm format kept the cyber-real estate scarce, and accordingly expensive. Cohen set his rates, then let the industry integrate his charges into their pricing. Levinson said that with Cohen, it was always "his way or the highway." All advertising revenues were paid in advance by wire transfer, and gratefully so. Serious pornographers were happy to pay for the traffic, especially those with the graphics skills and large image libraries to deploy the smut wonderlands that took the millennium by storm. Cohen had also given advertisers total freedom to post any picture or text link they thought would score a click, which kept the advertiser's conversion rates high, and ad rates similarly so. You might say that, by combining totally free speech with a completely free market, Cohen had found the sweet spot at the top of the profit pyramid. Certainly Yishai's report, with its short list of big numbers, made it clear that the status quo at Sex.Com was very profitable.
Cohen's version of Sex.Com was popular for another reason that fans of open markets might appreciate -- the lack of intrusive government regulations. Cohen had never reported any of his transactions to the IRS, the Treasury Department, or any other agency of government. This leads to the possibility that some of the millions of dollars that Cohen had pumped through the Omnitec account was simply being laundered from various illicit sources, and may not have reflected real advertising revenue. After all, even AOL had to admit to doing hundreds of millions of dollars in "wash" advertising deals that were simply a way to kite checks for astronomical sums. Cohen was always dabbling in ways to inflate his income and skim a profit, and he wouldn't have blushed at the opportunity to launder a few bundles of drug or gun money. This might account for occasional fluctuations in Sex.Com's monthly revenue, like the month in 2000 when Omnitec received a million in deposits, a substantial upward deviation from the standard 400K. So you never know -- maybe Cohen really did have some friends in Caracas who were gunrunners -- I never went to see.
Even discounting total Sex.Com revenue somewhat for the possibility that Cohen was actively exchanging black money for white, there were plenty of real clicks being sold to pornographers for their conversion value. In those days, before Google had gone into the business of selling clicks, the term "conversions" was heard almost exclusively in porn circles. Conversions, as most every person knows now, are simply sales, cash transfers via credit card for website signups, that in those days usually cost $20 to $30 dollars each before merchant fees. Profit is calculated based on a simple formula, because certain website traffic will convert at an ascertainable rate. Some traffic is utter garbage from a pornographer's viewpoint -- converting at low rates, or not at all. The question is, of course, who is doing the clicking? And in the case of people seeking pornsite conversions, how old is that person, and what is their sex? According to Fernando of Wired Solutions, Sex.Com traffic converted at unheard-of rates, suggested to him that the bulk of visitors were young and sexually inexperienced, typing in the most obvious Internet address to find the object of their desires. In the aggregate, they were clicking at the rate of around 200 clicks per second, and converting at rates sometimes as high as one out of fifty -- an unheard of rate during a time when conversion rates of one in two-hundred and fifty were considered extremely profitable. Fernando was a corpulent Latino whose face filled with delight when discussing the unbelievable conversion rates he had seen with Sex.Com traffic. It made me quite uneasy.
When we met in New York to formally sign the hosting and commissions deal with Yishai, we discussed ending the gross-out contest still taking place on the page. Since such agreements don't always look right when you put them in writing, we verbally agreed that within thirty days, advertisers would no longer be allowed to display "penetration" or "girls who look underage." We agreed to immediately stop running text links that smacked of criminality or conduct generally acknowledged to be depraved, like incest and bestiality. Aside from these small adjustments, we weren't changing the site at all. We were afraid to scare off advertisers, and since the word on the street was unclear about Gary, we needed to reassure the markets. Yishai wanted to pour a pitcher of ice water on the idea that Sex.Com might become a "woman friendly" site, as we had suggested in our press release and court filings. Haha, very funny! As Steve Sherman had told me during our breakfast meeting -- "Get real, this is pornography!" The end result of the meeting with Yishai was that the Cohen format stayed in place. One page of banner ads, a list of advertisers you could count on two hands, and pure profits of at least $400,000 per month. Not a formula you want to tinker with.
Toward the end of the day, Yishai took us to meet his boss, Richard Martino. They talked about how their company, Crescent Communications, was about to buy a midwestern phone company. They took us on a very boring facilities tour, which consisted of views of eight accountants housed like cattle with their computers, calculating all day long. On the way out of our meeting with Richard, Yishai pulled me aside. They would be happy to pay $15,000,000 for the name -- half now, the rest in payments.
Back in the hotel room Gary and I were occupying jointly at Yishai's expense, I told Gary that Yishai had offered to buy the domain. He responded as I'd expected, utterly disinterested, and said he was going out. I was alone in New York City. I took a shower. I lay in the tub, letting the numberless drops cascade off my body into the narrow beige porcelain concavity. The hotel tub was small and cramped in the supposedly fancy hotel. Apparently, regardless of how much money we were going to have, Gary would still be extremely parsimonious, and the facilities could still be banal.
But I had a much bigger problem. All the money in the world would not change the fact that I was getting rich on the exploitation and degradation of women. I was very tired, and felt like crying as I lay in the tub, feeling that every drop of water was a click of someone accessing an image of some girl being photographed forever like a captive animal, and some poor sucker's cash rolling down the drain. I felt like the sewer, collecting all those unwanted moments and mistakes made by young, foolish people with basic needs for love and money. I felt for the women and men, embracing each other lovelessly, doing things they'd balk at doing at gunpoint, just for a little cash. I felt like I was riding with my rich friends on an ocean liner floating on a sea of garbage. I lay in the tub a long time, wasting water and listening to it gurgling down the drain.


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Thursday, 3 April 2008
10 Ways to give your blog a buzz with Caffeine Creativity -
At last! scientific justification for my habit.
Dr Jonathan Geiger University of North Dakota (I couldn't help imagining people making faster and faster clicking noises as he walks towards you) claims that Daily caffeine 'protects brain' This is especially good news if your Rabbit has a blog as caffeine it seems prevents de-generative brain disorders.
In order to test the hypothesis I am currently drinking a big mug of coffee...let's see what happens...glug...slurp...hmmm..yes...it seems to be working...
1. Do several varieties of the same post...(latte post, mocha post, with chocolate etc)
2. Ask the cream of the blogging community to do guest posts
3. Filter news sites for inspiration
4. Make sure there is a lid on your post so that you don't overspill
5. Post something every time you make a fresh cup of coffee.
6. Write a post about what your are really addicted too...the coffee or the posting
7. Write a Post entitled 'Bean There Done That' (groan)
8. Take time out to let your ideas percolate
9. Write a post on a Hat and a pair of Trousers and title it Cap and Chino
10. Check Wikipedia to find out if 'You f'coffee' really is a Chinese insult.
5 comments:
Great blog. I just wanted to remind you, that you have no comments.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous3 April 2008 at 13:31
You're sounding as bad as me, RR. I drink coffee in 48 oz lots. I've been wishing that it would move this "lead butt syndrome" of mine from granny gear into at least first gear.ReplyDelete
Oh, and if you're anything like me, I could give a rip whether anyone leaves a comment or not. :P~~~
My stats counters are very happy. That's what floats my boat as well as Technorati's boat.
rr - you are a wag!ReplyDelete
I've BEAN thinking about the role of caffeine in blogging myself - anything to ease the GRIND - but I had to give up when I ran out of puns!
Always trying to do things to the Max, well at least it almsot brought the house down.ReplyDelete
Isn't there a quaint little coffee shop up your way Daisy? The Ness Cafe?


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The Easter Bunny is putting finishing touches on those Easter Baskets because soon he'll be hopping around hiding all sorts of goodies! Why not entice him and make sure he'll show up? We made some Bunny Bait and it was a huge hit with the girls!
If you are looking for a quick spring snack for school, Girl Scout Meetings, a little treat for your neighbors or maybe after your Easter get together with the family this is something to check out!
From start to finish I believe we had everything done and started taste testing about 20 minutes later!
What you'll need:
- Popcorn (we used the kernals so there wasn't any butter or anything already on it)
- Pretzels
- White Chocolate or White Chocolate Chips
- Sprinkles
- M&Ms
- Rice Chex
- Mixing Bowl
- Wax Paper/Foil Covered Cookie Sheet
1. Pop your popcorn so that it's ready to go and break down your pretzels into smaller pieces if you prefer and add into your mixing bowl with the rice chex. We didn't measure anything out but poured until we thought an even combination of the popcorn, chex mix and pretzels were inside of our large mixing bowl.
2. Start melting your chocolate in 30 second intervals stirring until smooth. I could only find white chocolate chips and I melted it down and added a little milk to my mixture as I went.
3. In a large bowl where your popcorn, rice chex, and pretzels are, pour over your chocolate mixture and mix it up.
4. We then spooned everything onto a cookie sheet that was covered in wax paper and poured some Easter M&M's and sprinkles into the mixture. DO NOT mix after you add these in as you will cover them in your white chocolate!
5. After it cools you can break it apart and package it up into individual baggies or just let them eat!


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Saturday, November 10, 2012
a sleepy end-of-summer evening
Somehow in the middle of the chaos that was our summer, I managed to forget to post these photos from a corn field adventure. We had just finished a relaxing day on the beach and on the way home these fields were crying out to us to stop and take advantage of the amazing light and surroundings.
There were a million of these tiny frogs hopping around everywhere.. and right after josh snapped that photo we ran to the car just in time to dodge a stormy downpour.
I'm thankful for these seemingly uninteresting memories..
and that i have a [patient] someone to share them with.
8 comments:
that top (and the little froggie) are totally adorable. love this.ReplyDelete
Lovely photos! Love those outfits!ReplyDelete
Beautiful shots. The light is amazing indeed.ReplyDelete
What a cool little frog! Great photos, too - they really do capture that lovely feeling of the freedom and warmth of summer!ReplyDelete
these photos are amazing, full of magic.ReplyDelete
I love your outfit and that teeny tiny frog is just adorable!!!ReplyDelete
I'm so glad that you're the type to stop when the fields are crying out to you -- that's where the most whimsical and magical moments seem to hide. (:ReplyDelete
Oh look at the frog!!! He's so tiny! I've only ever seen big frogs before, I'd love to find a corn field full of these little guys xxReplyDelete
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25 Dec 2010
DIGITAL CHRISTMAS - Modern Times
6 comments:
- eastcoastlife said...
Merry Christmas to all at home! *hugs*
- 25 Dec 2010, 07:04:00
- Lifecruiser Travel Blog said...
Yeah, that was a really modern digital one! Hi hi...
Cute xmas card!!!
Merry Xmas once again! I hope all has been peace- and joyful....
- 25 Dec 2010, 13:33:00
- Tossing Pebbles in the Stream said...
Happy Birthday to you and your family. May the New Year bring to joy, perhaps, beginning with a little warmer days that will make travel easier.
- 25 Dec 2010, 17:19:00
- Jo said...
On my word, Gattina;) You are brilliant. Where did you come across that clip? Hope you'e had a WONDERFUL Christmas with your son, dil and newest member of your family, Toby. Travel safely when you go home. Warm (((hugs))) Jo
- 25 Dec 2010, 19:22:00
Mele Kalikimaka e Hau'oli Makahiki Hou!
- 25 Dec 2010, 21:01:00
- Melli said...
ROFLMBO! I have been hearing about that digital Nativity! Hadn't seen it yet -- that is hysterical!!! Same story, no matter HOW it's told! :)
Toby looks like he is LOVIN' Christmas! Looks like he's givin' a little kiss!
- 27 Dec 2010, 01:49:00


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Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
|Motion: spatial variation of one or more observed or not observed objects in time. Problems arising in connection with attribution or withdrawal of predicates. See also change, temporal identity, process, flux, vectors._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.
|Meta data
Apparent motion/Copernicus: there is a difference between the true motion of the earth and the true motions of the planets - "true"/Copernicus: = relative to the sun. - Relative motion/Newton: (all observable B) always identifiable as the difference between true motion. - Phenomena/Fraassen: we call these relative (relational) structures phenomena. - Motions/Fraassen: are the structures that show the perceived motions (phenomena)
Phenomenon: a phenomenon is always identifiable with movements in a model -> "empirical structures": > Quantities/Physics/Fraassen. - Absolute acceleration/Newton: absolute acceleration produces strain and compression in the phenomena - Newton: would the center be in another constant absolute movement (not acceleration) the phenomena would not change because power is connected to acceleration not to speed - empirical adequacy: there is a model, so that all phenomena are identifiable with motions in the model (also historical, not perceived ones). Two theories are empirically equivalent if they have both models that can perform this._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. The note [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.
Fr I
B. van Fraassen
The Scientific Image Oxford 1980
Authors A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z