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Guidance on communion during swine flu pandemic
Thursday 23rd July 2009The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have written to Bishops in the Church of England recommending the suspension of the sharing of the chalice at communion.
The Archbishops' letter follows advice from the Department of Health not to share "common vessels" for food or drink.
For those who wish still to offer both bread and wine, the Archbishops have recommended use of "personal intinction by the presiding minister" allowing the priest to dip communion wafers in the chalice before handing them out to communicants.
The full text of the letter follows:
The Feast of St Mary Magdalene
22nd July 2009
Dear Colleague,
It now seems right to offer guidance at a national level about how the Church of England's worship might best take into account the interests of public health during the current phase of the swine flu pandemic.
The Department of Health have recently advised us that "in a pandemic it makes good sense to take precautions to limit the spread of disease by not sharing common vessels for food and drink". In the light of this advice, we recommend those presiding at Holy Communion suspend the administration of the chalice during this wave of pandemic flu. [1] For those who still wish to offer in both kinds, we recommend the practice whereby the presiding minister, whose hands should have been washed with the appropriate alcohol based rub before handling the elements and the vessels, personally intincts all wafers before placing them in the hands of communicants. This is a practice widely observed in Anglican churches throughout Africa. Communicants receiving in this way need to be confident that the clergy and all assistant ministers follow the relevant guidance on hygiene.
The Bishop of Ripon & Leeds circulated substantial guidance, including a summary of the government's advice[2], with his letter of 23 June[3]. Many of you have already issued local guidance based upon its content. We regard it as important that those presiding at Holy Communion are aware of this advice[4] and of that contained in this letter. They should offer guidance to the congregation about appropriate precautions in receiving communion and exchanging the peace.
We shall keep this advice under review and will ensure that the detailed guidance provided on the Church of England website[5] is kept up-to-date. In the meantime, we wish to express our gratitude to you and those who share your ministry for the pastoral care and service offered at this time of national concern.
+Rowan Cantuar: +Sentamu Ebor:
[1] The administration of Holy Communion in the Church of England is principally governed by section 8 of the Sacrament Act 1547, which provides that
'... the... most blessed Sacrament be hereafter commonly delivered and ministered unto the people... under both the kinds, that is to say of bread and wine, except necessity otherwise require...'
[2] http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/swineflu/governmentadvice.doc
[3] http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/swineflu/letter23609.doc
[4] http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/swineflu/communion.doc
[5] http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/swineflu


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Especially important before the first flight of the day, pre-flight checks could save you a nasty crash – here's what I check before I go flying. What did I forget?
It's not an exhaustive list by any means, but it's focused on flight-critical systems and flying safety. You will also probably want to run checks on your camera, FPV system and anything else to make sure you get those shots.
If you find these videos useful, please like share and subscribe, and if you'd like to support the channel please consider becoming a patron: http://www.patreon.com/newton
Twitter: @Simon_Quads
My "On the Kitchen Table" videos are mainly aimed at newcomers to multirotors, quadcopters, drones and UAVs, particularly to the DJI product range, and the Phantom line in particular. I have how to's, product reviews, tips, tricks, hints and information for beginners and those in the early stages of the hobby. I film "on the kitchen table" to show people that, like me, you don't need a workshop and an array of specialist equipment and years of experience to get started and progress with flying these amazing aircraft and enjoying making great aerial videos and stills. So if you have bought, or are thinking of buying, a DJI Phantom, Phantom FC40, Phantom 2, Phantom 2 Vision or Vision+ or Plus, or even building your own DJI Flamewheel F450 or F550, we can do it… on the kitchen table!

subset: commoncrawl


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Flo Mirtain iPhone Section
When we started working with Flo on his interview (featured in our current issue) we asked him if he had anything we could drop on the site to accompany it's release. Given he's working on a proper video part for the end of the year, we were half expecting him to say no. That was of course underestimating the young man's work ethic and he came through with not one but two amazing clips, the first of which is his this iPhone section edited by Guillaume Colucci. Enjoy and keep your eyes peeled for his footage in the new Josimard Crew production that should be making its way to freeskatemag.com very soon.


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"Thou Wast Chosen Before Thou Wast Born" – Lesson 2 (Old Testament Manual)
Posted by joespencer on January 10, 2014
Well, it's been far, far too long since I last posted here at Feast. And I think I might make a habit again this year of posting somewhat regularly. I was called some months ago as one of several Gospel Doctrine teachers in my ward, and that's reason enough for me to turn my attention back to things here. I didn't do any posts on the Doctrine and Covenants simply because the lessons in the manual aren't conducive to the kind of posts I write. But I think I'd like to use the blog here to air thoughts as I work through material for my Old Testament lessons. As always, my notes aren't much good for others, I suspect. I don't mean to provide anything like a lesson plan, but only to work through some of the texts I'm wrestling with as I prepare to teach. I should also apologize that I probably won't get these notes up with much time to spare before others will be teaching these lessons. I just haven't the time this year to get these done much in advance of my own responsibilities to teach. And I'll only be working through notes on the lessons I'll be teaching (every other lesson during the year), for which I also apologize.
Okay, enough stalling. To work!
I'll be frank from the outset that I find this lesson a bit frustrating. It seems to me that it forces the biblical text—in part by simply avoiding the biblical text and privileging the Books of Moses and Abraham—to tell the story of the plan of salvation in a way foreign to it. As we tell the story, we generally begin from the premortal existence as a kind of setting of the stage, and then we turn to the creation and its aftermath. Not only does the biblical text not do this, the Book of Moses doesn't do this. We get our first glimpse of the premortal world only in Moses 4, and then it's a pretty limited glimpse (I'll say more about that further along). It's only with the Book of Abraham, rather late in Joseph Smith's prophetic career, that we get a scriptural text that gives us a story about premortal existence before it gives us a creation story. We're clearly privileging the Abraham approach, and I find it difficult to shake the feeling that we're privileging it rather unthoughtfully.
Those are my frustrations, but I'm happy to swallow them for the moment. The task here is to begin to think about the premortal existence. The lesson focuses principally on two texts: Abraham 3:21-28 and Moses 4:1-4. I'll give my attention exclusively to these two texts. But rather than looking at how the two texts together give us a story we're far too used to telling about things premortal, I want to look at how different the two accounts of the premortal are. Rather than reconciliation or fusion, let's play with estrangement and distinction, and see what we can't learn.
Narrative Settings
Although we tend to begin from the Book of Abraham version of things and then turn to the Book of Moses version of things—and I won't deny that there's a certain logic to that—I want to begin from the Book of Moses version and then turn to the Book of Moses. Moses 4 was given to Joseph Smith more than a decade before Abraham 3. The Book of Moses represents a much milder departure from what was familiar to early Latter-day Saints from the Bible than does the Book of Abraham. I think it's probably helpful to begin there, then, and only then to look at how the Book of Abraham complicates the story.
A first point, then, that needs to be addressed is the fact that the Book of Moses's quick peek at the premortal world comes four chapters into the story, and only after the creation story familiar from the Bible has been completely told. Remember how the Book of Moses opens. In Moses 1, we get a story entirely absent in the biblical text: the story of Moses's experiences in "an exceedingly high mountain" (Moses 1:1), clearly related in certain ways to Moses's complex experiences related in Exodus 32-34 but unmistakably distinct from and earlier than those experiences. Moses 1 serves as a kind of prologue to the creation, setting up the occasion on which Moses was first given to understand the creation he'd go on to record for posterity. Note, then, that Moses's mountain-top encounters with God and Satan serve where we'd naturally place a story about the premortal realm. The Book of Moses doesn't get to the premortal until later.
When does the Book of Moses introduce the premortal? Only after (but immediately after) the creation stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2—these, though, altered in a host of fascinating ways we've got to skip over here. Moses 3 ends, just as Genesis 2, with the creation of Adam and Eve and the statement that they were "naked . . . and were not ashamed" (Moses 3:25). But where Genesis 3 opens with the subtle serpent, Moses 4 opens with an aside about Satan, who—according to the Book of Moses, but never mentioned in Genesis—"put it into the heart of the serpent . . . to beguile Eve" (Moses 4:6). Here the Book of Moses is clearly meant to fix a problem in the Genesis text, which never clarifies the role of Satan in the fall. And it does it not only by stating that Satan inspired the serpent, but also by making clear who Satan was. (In this regard, the opening of Moses 4 is very like 2 Nephi 2:17-18, Lehi's aside in the middle of his fall story regarding Satan's premortal origins.) It's fascinating that it's only here that Satan's origin story is told in the Book of Moses. Satan has already been a major character in Moses 1 (and Moses 4:1 makes reference to that fact), but he's only explained at this point. In other words, it would have been pretty easy to provide a bit of an account of the premortal back in Moses 1, but it's only here that we get a glimpse. That's important, I think.
How does all this compare to the Book of Abraham? Not unlike the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham opens with a series of experiences with the divine, experiences that led up to the prophet's learning of the creation. Abraham's stories are a bit less transcendent at first, however. Where Moses 1 recounts experiences on a mountain top, Abraham 1-3 recounts experiences on Pharaoh's altar in Ur, on the road to and through Palestine, and at the borders of Egypt. It's only as Abraham reaches the boundary of Egypt that something transcendent like Moses's experience unfolds, but even then it's apparently from wherever Abraham is sojourning (through the Urim and Thummim) rather than on a sacred mountain top. All those differences are important, but they result in a similar sort of vision: Abraham is given, like Moses, to see the creation. Also like Moses, that vision of the creation begins with a kind of insight into God's works more generally. We have more detail with Abraham's experience—with Moses we're told only that he saw the earth and/or world and its inhabitants, but it's not clear what that means—and it's pretty heady stuff: Kolob and so on. (All this is pretty clearly meant to be related to Abraham's experiences in Genesis 15, but again the occasion is supposed to be distinct—earlier than the biblical occasion.) As this complicated vision winds its way to a conclusion, though, Abraham is given to understand that there's a kind of parity between God's creations and uncreated spirits, since both are arranged in some kind of hierarchy: "These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all" (Abraham 3:19). And all this serves as a segue into the creation story Abraham has to tell, which beings with the spirits in their premortal condition.
Here in Abraham, then, the creation story is preceded by a story about the premortal. Also, the story about the premortal is far more robust than in Moses. Where in Moses that story is entirely focused on Satan—his origins and nature—in Abraham the story is focused first and foremost on all "the intelligences that were organized before the world was" (Abraham 3:22). Satan's story is told, but very briefly and without any emphasis. Because the story of the premortal isn't in the Book of Abraham meant to explain, after the fact, the existence and nature of a certain character who effectively interrupts the creation after its completion, but is instead meant to explain those who undertook the creation itself, it has a rather different place in the narrative, and a rather different focus. Here we're being given to understand, not Satan, but those "noble and great ones" (Abraham 3:22) who "went down at the beginning," those the Book of Abraham doesn't hesitate to call "the Gods" (Abraham 4:1), to organize the earth.
Even just in terms of narrative placement, then, these two stories about the premortal existence are radically distinct—with different narrative purposes, different emphases, and different main characters. And that's just the beginning of a whole host of important differences.
The Role of Christ
I've already emphasized the fact that Satan is the primary focus of the Moses story, while he's only a minor element of the Abraham story. If there's a primary figure in the Abraham story, it's probably the Son—though there's a host of ambiguities in the Abraham text that we tend to sweep under the rug. I'll ignore those ambiguities for the moment and just assume that we're indeed dealing with Christ where we tend to assume we're dealing with Christ. So here's a major difference between the two accounts: although Satan is present in the Abraham account, it's Christ that's standing in the spotlight; and although Christ is present in the Moses account, it's Satan that's standing in the spotlight. I want, then, to ask about the differences between the presentations of Christ in the two accounts. How do they differ? What role is Christ playing in the Moses account? What role is He playing in the Abraham account?
Here again I'll begin with the Book of Moses. Christ is actually mentioned there often, though He's not the central focus. He's first introduced, fascinatingly, as a figure who helps Moses to identify Satan: "That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning" (Moses 4:1). God doesn't identify Satan to Moses here by referring to the one who tempted him, or by referring to the one who claimed he was God's son, or by referring to the one who ranted on the earth. He identifies Satan to Moses by referring to the one whom Moses commanded in the name of God's "Only Begotten." From the outset of the Moses account, Satan can't be understood apart from his subjection to the Son. He's first and foremost the one who has to submit when he's commanded in the name of the Son. This same sort of role for Christ comes up in verse 3 as well: "because that Satan rebelled against me . . . by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down." That's most interesting. It's not just Moses who commands Satan in the name of God's Only Begotten. God Himself deals with Satan through the instrumentality of the Son. It's not at all clear what "the power of mine Only Begotten" is. Is the idea that the Father had the Son do the dirty work of casting Satan out of heaven? Is the idea that the Son directed what Latter-day Saints call "the war in heaven"? Is the idea that the Father did the work, but did it somehow through or with the power of the Son? Or what? (This question is all the more poignant given the fact that verse 3 seems to distinguish between "mine own power" and "the power of mine Only Begotten." How are we to understand that difference?)
There's a first role Christ plays in the Book of Moses account. The more overt role, though, appears in verse 2. This follows on a description of Satan's arrogant assertion before the Father: "I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind," etc., in verse 1. Here's what the text then says: "But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever." Here we learn a bit about who the Son is supposed to be: He's God's "Beloved and Chosen from the beginning." It's not entirely clear what those names are supposed to teach us. Is it significant, for instance, that the word "Son" doesn't appear after "Beloved" in "Beloved and Chosen"? That is, are we perhaps to understand that the "Beloved Son" was "Beloved" from the beginning, but not the "Son" from the beginning? Is that reading too much into the text? At least this much is clear, there was some kind of chosenness about Christ from quite early on, and that seems to indicate that there was something amiss about Satan's confrontation described in verse 1. That Satan offered to be God's son (or demanded it, perhaps) comes across by verse 2 as an attempt to usurp the position already obtained and held by Christ. And then it's worth noting that Christ here comes into the story when He approaches God immediately after Satan's offer/demand. And all He says is: "Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever." The first part of that almost sounds as if Christ is willing to let the Father choose Satan, should He desire it. But the second part clarifies the meaning. Since Satan ends his confrontation with "give me thine honor," Christ's "the glory be thine forever" seems to stand as a rebuke to Satan's arrogance. The Son is reasserting His position, affirming His right to it because of His submission to the Father.
There's much to learn in all that, but let me leave it a bit undeveloped so I can turn to Abraham. What do we find there?
The Abraham 3 passage begins with God standing "in the midst" of "the noble and great" spirits, those He planned to "make [His] rulers" (verses 22-23). And then we get this story: "And there was one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him . . ." (verse 24). We'll get to what He says in a moment, but let's make a note or two first. The traditional reading takes this figure "like unto God" to be Christ. The more I look at this passage, though, the more I'm inclined to think it's best interpreted as Adam, whose other name (Michael) literally means "he who is like God." But let me stick with the traditional interpretation for at least a moment here, seeing what role Christ plays here if indeed the one "like unto God" is the Son. Here's what that figure proposes to the other "noble and great ones": "We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; and we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them; and they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep the second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever" (Abraham 3:24-26). There's a lot going on in these words, but let's just see what this sort of proposal would imply about Christ's role in this story. If this figure is indeed the Son, then we have something rather different from the Moses account. In Moses, we get Christ as chosen from the beginning (but that noted only retroactively), and then we get Him countering Satan's proposal with one of His own—namely, to follow the Father's already-determined plan. Here in Abraham, though, we get no indication that Christ is chosen from the beginning, only that He's "like unto God." And we get no sense here that He's countering Satan so much as taking on Himself to propose a plan. (Of course, one might suggest that He's just communicating to others what God has already assigned to Him, but that's something we bring to the text, not something the text presents to us.)
All that's interesting, but, as I say, I'm increasingly convinced that we're off base when we assume that the one "like unto God" is Christ or the Son. Interpretively, it seems more likely to me that we're seeing Adam or Michael making a proposal. This seems all the clearer to me when, a few verses later, a figure clearly meant to be Christ is described not as one "like unto God," but as one "like unto the Son of Man" (verse 27). I'm guessing that what we've got here is a kind of symmetry of the following kind: the human figure (Adam) is described as "like unto God," while the divine figure (Christ) is described as "like unto the Son of Man." The earthly has to be described as like the heavenly, and the heavenly has to be described as like the earthly. That's what I'm guessing. And if that's right, then Christ doesn't really become a major character in the Abraham story until even later. Rather than being the Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, He comes into the story only once Adam has made a proposal regarding the nature of creation and its purposes. Maybe.
At any rate, let's say something about Christ as He appears in the last part of the Abraham text. Once the plan is proposed, whoever proposes it, we get this: "And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first. And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and, at that day, many followed after him" (Abraham 3:27-28). Here again we get a kind of reversal or inversion of the Moses story. Rather than Satan being the one who makes a proposal, which Christ then counters with His own, we have Christ making a proposal ("Here am I, send me"), which Satan then counters with his own ("Here am I, send me"). Where in Moses it seems that Christ is the second speaker and God says something like "I will send the second," here Christ is the first speaking and God says "I will send the first." Moreover, we get no sense in the Abraham text that one of the two figures is proposing some kind of rebellion, or is proposing to problematize agency, and we get no sense that the other figure means to support God's original plan. Instead, we get the sense that the two speakers are on the same level. The difference between them emerges not because one accords with God's plan and the other doesn't, but because one is chosen over the other, and the other throws a fit: "And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate." Satan's rebellion comes in response to God's choice between two apparent equals, not because he seems to think there's something wrong with the plan itself—which is suggested in the Moses account.
We've got, then, a rather different understanding of Christ in the Abraham story. Of course, the story is sketchy, and perhaps we should fill in all kinds of speculative detail, and perhaps we should do so by drawing on Moses, as we usually do. But I think it's important to notice how differently these two texts tell this story.
On Isaiah 6
A third point of comparison I'd like to take up is how each of these two texts relates to Isaiah 6. Hopefully that text is familiar enough: Isaiah's in the temple when the veil is suddenly parted and he sees God—something that fills him with dread until a seraph cleanses his lips with a coal from the altar. Purified, Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord asking His angelic council whom he might send to accomplish what turns out to be a dreadful task: preaching to an intentionally hardened people. Isaiah, though, having joined the angelic throng, offers his services: hineni shalakhni, "Here am I, send me" (Isaiah 6:8). It's a beautiful response. The first part echoes Abraham's obedient responsiveness to God, his consistent "Here am I" which is clearly meant to contrast, in the Genesis narrative, with Adam's hiding at the voice of the Lord. The second part anticipates the apostolic order of the Christian era, since "apostle" means "sent one" (the Greek translation of Isaiah 6:8 uses a form of the word "apostle" for Isaiah's "send me"). Isaiah is the figure of redeemed humanity: cleansed and attuned to God's voice, he not only presents himself faithfully and responsively before the Lord, he also asks to be given the work of preaching and angelic ministry.
Why is all of this relevant? Because Isaiah's "Here am I, send me" was entirely unique to Isaiah in scripture (apart from its partial echoes and partial anticipations, of course) until Joseph Smith provided the world with Moses 4 and Abraham 3. In both of these texts, "Here am I, send me" appears, and in both cases it's a key feature of premortal events. (Note that it doesn't appear anywhere else in Restoration scripture either: only in these two narratives.) It's quite appropriate that Isaiah's words are to be found in the stories of the premortal council, since it's precisely in God's angelic council that Isaiah uses the words, and it's precisely when the Lord's determining His purposes regarding the earth that Isaiah uses the words. It's as if we're given to understand that this is the right and key response to God's call in His council. So let's take a look at how this "Here am I, send me" business functions in our two texts.
Beginning, once more, with Moses, we find the following: "That Satan . . . came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor" (Moses 4:1). The first appearance of the phrase in the scriptures of the Restoration is profoundly ironic. It's found on the lips not of the obedient and faithful, as with Isaiah, but on the lips of the rebellious devil. "Here am I, send me" here becomes a gesture of arrogance. It's not here an expression of a willing acceptance of a troubling—even paradoxical—assignment, but precisely a rejection of that sort of thing. Isaiah's "Here am I, send me" is marked by a certain willing trust in God's intentions even though they seems terribly odd. Satan, however, offers his "Here am I, send me" apparently only because he's clearly convinced that God's plan will fail. The muted-but-still-present tone of humility and subjection is thus at best ironic. How can "send me" be coupled with Satan's constant repetition of "I," with his arrogant assurance that "surely" he "will do it," and especially with his demand for God's "honor"? At any rate, Satan's "here am I" has an entirely different tone than Isaiah's does. Where Isaiah's echoes Abraham in its unflinching faithfulness, its willingness to stand before God, Satan's seems to be demanding God's uninterested attention. Satan's "here am I" isn't responsive so much as interruptive, it seems.
All this is fascinating. And then it's all the more fascinating that the phrase doesn't make a second appearance in the Moses text. When Christ offers His counter-proposal in the next verse, He doesn't use Isaiah's words: "Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever" (Moses 4:2). Christ isn't here being responsive to God; He's countering Satan, and so there's no need for Him to echo Abraham. If we were to get a "Here am I, send me" from Christ, it would presumably have come before Satan's rebellion. But Moses tells us no such story. For Moses, the borrowing from Isaiah is only undertaken by Satan, and that in a horrible way. Uncleansed, in arrogance, Satan performs a kind of witch's sabbath parody of Isaiah's sacramental experience in the divine council. The Book of Moses leaves us thus a bit unsettled on the whole affair.
Very different, again, is the Book of Abraham. There it's only after the proposed plan has been laid out that we get any echoes of Isaiah—after, that is, the one "like unto God" (who I'm taking to be Adam or Michael) has proposed going down to make an earth. In response to the proposed plan, the Lord asks the very question He asks in Isaiah 6: "Whom shall I send?" (Abraham 3:27). Actually, the question is slightly different, and that may be important. Isaiah 6:8 gives us "Whom shall I send?" But it also gives us "And who will go for us?" That second question is of importance for at least the following reason: the plural first person suggests that the whole council of the gods is to be represented by the sent one. The double question of Isaiah 6 is reduced to a single question here: "Whom shall I send?" We get only an indication that the Lord wants to know whom to send. Still, the heavy presence of a whole council of gods in Abraham may be quite relevant. At any rate, it's worth noting that the fact that we actually have a question from the Lord in Abraham 3 is significant. In Moses, we simply have Satan showing up, responding to nothing with his "Here am I, send me," attempting to arrogate to himself a position of authority. In Abraham, however, we have a full proposal of a plan, and then we have the Lord asking a question that deserves and calls for a response.
Then we get the following: "And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first" (Abraham 3:27). This is a very different sort of thing, no? We get two responses, one from someone "like unto the Son of Man," and one simply from "another." But both say exactly the same thing: "Here am I, send me." Each echoes Isaiah's words exactly. What's odd when the text is compared with Isaiah 6 is simply that there are two responses rather than one. Is the second supposed to be a kind of parodic echo, a superfluous offer? Or are both offers supposed to be on something like equal grounds? Why is it that we're told that one's "like unto the Son of Man," while the other is reported to us only as the voice of "another"? At any rate, there's nothing in the actual responses that helps us to differentiate the two. They bear exactly the same form and content, and they seem to offer exactly the same thing. Gone entirely is the suggestion that the second "Here am I, send me" is unresponsive and interruptive, that it transforms the "Here am I" into an arrogant demand for attention, that it makes of the "send me" a gesture of rebellion and attempt at usurpation. Here the "Here am I, send me" seems to be a kind of simple offer, a willingness on the part of two different people among the "noble and great ones" to do God's work. It would seem that it's only when the one is chosen that the other rebels and causes real trouble.
Interestingly, we tend to find a great deal of passion and humility in Christ's "Here am I, send me" here. That's largely unjustified. If we can find any of that, it seems we'd be able to find it as much in Satan's "Here am I, send me" as well, since there's little to differentiate the two. And there's no further note of how Christ offers Himself. Here we have no talk of God's will being done, of the glory being the Father's, or any such thing. We have the simple self-offering that can be found in Isaiah as well. If anything, the "Here am I, send me" of Abraham 3 is less submissive than that of Isaiah 6, simply because the plan is laid out in Abraham 3 beforehand; Isaiah offers himself without having heard what will turn out to be a deeply troubling plan. It's only laid out for Isaiah after he's offered himself. So here again Isaiah 6 is taken up—in certain ways now more closely to the biblical text, but in other ways still distant or distant in distinct ways.
Concluding Thoughts
Where do these thoughts leave us? I'm not entirely sure. I should be clear that I do think the Moses and Abraham stories can be productively reconciled—intertwined even. I don't think there's any particularly wrong with suggesting that the two narratives are giving us to understand different aspects of a single coherent story. Nonetheless, I think it's worth looking carefully at these tensions between the two texts in order to help us raise questions about how they might shed rather different light on things premortal. How should we think about these two glimpses of something extra-earthly? That's a question we need to think about much further.
6 Responses to ""Thou Wast Chosen Before Thou Wast Born" – Lesson 2 (Old Testament Manual)"
January 10, 2014 at 9:03 am
Thanks for analyses and helpful thoughts. I like your noting the ambiguous nature of the individuals presented in the Abraham drama. Back in 2011, I wrote a blog post somewhat riffing on this to propose a reading of the three unique 'rejection of Satan' scenes in Restoration scripture (Moses, Abraham, Temple Endowment) to weave an interesting (if perhaps unintended) canonical progressing narrative. FWIW, I still think it's fun. http://improvementera.com/2011/07/the-three-rejected-roles-of-satan/
January 10, 2014 at 3:41 pm
20 years ago I suggested to my New Testament teacher at BYU that the one "like unto God" might be Michael and he totally dismissed me. That was the end of my caring about his class :-(
January 10, 2014 at 3:45 pm
I also tend to read the one "like unto God" as Michael/Adam, but linguistically I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as pointing to the translation of his name might suggest. The English word "who" serves both to ask questions ("Who spoke?") and to form relatives ("the one who spoke"), but if I understand correctly, the two functions are separate in Hebrew. "Mi" is the question, but the relative is "sh-" or "asher" (depending on the era/area). So one who is like unto God might be named Shechael, but Michael's name is a question.
(Traditionally, the question has been taken as rhetorical, presuming that God is unequaled. But as a Latter-day Saint I can't ignore Adam's role inaugurating our probation, pressing that question upon the human family: Who among us will prove to be like God?)
January 10, 2014 at 6:23 pm
[…] bloggers have done some great and thoughtful analyses of this lesson, such as Ben Spackman and Joe Spencer. I've even considered an alternate and expanded narrative of these passages a few years ago, in […]
January 11, 2014 at 10:30 am
Nice, Joe. I don't know the extent to which you were consciously thinking this, but it seems the lack of differentiation between Christ and Satan in Abraham's account really heightens the theme of grace when one is called and chosen of God (I'm thinking here esp. of various thoughts pertaining to Job that you have articulated previously).
January 19, 2014 at 7:31 am
I appreciate the notes that anyone puts hereregardless of if they are available for those who prepare lessons. As a Primary teacher I feel distant from the gospel doctrine curriculum and appreciate being able to review things on this website from time to time.
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Wessling, Germany, 27 July, 2012 – The CAM software manufacturer OPEN MIND Technologies AG, a Mensch und Maschine company, remains on track for growth. In the first quarter of 2012, the company recorded a 20 per cent increase in turnover compared with the same quarter in 2011. Given this result, the company is expecting to continue its positive business development in the future. With direct sales exceeding €30 million, 2011 was the most successful year in the company's corporate history. This is also reflected in the number of employees. The development department grew by 29 per cent and benefited most from the hiring spree.
"OPEN MIND specialises in the development of CAM software. Our hyperMILL CAM solution has been a technology leading tool for years and has allowed us to consistently increase our market share," says Volker Nesenhöner, CEO of OPEN MIND Technologies AG. "Our success as an independent developer speaks for itself and we are confident that we will continue our global expansion based on this strong foundation."
OPEN MIND reported direct sales of €27 million in 2010. In 2011, sales climbed to over €30 million. Products from the hyperMILL® CAM suite are currently in operation in over 15,000 installations around the world. The CAM solution combines all strategies for 2D, 3D, HSC, 5axis and mill/turn machining under a single, highly intuitive interface. The broad range of processing strategies allows even complex workpieces to be machined in a single setup.
Climbing up the rankings
In the latest CIMdata NC Market Analysis Report OPEN MIND is ranked on the seventh position in terms of global CAM software market shares, which is one position up compared with 2010. The reasons for OPEN MIND's business success include a strong focus on hands-on further development and optimisation of the CAM machining strategies, consistent process chains and a winning international expansion strategy based on wholly owned branch offices. In terms of global expansion, the company has been increasingly focusing on growth markets such as Russia and the CIS states since 2011.


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In January, 10 exceptional former student-athletes will be honored as the 2019 Today's Top 10 Award winners at the NCAA Convention.
The award recognizes former student-athletes for their successes on the field, in the classroom and in the community. Recipients completed their athletics eligibility during the 2017-18 academic year and will be recognized at the Honors Celebration on Wednesday, Jan. 23, in Orlando, Florida.
The honorees are selected by the NCAA Honors Committee, composed of representatives of NCAA member schools, conferences and distinguished citizens, including past awardees.
The following former student-athletes are the 2019 Today's Top 10 awardees:
Ama Biney
School: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Major: Management Engineering
Sports: Women's Basketball, Softball
Ama Biney was a dual-sport athlete at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, competing in women's basketball and softball. In softball, the team co-captain was the 2018 New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference Athlete of the Year and a 2018 National Fastpitch Coaches Association first-team All-American. In basketball, Biney was the NEWMAC's 2018 Co-Athlete of the Year. Biney was also named the NEWMAC Defensive Player of the Year in both 2017 and 2018. In 2016, she helped the Engineers to NEWMAC tournament titles in both basketball and softball. Biney also led WPI softball to a pair of NCAA Division III Softball Championship regional titles in 2015 and 2016 and aided WPI women's basketball to a Division III women's basketball tournament appearance in 2016. Biney also excelled in the classroom. She earned College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America honors for softball in 2016 and 2018 and NEWMAC Academic All-Conference honors throughout her career at WPI. Biney led through her involvement on campus and engagement within the community. For four years, she was a volunteer mentor with Big Brother Big Sisters of America. Additionally, she volunteered monthly with Girls Inc., belonged to several student organizations and served as a WPI camp counselor. In both 2017 and 2018, WPI recognized Biney's leadership with the Crimson and Gray Award, given to students who demonstrate outstanding leadership abilities and make significant contributions to improve the quality of student life at the university.
Andrea Bryson
School: St. Cloud State
Major: Chemistry
Sport: Women's Swimming and Diving
Andrea Bryson, who swam for four years at Division II St. Cloud State, graduated in 2018. After strong showings at the NCAA championships, she earned All-America honors in 2017 and 2018. During her time with the Huskies, she won eight event titles in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference and New South Intercollegiate Swim Conference championship meets. She rounded out her career with 2018 NSIC individual titles in the 50-yard freestyle, 100 freestyle, 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle events. Bryson was named both the 2018 NSIC Swimmer of the Meet and overall NSIC Swimmer of the Year for her outstanding performances. The same year, she also set conference records in the 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle events. Bryson was a College Swimming Coaches Association of America Scholar All-American for four straight years. In 2018, she earned College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America At-Large honors. During the 2014-15 academic year, she was named Freshman Chemistry Student of the Year. As a senior, Bryson earned the American Institute of Chemists Award, given to the student with the highest grade-point average in the chemistry department. For three years, Bryson was a University Ambassador, serving as a representative for St. Cloud State at official university and charitable events. Additionally, she represented the women's swimming program on the school's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, including taking the role of vice president. With SAAC, she organized several initiatives, including food drives, a mental health panel and fundraisers. For her involvement and leadership on campus, Bryson was presented with the Dennis Thayer Excellence in Leadership Award in 2018.
Jevon Carter
School: West Virginia
Major: Sport Management
Sport: Men's Basketball
Former West Virginia men's basketball student-athlete Jevon Carter led West Virginia to 105 wins and four NCAA tournament appearances including three trips to the Sweet 16 during his career. The standout recorded 1,758 total career points and set the school record for most season steals (112), most career steals (330) and most season assists (246). In the 2017-18 season, Carter became the Division I steals leader with 112 and was the only Division I men's basketball player in the nation to average more than 17 points, six assists and three steals per game. Carter's decorated career includes a Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award, two National Association of Basketball Coaches Defensive Player of the Year awards, and two Lefty Driesell Defensive Player of the Year Awards among a host of All-America honors. Carter, a three-time Academic All-Big 12 men's basketball honoree, was also the 2017-18 College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-American of the Year for Division I men's basketball, the Big 12 Men's Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year and the Arthur Ashe Jr. Men's Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Additionally, Carter was the recipient of the 2018 Senior CLASS Award for men's basketball, honoring the attributes of college seniors in four areas: community, classroom, character and competition. While at West Virginia, he also served his community, volunteering at the Dream Foundation and the United Way basketball clinic among several other charitable organizations. Carter was drafted as the 32nd pick in the 2018 NBA Draft by the Memphis Grizzlies.
Lucas Kaliszak
School: Alabama
Major: Human Performance Exercise Science
Sport: Men's Swimming and Diving
Former Alabama men's swimming student-athlete Lucas Kaliszak graduated summa cum laude in 2018. While at Alabama, Kaliszak was a 12-time All-American, earning seven first-team accolades. He swam the butterfly leg on Alabama's first NCAA relay championship title as part of the 2016 200-yard medley relay. Kaliszak was a USA National Championships bronze medalist in the 100-meter backstroke in 2015 and a silver medalist at the 2017 U.S. Open as part of the Crimson Tide's 400-meter freestyle relay. He broke Alabama school records in four events, including two individual and two relays. In the classroom, Kaliszak was a two-time member of the College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-American At-Large First Team and a four-year College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America Scholar first-team All-American. In 2018, Kaliszak was named the Southeastern Conference Swimming and Diving Scholar-Athlete of the Year and earned postgraduate scholarships from both the NCAA and SEC. Kaliszak volunteered at a local elementary school for two years, speaking with fourth-graders about leadership, self-respect and other topics.
Alison Lindsay
School: Washington University in St. Louis
Majors: Political Science, French
Sport: Women's Cross Country, Track and Field
Alison Lindsay is a 2018 graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. A team captain on the cross country and track and field teams, she earned all-conference honors in both sports each season. She also earned U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association All-Midwest Region honors 11 times for indoor and outdoor track and field and All-Region honors all four years of cross country. In 2017, she was a member of the Division III indoor track and field distance medley relay championship team. That year she helped WashU to national championship titles in both the indoor and outdoor seasons. Lindsay also excelled in the classroom as a three-time College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-American and four-time USTFCCCA All-Academic honoree in both cross country and track and field. Last year, she was recognized with the A. Gwendolyn Drew Award for superior academic standing and contributions to athletics and the W. Alfred Hayes award for constructive leadership at WashU. On campus, Lindsay served as president of the Association of Christian Truth Seekers and led a student group of 30 in organizing service and fellowship events. From 2016 to 2018, she was also a member of the WashU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee where she participated on the fundraising team. As a junior, Lindsay was one of three students in her class to be inducted to the nation's oldest academic honorary society, Phi Beta Kappa. Lindsay also has served the community through volunteering with youth organizations, taking service trips, and helping at a nonprofit law office through the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project, which serves low-income immigrants in the St. Louis area and helped guide her to work as a paralegal.
Alex McMurtry
School: Florida
Major: Applied Physiology and Kinesiology — Exercise Physiology
Sport: Women's Gymnastics
Alex McMurtry sealed Florida's 2015 National Collegiate Women's Gymnastics Championships team title with her uneven bars routine as the Gators' final competitor of the meet. In 2017, McMurtry earned her first individual NCAA titles, emerging as champion in the uneven bars and all-around competition. That year, she tied the NCAA championships' uneven bars record and set the semifinal all-around record. In her last season with the Gators, she earned her third individual NCAA title as 2018 vault champion. The six-time Southeastern Conference champion earned All-America honors across all four events in both the regular season and postseason throughout her collegiate career. McMurtry was named the 2017 SEC Gymnast of the Year and the 2018 SEC Event Specialist of the Year. She is also a two-time National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches Southeast Region Gymnast of the Year. McMurtry graduated summa cum laude from Florida in August 2018. The three-time College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-American was also an NCAA Elite 90 awardee among several other high academic honors. While serving on Florida's Student-Athlete Advisory Council from 2015 to 2018, she organized and participated in several annual volunteer projects with the Goodwill Gators, Florida's community outreach program that fosters citizenship among staff, coaches, student-athletes and the greater Gainesville, Florida, community.
Keturah Orji
School: Georgia
Major: Financial Planning
Sport: Women's Track and Field
2018 NCAA Woman of the Year Keturah Orji served for three years on Georgia's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, including one year as vice president. In 2017, she founded Amara's Pride, an after-school mentoring program for middle school girls, focusing on self-worth, education, social media influences and perseverance. Orji, a 2018 Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar, was a member of Georgia's Sphinx Club honor society. She was named the Southeastern Conference Women's Track and Field Scholar-Athlete of the Year twice for outdoor and once for indoor, and she was the university's Joel Eaves Scholar-Athlete of the Year, presented to the female student-athlete with the highest GPA going into her senior year. She also received the SEC's H. Boyd McWhorter Postgraduate Scholarship, presented to the conference's top male and female scholar-athletes, and she earned an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. Orji was recognized by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association as the Division I Field Scholar-Athlete of the Year three times for outdoor and once for indoor. Orji — who competed and was fourth in the triple jump at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro — is a 15-time first-team All-American and eight-time NCAA individual national champion (four times in the outdoor triple jump, three times in the indoor triple jump and once in the outdoor long jump), helping Georgia win a team NCAA indoor championship in 2018. She holds the American and collegiate records for the indoor triple jump and the collegiate record for the outdoor triple jump. Orji was a four-time USTFCCCA Division I Women's Field Athlete of the Year, and she is the only woman in history to be a three-time finalist for The Bowerman award. She is now pursuing a graduate degree at Georgia and is a volunteer assistant with the Bulldog track and field program.
Ben Reeves
School: Yale
Major: Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology
Sport: Men's Lacrosse
Ben Reeves is a 2018 graduate of Yale, where he spent four years on the men's lacrosse team. Reeves was an immediate contributor on the field, earning 2015 Ivy League Rookie of the Year honors, and for three consecutive years, he received first-team all-Ivy League honors for his performance. Reeves was also named the 2017 and 2018 New England Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association Player of the Year. In addition to receiving All-America honors three years in a row, he was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year. Reeves was also a recipient of the 2018 Tewaaraton Award, an award given annually to the most outstanding American college lacrosse player. During his last season with the Bulldogs, he helped his team win the Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship. In the classroom, Reeves earned College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America honors in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, his name was listed on the NEILA All-Academic team. Outside of his athletic and academic responsibilities, Reeves is a regular volunteer at the local hospice care center. In the fall of 2015, he worked in the Yale cancer research lab, focusing on leukemia. The following summer, he worked at the University of Rochester, researching tumors of the neural crest while shadowing a pediatric oncologist at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York.
Kyle Snyder
School: Ohio State
Major: Sport Industry
Sport: Wrestling
Kyle Snyder, a 2018 graduate of Ohio State, captured both the Big Ten and NCAA heavyweight wrestling titles in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Snyder reached the NCAA finals all four seasons and helped the Buckeyes to an NCAA team championship in 2015 with runner-up finishes in 2017 and 2018. He earned All-America honors during each campaign and was named the Most Outstanding Wrestler at the 2016 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. That same year, he brought home Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro, leading to his distinction as the 2017 U.S. Olympic Committee's Male Athlete of the Year. Snyder added multiple world titles while at Ohio State, becoming the youngest Olympic and world champion in U.S. wrestling history. Snyder's academic success earned him the Big Ten Medal of Honor in 2018, an award given to a student-athlete from the graduating class of each university who attained the greatest proficiency in athletics and scholastic work. Additionally, he earned all-academic honors from the National Wrestling Coaches Association for four straight years, as well as Academic All-America honors from the College Sports Information Directors of America in 2017. Outside of sports, Snyder is committed to making a positive impact on the lives of children in his community. He has spent numerous hours with youth-focused organizations such as the Casey Cares Foundation, the 2nd & 7 Foundation and Nationwide Children's Hospital. Snyder also served as a motivational speaker at local elementary, middle and high schools and as a youth club wrestling instructor in the Columbus, Ohio, area.
Julia Wilson
School: Kenyon
Major: Psychology
Sport: Women's Swimming and Diving
Julia Wilson, a 2018 NCAA Woman of the Year Top 30 honoree who swam for Kenyon, graduated from the college in 2018. Wilson was a 2018 Division III champion in the 400-yard medley relay and the runner-up in the 100 breaststroke. Overall, she has six career top-three finishes in NCAA championship breaststroke events. Additionally, Wilson was a 14-time first-team All-American across nine individual events and five relay events. While at Kenyon, she set the school and North Coast Athletic Conference records in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke. In 2016, Wilson earned individual NCAC titles in both breaststroke events and the 200 individual medley. She helped Kenyon to two team NCAC titles in 2016 and 2018. Wilson was Kenyon's female winner of the NCAC Scholar-Athlete Award for the 2017-18 year. She was named the College Sports Information Directors of America Division III At-Large Academic All-American of the Year in 2018 and also received Academic All-America honors in 2017. In 2018, Wilson was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, a national academic honorary society, while already a member of Psi Chi, an international honor society for psychology. She received the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship and Emory's Laney Graduate School Fellowship. In addition to athletics and her classwork, Wilson volunteered with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and East Knox Elementary School, raised funds for the Alzheimer's Association, and served as a mentor and tutor.


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- Alzforum Recommends
Weston PS, Poole T, Ryan NS, Nair A, Liang Y, Macpherson K, Druyeh R, Malone IB, Ahsan RL, Pemberton H, Klimova J, Mead S, Blennow K, Rossor MN, Schott JM, Zetterberg H, Fox NC. Serum neurofilament light in familial Alzheimer disease: A marker of early neurodegeneration. Neurology. 2017 Nov 21;89(21):2167-2175. Epub 2017 Oct 25 PubMed.
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The study of NfL in autosomal-dominant AD (ADAD) provides exciting preliminary evidence supporting this as a progression marker. The effect size was much more impressive in symptomatic patients than in preclinical carriers, and it will be interesting to see how within-subject longitudinal serum or plasma NfL changes over time. In principle, this may provide one way to help monitor a therapeutic intervention that slows down neurodegeneration.
The study in MS takes monitoring of progression and of therapeutic intervention one step further, because of the availability of longitudinal plasma samples. The data overall support the use of NfL in the early stages of relapsing-remitting MS and in progressive MS, across groups of patients, and showed a beneficial effect of induction of disease-modifying therapy. It will be interesting to see how well NfL may behave as a way to monitor individual patients with MS, particularly in comparison to serial MRI.View all comments by Douglas Galasko
This is very interesting, but what is the underlying mechanism?
Why NfL? Why not other neurofilament components? There must be answers.View all comments by Takaomi Saido


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IN THE NEWS: Video games: risky or beneficial Playing video games may lead to improvements in areas of attention, cognitive control and workload, visuospatial skills and more. Video games may alter the reward-processing areas of your brain, potentially leading to addiction, and may desensitize players to violence. If you play video games on your TV or computer at night, be sure to take steps to protect yourself from exposure to blue light from the screen (such as wearing blue-blocking glasses after sundown). Addicted to video games: At an addiction treatment center in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, teenagers and young adults begin detox by admitting they are powerless over their addiction. But these addicts aren't hooked on drugs or alcohol. They are going cold turkey to break their dependence on video games. Keith Bakker, director of Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants, tells WebMD he created the new program in response to a growing problem among young men and boys. "The more we looked at it, the more we saw [gaming] was taking over the lives of kids." Detox for video game addiction may sound like a stretch, but addiction experts say the concept makes sense. "I was surprised we didn't think of it here in America," says Kimberly Young, PsyD, clinical director of the Center for On-Line Addiction and author of Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction -- and a Winning Strategy for Recovery. "I've had so many parents call me over the last year or two, particularly about the role-playing games online. I see it getting worse as the opportunity to game grows - for example, cell phone gaming." But can a game truly become an addiction? Absolutely, Young tells WebMD. "It's a clinical impulse control disorder," an addiction in the same sense as compulsive gambling.
WELLNESS: "The Power of Bioavailable B Vitamins – What Could Your Life Look Like If You Had More?" Low levels of B vitamins are becoming more commonplace just as researchers discover exciting new benefits for this valuable family of nutrients. For the sake of your body and brain, I suggest you take advantage of their new findings and, above all, make sure you're not making these eating and supplement mistakes. Researchers are discovering potential benefits of the family of B vitamins that are much greater than we ever imagined. Keep in mind; you don't need to have a flat-out deficiency in any of these vitamins. Surprisingly, many of the subjects in the studies you're going to hear about didn't. They just had lower levels. Increasing their intake of these vitamins made all the difference for these study subjects. Going from low or even routinely recommended minimal levels to optimal levels allowed them to benefit in significant ways! 13 Signs You May Be Low in B Vitamins: Inability to sleep well, Fatigue and apathy, Mental "fog," confusion, and forgetfulness, Mood swings and irritability, Gastrointestinal symptoms, Joint or muscle discomfort, Muscle weakness, Loss of muscle mass, Numbness or tingling in fingers and toes, Frequent bruising, Headaches, Irritability, Dry, cracking skin. Because the vitamin B complex is a group of eight major B vitamins that work together, you can impact their synergy just by running low on one. For example, many of the B complex vitamins are needed for healthy skin. If you're low in one or two, that can affect the actions of the others. Fresh, whole foods like meat, fish, dairy, and whole grains provide ample supplies of B vitamins. Yet once you process those foods, you jeopardize the integrity of the B vitamins as many are sensitive to heat, light, air, and long storage times. As we've just seen, these water-soluble nutrients are required for your healthy normal: Brain and nervous system function, Growth and development, Immune function, Energy production, Cell metabolism, Organ and tissue health, Muscle, skin, and eye health, Appetite and digestion. The B vitamins act as coenzymes and play a key role in the metabolism of carbohydrate, protein, and fat.
CHIROPRACTIC: INNATE INTELLIGENCE Healing comes from within. The wisdom that made your body can heal your body. Chiropractic science teaches that the body has an inborn ability to heal itself. In chiropractic, we call this innate intelligence. When you cut your finger in most cases all you need to do is clean the cut and the body will do the rest. When you break a bone if it is not severely dislocated the body can pull the bone back together and make it stronger than it was before the break. As a chiropractic physician, I rely on your body's inborn intelligence to produce the results from care. My job is to remove the interference and let innate intelligence do the rest. Yes, we have to give innate the proper building blocks through proper diet and nutrition plus we need to stop overloading the body with toxic chemicals and depleted nutrients like refined carbohydrates or junk food. Exercise, oxygen, clean water, stress reduction and proper rest are all components necessary for good health. Drugs cannot give you healthy tissue cells, vitamins cannot give you healthy tissue cells without innate intelligence doing its job. That's why the adjustment is so important. The doctor inside needs to have full access to every part of your body in order to maintain good health. Nerve pressure interferes with the innate intelligence's ability to restore health. Who do you know who would benefit from chiropractic care? Chiropractic releases health from within, not from a pill.
FUNNY BONES: Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that people who have the most live the longest.@@If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.@@Sorry for the mean, awful, accurate things I said.@@The more you weight the harder you are to kidnap. Stay safe, eat cake.@@I just wrote a book on reverse psychology. Do *not* read it!@@You can't be late until you show up.@@A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.@@Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock.@@Campers: Nature's way of feeding mosquitoes.@@Don't steal. The government hates competition.@@If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea... does that mean that one enjoys it?


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Fake cop given 15-month community order
An 18-year-old man who stole police clothing and pretended to be an officer has been given a 15-month community based order after the court was told he had been living out his boyhood dream of being a policeman.
Christopher Peter Michael Bergroth pleaded guilty to 38 offences after he was arrested and charged when confronted by police suspicious about his activities during a police station visit while impersonating an officer.
The court was told that on one occasion, Bergroth avoided a speeding fine by claiming to be a tactical response group police officer rushing to a job.
Today, the prosecution accepted that there had been no malicious intent by Bergroth and that he had been motivated by a genuine desire to be a police officer.
Bergroth's friend was investigated but has resigned from WA Police and no charges were laid against him.
Defence lawyer Michael Clarke outlined how his young client had feared his chances of being an officer and serving the community had been ruined after a foot injury in his high school years.
It was through a former boy scout friend who was working as an unsworn officer that Bergroth gained access to Police Headquarters in the city in April and was able to steal police uniforms destined for disposal.
Today, the Magistrates Court heard that he had gone on to visit a number of restricted areas in a string of police properties, including the East Perth watch house and Curtin House, after other officers believed he was an officer.
Over the next seven weeks he had impersonated an officer, gained access to restricted areas and stolen more items including handcuffs, a baton, access card and fuel card.
On one occasion while driving his own car, Bergroth had stopped at a car crash, offered first aid and taken witness statements which he later handed to police.
Mr Clarke told the court that while the offences were serious his client was a "benign threat" and it could be said that his actions had the "silver lining" of revealing flaws in police security.
Outside court, Mr Clarke had said it was fortunate his client was motivated by an honest desire to be a policeman after an accident he suffered while doing church volunteer work left him with an ankle injury.
It was after his first visit to the police watch house that Bergroth had found himself on a "slippery slope" and not thinking of the consequences.
"I think he got a lot of self esteem from it and thought he was gaining the respect of others," Mr Clarke said.
The lawyer said his client was "crushed" by the realisation he could never be an officer as a result of his crimes and was looking at joining the defence force.
Magistrate Greg Smith gave Bergroth, who had no prior convictions and had cooperated with police, a 15-month community based order and fines totalling about $2000.
Outside court, prosecutor Brent Meertens said the prosecution believed the penalty was appropriate that, fortunately, the Police had been able to some positives from the incident that resulted in a tightening of security.
Bergroth thanked his family and friends for their support.
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Almost 40,000 children and young people are in foster care and their needs vary greatly. For appropriate placements to be made, more foster carers from all walks of life and with growing skill and experience are needed.
What can we offer you?
We know that our foster carers make all the difference to our children, and we want to work with the best. We make sure that our carers have:


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The Donald plans to end his immediate predecessor's (HIP) Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy in six months. It is estimated to affect about 800,000 illegal aliens. The action by HIP was widely recognized as unconstitutional so The Donald's wisdom in this action seems obvious. The crazy reaction it has led to is amazing. Here was one on my Facebook feed:
Trump needs to be deported–not these aspiring young people. What a CREEP he is!!! And certainly delusional too–as Andy Borowitz so aptly summarizes in this article. (God help this country with this wacky, cruel, traitor for a president.)
We see there is no evidence that these folks are aspiring. We see no evidence that they will add to anything other than Democratic vote totals. We checked out Andy at the New Yorker. It says it is satire from the Borowitz Report and here is a sample:
"Under this new decision, if you have worked hard, gone to school, and contributed to the country, you face immediate deportation," one legal expert said. "On the other hand, if you can prove that you have a glaring personality disorder and a flimsy grasp on reality, you can decide the fate of those other people." [Quotes in original]
It is possible that Andy is making fun of the legal expert but it doesn't seem like it. There are six months for Congress to act as only Congress should. If they don't act it is unlikely that any large percentage of these illegal aliens will be deported.
The WSJ isn't much better. We know that they are open boarders advocates but they should have more respect for the rule of law even when it is the immigration law. The editors start the second paragraph with:
[The Donald] was at his worst during the campaign when he assailed DACA as an "unconstitutional executive amnesty," though to his credit he later evinced a change of heart toward these immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
Why was this The Donald at his worst? It is not quite clear but a couple of paragraphs later they admit:
But as a legal matter, they are right that Mr. Obama's DACA diktat presents legal problems. The Constitution gives Congress the power to write immigration law, and issuing work permits confers a right that is the purview of the legislative branch.
So the WSJ agrees that The Donald and most everyone else is right that HIP's action was unconstitutional. The Donald give Congress time to act. We hope they find some common ground to improve immigration policy and that the executive branch enforces that law. The Congress needs to find a way to compromise. It would help the Congress develop some backbone if folks responded more reasonably to events.


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The true meaning of SEO in essence is in its name. Search Engine Optimisation. But what does this actually mean?
To understand this lets break down the the individual words in the acronym. Search Engines are you internet web browser. The most commonly used and known is Google. In fact Google has become so popular that it has worked its way into every language. The answer to a common question of "how do I do this?" is now - "Why don't you just Google it?".
People from all walks of life now understand the power of Google in terms of being a tool that can help them find information on literally anything. And why? Well Google's goal is to be able to sort through the entire internet which contains billions and trillions of pages of data and information and return to the user or searcher the most relevant content. After all that is why Google has risen to the top of the search engines.
You have probably heard of the 2 other big guys in the search engine world, namely Yahoo and Bing. At one stage Yahoo was being used more and they were neck and neck with Google. However through some smart decision making and innovation Google has taken leaps and bounds and has become the most used search engine by far.
It all has to do with their search algorithm. You see when you are sorting through what seems like an infinite amount of data you need a way of finding what is relevant to return to the searcher and omit what is irrelevant. Google does this by using a very complex algorithm which scans the internet and categorizes all the information according to relevance or keywords, popularity from internet users and various other parameters. In fact no-one actually knows the total algorithm that is used by Google. If they let all their secrets out of the bag then it would be easy for people to manipulate their website to show up in higher in the search results, and a competitor search engine could easily copy and tweak to make their better. But this is not the case.
Instead the other search engines and internet marketers have a fair understanding of how Google's algorithm works and Bing, Yahoo and other search engines use a similar approach. Each with their own variations so that if you do the same search in each search engine you will get similar but different results.
So now onto the word Optimisation in SEO. This is where the real essence of SEO takes place. A good internet marketer understands what Google is looking for and how the algorithm works. As mentioned before no-one know s the exact parameters however through education it is easy to get a decent ball park idea. Enough to know how a website should be designed, how content should be written and structured, and what websites should be linking to any site to optimize its ranking in the search results. And even though the other search engines have different algorithms their concepts are very similar, so what will work for Google will be good enough to work for other search engines too.
So there you have it. SEO is effectively work that needs to be carried on a website and websites pointing to that website to improve its ranking in the search results. Obviously it is better for a website to be showing up higher in the rankings, ideally at number 1 spot. Because as we know Google wants to return the most relevant result to the searcher. So if the searcher is looing for Dog training and you have a dog training business, then you would want your website to come up at number 1 spot if that person searching is in your area of service.
Hopefully this has helped explain SEO as an overview. How to do the process of SEO becomes a complete lively hood in itself.


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All of our quality cleaning equipment and products are available
to view in our showroom in Cowley. We also offer free collection and delivery services for all of our customers within a 10 mile
radius of Oxford.
At Smith & Osman Services, we offer the best prices and the largest range of cleaning equipment.
With 40 years of experience, and 25 years of operating in the Oxford area, we have the knowledge required to bring you the best prices on top brand cleaning products.
At Smith & Osman Services, we have a great reputation
throughout the Oxford area. We are trusted suppliers of cleaning equipment for homes, offices, schools, colleges, universities, local authorities and hospitals.


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Audio: White House? Nah. But in race for most anti-gay House member, Bachmann a strong contender
Rep. Michele Bachmann, who once told an audience that homosexuality is "part of Satan, I think," is getting back into the viciously anti-gay game off which the Minnesota Republican largely built her national profile. In clips that Right Wing Watch posted today, Bachmann accuses gay activists of bringing about a "rise of tyranny" that will ultimately legalize polygamy, she predicted that God is going to punish same-sex marriage with "profound consequences that we haven't yet realized," and referred to this growing acceptance of equal marriage as part of the "evil we see unleashed upon the world today." Oh, and she also demanded that gay activists are creating a world where "adults will be able to freely prey on little children sexually."
Here's one clip; find the others at the subsequent link:
Michele Bachmann: Gays Want To Let Adults 'Freely Prey On Little Children Sexually' [RWW]


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It is expected that this symposium will attract eminent basic research scientists, biotechnologists and plant breeders from all over the world. Therefore, the symposium will provide opportunities to present and discuss current research and technology development in gene editing as well as to establish linkages among scientists in order to develop novel knowledge-based strategies. Therefore, the target audience for this symposium will include:
• Plant breeders involved in classical genetic improvement,
• Scientists engaged in applied research related to biotechnology and crop improvement,
• Molecular geneticists and scientists engaged in basic research,
• Plant pathologists, and
• Stakeholders involved in seed business, biotechnology and food industry, and biosafety regulation.


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Best Practices are for Beginners (So Grow Beyond Them)
Best practices are ruining the Internet and your sales. Time to put on your big kid pants and start making decisions based on data rather than a Google search.
Best practices rule the Internet. Best practices are the reason for every rotating carousel, email pop-up, social media button, and poor checkout process.
At The Good, we think of best practices as most common roadblocks to conversion. Best practices happen when every business looks to each other for their ideas and end up serving up the same cold, generic experience.
We've proven that relying on best practices can be a brand's worst idea. Instead, we we rely on a process–a series of steps that heats up a cold experience and delivers increased revenues and conversions.
The process we rely on is very different from what is considered a best practice. It isn't sexy, covered in splashy graphics, or presented with theatrical flare.
It is a data-driven approach.
It is based on expertise that spans a multitude of industries and verticals, intelligence born from years of work with e-commerce and lead generation websites, and ongoing research into consumers and industries.
It works.
Here's the basic overview:
Comprehensive Conversion Audit:
Our in-depth, proprietary report that breaks down a website to identify key elements, variables, obstacles, risks, and opportunities. The Comprehensive Conversion Audit is the roadmap for a business to realize massive online sales growth.
The Comprehensive Conversion Audit eliminates the guesswork that most agencies and marketers use to assemble or update a website. The report creates a digital to-do list and identifies where the highest priority should be placed.
The Comprehensive Conversion Audit provides evidence-based recommendations that provide high ROI, increased revenue, and increased conversions. Our experience has shown that evidence-backed recommendations often defy best practices and return huge results.
The Comprehensive Conversion Audit gives businesses the benefit of a fresh pair of eyes. Third party validation of priorities and initiatives is often the final nudge a project needs to move forward. We can help you achieve your goals by supporting you with evidence and data to champion your cause.
The Comprehensive Conversion Audit provides a clear view of a business from its consumers' perspectives. By looking at a website as a business owner or marketer, you see it through that lens. With the Comprehensive Conversion Audit, you will see your website as your customer does. If you aren't already a customer of your own site, you should be. It's amazing the empathy and discovery you'll have.
Prioritized initiative based on ROI
Having a laundry list of features and changes is nice, but putting that list into order of ROI is amazing. Using the discoveries of the Comprehensive Conversion Audit helps to prioritize the work a site needs that will realize the largest revenue and ROI first.
Best part, this isn't a guess. It's proven to work.
Conversion Growth Program
Uncovering how to unlock stuck revenue is just the beginning. Our Conversion Growth Program provides continued success, revenue gains, and conversion increases. This ongoing engagement works like an editor to refine, tune, and enhance a website.
The Conversion Growth Program dives deep into a website's data to understand and refine existing traffic sources; understand (and convert) non-converting visitors and customers; refine the digital and content strategy; and create an ongoing strategy for experimentation, testing, and implementation.
With each bit of data, test results, and analysis, we iterate. As your site's revenues grow and conversions increase, new opportunities will reveal themselves. This process builds upon these results helping your business further separate itself from the competition, making it harder for them to compete with you.
Sound too good to be true? Let us prove it to you.
Evaluate your site to start the process of doubling your online revenues.


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Lavabo Factory - Chinaprice: contact company for price
Lavabo | DreamBath manufacturer
Dreambath sanitaryware factory produce wash basin, lavabo and vanity sink etc. Product Name:Lavabo
Model No.: DB-9080EC Dimension: 800X460X140mm (1 inch = 25.4 mm) Volume: 0.073CBM Gross Weight: 20KGS (1 KG ≈ 2.2 LBS)
Lavabo shape: Rectangular Product features and detailed information as follows : 1. Material: vitreous china, high quality ceramic and glaze material 2. Colour: pure white
3. Virus resistant, eco-friendly 4.High temperature 1350 degree centigrade
5.Water absorption<0.5
6. Water-saving 7. Excellent flushing function & high quality
8. Easy to clean and install 9. Downcomer and faucet excluded
10.Sample available by charge for quality checking, but sample cost will be deducted from your next full container order
11. Warranty / guarantee duration: 24 month
12. Delivery time: Usually within 8-30 days according to your order quantity
13. Inner & outer Packing: Seaworthy standard export packing like foam +bubble wrap+wrapped in strong carton reinforced by two or three straps etc. or plus plywood pallet If needed, buyer logo could be printed on the packing box if enough 40 HQ container
14. Payment terms: T/T / Western Union / Cash acceptable, 30% deposite downpayment before production, and the balance amount before loading the container
15. Place of origin: China
16. Port of loading: Shenzhen / Foshan / Guangzhou, Guangdong, China 17. Trade terms: EXW / FOB / CNF / CIF
18. Factory production capacity: 30000 pcs / month
19. Surface treatment: glazed, smooth surface
20. MOQ: 10 pcs, but one piece would be ok if sample
21: HS Code: 69101000
22: OEM / ODM / Buyer label available, we could customize your products according to your design, shape and size etc.
23. Trademark: Dreambath, but normally without any logoes on the products
24. Certification: CE
25. We have a profession QC system to check every sink's quality before packing Lavabo Prev: Wash basin Next: Vanity sink | Washbasin | Bathroom sink | Bathtub | Basin sink |
Company Contact:
- Posted By: Foshan Dreambath Sanitaryware Co., Ltd.
- Phone: 008875782520278
- Address: No. 4, West Two Street, Bitang, Chancheng, Foshan, Guangdong, China, Foshan, Guangdong, China
- Email:
- Website: http://www.dreambath.cn/lavabo.html
Published date: May 5, 2017 -
- Business Description: Foshan DreamBath Sanitaryware Co. Ltd. is one of leading suppliers mainly dealing with all kinds of Sanitaryware such as Freestanding Bathtub, Bathroom Basin, Ceramic Basin, Washbasin, Counter Basin, Above Counter Basin, Under Counter Basin, Vanity Basin, Hand Basin, Bathroom Toilet, Bathroom Bidet, Pedestal Basin, Urinal and Squatting Pan, Resin Basin, Resin Bathtub & Microcrystalline stone basin and so on.
Related listings
Vessel Bathroom SinkNonresidential building construction services - Dreambath Sanitaryware Co., Ltd. - China - April 12, 2017 - contact company for price
Vessel bathroom sink | DreamBath manufacturer Dreambath sanitaryware manufacturer manufacture round vessel sink, vessel bathroom sink and oval sink etc. Product Name:Vessel Bathroom Sink Model No.: DB-233 Dimension: 650X475X190mm (1 inch = 25.4 mm) V...
Round Vessel SinkNonresidential building construction services - Dreambath Sanitaryware Co., Ltd. - China - April 12, 2017 - contact company for price
Round vessel sink | DreamBath manufacturer Dreambath sanitaryware manufacturer sell corner basin, round vessel sink and vessel bathroom sink etc. Product Name:Round Vessel Sink Model No.: DB-A162 Dimension: 435X435X120mm (1 inch = 25.4 mm) Volume: 0....
Corner BasinNonresidential building construction services - Dreambath Sanitaryware Co., Ltd. - China - April 12, 2017 - contact company for price
Corner basin | DreamBath manufacturer Dreambath sanitaryware manufacturer offer small basin, corner basin and round vessel sink etc. Product Name: Corner Basin Model No.: DB-A222 Dimension:590X445X160mm (1 inch = 25.4 mm) Volume:0.055 CBM Gross Weigh...
Safe Trade Tips
- Ask for business references and check them
- Use a payment method that offers better protection for all such as Letters of credit and verified professional escrow services. Avoid payments in advance such as money transfers
- Verify their business via their local Chamber of Commerce
- Search the internet using their website address, their business name, their phone and fax numbers, and their email addresses to see if you can find any feedback about them.
- Get to know more about scams to avoid: Internet Crime Complaint Center - International Financial Scams
- This site is never involved in any transaction, and does not handle payments, shipping, guarantee transactions, provide escrow services, or offer "buyer protection" or "seller certification"


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Display advertising can play a vital role in your marketing strategy. Whether you are looking to raise general awareness of your business or target a specific audience, display advertising solutions offer the flexibility and customization to suit any need or budget.
Leveraging Print Audiences
Even in today's diverse media landscape, newspapers continue to be among the most trusted and credible sources of news and information. Quality reporting draws a quality and engaged audience. Newspaper audiences actively seek information about the world around them and the sales around the corner. We connect you to this eager audience of savvy consumers. Our strategically developed marketing solutions can help you meet your goals and optimize your effectiveness. Print advertising can play a vital role. Whether you need broad reach or ZIP code-level targeting, our print solutions including The Express-Times, our EMC publication MainStreet Marketplace and other affiliated Hunterdon and Somerset County New Jersey newspapers providing the audience you want, where you want.
- Benefit from a supportive editorial environment
- Improve your marketing efficiency and effectiveness
- Reach your key targets at a lower cost than direct mail
Our print display advertising solutions include traditional in paper advertising, front page notes, skybox ads, front page strip ads, preprints and spadeas.
The Express-Times Audience Profile
Average HH Income: $92,466
Adults 55+ skew: 77%
Slight female skew: 58%
Homeowners: 88%
College Educated: 44%
Source: 2017/18 Release 2, Nielsen Scarborough Report, New York & Philadelphia Mix Study. Reside in Lehigh, Northampton,PA, Hunterdon, Warren, NJ


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A Husk of Metal
Synopsis: This week on the podcast, watchOS beta 1 gets temporarily pulled because it bricked some older devices, Apple Watch Series 4 rumours, some follow up on WWDC, Mac App Store free trials and upgrades, Siri upgrades, and more.
Duration: 45:31:00
Present: Michael Norton, Alex Knight
Episode Links
- watchOS 5 beta temporarily pulled over reports of the software bricking Apple Watch devices
- Apple Releases iOS 12 Beta 1
- ta-da, we have a (almost) full React Native environment under Marzipan. that's wild. thanks for your help, again!
- Apple Watch Will Soon Get Touch Sensitive Solid State Buttons
- App Store in macOS 10.14 & iOS 12: Free trials for non-subscription apps, more
- Tweetbot 4
Follow your hosts, guests, and the show on Twitter
- @ZeroDistraction
- @ZenImpulse
- @TheImpromptu
- @HologramRadio for updates on other interesting podcasts
Subscribe to The Impromptu!
- Get The Impromptu on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, RadioPublic, or via RSS.
Download: Episode 140: A Husk of Metal


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In 1861 a public museum was founded in Weston-super-Mare by founder, William Mable. William Mable, a shoemaker by trade, came to Weston-super-Mare from London in 1852. Fascinated by the excavations then taking place on Worlebury he began to put together a collection of "specimens of natural history". William's aim was "to secure a museum for the town of Weston, free to the public at all reasonable times".
Mable was a believer in the power of education and around 1859 he was one of the founders of a school in Carlton Street for disadvantaged young working boys. Education was still not compulsory at this time and many children did not learn to read or write. In 1861 he donated his collection to the school. In 1863 the nearby Emmanuel Church raised the money to build a hall in memory of the late Prince Albert, husband to Queen Victoria. Mable's Night School and collection moved in. In 1868 a large new room was added to the Albert Memorial Hall to house Mable's growing collection.
William Mable died in 1887. His broader vision of a Public Museum finally came to pass in 1901 when a purpose-built Library and Museum was built on the Boulevard – the work of celebrated local architect Hans Price.
After nearly 75 years of close association the library and museum services were separated following Local Government reorganisation. The Museum moved into its present premises in Burlington Street and was renamed "The Woodspring Museum" and reopened 30th June 1975. From this date the Museum Service's collecting area became the District of Woodspring and not just Weston-super-Mare. The premises had formerly been the workshops and store for the Weston-super-Mare Gaslight Company, having been developed in that role from a jumble of earlier buildings. The Gas Company moved out to Drove Road in 1970 and Weston Borough Council bought the building in 1973.
In 1985 The Museum acquired a Victorian cottage standing at the eastern end of the building. It has been furnished in the style of 1901 and adapted to house the Museum's wonderful collection of toys. It is known as Clara's Cottage after Clara Payne who lived there for many years. From 1996 North Somerset Council took over from Woodspring and the Museum was renamed "The Time Machine" until 2002, when its name changed yet again to "The North Somerset Museum".
Weston -super-Mare Town Council acquired the Burlington Street building in 2012 and wasted no time in making a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund to make major improvements. The bid was successful and the building has undergone a major redesign, and the collection is presented in an entirely new way. Now known as "Weston Museum" we are once again telling the story of Weston-super-Mare and North Somerset to a whole new generation of residents and visitors.
William Mable would probably be surprised and not a little delighted that his vision of a Museum for the town of Weston-super-Mare is still very much alive. The new Gallery for Temporary Exhibitions is named in his memory.
His collection has been added to over the years and the exhibits rewind the clock to allow visitors to discover how people made North Somerset their home, reaching back as far as the Iron Age and moving in chronological order right up to the 20th Century.
The family friendly museum caters for all ages and through inspiration, learning and enjoyment you can explore the galleries and exhibits to understand the past and ask questions about the present and the future. Weston Museum is community orientated as well as offering a delightful environment where you can simply enjoy a wander around our exhibitions and take part in our learning and events programmes.


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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
I tried MapPoint 2006 hoping to see an improved interface to UDM data. Unfortunately it seems there is not a direct support to OLAP cubes and a dynamic navigation with territory dimension.
I wrote a proof-of-concept of a .NET WinForm application that embed MapPoint 2004 as an ActiveX component and use levels of a Territory Dimension to choose what level of detail the user want to display on the map. I had to write data to a temporary file just to import them in MapPoint, but in generale it was very few lines of code. I hoped a better integration would have showed up in MapPoint 2006, but apparently MapPoint is still not considered a first-class citizen as a BI client application.


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The Central Pennsylvania Business Journal this week published the list of the highest-paid 10 executives in the region in 2010. Nine of these executives are men. The tenth was Mary F. Sammons, the former Chairman and CEO of Rite Aid.
Some of the salary information in The Business Journal is not new. (See, for example, the CEO pay list in Table A1, starting on page 21 of The State of Working Pennsylvania 2011.) What is new is that The Business Journal also published these executives' pay in 2009, allowing us to look at the change in pay from 2009 to 2010 for a group of Pennsylvania executives. (Earlier, we only had information on change in executive pay from 2009 to 2010 for U.S. CEOs.)
Here's what we found. The dollar increase in pay for these executives ranged from $2.55 million for Michael Lockhart of Armstrong World Industries to less than a million dollars (about $900,000) for Neil Shah, the President and COO of Hersha Hospitality Trust. The average increase was $1.64 million.
The percent increase in pay ranged from a mere 14% for Peter Carlino, Chairman and CEO of Penn National Gaming Incorporated, to nearly 100% for John Standley, the current President and CEO of Rite Aid.
With the increases received in 2010, the highest-paid Central Pennsylvania executive was Mr. Lockhart at $11.7 million. In second place at $10.5 million was David J. West, the former President and CEO of the Hershey Company, now at Del Monte. As we pointed out in The State of Working Pennsylvania, Mr. West's salary amounted to 55% more than the combined salaries of 400 foreign exchange students earning $8.15 per hour, if they work full-time, full-year. Shaving pennies from workers to add millions to executive pay, that's the ticket.
The average increase in executive pay for this top 10 list was a cool 38%. This 38% increase compares to a 2010 increase in hourly wages for the lowest-paid 90% of Pennsylvania workers that ranged from zero to 4% (unadjusted for inflation since The Business Journal didn't adjust for inflation when looking at executive pay).
The evidence is overwhelming that the levels of inequality that the United States has now reached have large negative social and economic impacts. (For additional evidence, check out this TED video by Richard Wilkinson.) Yet after a very brief pause after the stock market crash of 2008-09, inequality has started merrily growing again, and executives are riding the gravy train as enthusiastically as ever.
We think that this is shameful and it's got to stop.


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Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Taylor Kitsch, Ryan Reynolds
Director: Gavin Hood
Writer: David Benioff (Screenplay), Skip Woods (Screenplay)
Hugh Jackman has shown a remarkable dedication to the character that made him famous, playing Wolverine in 4 X-Men movies and voicing him in 2 games. The problem is, this dedication can't seem to pull an otherwise likable actor from being in a bad movie, and that's really all X-Men Origins Wolverine is…a bad, bad movie.
The premise is to take the checkered past of Wolverine and stitch together a tale of intrigue and mystery. Unfortunatly, we're left with something mediocre and sub-par. Hugh Jackman pulls off Wolverine with ease, and can you blame him? He's been playing the character long enough to really get him. But then we get Liev Schreiber's Sabertooth. Don't get me wrong, Schreiber is a great actor, but come on…was Tyler Mane too busy to reprise the role from X1? There's not even an attempt made to make the two characters close to each other, with XMO's Sabertooth being sadistic, somewhat methodical and rather intelligent. Are we supposed to believe he became the angry, simple monster that showed up in the first X-Men?
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool? Forget it, he's in the movie a good 10 minutes, and that's Deadpool in name only. I won't say what they've done, but quite frankly, they clearly have no idea what they're doing with one of Marvel's most popular characters. and instead have created a cannibalized abomination. Taylor Kitsch's Gambit is…well, its Gambit. His role in the movie is barely there, and I don't actually seem to recall any sort of a Cajun accent.
The plot is an attempt to make the most of the overly complicated Wolverine backstory, a huge mistake in my opinion. A lot of the character's appeal has been his mystery, and despite it having been resolved in the comics, it still had a lot of potential for future movies. With the advent of XMO Wolverine, this mystery is now gone.
In short, this is a horrible attempt by FOX to create an origin story. This probably felt a little rant-y, and if it was, I'm sorry, but its just a disappointing attempt to create something that has so much potential to be so damn good! We know it can be, because we've seen it before with X-Men and X2.
There's rumors abound already that this is going to lead to a Deadpool spin-off, and the Magneto Origins movie is supposedly still in the works, but if its anything like this one, its bound to be a flop.
Final Grade: F. After 2 hits and a mildly entertaining third entry, its time for the merry mutants to be rebooted or abandoned altogether.


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|Prem Kamble - IT Professional & Author
Computer Professional
|My Other Links
Mentomatics :
reference to "Prem Kamble" in Google
IT Consumer Forum : My
Forum for users of Business Application software
My IIT Bombay Page My page in Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai where I studied Engineering.
My page in IIM , Calcutta: where I studied Management.
I, Prem U Kamble (known to some as P U Kamble) am a Computer Professional and author of articles on God and Religion and on Computer Management.
I am an engineering graduate
from Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.), and management graduate
(with specialization in Systems) from Indian Institute of Management
(I.I.M.), the most reputed technology and management institutes
respectively in the country. Read more
My Articles
From Machine Age to Information Era
The Management is Shocked that .…..
Key Success Factors
and more .....
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"A time will come when man will look back and say " Once upon a time, there lived barbarians on this earth who believed in several Gods, and they killed their fellow beings in the name of religion ." - from my book God in Two Minutes
"I can foresee a world united again, a world where man will not be divided by religion. Religion will be 'scientifically' explained and we will see that there is only one so called 'God' , which is nothing but a power within each one of us. Man will see his folly" - from my book God in Two Minutes
COMPUTERISATION can take the path of routine work reduction if it is not given a direction and meaning by the business expert..." Read on ...
"Not all actions are results of our conscious decisions. Most actions are controlled by the subconscious mind on which we have little control. This learning can help us better understand people and improve relations" - Read about Subconscious Mind...