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At least temporarily. Visit us at scoop.onsquared.com as we try out new curation platform scoop.it. We're also now on tumblr. And Facebook. Here are the latest heds: Earlier Posts on Tumblr
Entries Tagged as 'Uncategorized'
Squared's back
July 3rd, 2011 · Comments Off on Squared's back · Uncategorized
Tags: back_again
October 24th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
Squared's attention to Squared has appallingly declined since he left Mama Tribune six months ago, as those of you who visit or get fed have noticed. Curiously, the going premise after the Package Fairy visited was there'd be plenty of time to focus on Squared during the "sabbatical." Turns out there was the time; there just, as every day […]
Early UGC
September 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on Early UGC · Uncategorized
Free Range archives
Knock Knock
September 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on Knock Knock · Uncategorized
Who's there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you ever going to post to this freakin' blog again, Squaredster?
Adrian Holovaty, Cover Boy
August 17th, 2008 · Comments Off on Adrian Holovaty, Cover Boy · Uncategorized
Chicago Tribune Magazine on "Holovaty's twin passions – reporting and problem-solving – the unexpected intersection of journalism and computer code." Here.
Tags: Data


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Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Critter Easel Challenge
Posted by Melanie at 3/30/2010 10:23:00 PM 13 comments
Fabulous Friend
This is another fun card we created at the SU! class I went to on Thursday night. I love how simple this card is. I always try to think of how I can spruce up a card with embelishments but I think this is cute just sprucing it up with stamps.
Posted by Melanie at 3/30/2010 09:00:00 AM 9 comments
Monday, March 29, 2010
Critter Sketch Blog Hop - - "Egg"stra special event!!!
Posted by Melanie at 3/29/2010 09:00:00 AM 0 comments
Saturday, March 27, 2010
With Sympathy
On Thursday night I went to a SU! class. It was the first in a long time and I loved it. I missed going to these classes. This is one of the cards we created. I love this tree stamp set. I was sad to find out that it is discontinued. My Aunt and I decided we are going to try to make one class every other month, I sure hope we can stick to that. ;-)
Posted by Melanie at 3/27/2010 09:00:00 AM 9 comments
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Sugar Nellie
This is another Easter card I created to send out to a family member with my boys pictures. I know it's a little different than a normal Easter card but I just love this fun, sweet image. I followed CCEE Stampers challenge for this week.
Posted by Melanie at 3/25/2010 10:52:00 PM 7 comments
Monday, March 22, 2010
Happy Easter
Posted by Melanie at 3/22/2010 05:00:00 PM 18 comments
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Happy Day
Posted by Melanie at 3/21/2010 10:27:00 PM 10 comments
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Ready for Spring - Critter Sketch Challenge
Crafty Pad - Oval and Two Ribbons
The Pink Elephant - Spring Theme
Stampin' B's - Spring or Easter
Posted by Melanie at 3/18/2010 05:00:00 PM 15 comments
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Critter Sketch Challenge
Posted by Melanie at 3/17/2010 08:00:00 PM 9 comments
Monday, March 15, 2010
Spring Card Kit
Posted by Melanie at 3/15/2010 08:00:00 AM 10 comments
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Are you feeling lucky???
Are you feeling lucky? Well this weeks Doodle Dragon Studio Challenge is exactly that. To create a card showing luck using a Dustin Pike image. The great thing about this image is that it's a freebie digi image.
Paper Garden Birthday - Sketch
Posted by Melanie at 3/13/2010 08:39:00 PM 17 comments
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
CCC22 and MTSC64
Our Crafty Critter Blog Group is working on its 22nd challenge. It's so awesome to think that we have been together as an awesome group for this long. ;-) I love these girls!! Thank you Melina for giving us such a wonderful inspiration challenge.
Posted by Melanie at 3/10/2010 09:00:00 AM 11 comments
Monday, March 8, 2010
Happy Birthday - Critter Challenge #4
So when it comes to crafting and making cards there is nothing I can resist more than some great challenges. So tonight I decided to play in four different challenge which I always find so much fun.
First is my very own Critter Challenge Blog. This is a weekly challenge that post every Monday. This months sponsor is Paper Jewels which is the same company that you can find this cute Bildmalarna image, Mimosas Sommer Flower. This month play along in the Critter challenges and have the chance to win at $15 gift certificate to Paper Jewels.
The next challenge is a sketch challenge from SCS, SC270. Kaboodle Doodle Blog is a Birthday theme. Lastly I did a Crafty Cardmakers challenge. This week their theme is a feminine theme.
Posted by Melanie at 3/08/2010 10:01:00 PM 16 comments
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Puppy Love
Posted by Melanie at 3/07/2010 07:28:00 PM 10 comments
Monday, March 1, 2010
Hey Dude
This fun image is a Greeting Farm image. Today I played in two challenges. The first challenge is a color challenge by Easy Breezy "Kew" Colour. This challenge was exactly that, a challenge. I would have never pictured these colors together but it really made me think outside of the box. I already knew (before knowing the color combo) that I wanted to use this image. As it turned out, this was a perfect color combo for a boy card. Click HERE to play along in the challenge.
The second challenge was a sketch challenge with my Crafty Critter girls. ;-) Love ya girls!! Colleen gave us this sketch. The twist was to use dots and the color brown. My dots are my brads and the brown is in the shoes. Thanks Colleen for a fun challenge.
Posted by Melanie at 3/01/2010 09:23:00 PM 13 comments

subset: commoncrawl


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Public Record Research and Retrieval
We can provide you with instant availability to nationwide hands-on (on site) research of County Civil and Criminal records, Federal Civil and Criminal Records, Marriage Licenses, Divorce Records, Death Certificates, Business Licenses, Fictitious Business Name Filings, Corporate Records, Limited Partnership/Limited Liability Records, LASD, SEC, UCC Filings, Board of Equalization Records, OSHA records, U.S. Patents and Trademarks, Real Property Records, Tax Liens and Judgments, Workers' Compensation Records, and more. The majority of the requests can be completed in the same working day, including document retrieval. You will need to advise us if you would like the records certified or non-certified.
If you would like the information returned by Federal Express, UPS, or another delivery messenger, please include the name of the messenger service, and your account number.
Fee: Call for Quote. Average turnaround time: 1 – 3 working days.
Detailed Description of Public Records
SOCIAL SECURITY TRACE: Verifies that the Social Security number provided by applicant is valid and was issued by the Social Security Administration, and that the applicant is reporting this as his/her number. Also, may provide current or prior address information not listed on the application, as well as any other names the applicant may use. Could also reveal that the number is not reported as belonging to the applicant or that the number is reported as belonging to a deceased individual. This search will also provide any other names associated with the applicant's Social Security number
DRIVING RECORD: Department of Motor Vehicles' report of traffic violations, convictions or accidents. This report will show drunk driving, reckless driving, outstanding traffic warrants, suspensions, penal code violations, probations and/or revocations. It may also reveal the applicant's full name, as well as verify his/her date of birth and physical description. It may also reveal activity in other states when the California driver's license has been surrendered to obtain a new one.
This search helps provide insight into the applicant's ability to be responsible, identifies any alcohol or drug problems, determines whether the applicant failed to appear in court or neglected to pay fines, and determines if his/her license was suspended, restricted, or has expired. This search is extremely important when hiring an individual for a driving position. Failure to check driving records may result in negligent hiring litigation. The same risk exists if a position requires driving for company errands. An organization can be held liable for automobile accidents whether in a personal or company vehicle. The applicant's full name, date of birth, driver's license number, and the state of issue will ensure an accurate report.
MOTOR VEHICLE REGISTRATION: Provides all vehicles currently registered to the applicant at a specific address.
WORKERS' COMPENSATION HISTORY (Post Offer): A search that provides a history of the employee's work-related injuries that have been filed by past employers. This post-job offer allows our clients to rescind a conditional job offer under the strictest guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990). In some states, where information is no longer accessible for the past seven years, we will offer the best information possible.
CONSUMER CREDIT: This search provides insight into the applicant's ability to be responsible, based on financial history. Since previous addresses and employment are part of the report, they can be cross-referenced with information provided by the applicant. Any aliases utilized by the applicant may also surface. The report indicates the applicant's credit history as recorded in the files of national reporting agencies.
Of particular concern to the employer are residential addresses and prior employers that may be reflected in this report, but not listed by the applicant. Financial difficulties would also be uncovered.
Please note, an authorization (signature) from the applicant is required, including his/her full name (including Sr., Jr., I, II, III, etc.), social security number, and current address, including zip code.
CIVIL COURT RECORDS : A search, by county or district, at the Municipal, Superior or Federal court levels for lawsuits filed by or against the applicant (plaintiff or defendant). These lawsuits can sometimes reveal information regarding the applicant's past activities and business ethics, wrongful discharge suits against former employers, breach of contracts, etc.
In this day and age of wrongful termination, discrimination, and sexual harassment litigation, this search is recommended to uncover a history of fraudulent lawsuits. Please provide the applicant's full name, any aliases utilized, and areas where the applicant resided, worked, or attended school as an adult.
CRIMINAL COURT RECORDS: Felony and misdemeanor records search for convictions by county. We search by county for misdemeanor (Municipal Court) and felony (Superior Court) convictions and, when required, a reading of the original court documents to verify identification of the subject and determine the disposition of the case.
Misdemeanor cases are heard in Municipal Court, and felony cases are heard in Superior Court. However, most preliminary hearings for felonies are first heard in Municipal Court. If there is sufficient evidence to support the felony charge, the case is then sent to Superior Court for trial. We recommend a review of both the Municipal and Superior Court because a failure to appear for a preliminary hearing on a felony or a misdemeanor charge would not be detected if only Superior Court records were searched.
Misdemeanor crimes include, among other things, petty theft, assault and battery, and certain drug-related offenses. Felony charges include grand theft, sale and transportation of drugs, embezzlement, and armed robbery, among other more serious crimes.
Two unfortunate realities for today's employers are workplace violence and negligent hiring litigation. By investigating an applicant's criminal background, companies can avoid workplace violence, and can also prove to a court of law that they have exercised their due diligence in the hiring process.
With fast, easy access to this valuable information, our clients can reduce the risk of negligent hiring suits, and reduce the risk of losses caused by employee theft. Employers can be held liable for any damages if an employee poses a threat to the public. Unfortunately, this can hold true even when the employee's transgression occurs outside of the scope of employment.
Information regarding the applicant's full name, aliases utilized, date of birth, and residential/business addresses are required to develop accurate records.
Federal Courts can also be searched for criminal violations of Federal Laws. Embezzlement is often found in these courts.
NATIONAL CRIMINAL WANTS & WARRANTS: Provides information on extradited wants or warrants on the applicant. Please note, enforcement may contact the requester.
BANKRUPTCIES, TAX LIENS, JUDGMENT(S): A search by state for bankruptcies; by county for state and federal tax liens and releases; civil and small claim judgments and satisfactions; foreclosures; notices of default, and unlawful detainers. This search is sometimes done instead of running the consumer credit report.
PROFESSIONAL LICENSES: Verification of professional licenses claimed by the applicant, including license type, date of issue, expiration date, and current status. In some instances, depending on the type of professional license, information is obtained regarding workers' compensation and bond coverage. Please provide the applicant's name, any aliases utilized, the type of license, the state where the license was issued, and, if available, the professional license number. This search will determine if the applicant's professional license is authentic, active or suspended, and discover any complaints, suspensions, or revocations filed against the license.
VERIFICATIONS: In an effort to end countless rounds of phone tag and long-distance calls, we provide our clients with the verifications they require, which frees up their time to focus on critical issues, such as applicant recruitment, employee morale, and much more.
Employment: Leave this time-consuming and frustrating task to us. We will verify employment at companies listed by the applicant. This check verifies dates of employment, position, supervisor, last salary earned, eligibility for re-hire, and reason for leaving by contacting either the personnel department or the former supervisors. References can also be obtained. Please provide the applicant's full name, social security number, and fully completed employment application (dates, locations, supervisor names, etc.)
Education/Academic Verification: Verifies the level of educational achievement, the place of education, type of degree, dates of attendance, and date of graduation. Please obtain the full name utilized by the applicant while attending school, his/her social security number, the location of the school, the year graduated, and information regarding the degrees/certificates received to ensure accurate results. Please note, occasionally the applicant's signature may be required. Also, in some instances, this search may determine if a degree has been withheld due to financial obligations to the school.
MILITARY SERVICE VERIFICATION: Verifies branch of service, dates of service and character of discharge.
CORPORATE RECORDS SEARCH: Verifies, through the California Secretary of State's Office, affiliations the applicant may have/had with California corporations, in the capacity of officers, directors, or agents for service of process.
UCC FILINGS: Verifies any type of UCC filings the applicant may have on record with the California Secretary of State's Office, i.e., financing statements, state tax liens, etc.
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS FILINGS: Verifies any fictitious business name filings in which the applicant is/was listed as the owner.
BUSINESS LICENSING: Verifies the existence of a city business licenses issued to the applicant and/or their business.
STATE BOARD OF EQUALIZATION: Verifies if the applicant was issued a sales tax permit for a business that is/was required to pay state sales tax.
OSHA: The Occupational Safety & Health Administration reports on the status of safety and hazard matters of individuals and companies in the medical, dental, automotive, and construction business. Pending complaints are also reported.
BUSINESS CREDIT REPORT: Provides information on a business' credit history, lines of credit, types of credit, and overall payment history, including length of time past due, and amounts past due.
We've provided a convenient online form for this service to serve you better.Please include this form with your order. Call us with any questions.


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B L Hislam : Writers Statement
agender of the agresiv dislecksick
The premises that is set by educashon on the dislecksick only leevz one avenyou to follow. This is not the normall way. But one you must billed your self for all avenyooz of normallsee are closed by the bigut. And so it berginz !
Thair is litell dowet in my mind that persaqushon is to be the fer-los-serfee of your saroundingz.so you must kick ! And kick hard. For thair is only one thing your foot will hit, and that is the wall of intolaruns. You will fined yourself being tolled you are stuped by the moron. Thay will smerk at you with thair ignarents. Thay will pat you on the hed for spelling in thair perversely ilogacul way. Not seeing that even a gentell stroke of latrul thort wud tell them you were born with the upper hand ! This thay will never see. And thowz sent to help you ? Will see themselvz as the mishonary. Thay will be so proud of themselvz wen seeing that you can lern to twist your mined to Ilojicull. Prnounsing themselvz rite with the eco of your paret spell in the background. Fuck the lot of them. Why lern to do a thing that is not your destiny ? You can rite and the shock in thowz hoo will reed is not in that thay canot understand. But that yours is a more lojcull way.so wen you hear them say "I red wot you have riton and thow it woz hard for me at ferst and forst me toconsider the context of the prowz, and on akajon had to ree reed braking werdz in to soundz and shapes to understand. I did it and it woz good". To this is your reeplij. For every day of school and every day of life that arscs me to reed your langwidg, I hav no chojss but to reed that way.
Realaty is wot man understandz, trooth being wot he berleevz. The realaty of the dilecksick is not shaird by menny, so thair for – the outcast. The trooth is noing you are the outcast. Taking advantij of the youneek prospectiv. Do not eksept the translashon ! for this is the rowed to banality. For wuns you eksept the translater as naseserty, you denigh yourself the freedom of your owen verlishon. As litraseey is the norm for most, it is the strate jaket to you hoo are chozen by lojick. Do wot no litret can do with instinct. Take the langwidj and sine it with your owen hand. Do this in your owen name and if it helps, do it for all thows fuckwits hoo let thair creativerty di in thair folss litrasee.
B L Hislam


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Holiday warning: Britons flocking to sun in Spain at HIGH risk of ISIS attack
SPAIN is facing its highest level of terror threat for more than 10 YEARS - with sun-seeking Britons at serious risk of being attacked by Islamic State (ISIS) extremists, governments have warned.
Holidaymakers heading to Spain could be at risk of terror attacks
Around 12 million Britons flock to Spain each year to soak up the sun in popular destinations including Ibiza, Majorca, Barcelona and the Costa Del Sol.
But UK holidaymakers have now been warned that they could be "high value" targets for terror attacks.
The Foreign Office (FCO) raised the terror threat level in Spain to "high" in June - before the Tunisia beach massacre which saw 30 Britons gunned down and killed on the popular resort of Sousse.
The terror threat was raised after security forces in Spain disrupted a number of groups who were recruiting people to join extremists in Syria and Iraq.
It is also believed by the Spanish government that they were plotting deadly attacks across Europe.
Spain was targeted by an al-Qaida-linked cell in 2004
The FCO said on their website: "There is a high threat from terrorism. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners."
And a spokesman added: "The situation in Iraq and Syria means there is considered to be a heightened threat of terrorist attack globally against UK interests and British nationals, from groups or individuals motivated by the conflict."
Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz warned last week that the country faces its highest level of terror threat since the 2004 train bombing in Madrid.
We are at the maximum alert level since the attacks of March 11, 2004, in Madrid
A total of 191 people were killed and nearly 2,000 injured when a series of bombs were detonated on four commuter trains.
An official investigation into the incident determined that the attacks were directed by an al-Qaeda-inspired terror cell.
Mr Fernandez Diaz said: "We are at the maximum alert level since the attacks of March 11, 2004, in Madrid."
He added that the "level 4 alert [out of a maximum of 5] corresponds to a reality".
The raised terror threat in Spain has come following a year of ISIS attacks across Europe - including neighbouring France.
More than 12 people were killed earlier this year by Islamist gunmen who had stormed the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
Then last month a man was beheaded and his head impaled on a spiked fence near Lyon by an ISIS fanatic.
More than 110 people have fled Spain to fight alongside ISIS in Syria and Iraq over the past year.
The travel advice for Spain on the Foreign Office website
Last year a group of extremists claiming to be associated to ISIS vowed to invade Spain.
One said, in a video posted online: "I tell you, Spain is the land of our forefathers, and, Allah willing, we are going to liberate it, with the might of Allah.
"I say to the entire world as a warning: We are living under the Islamic banner, the Islamic Caliphate.
"We are going to die for it until we liberate all the occupied lands, from Jakarta to Andalusia."
Other popular holiday hotspots that currently face a high risk of terror threats include France, Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt.
A number of destinations are also on a general threat level, including Greece, Italy and Morocco.
Holidaymakers deciding where to take their next break have been urged to follow a set of guidelines when assessing any risks for their intended destination this summer.
Britons have been told by HolidayTravelWatch to research the current state of affairs of your destination, as well taking a virtual Google Maps tour of any hotels and resorts.


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Hybrid Software Shows Order Lifecycle Print Management Products at GRAPH EXPO
Hybrid Software will also demonstrate its new Taskforce Scheduler, a highly configurable scheduling system for prepress and graphics production that integrates with MIS and ERP systems to download a feed of jobs and due dates. It then maps available resources to insure that the jobs are produced on time with the available manpower and equipment.
GRAPH EXPO is also the venue of the first North American demonstration of Proofscope Live, an online tool for remote softproofing and, uniquely, remote file corrections and last-minute changes.
Hybrid Software announces new partnerships
Hybrid Software will be supporting the use of their print management technologies as front end systems for two major digital engine vendors, OKI Data Americas (booth #2844) and Xeikon (booth #2238). The systems provide full production management for digital printers including order management, production ticketing, graphics management, production output, archiving and reporting.
Complete OLM product line on display
In addition, Hybrid will also demonstrate all of the other pieces from its complete OLM product line:
- Facelift is a Web-based custom job ticketing and automation application providing transparent integration between otherwise disparate production workflow systems, MIS/ERP systems, third-party Websites, external databases and other sources of digitally-held data. Facelift can act as an intermediary tool to quickly and seamlessly map data, while providing a customizable interface for production operators. It offers CSRs (and customers) total transparency of what is happening to a job, between the initial order and its delivery. Users can create their own templates to encompass every stage of the order's lifecycle, regardless of the printing process or product being produced.
- Frontdesk is a Web-to-print portal offering a user-friendly and optimized interface between printers and their customers. With Facelift, customers are given powerful file upload and download services, plus comprehensive job interaction from on-line ordering through all stages of tracking, proofing and approvals to delivery of the completed work. Optional components include Proofscope, which provides integrated softproofing and annotation via its powerful HTML 5 architecture, and Proofscope Live.
- Fileforce connects multiple production or print sites within an enterprise, allowing print providers to benefit from the enormous efficiencies that can be obtained by load balancing and file sharing between sites. Fileforce does not require a centralized file server or DAM system, but instead works in conjunction with local file servers at each location.
"While there are many effective premedia, MIS, planning, accounting and administration systems available, the challenge printers face is making them work well together," explains Mike Rottenborn, president and CEO at Hybrid Software. "It requires mapping data between the systems. Even if they are JDF-ready, it is still a tedious job. Hybrid Software offers printers an affordable, flexible and extremely powerful solution for integrating and streamlining the entire production process. Rather than requiring an IT department to build the links between these islands, Hybrid Software provides solutions that not only make it much easier to build communications between the systems, but to assure that new systems in the future can be easily introduced. All of our products operate via Web browser technology and provide vendor-independent solutions for Order Lifecycle Management, based on industry standards such as JDF/JMF and SQL."


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Matt's Book Blog reviewed At the Right Hand of Long Street: Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer by G. Moxley Sorrel for the U.S. Civil War Reading Challenge 2011. Here's an excerpt:
Sorrell wrote this memoir at the close of the 19th century, looking back on the high point of his life 35 years before. He admits he kept no war-time journal and was working from memory, without notes or other memoirs. His intention was not to focus on battle tactics, not to re-tell the content of scores of other memoirs being published at the time, but to provide, in the words of the Lost Cause & Unreconstructed Confederate who wrote the introduction to the original edition, "sketches, incidents, anecdotes, and … vivid portraitures and scenes."
Read the full review.
**Attention participants: Remember to email us a link to your reviews, and we'll post them here so we can see what everyone is reading!**


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August 1, 2004Hey. I have a 1991 Mazda b2600i. I am told post 99 chevy will fit my truck no problem. Also what about the escalade wheels. How easy is it to put on. Just bolt up or is there something I need to do first. Any help would be great.
Forums : Mazda : Chevy/Cadillac wheels (1902 Views)
August 1, 2004you have to grind down the four "teeth" that are in the center of your hubs. it is not that big of deal at all. other than that you just bolt them up
August 1, 2004Dont forget to get some bulge lug nuts also! The stock lugs are not large enough for the bigger stud holes.
August 2, 2004Yeah, that's all you need to do, plus the grinding part is awesome.
August 2, 2004yep, put the stock lugs on while grinding the four teeth down so you don't accidentally mess up some threads. I used honda lugs if you happen to have any of those around.
August 2, 2004Try Denalis too! They look clean and they aren't on every mini like the caddy wheels are that what im running
August 3, 2004Cool I am gonna have to try that this weekend. Now I have American Racing rims on now. Can I do that grinding before I put the new wheels on, or should I wait.
August 3, 2004You can grind those tabs down right now if ya like. wont make any difference with the wheels you have now.
June 12, 2012Hello, I have a set of Impala SS wheels I have put on my 95 Fleetwood. Right now I am just seeing how I feel about the look of them. I seem to remember some talk about a Cadillac center cap that will fit these wheels. Does anyone here have any experience with this? The SS cap is 6 3/4" across.


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This is the face of the nasty pathetic cunt who has been attacking and slandering the death of my dog, me and my stories for the past 8+ years. Just looking at her ugly mug makes me want to throw up. Who the fuck is this clown and why is she so obsessed with me? No one is jealous of her. She has an ugly soul: ugly on the inside and ugly on the outside. I've never been attacked and slandered by someone who looked better than me. It's always these ugly hideous clowns who are slandering me:
I guess Cha_Aegis loves to defend scary lookin' creepy weirdo clowns, LOL.
I thought about reporting her slander and getting her Twitter taken down because her Twitter is her life, then I decided to not report her and let her rot her pathetic unproductive loser self on the Internet. She'd really go off the deep end and stalk me 50 times more than she already stalks me if I got her Twitter suspended. The only reason she still has her Twitter account to talk trash is because I feel sorry for her that exaggerating herself on Twitter is all she lives for, LOL. I'll let her live in her delusions of grandeur while I'm out getting things done. 🙂
While she's busy talking trash about me on Twitter I've been writing my stories and enjoying life and I couldn't care less what that batshit lunatic has been saying about me on Twitter.


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Diagnostic Tests
- font size decrease font size increase font size
Our interdisciplinary team of compassionate cardiovascular experts uses the latest technology and procedures to pinpoint the nature and scope of cardiovascular problems.
Diagnostic tests, can assist doctors in determining if you have heart or vascular disease. If you already know that you have heart or vascular disease, these tests can show if your disease is progressing and guide the treatment that is best suited to your needs.
Your doctor will determine which test is best for you, based on your family and personal medical history and symptoms.
During your first examination, your doctor may listen to your heart sounds with a stethoscope and determine your blood pressure, using a blood pressure cuff and a blood pressure machine called a sphygmomanometer. Your doctor may also take an X-ray of your heart to see its outline or shape.
Other beneficial tests are available at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center. These diagnostic tests, listed below, can be performed on an outpatient basis and will not require an overnight stay:
- Electrocardiogram (EKG)
- Holter monitor (24 hour EKG)
- Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring
- Cardiac event recording
- Stress testing
- Cardiac nuclear stress testing
- Pharmacological stress testing (Dobutamine, Persantine)
- Echocardiogram
- Transesophageal echocardiography
- Pediatric echocardiograhy
- Transtelephonic pacemaker monitoring
- Electrophysiology studies
- Cardiac catheterization
Should you or a loved one need more invasive procedures such, as cardiac angioplasty, cardiac or vascular stenting or cardiac surgery, St. Joseph's team of Invasive Cardiologists and Cardiac Surgeons provide the highest level of care while using the most current technology available.
To ensure that our patients receive the best care possible before and after their invasive procedures, our nationally certified Cardiac Rehabilitation Team, located at St. Joseph's Regional Hospital in Paterson, provides Cardiac Rehabilitation for both our inpatients and outpatients to assist them with a rapid recovery.
The Division of Cardiology hours are 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Most services are offered at both St. Joseph's Wayne Hospital and St. Joseph's University Medical Center.
- Contact Us
- Locations
For appointments or inquires, please call:
St. Joseph's Wayne Medical Center, 973.956.3326
St. Joseph's University Medical Center, 973.754.2330


text: Made with the same quality and attention to detail as our famous Pro Silicone Masks, this strand of large intestine has the look and feel of squishy freshly eviscerated entrails. These intestines are stretchy, durable, bouncy, and generally fun to pull out of a slimy body cavity. Approx. 5.5 ft. long. The wait time for this item is approximately 5 weeks.


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We watched this movie the other day at my sister's place. I watched it once already but it was still nice to watch it again. I believe that my sister and Mee thought the same too because they both watched it from start to finish. In that movie, there were a lot of lab furnaces in the lab where the lead actor was working with the chimpanzee. I didn't think lab furnaces were relevant in that movie especially the type of medicine, which was used to test on the chimpanzees, was for treating Alzheimer. Maybe it is beyond my knowledge but it's just a movie and maybe I shouldn't treat it that seriously.
I have to say, I watched a few older versions of planet of the apes but they always start with apes dominating the world and human beings as slaves. They never sort of explaining the beginning of the apes and I believe that is why I am attracted to this movie. I do hope that there will be more sequels of this movie since it's one of my favourite movies this year.
On another note, it's the last day of the year 2011, Happy New Year!


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Fri, 30 January 2015
This week, the Question Block segment returns to your favorite Nintendo podcast! But this episode isn't just about Q&A. Join host Jose Otero, Brian Altano, and Peer Schneider, as they share hands-on impressions of New Nintendo 3DS XL, what they think of Code Name S.T.E.A.M.'s new demo, and the analysis of the recent numbers from Nintendo released to its investors.
Direct download: Nintendo_Voice_Chat__Whats_Next_for_Nintendo.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:05pm EDT


text: your information Book A Mayimba Artist Thank you for your interest in our talented roster of artists! Please answer the questions below. Once we have a better understanding of your needs, a Mayimba representative will get back to you within 24 hours or less.Thanks for stopping by!Listen to new music from Mayimba: Which Artist are you interested in booking? Vakeró What market is this for? What is your budget?


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Amazon Echo is a successful device in the US. (the only market the Echo is available yet) But what if Alexa, the voice interface technology behind Echo, gets integrated in as many household gadgets as possible?
That, make no mistake, is the goal Amazon is aiming for. Selling Echos is nice, but that is not there the big money is going to be. That is going to come with all the items we are going to order via voice.
Last year, when the investment of the Alexa fund in Invoxia, France based maker of Triby, became public, I wrote:
The Alexa fund invests in companies creating devices and applications integrating Amazon Echo. It already has invested in ten companies which are listed on the fund site. (…)
One can get a glimpse into why the Alexa fund is attractive for startups in this paragraph from Rude Baguette:
> As Triby seeks to stay above water as an alternative communication tool for families – one which will compete not only with traditional tools like the land line & digital tools like Skype, but also with up and coming startups like Ily, which French entrepreneur Ilan Abehassera launched this past Summer – creating technology partnerships with big players like Amazon, who already have a foot in the connected home, will be crucial.
Amazon already "has a foot in the connected home", a platform to connect to and is a large online retailer and it might even help you with AWS if you need that. If your startup faces strong competition the money from the Alexa fund is more of a formality. The real deal is what Amazon has strategically to offer.
Now the fruits of that investment are ripe. Triby is now with Alexa integration available in the US.
From the press release:
Triby is a fun addition to any family, transforming the way they connect with the content and people they love. Triby is a digital assistant, Internet radio, connected speaker, hands-free speakerphone, and connected message board all rolled into one! And now with Alexa, customers have hands-free voice control for information from Wikipedia and the web, weather, timers and alarms, news, shopping/to-do lists, sports updates and scores, smart home features, calendar entries, IFTTT, and much more—with new skills being added every week. To learn more about Alexa on Triby, visitwww.amazon.com/triby.
As the first non-Amazon product with a built-in Alexa experience, Triby gives families unprecedented access to new and exciting services. Simply say "Alexa, play Adele" and Triby can play Adele from Prime Music, say "Alexa, add milk to my list" and Triby will add it to your shopping list, or "Alexa, turn off the kitchen lights" and Triby becomes a way to access and control the smart home.
In essence, the Alexa integration changes Triby as a product fundamentally. Before the integration Triby was a communication device with its own network. Expensive but easy to use for extended families.
Now with full Alexa integration, Triby is essentially an Echo alternative with additional functionalities like the before mentioned communications network for families. (Obviously Alexa integration is US only for now.)
For Amazon this means that for the first time people can choose which device they want to buy to use Alexa at home.
Expect this to be a theme for Alexa for the next years. Within a year there will almost certainly be a wide array of devices customers will be able to choose from.
Remember, the goal is to make Alexa ubiquitous in the "Smart Home".
The incentives are high enough for this platform to expand rapidly on the hardware side now. (Which is a really impressive achievement by Amazon, by the way.)
For more on Amazon's platform strategy read our primer on how the company proceeded to establish the Echo and Alexa as a platform and why the online retailer is doing that in the first place.
On a sidenote: Triby first started as a Launchpad product.
Amazon is establishing itself as a very startup friendly online retailer. For consumer electronics this is far more important strategically than most anticipate. (And Triby may be one example why, if the device gets traction that is.)
Triby can be found on Amazon and on its website.
- Amazon's Alexa Fund Invests in Smart Home Communication Device Triby
- Post-PC Online Retail: Why and How Amazon is Building the Alexa Voice Platform
- 3 Million Echoes: Why Amazon's Alexa Voice Platform Is Here To Stay
- How Amazon built the Echo
- Screenless E-Commerce: Amazon Echo Is A New Interface To The Internet
- Why Ford and Others Are Going to Integrate Amazon Echo/Alexa
- The More the Merrier: Amazon Alexa Comes to Original Fire TV and Fire TV Stick
- Amazon's Alexa and Dash Replenishment Service – A Level of Convenience Unseen Before
- What Amazon Might Try To Get Into Android Phones At 'Factory Level': Alexa


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In a major paper published in the journal Anesthesiology, a Cleveland Clinic-led research team announced the development of a new publicly available tool to help patients, regulators and hospitals compare patient outcomes and quality.
The Risk Stratification Index was developed using more than 35 million Medicare and Medicaid records, and then validated using more than 100,000 Cleveland Clinic patient records. A team led by Daniel I. Sessler, MD, Professor and Chair of Cleveland Clinic's Department of Outcomes Research, used billing and procedure codes to develop the objective and transparent system which allows for outcomes to be compared across institutions and even among individual physicians.
Federal healthcare reform is placing a high value on healthcare quality, as measured by mortality, hospital readmissions and length of patient hospital stays, among other factors. As federal officials consider pay-for-performance reimbursement models for hospitals, the need for reliable, fair and equitable quality measures becomes imperative.
Hospitals that compare favorably can share best practices with other healthcare organizations or become regional centers of excellence. In either case, reliable quality measures would help drive quality and lower healthcare costs by steering patients toward the facilities that perform best and offer the best outcomes.
"Hospitals are already being compared," Dr. Sessler said. "But comparisons only make sense after adjusting for baseline risk and the risks associated with different operations. Our Risk Stratification Index allows for an accurate and fair comparison among hospitals using only publicly available data."
Cleveland Clinic worked with Covidien on interpreting the data for the Risk Stratification Index.
"Gathering accurate quality healthcare data is increasingly important," said Douglas Hansell, MD, MPH, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Covidien, Respiratory and Monitoring Solutions. "When working with Cleveland Clinic on the Risk Stratification Index, the team took great care to develop an objective tool to fairly evaluate outcomes."
Dr. Sessler said the quality of healthcare services is currently difficult to measure because institutions use various — often proprietary — systems to evaluate outcomes. To help deal with this problem, Dr. Sessler's team developed objective risk-adjustment models for length-of-stay, and for in-hospital, 30-day and 1-year mortality.
The system is statistically stable to as few as 5,000 patients; thus even a small hospital can use it reliably. And a large hospital could use the system at frequent intervals to evaluate improvements in outcome.
"An important aspect of our Risk Stratification System is that it is entirely objective, reproducible and transparent," Dr. Sessler said. "It does not include any adjustments or subjective fixes. Therefore, the system provides a fair basis for comparing outcomes among hospitals.
"Hospitals can adjust for their patients' baseline level of illness and the risk associated with various procedures using only standard billing records — thus permitting important outcomes such as mortality to be fairly compared among hospitals," Dr. Sessler said.
The investigators have put their Risk Stratification Index in the public domain; any entity can use it freely.
Dr. Sessler, Professor and Chair of the Department of Outcomes Research, Cleveland Clinic, was the study's lead author. The co-authors were Jeffrey C. Sigl, PhD, Senior Director, Analytical Research, Covidien; Paul J. Manberg, PhD, Vice President, Clinical Research and Regulatory Strategy, Covidien; Scott D. Kelley, MD, Vice President and Medical Director-BIS, Covidien; Armin Schubert, MD, MBA, Professor and Chair, Department of Anesthesiology, Ochsner Clinic, New Orleans, Louisiana and Nassib G. Chamoun, MS, Vice President, Technology, Research and Clinical Development, Covidien.
About Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland Clinic, located in Cleveland, Ohio, is a not-for-profit multispecialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. It was founded in 1921 by four renowned physicians with a vision of providing outstanding patient care based upon the principles of cooperation, compassion and innovation. U.S. News & World Report consistently names Cleveland Clinic as one of the nation's best hospitals in its annual "America's Best Hospitals" survey. About 2,100 full-time salaried physicians and researchers and 11,000 nurses represent 120 medical specialties and subspecialties. In addition to its main campus, Cleveland Clinic operates nine regional hospitals and 15 Family Health Centers in Northeast Ohio, Cleveland Clinic Florida, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, Cleveland Clinic Canada, and opening in 2012, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. In 2009, there were more than 4.6 million visits throughout the Cleveland Clinic health system and 170,000 hospital admissions. Patients came for treatment from every state and from more than 100 countries.
Media Contacts:
Scott Heasley, 216/444-8853, [email protected]
Erinne Dyer, 216/444-8168, [email protected]


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KING'S HAWAIIAN Turkey Casserole
KING'S HAWAIIAN Turkey Casserole
Prep: 15 Minutes
Cook: 50 Minutes
Serves: 6
Submitted by: KING'S HAWAIIAN
Meet the Chef!
Making irresistible, original recipe foods with Aloha Spirit since 1950. Welcome to our ohana & mahalo for helping us spread Aloha Spirit.
Recipe Details
3 cups diced cooked turkey
8 ounces mild cheddar cheese shredded
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1 tablespoon dijon or spicy mustard
3 tablespoons butter melted
4 large eggs beaten
3 cups milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 (12 pack) KING'S HAWAIIAN Original Hawaiian Sweet Dinner Rolls
Step 1
Place bread, turkey and cheese in a large bowl and blend gently with a large spoon. In another bowl, whisk eggs, add flour and whisk, and then add mustard, melted butter, eggs, milk, salt and pepper. Whisk thoroughly.Step 2
Pour milk mixture over the bread, turkey and cheese; stir gently to blend (be careful not to over-stir as the bread can become overly moist and break apart).Step 3
Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes for bread to absorb liquid.Step 4
Pour into a buttered 2-quart baking dish.Step 5
Preheat the oven to 350° F and bake for 50 minutes (should be lightly golden and puffed). Test with a knife inserted into center — it should come out clean with little liquid on the knife.Step 6
*Any KING'S HAWAIIAN product, cubed, will be ideal for this recipe, including Mini Sub Rolls or Original Round Bread.
KING'S HAWAIIAN says:
For a lighter dish, consider using low-fat mild cheddar cheese and low-fat milk.
Would you like to submit a review?
In this recipe!Shop online
KING'S HAWAIIAN Dinner Rolls have a melt-in-your mouth texture - soft and fluffy with just the right touch of sweetness.


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Your Ultimate Song Learning Program For Guitar!
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I am going to start a british invasion band. My main focus is to be able to perfect approx. 40 songs from the period of 1963 to 1999. All from the british genre. How much of yourseries covers the songs I am looking for assistance on. I can probably get a lot of them off of youtube, but it woud help to be able to get them form one source. I am in the medium skill set but am a very quick study. I just need quality education with both the chords, strumming and the riffs.
Sounds interesting. I would like to join after the Holidays, in the new year
I'm trying to get an idea of the songs you provide, do you have a list? I'm primarily into country/rock. Examples like older country such as Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and newer stuff like Chris Young (getting you home, tomorrow) In the rock area, some classics like Freebird and sweet home Alabama, Eagles (Hotel California) and Bon Jovi (Wanted Dead or Alive) and newer stuff like Daughtry (Feels like tonight). My son and I have been considering learning Canon in D which is a bit off that track but just shows my diversity.
I am trying to log in to order this $99.00 lifetime special.It indicates I have wrong pw and un. I copied what I had before. It keeps saying Oops this page is for members only but when i try to register is keeps bringing me to the same page. Please advise.
Having trouble can't log in.
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The last scene established that this world full of violence and treachery; this scene establishes that it is full of dark magic. Our goal for this scene is to understand how the witches' half-truths and prophesy take hold of Macbeth.
Before we begin, I want you to complete a very quick writing task (5 minutes). Imagine that you are walking down the street in downtown Toronto, a young student looking for work (hey…times are tough). You are approached by a strange old woman who might be insane. After muttering to herself for a while, she fixed her eyes on you. Cackling gleefully, she says:
Strange days indeed, my dear, strange days indeed,
When the likes of you are in desperate need.
Around the next corner you will find,
Wealth that will give you peace of mind.
But continue on the road most dark,
Brave the monsters that will chill your heart,
And you will claim the greatest treasure
Finding happiness in the greatest measure.
You turn the corner, look down, and find something truly remarkable: a stack of $100 bills sitting in the snow. You take, it of course; after all, hadn't the old woman told you that you will find great wealth?
As you look up, however, you notice something else: a long, dark alley straight out of a horror movie. On a normal day, you wouldn`t dream of walking down this path; however, given what the old lady told you, do you consider it today?
- let's spend a moment or two talking about iambic pentameter. Do you remember this line from Romeo and Juliet?:
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
- Now, let's read the witches' lines together. How is the structure of their lines different from iambic pentameter?
- finally, let's consider the rest of the scene.


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PITTSBURGH (93-7 The Fan) – Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart joins Sportsradio 93-7 The Fan's Ron Cook live on Super Bowl XLVII's Radio Row.
Stewart thinks that a San Francisco 49ers win on Sunday will cement the age of the athletic quarterback in the NFL.
"That 'quarterback-sitting-in-the-pocket' thing is over. It's dead, it's done," he declares. "The mobile quarterback is really relevant – and has been for some time – but people will have no choice but to accept it now."
Still, Stewart explains why the game may rest on Kaepernick's arm instead of his legs.
"He's going to have to be able to throw the football," says Stewart. "He can't be like the Tim Tebows of the world where he can only run the football. He's going to have to be able to throw the football on a consistent basis."
Stewart also looks back fondly on his days in Pittsburgh, and remembers how the tougher times of his Steeler career helped make him a better man.


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Cholesterol Channel
Related Channels
Lopid Alternatives
A number of other cholesterol medicines can be taken as alternatives to Lopid. Some Lopid alternatives include other fibric acid derivatives (or fibrates), which work by slowing down triglyceride and VLDL production in the liver. A few other alternatives to Lopid include niacin, Lipitor, and combination medicines such as Vytorin and Advicor.
An Overview of Lopid Alternatives
Lifestyle changes are the first line of treatment for lowering cholesterol. However, for some people, treating high cholesterol or high triglycerides with a low-cholesterol diet, weight control, and exercise is not enough. If lifestyle changes alone are not enough, your doctor can prescribe medications. One such medicine is Lopid® (gemfibrozil).
For most people, Lopid is quite effective at lowering triglycerides and is also generally well tolerated. But Lopid side effects can occur, and people may wish to consider an alternative to Lopid. These alternatives could include other fibrates along with other cholesterol medicines.
Lopid Alternatives: Other Fibrates
Lopid is part of a class of drugs known as the fibric acid derivatives (also known as fibrates). It is believed to work by slowing down the production of triglycerides and VLDL (very low density lipoprotein cholesterol) made in the liver.
In addition to Lopid, there are other fibrates available by prescription. These include fenofibrates (Tricor®, Antara™, Lipofen®, Triglide™, Lofibra®).
Lopid Information
Written by/reviewed by: Kristi Monson, PharmD; Arthur Schoenstadt, MD
Last reviewed by: Kristi Monson, PharmD


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On Saturday mornings, children gather to paint and draw in the main downtown shopping street of Curitiba, in southern Brazil. More than just a charming tradition, the child's play commemorates a key victory in a hard-fought, ongoing war. Back in 1972, the new mayor of the city, an architect and urban planner named Jaime Lerner, ordered a lightning transformation of six blocks of the street into a pedestrian zone. The change was recommended in a master plan for the city that was approved six years earlier, but fierce objections from the downtown merchants blocked its implementation. Lerner instructed his secretary of public works to institute the change quickly and asked how long it would take. "He said he needed four months," Lerner recalled recently. "I said, 'Forty-eight hours.' He said, 'You're crazy.' I said, 'Yes, I'm crazy, but do it in 48 hours.' " The municipal authorities were able to accomplish it in three days, beginning on a Friday night and installing paving, lighting, planters and furniture by the end of the day on Monday. "Being a very weak mayor, if I start to do it and take too long, everyone could stop it through a juridical demand," Lerner went on to explain. "If they stop the work, it's finished. I had to do it very fast, at least in part. Because we had discussed it a great deal. Sometimes they have to have a demonstration effect."
The demonstration worked. Within days, impressed by the increase in their business, the once-recalcitrant shop owners were demanding an extension of the traffic-free district. Some diehard motorists, however, sulked. Lerner heard that a group of them were planning to disregard the prohibition and drive their cars into the street on a Saturday morning. So he contrived an unbreachable defense. With the cooperation of the city's teachers and a donation of rolls of newsprint and boxes of paint, on that morning he assembled several hundred children in the street, where they sat and drew pictures. "It was to say, 'This is being done for children and their parents — don't even think of putting cars there,' " he told me. The sputtered-out protest was the last resistance to the pedestrianization of the shopping area, which has since expanded from the original 6 blocks to encompass about 15 today. "Of course, this was very emblematic," Lerner recounted. "We were trying to say, 'This city is not for cars.' When many mayors at the time were planning for individual cars, we were countervailing." He observed that it was emblematic in another way also: "From that point, they said, 'If he could do this in 72 hours, he can do anything.' It was a good strategy."
An opening salvo, the creation of the pedestrian zone inaugurated a series of programs by Lerner and his colleagues that made Curitiba a famous model of late-20th-century urban planning. In the early 1970s, when Brazil was welcoming any industry, no matter how toxic its byproducts, Curitiba decided to admit only nonpolluters; to accommodate them, it constructed an industrial district that reserved so much land for green space that it was derided as a "golf course" until it succeeded in filling up with major businesses while its counterparts in other Latin American cities were flagging. Through the creation of two dozen recreational parks, many with lakes to catch runoff in low-lying areas that flood periodically, Curitiba managed, at a time of explosive population growth, to increase its green areas from 5 square feet per inhabitant to an astounding 560 square feet. The city promoted "green" policies before they were fashionable and called itself "the ecological capital of Brazil" in the 1980s, when there were no rivals for such a title. Today, Curitiba remains a pilgrimage destination for urbanists fascinated by its bus system, garbage-recycling program and network of parks. It is the answer to what might otherwise be a hypothetical question: How would cities look if urban planners, not politicians, took control?
Although the children who paint on Saturday mornings are no longer needed to protect the downtown shopping street from cars, the battle to keep Curitiba green is never-ending. Indeed, some say it is going badly these days. The rivers, once crystalline, reek of untreated sewage. The bus system that has won admirers throughout the world appears to be nearing capacity; what's more, Curitiba, by some measures, has a higher per capita ownership of private cars than any city in Brazil — even exceeding BrasÃlia, a city that was designed for cars. Curitiba's garbage-recycling rate has been declining over the last six or seven years, and the only landfill in the municipal region will be full by the end of 2008. Jorge Wilheim, the São Paulo architect who drafted Curitiba's master plan in 1965, says: "When we made the plan, the population was 350,000. We thought in a few years it would reach 500,000. But it has grown much bigger." The municipality of Curitiba today has 1.8 million people, and the population of the metropolitan region is 3.2 million. "I know the plan of Curitiba is very famous, and I am the first to enjoy it, but that was in '65," Wilheim continues. "The metropolitan region must have a new vision."
It is often said of Curitiba that it doesn't feel like Brazil. Depending on who's speaking, that can be intended as a compliment or a criticism. Populated by European immigrants in the 19th century, Curitiba has a demographic makeup that is largely more fair-skinned and well educated than that of Brazil's tropical north. It is also unusually affluent. Unlike São Paulo, with its startling extremes of wealth and poverty, much of Curitiba to an American eye looks familiarly middle class. Even the scruffy used-car lots have a seediness reminiscent of Los Angeles, not the Rio de Janeiro of "City of God." The city, especially the large downtown, is very clean, thanks to municipal sanitation trucks and the freelance carrinheiros, or cart people, who pick up trash to sell at recycling centers.
During my visit to Curitiba in March, the city was the host of an international biodiversity conference. While I hadn't known of it when I scheduled my trip, the coincidence was about as remarkable as finding a design show to greet you in Milan or a wine festival under way in Bordeaux. Environmentalism is the heart of Curitiba's self-identity, and the municipal government is always devising new schemes that showcase the brand. The rest of the world has caught on, if not yet caught up. Ecological awareness is architecturally trendy. This year's winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize is Richard Rogers, a longtime proponent of mass transit, lower energy consumption and ecologically sensitive buildings. Commercially, real-estate developers from Beijing to Santa Monica are brandishing their LEED certificates (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) as they market condominiums and office suites to green-minded consumers. While it is unusually ambitious, the 25-year plan that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed last month for New York is part of an international wave of recognition that cities must live more responsibly, especially when it comes to their effusions of climate-warming gases and their excretions of mountains of solid waste. Bloomberg's most contentious idea — a "congestion tax" on cars entering traffic-clogged districts during peak hours — has been working for more than four years in London (and more than 30 years in Singapore) to increase the numbers of people using public transportation. Interestingly, Curitiba adopted an opposite approach, brandishing a carrot instead of a stick. The city planners suspected that public transportation would attract more users if it was more attractive. And that reasonable assumption turned out to be correct.
The efficient buses that zip across the Curitiba metropolitan region are the most conspicuously un-Brazilian feature of the city. Instead of descending into subway stations, Curitibanos file into ribbed glass tubes that are boarding platforms for the rapid-transit buses. (The glass tubes resemble the "fosteritos" that Norman Foster later designed for the metro in Bilbao, Spain.) Curitiba has five express-bus avenues, with a sixth in development, to allow you to traverse the city with speedy dispatch. In the early 1970s, most cities investing in public transportation were building subways or light-rail networks. Curitiba lacked the resources and the time to install a train system. Lerner says that compared with the Curitiba bus network, a light rail system would have required 20 times the financial investment; a subway would have cost 100 times as much. "We tried to understand, what is a subway?" he recalls. "It has to have speed, comfort, reliability and good frequency. But why does it have to be underground? Underground is very expensive. With dedicated lanes and not stopping on every corner, we could do it with buses." Because widening the avenues would have required a lengthy and costly expropriation process, the planners came up with a "trinary" system that embraced three parallel thoroughfares: a large central avenue dedicated to two-way rapid-bus traffic (flanked by slow lanes for cars making short local trips) and, a block over on each side, an avenue for fast one-way automobile traffic.
When the bus system was inaugurated, it transported 54,000 passengers daily. That number has ballooned to 2.3 million, in large part because of innovations that permit passengers to board and exit rapidly. In 1992, Lerner and his team established the tubular boarding platforms with fare clerks and turnstiles, so that the mechanisms for paying and boarding are separated, as in a subway. To carry more people at a time, the city introduced flexible-hinged articulated buses that open their doors wide for rapid entry and egress; then, when the buses couldn't cope with the demand, the Lerner team called for bi-articulated buses of 88 feet with two hinges (and a 270-passenger capacity), which Volvo manufactured at Curitiba's request. Comparing the capacities of bus and subway systems, Lerner reels off numbers with a promoter's panache. "A normal bus in a normal street conducts x passengers a day," he told me. "With a dedicated lane, it can transport 2x a day. If you have an articulated bus in a dedicated lane, 2.7x passengers. If you add a boarding tube, you can achieve 3.4x passengers, and if you add double articulated buses, you can have four times as many passengers as a normal bus in a normal street." He says that with an arrival frequency of 30 seconds, you can transport 36,000 passengers every hour — which is about the same load he would have achieved with a subway.
Unfortunately, the trends of bus usage are down. While the system has expanded to cover 13 of the cities in the metropolitan region, charging a flat fare that in practice subsidizes the trips of the mostly poorer workers who live in outlying areas, bus ridership within the Curitiba municipality has been declining. "We are losing bus passengers and gaining cars," says Luis Fragomeni, a Curitiba urban planner. He observes that, like potential users of public transport everywhere, many Curitibanos view it as noisy, crowded and unsafe. Undermining the thinking behind the master plan, even those who live alongside the high-density rapid-bus corridors are buying cars. "The licensing of cars in Curitiba is 2.5 times higher than babies being born in Curitiba," he says. "Trouble." Because cars are status symbols, attempts to discourage people from buying them are probably futile. "We say, 'Have your own car, but keep it in the garage and use it only on weekends,' " Fragomeni remarks. And the public-transport system must be upgraded continuously to remain an appealing alternative to private vehicles. "That competition is very hard," says Paulo Schmidt, the president of URBS, the rapid-bus system. During peak hours, buses on the main routes are already arriving at almost 30-second intervals; any more buses, and they would back up. While acknowledging his iconoclasm in questioning the sufficiency of Curitiba's trademark bus network, Schmidt nevertheless says a light-rail system is needed to complement it.
When it comes to modifying human behavior, persuading urban dwellers to sort their garbage can be harder than coaxing them to garage their cars. Lerner and his allies have claimed that they have succeeded beyond the dreams of environmentalists in far more eco-friendly countries, including Japan and Sweden. Curitiba was a pioneer in separating recyclable materials, with its "Garbage That Is Not Garbage" program, inaugurated in 1989. (The city leaders have a flair for slogans.) Recycling has assumed a new urgency, because the entire metropolitan area contains only one landfill, and it will be exhausted by the end of next year. José Antonio Andreguetto, Curitiba's secretary for the environment, told me that 22 percent of the city's garbage is being separated for recycling, a rate that has been declining over the last half-dozen years; he says he hopes to bring the number up to 34 percent by the end of the current mayor's term in 2008. Lerner says the numbers have been eroding until recently because some recent mayors haven't emphasized the issue, but he maintains that the recycling rate in Curitiba is still the highest in the world.
It is very hard to determine how accurate the estimates are for garbage separation. "Curitiba began early to look at recycling garbage — that is true, and it is good," says Teresa Urban, a local journalist and environmental activist. "But the separation of recycled garbage is a little part of all the garbage we have here. There is no tradition of participation here. The mayor sold to the people the idea that this is a wonderful city. And the people think, This is wonderful, I don't have to do anything."
Like other left-wing critics, Urban traces the lack of participation to an original sin. The progressive urban planning of Curitiba was not initiated by a democratic process; it was set in motion by the military dictatorship that seized power in 1964 and ruled Brazil until the mid-'80s. Its environmentalism is rooted in authoritarianism. "They didn't have to confront the public through public participation, and the decisions could be made by urban planners — architects acting as politicians," says Clara Irazábal, who has written a book comparing the urban planning experiences of Curitiba and Portland, Ore. The city that has been called the most forward-looking in the Western Hemisphere is an outgrowth of an era that many Brazilians prefer not to look back on. Jaime Lerner, the archangel of the Curitiba green movement, was anointed by the dragons of war.
Always an anomaly, Curitiba became a model for our day by defying the spirit of the time. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, urban developers throughout the world, influenced by Le Corbusier and his followers, were remodeling cities to facilitate the easy circulation of people in automobiles. But in Curitiba, an informal group of young architects, urban planners and civil engineers at the city's Federal University of Paraná, which is the oldest university in Brazil, objected more effectively to the mayor's widening of streets and a proposed highway bypass that threatened the historic city center. As luck would have it, one of these outraged civil engineers, Fanchette Rischbieter, was married to the chairman of the government-controlled investment company that was financing the construction of roads in Paraná, the largely agricultural state of which Curitiba is the capital. "I said, 'It doesn't make sense, my wife and her friends are against these people — why don't we make a plan?' " Karlos Rischbieter recalls. Selected by the city, Jorge Wilheim came up with a master plan that concentrated high-density construction along two long rapid-transit axes that skirted the center. At least as important as his transportation and zoning recommendations was Wilheim's request for an urban-planning institute to implement them. In retrospect, the enthusiastic and talented staff of the Institute of Urban Research and Planning of Curitiba, which is known by its Portuguese acronym, Ippuc, ensured the success of Curitiba's redevelopment.
Still, there was a lag of five years from the formal adoption of the master plan in 1966 until its implementation, which began with the governor's selection of Lerner, who was president of Ippuc, to be mayor in 1971. Wilheim the planner needed Lerner the doer to turn abstract ideas into inventive reality. Curitiba has been studied more than copied (one notable exception is a Curitiba-style bus system in Bogotá, Colombia) because unlike Lerner, most mayors stumble over political obstacles. "I always tell a story of the '80s," Rischbieter says. "A friend from São Paulo came with his wife and son to visit Curitiba. He did not know this city. I took my car and showed him Curitiba for three hours. When I left him at the hotel, he said, 'What did you show people before Jaime Lerner?' "
A spark plug of ideas, Lerner, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, combines salesmanship and pragmatism. Following his mayoral terms, he won election twice as governor of Paraná State, retiring in 2002 at the age of 65 to devote himself to his architecture firm and to worldwide speaking engagements espousing green urban planning. He has a large head that seems to rest directly on wide shoulders; knowing his passion for recycling, you might almost believe that his thick-set body has been through a compactor. He radiates a highly compressed and infectious energy, with a can-do assertiveness that borders on arrogance. "He never asked if something was good or not," Rischbieter remarks. "He would say, 'I'll go do it.' I would say, 'You have to go ask people and get their opinions.' He would say, 'No, they won't agree with me, and it has to be done.' He is not a political animal, he is a dictator." Rischbieter admires Lerner; others, however, using the same descriptive terminology, do not. In the rough-and-tumble of Brazilian politics, it has become customary for supporters of populist parties to disparage Lerner (who personifies his talented team to allies and foes alike) as a creature of the dictatorship. According to this argument, the generals detested politicians; they admired technical experts. In Curitiba, they found a showplace to display their accomplishments to the world. "The military are addicted to planning," says Fragomeni, who has an ambivalent attitude toward Lerner. "If they don't plan, they don't go forward. They invested in Curitiba. Mr. Lerner may like it or not. His continuity was ensured by the military government." For his part, Lerner says that he had a far harder time with the military dictatorship than he did later, as an elected official. Under the military regime, he served at the pleasure of the governor and the state assembly. "I could be fired the next day," he says. "Being an elected mayor, I was stronger. Nobody could fire me."
In two terms (1971-75 and 1979-83) under the military regime, and then in an elected third term (1989-92) after the restoration of democracy, Lerner translated the master plan into concrete and leafy reality. Like an impatient muralist, he worked on a wide scope at high speed. "I know cities that plant 10,000 trees, and they make a whole festival," he told me. "We planted a million trees. I am obsessed with scale." He sought to make a livable city; over time that segued smoothly into an ecological city. Parks initially intended as recreational areas would also absorb floodwaters and extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Lerner used tax breaks to wheedle landowners into turning over portions of their property, which typically had little value at the time. In the rocky northern district, he converted one flooded quarry into the Wire Opera House, which has become a city icon, and another into the Free University of the Environment, a non-degree-granting institution that educates people on ecological issues. He transformed land that was serving as a refuse dump into a botanical garden; named for Fanchette Rischbieter, who died in 1989, it features a duck pond, French parterres and a classic Victorian greenhouse. The architecture in all three of these parks is less noteworthy for its formal design than for its building materials — salvaged telephone poles, mesh grating, metal tubing — and the speed of construction. From blueprint drafts to opening night, the Wire Opera House took about two months to complete. Lerner refers to such projects as "urban acupuncture" that energizes the development process.
When I would ask people if they thought Lerner could have accomplished his reforms under a democracy, people sympathetic to both Lerner and the military (like Rischbieter) or critical of both (like Urban) would say no; but most, professing admiration for Lerner but distaste for the military, said the dictatorship was not a precondition for his success. Lerner and Wilheim were emphatic on this point. "Not being a traditional politician helped me a lot," Lerner told me. Nonetheless, by entering public life, even a self-professed apolitical man becomes a political actor. What struck me was the way in which the return of democracy changed Lerner's core constituency. Under the generals, he was vulnerable mainly to the business community. That is why, for instance, he had to implement the pedestrian mall so quickly: if the business class lost confidence in him, the state assembly would have insisted that he be replaced. In a democratic Brazil, Lerner and his successors are threatened not just by the rich, but perhaps even more acutely by the poor — politically, by populist parties, and demographically, by the inexorable population growth. In politics, the pendulum has swung, as it always does. For the first time in 15 years, the winning candidate in Curitiba's last mayoral election, in 2004, was not directly associated with the Lerner Group, the firm of 10 architects and planners that Lerner runs. Still, the new administration is continuing on the path that Lerner blazed. More worrisome for Curitiba's future is the demographic trend. Over the past half-century, the state of Paraná underwent a radical change, from a labor-intensive coffee economy to a mechanized agriculture of soybeans. Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs. Many of the dispossessed have relocated to the Curitiba metropolitan region, which in Brazil is famously livable. Every day, more keep coming.
The "invasions" of homeless people onto unoccupied land spill like ink stains over the neatly outlined development maps of the urban planners, not only in Curitiba but across Brazil. One Saturday morning, I visited the neighborhood of Nossa Senhora da Luz, where a small group of people waited with sacks or improvised carts of garbage. The hardscrabble community dates from an early invasion of the 1970s. Today the streets are paved and the houses are solid cinder block, but unlike downtown Curitiba, here it is immediately apparent from the bleak, scrubby streetscape and the dark skins of the populace that you are in a third-world setting. I was there to observe one of 79 exchange centers that the municipality of Curitiba has established in communities where the streets are too narrow or too bumpy for large garbage trucks to circulate. Instead, people can carry their trash to biweekly collection sites and trade four pounds of garbage for one pound of vegetables. Mostly they bring plastic, paper and cardboard. At another site, run by the community council, more valuable aluminum cans are collected in return for money, and at yet another, organic material is traded for bus tokens. Compared with middle-class people, the residents of this neighborhood do not generate so much recyclable material; much of what they trade they prospect for around the city. Curitiba may be more successful in enlisting poor citizens to function as part-time carrinheiros than in enlightening better-off residents on their civic responsibilities.
The largest working-class housing development within Curitiba is called Bairro Novo, or "new neighborhood." It was developed hurriedly, you might say frantically, after a band of 3,000 people, at the start of a three-day holiday weekend in September 1992, invaded a nearby parcel of vacant land where a disused railroad line once operated. This was the same sort of stealth tactic that Lerner employed two decades earlier to pedestrianize the shopping street, but now it was being used against him — coordinated, he maintains, by his political opponents, who controlled the governorship then as they do now. Since the security forces are directed by the state of Paraná and not the city, there was no way Lerner could stop the so-called Ferrovila (or railroad town) invasion. He says that he was especially infuriated because his administration had been researching the creation of a much larger development on the same land, housing 10 times as many people, as well as establishing schools and other social services. Instead, his team began planning the Bairro Novo on a parcel of land that was slated for development a decade or two later. There are 80,000 people living in Bairro Novo today. For a while, the illegal squats died off. "If you have a good alternative, you can prevent the invasions," Lerner says.
Recently, invasions have started up again. "There is a feeling that it may be politically motivated," says Fragomeni, the urban planner, who served until March as president of Ippuc. He reports that in Curitiba today, there are 13,000 households in invasion settlements, 6,000 of them in ecologically fragile areas. Squatters often occupy land by rivers, both to obtain a water source and because, by law, the riverbanks can't be developed. "The land is forbidden, and it is free at the same time," says Urban, the environmental activist. Raw sewage from these settlements flows directly into the rivers. Fragomeni says that fewer than 70 percent of Curitiba households have sewer connections. The current administration, led by Mayor Beto Richa (who was endorsed by Lerner but is not professionally associated with him), is trying to alleviate the problem with a new program to clean up the water basin of the sadly polluted Bariguà River: relocating people to housing that is a little farther from the river, replanting vegetation on the banks and linking houses to the sewage system.
The program to reclaim the Bariguà basin was galvanized by the most recent invasion in February, when 1,500 people seized land near Ferrovila in Bariguà Park and hit a sensitive nerve. Their encampment is provocatively close to Ecoville, a controversial upper-middle-class development that arose in the mid-'90s along one of the rapid-bus corridors. As Lerner acidly observes of Ecoville, "I don't like this project, because it is not 'eco' and it is not 'ville.' " Ecoville is a self-contained development in which tall buildings loom over patches of vegetation and looping roads. It's an unconvincing version of the discredited Corbusian model of "the city in the park," an idea that the developers self-consciously reference by naming one of these buildings "Le Corbusier." Many buildings have been labeled for works by Picasso — the Arlequin, the Pierrot, even the Guernica. One noteworthy Picasso-christened tower, the Suite Vollard, features 11 full-floor residences, each of which is supposed to be able to rotate independently. The Suite Vollard is 10 years overdue for occupancy. Its engineering is still unproved.
Ferrovila and Ecoville: in close proximity, you can see the politicized landless and the profit-minded land developers who threaten Curitiba's status as an ecological city. A reputation can be as hard to uphold as to establish. Unlike his three immediate predecessors, Mayor Richa — a boyish, blow-dried 41-year-old civil engineer from a prominent political family — is not an urban planner. And Ippuc, while still powerful, no longer directs the show. Richa has discontinued the longstanding mayoral custom, established by Lerner, of attending a weekly meeting at Ippuc. Under Lerner and his successors, "the mayor sat in Ippuc, and you felt what he wanted," Fragomeni says. "It was a very verticalized government. Ippuc also planned the budget for the city. There's democracy now, which is good. But it is no longer a pyramid; it's a network. The mayor now expects you to propose what Curitiba should look like. He's not a town planner."
Nor is Curitiba a single town any longer. It's a conurbation. Planning must be for the metropolitan region, not just for the municipality. Does it matter that Curitiba bans polluting industries if the neighboring town of Araucária has an oil refinery belching smoke on the city line? Similarly, if the new immigrants to the poor surrounding communities don't recycle, then Curitiba's landfill, the only such facility in the metropolitan region, will fill up even sooner. Like garbage, water does not respect city limits: Curitiba's water supply depends on reservoirs controlled by municipalities outside its borders. What was never simple has become even more complex. For a long time, the citizens of Curitiba were so proud of the city's reputation as an urban showplace that they kept re-electing urban planners — self-styled technical experts who seemed to be above politics and who vaunted their expertise in running the buses, building the parks and recycling the garbage. But a mayor today must be able to negotiate successfully with other mayors if reform is to work. Mayors need to be politicians, even in Curitiba.


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For a long time – for about a year to be exact – nothing happened on this blog. While so much was happening on my journey across Australia and my visits to Singapore, Indonesia, Fiji and Vanuatu, I simply did not know where to start. So I never did.
As I had settled down on the Central Coast for a while, I was thinking about bringing the blog back to life again, but was too busy in my job as a store manager. Now that I have started travelling again and there is some things to talk about and some pictures to show, I finally made my decision to re-open this blog with a new strategy.
Instead of keeping everyone informed about every step of my journey, in the future I will post about a place at a time. This could be a town, a national park, a beach or any other point of interest that I either have been to and would to share with you, or a place that I am currently at. No matter which one of these, only the best and most interesting places will be reviewed in this blog.
Coming up is a what I would call a summary of amazing spots throughout Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and maybe occasionally some from my visits to South East Asia. From secret beaches to famous cities, from stunning attractions to wildlife and national parks…
Let this be an inspiration or even your personal guide to an amazing holiday downunder.


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The new Honda Jazz has impressed the independent safety organisation Euro NCAP again, winning the prestigious Best in Class 2015 award in the supermini category. This shortly follows the maximum 5-star safety rating the Jazz received earlier in 2015.
Each year, Euro NCAP publishes a list of cars that have performed the best in their relevant category. To achieve a 'Best in Class' award from Euro NCAP, cars from each category are assessed against a weighted sum of scores in four key areas of evaluation these include: Adult Occupancy, Child Occupancy, Pedestrian and Safety assist. Despite competing against nine superminis in total, the Jazz came out on top scooping the 'Best in Class' supermini award.
Secretary General, Dr. Michiel van Ratingen of Euro NCAP commented that the award "recognises the Jazz's five star performance and Honda's safety equipment strategy which make it the top performer in this segment."
Honda's City-Brake Active System (CTBA) is fitted as standard on all Jazz grades. The mid and upper ranges of the Jazz also feature 'Advanced Driver Assist Sytem' (ADAS), a comprehensive array of active-safety technologies including: Forward Collision Warning, Traffic Sign Recognition System, Intelligent Speed Limiter, Lane Departure Warning and High-beam Support System.
An additional feature on the Jazz is Honda's Advanced Compatibility Engineering (ACE) body structure. This intelligent system is designed to redirect collision energy away from the passenger compartment, while reducing the damage caused to other impacted vehicles.
On receiving the award, Philip Ross, Honda Motor Europe Senior Vice President said the brand were "thrilled to have the Jazz named as the Best in Class supermini 2015" and that Honda is "committed to providing customers with high quality products that meet the most stringent safety standards in Europe."
For more information about the New Honda Jazz and to arrange your test drive, visit our Honda dealerships across Essex in Chelmsford, Colchester and Romford, or contact us using the buttons above.


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Well, first of all, this post is a bit rantish, but after talking with some people, it seemed just fair to explicitly put examples of why I think Bishop's Machine Learning Book book offers overall a better learning experience than Murphy's Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective
I'll present two didactic experiments, and I will have the point of view of someone versed in Probability and Statistics to an undergrad level, but not that much with ML.
So the 1st experiment is to introduce the reader to the EM algorithm via Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM), every book does it, and every book has its strengths and disadvantages.
Just so you can follow, this topic starts in page 352 in Murphy's Book and in page 430 in Bishop's.
Ok, so to start off, Murphy never references the equation of the Mixture of Gaussians (granted, is 5 pages before, but still, you need a finger in that page going back and forth), while Bishop essentially restates the whole Mixture of Gaussians paradigm, which he already did 200 pages before, is essentially the same text, but he goes to the whole problem of restating notation, what each term means and how the likelihood is calculated. He does mention the fact that he already did it 200 pages before (by putting a reference to the equation), but he just goes ahead anyway. Murphy does not even goes to the problem of saying where are the likelihood equations.
Furthermore, Bishop uses GMM as a motivation for EM, while Murphy's follow the years old formula of Model - > Numerical Recipe to solve it, and beware the numerical recipe has zero notation, and you have to go through the whole book looking for it.
So first experiment, Bishop is the clear winner.
Second experiment, introduce the reader to a new topic, not in Bishop's (because that is supposedly one of Murphy's advantages). In this case Deep Learning, which is the last chapter on the book, page 1000.
Ok, so we are presented with equation 28.1:
$p(h_1,h_2,h_3,v|\theta) = \cdots$
Without any context text, that equation is just useless. What are $h_1, h_2, h_3$, in the right hand side of the equation they are multiplied by some $w$. Remember, I am a newbie in ML, I am not supposed to know directed graphical models at all. Furthermore, there is no explanation or motivation for the model at all.
A good reference book, would ate least direct you where those terms where first introduced. So I went to the Notation sections, where oh surprise! $h$ is never explained, neither is $v$, I mean there is a $v$ for nodes of a graph, and this is a directed graphical model, so that makes sense.
So $v$ is any node in the graph. just to be sure I will search in the book. I assume that the previous chapter (latent variable models for discrete data, page 950) has the notation at the beginning, since per definition a deep net might be latent model for discrete data (here I had to pick a bit on my ML expertise). Remember, we still have no idea what $h$ stands for or $w$.
Ok, so the first thing I notice, is that $v$ is actually words in a document, so it is not nodes, but words? I do not do NLP, what are the words in a Bag of Words supposed to be? Features? examples?
Why words, why not something more general?
But at least we know $v$ are words. We still do not know what $h$ or $w$ is.
So perhaps is even further back.
Graphical Models Structure Learning (page 909), obviously, no notation on the first few pages, let's go over the chapter, I think I saw an $h$. Yeii!! success!! Page 924 defined $h$ as hidden variables.
So $v$ are words and $h$ are hidden variables, right? Ok cool, wait.... I just bumped into page 988, and here it says that let's overwrite notation (just because, I guess) and now $v$ is actually the input (which are the visible layers by the way, hence the $v$). So $v$ went from being nodes, to words to input that was formerly known as $y$ (like Prince!!)
Now, we understand the left hand side of equation 28.1, oh yeah, we haven't defined the weights yet (yeah those pesky $w$ that I just defined in a single line) but I'm too tired to even try. They are weights that mark the importance of each hidden or visible node, and are the things we are trying to find (there! print it and paste it at the top of the book, a single line!!!)
We essentially backtracked two chapters and wasted a ton of time looking for a single line where he defined the variables for the first time, and if you missed it, like I did with page 988, you are essentially doomed to have a bad understanding of the topic.
Anyway, I guess that is off my chest and I promise, this is the last post on Murphy's book, I guess my take home message is: This is probably a good book if you already know machine learning (and familiarized with the particular flavor of their notation), but is by no means an "essential reference for practitioners of modern machine learning". The last thing a practitioner wants is to go through the entire book so he can implement EM. Specially today's practitioners, but that is a rant for another day.
At the end of the day, I enjoy teaching ML to people, and introducing these fascinating concepts to them and is very frustrating that the community endorses a book that does a very poor job at addressing this issue.
See ya


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As John Cage says, music and art are one reality, just in different forms; in their sublime resonance they reveal the spirit and soul of the universe.
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


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Help Us Tweet (and Facebook) to Beat Heatstroke on July 31
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The below blog post was written and submitted by NHTSA Acting Administrator, David Friedman.
Summer is supposed to be a time of fun and freedom for children. But, too often during the summer months, a child left alone in a vehicle dies due to heatstroke. Already this year 18 children died due to heatstroke, in addition to the 44 children we lost in 2013.
To help parents and caregivers protect children, NHTSA launched the "Where's Baby? Look Before You Lock" public education campaign. The campaign's web page – safecar.gov/heatstroke – seeks to arm parents, caregivers, and bystanders with the information they need to protect our kids. This year, we're also again asking everyone on Twitter and Facebook to help spread our lifesaving message as part of Heatstroke Awareness Day on July 31. We'd greatly appreciate the support of JPMA members in this endeavor.
To prevent heatstroke, parents need to understand that vehicles heat up quickly—even with a window rolled down two inches, if the outside temperature is in the low 80s degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature inside a vehicle can reach deadly levels in only 10 minutes. Heatstroke is a serious risk even with temperatures in the 60s or 70s and cracking a window does not help. When a child's temperature reaches 107 degrees that child dies.
The threat of heatstroke is real, which is why NHTSA offers helpful tips on how to help keep children safe at safercar.gov/heatstroke. We hope that you'll help share this advice on Facebook and on Twitter on July 31. Along with our partners, Safe Kids and the Administration for Children and Families, we'll be tweeting and posting every 30 minutes from 8 AM to 4 PM. Our Twitter account - @NHTSAgov – will be using the hashtags #checkforbaby and #heatstrokekills on all of our social media posts, and we'd like JPMA members to do the same.
Our commitment to preventing heatstroke extends all the way up to the Secretary's Office at the U.S. Department of Transportation and throughout the federal government.
Secretary Anthony Foxx and I recently visited the Rosemount Early Childhood Development Center in Northwest Washington to warn of the danger of heatstroke. We were also joined by Mark Greenberg, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, who spoke about HHS' efforts to spread the word and combat heatstroke.
But the most powerful message sent at our heatstroke event came from Reginald McKinnon, who lost his 2-year old daughter when he accidentally left her in his vehicle four years ago. His story is a heart wrenching reminder that this tragedy can happen to anyone. Reggie has shown great courage by choosing to dedicate his time to helping parents avoid a similar tragedy.
Every single death from leaving children in hot cars is 100 percent avoidable, and even one heatstroke death is too many. To learn more about how you can help keep children safe visit safercar.gov/heatstroke. And please join with us on Facebook and Twitter on July 31 to help spread the word that heatstroke kills.


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Our bands, orchestra, jazz, and choral ensembles expose students, faculty, and the community to the artistic and communicative values of music and the power it has to changes lives.
Media Gallery
Play Music is _____. video
Music is _____.
Play Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra video
Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra
Play Five Sax Arrangement video
Five Sax Arrangement
Play Some Like It Cool video


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On June 23rd the UK voted to leave the EU.
Following such a momentous referendum it's time to review the facts, to reflect on some of the challenges that lie ahead and assess how, together, the EU and the UK can forge new opportunities for the future.
First, a few facts:UK is, and will always be, a truly global trading country, a country which has constantly looked outward to trade and engage with the entire world.
The result is that more international companies have come to the UK – in particular to London – than to any other country/city and more than half of international investors have cited London as the leading European city for foreign direct investment.
London is home to more than 250 international banks. In fact, there are more American banks based in London than there are in New York and there are more banking head offices in London than anywhere else in the world.
Forty per cent of the world's top companies are headquartered in London which makes the city Europe's leading city for patent registrations in healthcare, wireless technology, video games, multimedia and software.
The Commworld Partnership is also registered in England as a limited company and will remain registered there.
All CommWorld member agencies, both those in the E.U. and outside it, feel committed to working ever more closely to build stronger alliances between countries across Europe and companies in the UK.
Therefore, we are looking for a new UK partner agency who feels committed to future trading relationship with the rest of Europe and thus open for new opportunities.
If you're a UK-based, future minded communication agency, we strongly recommend you to get in touch.