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This is a community for those wholike JuC (Justin/JC) slash. Herepeople can post pictures, fictionor anything JuC-related. RULES:1) Your story (obviously) must contain the JC/Justin pairing.2) When posting the story please use a cut-tag. If you do not know what a cut-tag is, please check out LJ's FAQ's.3) Please include the rating of your story when you post it, along with any other pairings that may be invovled. 4) Please inform us if it is a Work In Progress or if it is a finished piece. 5) This is a JuC only community. You cannot post about other communities or anything else that is not JuC-related. 6) None of this "If I don't get any feedback - I won't write anymore!" If you post something saying that, I will just delete it.

[CU] voting required Hmm, i have noticed that some of you guys voted, while we still worked on templates layout. Many has changed and few additional has appeared, thus if anybody wishes to change their votes, do not hesitate to do so. Preferably under this post-will be easier for me to count. -- Kind Regards Patryk Benderz IT Specialist Linux Registered User #377521 +48 22 538 6292 ERSTE Securities Polska S.A. ul. Królewska 16 Warszawa 00-103 KRS 0000065121 NIP 526-10-27-638 REGON 011136053 Kapitał akcyjny: 15.500.000 złotych (w pełni opłacony) This message and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the addressee(s). Any publication, transmission or other use of the information by a person or entity other than the intended addressee is prohibited. If you receive this in error please contact the sender and delete the material. The sender does not accept liability for any errors or omissions as a result of the transmission. Email secured by Check Point

Outside Reality When my lover and I play so intimately, so charged with eroticism, we incorporate a ritual of cleanliness to insure our enhanced pleasure. Part of our lovemaking process is this preparation. We use it as tender, loving, foreplay. It is our way of anointing our bodies for the lovemaking that follows. the siren * * * * * He waits for me out there somewhere in the woods. At the appointed time I am to join him. We have agreed that I shall be his birthday gift. He is to unwrap me and to use me in any manner he desires with no resistance from me. My heart races in anticipation of what carnal delights he has designed for his own amusement and our mutual pleasure. He has had carte blanche for over a month to conjure his plan. As I glance in the mirror to apply one last layer of lipstick before journeying forth, I notice a pink glow to my skin, evidence of my growing arousal. We have been here beside the Pacific Ocean for a week now; time enough to familiarize ourselves with the geography surrounding the cabin - nine acres in total, much of it hillside terrain, with an abundance of old growth forest. We have used this week to explore each other, filling our minds with the other's fantasies, and filling our bodies, every orifice with repeated offerings of pleasure. Each morning before sunrise he greets me fresh from the shower and already having cleansed himself in preparation for the day's activities. He delights in having prepared a glowing fire in the stove, a steaming cup of coffee with one sugar and warm milk, and lastly a warm enema bag hung beside the daybed facing the ocean to greet me when my eyes first open. He lovingly places me face down on the mattress with face towards the scenic view. He brushes my skin with his fingertips and soft kisses. His mustache sometimes tickles me unexpectedly and produces a rise of small goose bumps, but his warm breath soon sends them away. He massages my buttocks, stroking them so that he exposes my pink bud. With his thumbs spreading the cheeks apart and the private hole open he visually inspects the chamber. "You like this, don't you?" He whispers. I do not respond. Instead I sigh a deep breath that nestles my body further into the soft comforter all the while knowing that my silence would solicit additional stimulation. Two digits press against the sphincter for entry. Once again I sigh and they slide in; he massages and stretches until I coo with pleasure. The bardex soon replaces fingers. It is always such a wonderful surprise when the balloon expands and releases me from worry of any possible embarrassing leaks. He lies beside me and pulls me into the spooning position as he trickles the liquid into my hungry body. He cups a breast in his hand and caresses the nipple. His lips nibble the nape of my neck compelling my body to grind against his ready penis. He gently rubs my ever-swelling belly before pulling me to my knees and crawling behind me. He penis fills my vagina with a rush. My body is so thoroughly filled. He pumps with a deliberate steady rhythm. I feel him tug the hose causing the balloon to draw back and force my anus open. My mind saw and felt the sensation of two penises simultaneously fucking me. I love the feel of his penis as his orgasm builds and begins to pulse. This inevitably triggers my own release. On occasion, something magical happens in our coupling, and this was one of those wondrous moments. His penis had been in almost constant contact with that sometimes-elusive zone of a woman's body. The texture begins as fine ridges, and then softens and ripens when stimulated properly. His orgasm erupted through me. My body responds by ejaculating a slippery liquid all its own. Moments such as this are most indescribable. Suffice it to say that if there be a nirvana, this must surely be it. After unlocking from my body, he has me hold the enema while he sets about cleaning me up and washing me with warm cloths. He wraps a blanket about my shoulders and leads me to the bathroom for release. From Nathan's Journal: I remember every step of the pathway that leads to our secret place in the woods. It was not easy to get to from our cabin--through several ravines, a wooden bridge and two planks pretending to be a bridge and doing a great job! I was so excited as I made the journey! Just knowing that Diana was as excited as I fueled my anticipation. I arrived at our pre-arranged nest, laid out a few necessities, and stripped to await her arrival. Fortunately, the breeze was cool for the filtered sun's rays were warm on my naked skin--I did not have to wait long! This is a fantasy that has long played in both of our imaginations. It has been dreamed of, tweaked, and then re-dreamed of for over a year. So, whether it is coincidence or kismet, I know not; but yesterday as we walked the trails, the required elements began to fall into place We followed a trail that wound through the woods to a series of steps descending downward toward the ocean, across a primitive bridge, and then to steps leading up the hill on the other side of the ridge. From the bridge, by looking to the right a waterfall of cold icy water fed by the melting snow top mountains was the visual. To the left side, the view became a sharp drop where the flowing water collects into a tide pool before overflowing the boundary and cascading down the hill and into the Pacific Ocean. We stopped at a landing further up the hill where a bench had been strategically positioned for any who cared to sit and ponder the ebb and flow of tides or witness the hawks soaring on the waves of wind. Continuing on, the trail made many twists and turns before opening up to a small clearing with a view of the ocean. A freshly fallen log lay there invitingly. The rear of the clearing was comprised of a cluster of bushes and trees shielding the clearing from any possible prying eyes. Our eyes locked and we smiled in pure delight that a stage complete with backdrop had been presented to us to enact our little drama. It was wise of him to go on ahead of me and build our nest. I needed the time to prepare myself both physically and mentally. First, I showered and shaved my legs and underarms. Then, I paid particular attention to re-shaving my vulva so that it would be smooth and baby soft. Also while showering, I completed the preparations with a thorough cleaning of the inside of my body as well. My intent was to free myself from any potential embarrassment or distress. Achieving this meant focusing on each sphincter ring as the water nudged against it and concentrating on relaxing so that I would arrive to meet him ready to receive the fluids that he had planned for me. Mentally I inwardly envisioned the chambers of my body opening and letting loose of all stress. Over and over I filled small amounts of water and then drained. Each filling was an increased volume. It was at this point that he came into the bathroom and announced that he was leaving. He asked, "Do you think you can find your way alone, Diana?" "Yes," I nodded, "I can do it." This affirmation was vital! This was my commitment to the adventure; it was my acknowledgement that I entered into this game freely. He had taken the liberty of laying out the clothes that he wanted me to wear. I picked up the pair of black crotch-less panties and fingered the small lavender rose centered to sit above the Venus mound. My clitoris was so engorged, for I had rubbed the essence of Damiana over both sets of lips and massaged the inner vaginal walls. My sex absorbed the liquid! I could hear blood rushing through my ears! It was intoxicatingly erotic! I continued to masturbate with the liquid inside of my vagina as I expelled the last preparatory filling. He had chosen the dainty silver and glass earrings and necklace as my only adornment. Over my naked and unrestrained breasts I was to wear a very sheer while blouse, and finally a purple and black broomstick skirt. My hair was twisted upwards and secured with a barrette. After adding sunglass as a practicality it was now time to present myself to him. As I made my way out of the door, I turned to secure it. My first few steps were rather clumsy. I had stop momentarily to listen to my heart. The tempo was racing as if I had just run a marathon. Breathe in, now breathe out, I reminded myself! Only then could I resume forward progress. This time a smile of pleasure graced my face. By reminding myself that this was an adventure well planned, I was able to remain composed and calm. He was somewhere out there waiting………. As I reached the first plateau, I stopped to appreciate our beautiful surroundings. Then as though repeating .a mantra for my own ears I voiced, "We are grownups playing a grownup game. This game was mutually agreed upon and sealed in the alliance of our love for each other. I will not allow fear, not needless fear, to intervene. I go to him as though a virginal bride to join him at the forest altar he has created for us. I submit to his touch and to his pleasure. I desire to be his pleasure orifice. I will not resist. I will find a place within my mind that will provide stimulus and satisfaction for both of us." When I arrived at the edge of the clearing he was stretched out on the quilt with his arms folded behind his head. He wore nothing except a small black collar. His eyes were closed and he was smiling the smile he always has when he travels deep inside his head to his fertile fantasy playground. There was a backpack, a picnic of fresh fruit, a loaf of crusty bread, a block of soft white cheese, and an uncorked bottle of wine and two wine glasses. An open journal lay by his side. Perhaps sensing my presence he opened his eyes and smiled. He beckoned me to sit beside him and held his finger to his pursed lips indicating that we should remain silent. He looked so handsome, so comfortable in his nakedness, and his penis began to swell in greeting as I lowered myself beside him. He leaned forward and laced his fingers around the back of my neck and kissed me warmly. We gently explored the other's mouth. His tasted so sweet! He handed me the open notebook and a glass of wine. "Welcome to our playground. I'm glad you came .The bushes make this area very secure!" "Yes, I agree. As I walked the path, I stopped along the way to familiarize myself and to reassure myself of our solitude." "So how about a toast to the other couple somewhere in the universe, playing as we are right now…." "I'll drink to that. Have you determined that no one is at home on the other hillside?" "I haven't seen a soul, car, or anything else over there in 3 days. Now, please remove your blouse and lift your skirt so I can se you." "Are we taking sunburn into consideration?" "We will be in shade in 30 minutes" "I am having a wave of panic that we might get caught. Tell me again that we haven't drawn any attention to ourselves that might draw scrutiny." "Nothing, Dear! No one saw us and if they did it would look as if we were taking a picnic." He took the book from my hands and closed it and then leaned forward and took a breast into his mouth. First one and then the other until both nipples were hard and very very pink. He slid his hand between my legs as he tenderly guided them apart. A rush of cool air preceded the entry of his fingers inside the wet darkness. To both of our surprise, my body responded immediately as I climaxed on his hand. It was sudden, it was intense, for so great had the anticipation been that there was no holding back. "There will be many more of those before this picnic is over." He withdrew his fingers and got to his knees. He prepared us each a small plate and refilled our wine glasses. We only nibbled for both of us were more focused on the stirrings of our bodies and the erotic imaginings of things to come. Sensing this, he gathered the lunch items and put them away. He busied himself laying out a large heavy purple towel and draping it over the fallen log as if the log were a stallion and the towel a saddle. He patted the towel and indicated that I was to straddle the log. The towel was positioned to fit from my neck to the edge of my lips. He has rolled a small towel into a pillow where I could rest my head. He raised my skirt to above my waist revealing the delicate black panties, the vaginal lips shaved barren and the recesses of my glistening vagina. . From the backpack he removed a two-quart enema bag that he laid flat on the quilt beside the log. He attached tubing and a red bulb, which he explained was a pump. This device he said did not require a gravity feed. Once again he reached deep into the pack and removed a gigantic looking dildo that had life like markings of a male genitalia. "This is the nozzle, Diana. Do you want to feel it? There is a tube that runs through the shaft. When I fill you it will be like I am ejaculating my juices inside you." He placed a latex glove on his hand while smiling at me coyly. "Can you pass the rubber glove test?" He did not wait for my answer. My answer would not have mattered. I was his birthday toy. And he was the birthday boy, so he could play with his toy any way he pleased. First one finger, then two entered the first elastic ring. It snapped tightly around the digits. He curled his fingers and pressed down towards the vaginal wall. Then he began a slow deliberate circular pattern. Upon the completion of each circle he stretched the ring slightly open. My body shuddered. "Good girl." He stretched his fingers full length and thrust in and out before slipping them out completely. He held his gloved hand up for his and my inspection. "Very good. You are very clean!" At that moment, I experienced a pang of emotion, a mixture of minute humiliation and pride that I had pleased him. He picked up the artificial penis and lubricated it well. With one hand he spread my cheeks apart forcing the pink ring to pucker outward. He placed the tip of the head at the opening and instructed me "swallow it". With amazing ease it filled the cavity snugly. He fucked my body with this object , all the while watching my face intently for any nuance of change. My arms wrapped around the log just as I would caress a lover. "Ooooh!" I sighed my pleasure. He squeezed that big red bulb and a gush of water flowed into me. He waited. Then he squeezed again. He waited. He kept repeating this process before suddenly stopping. He slid the dildo out and placed his hand firmly on the small of my back. "Now, Diana, you must expel." My only resistance was to swallow hard on the lump that had formed in my throat. I simply contracted my abdominal muscles and a stream of water exited. "Don't worry. You are very clean. Just relax and enjoy it." Again the dildo and my rectum were united. Again he pumped the fluids, squeeze after squeeze, and then the release. He watched in fascination at his work. Each expulsion became easier. Each filling and expulsion made me crave more. I relished this freedom of nature and passion! He ran out of water before he came close to tiring of this game. He tugged on my skirt to indicate that he wanted to reposition my body. He placed me on my knees using the log to support my upper torso. My eyes faced the Pacific. He crawled behind me and penetrated my ass with his own beautiful erection. His thrusts were accentuated with guttural grunts. The texture of the bark made slight indentations in my torso, my mind blazed with erotic images, and my body eagerly received his intensified thrusts. “I could fuck you like this all day!” My breasts hung loosely over the side of the log. Each tempo change caused them to bounce against the log. The sensations were each so unique that my body responded greedily. This could best be described as a sensual overload. He told me that he was going to fill me with his orgasm. He clung to the curve of my ass. How delicious was the feel of the repeated throb within me! How intoxicating was the explosion of heat from his ejaculate! His body draped atop my own as we both clung to the other and absorbed the beauty that surrounded us. Afterwards, as we lay on the quilt together whispering terms of endearment, a magical happening occurred. A humming bird flew in to "our nest" only inches from my eyes. It hovered, its wings moving so rapidly , as we seem to study each other in equal awe. The last touch of whimsy to end a very perfect afternoon.

A steel Chronoswiss Timemaster Chrono Luminous Thursday, June 03, 2010 Article content This is a great example of Gerd Lang's driving force behind Chronoswiss. Utilizing the venerable Valjoux 7750, and executed very well, this watch has an amazing dial that one has to see to believe. When exposed to the sun or a bright light with UV, it glows green. The black hands and markers stand out against it to reveal the time or chrono recording. The value proposition from Chronoswiss is always one I appreciate, together with the well designed style of their watches. The finishing of the movement is good for the price and the case work is excellent. This piece comes with an extra long brown leather aviator strap and spare parts kit housed within an aluminum case.

If you're not going rest assured you can get all the latest news that comes out of Amsterdam right here on the CrackBerry blogs. We'll be live blogging the keynote, so be sure to tune in next week for all the happenings from Amsterdam. If you're attending, let us know. Don't forget to register for any breakout sessions you want to attend during the Jam. The BlackBerry Jam Europe 2013 Mobile Guide is also now available for download from BlackBerry World. I recommend downloading it if you are attending. CrackBerry is in no way Affiliated with BlackBerry. We take pride in our unbiased content, however do occasionally receive free products from vendors that we review or discuss. For more info click here.

Cosmo Lite sleeping pad May 25, 2019 Sleeping on the unforgiving ground in a tent doesn't always lend itself to a good nights rest. Finding a way to get comfortable on the ground has always been a challenge for me. As much as I love hiking and camping, a solution had to be found in order for me to continue enjoying an overnight in the woods. A history of shoulder injuries incurred while serving in the Ranger … [Read more…]

Wednesday, September 4, 2013 dance dance revolution I am looking for a dance class for Wren. When asked what class she wanted to take this year, she said Ballet. So fine. That's doable. Jane's taking Tae Kwon Do (of course she is) but that only lasts 3 months and then we might be putting her in whatever program we find for Wren. So that's a slight complication, but still totally workable. One would think. However I have probably put about 8 hours of computer/phone time into this quagmire/land war and see no sign of a happy solution. Here are things that are wrong with every possible dance program we could do in Austin, in no particular order: - the class descriptor uses the words pole and/or break. - the class takes place at an absurd time, such as 7:30 on a weeknight. Or classes for my 2 children, separated by 2 years, take place at the same time on different campuses. - the class costs a billion dollars OR only accepts a lump sum payment at the beginning of the semester (of a billion dollars). No prorating available, obvs. - which you only find out by calling, waiting, chit chatting about pointe shoes, and then finally, like you're pulling fucking teeth, they will tell you how much it costs. WHICH IS ABSURD, and a waste of everyone's time, because chances are it costs too damn much for me to afford. Whatever lady, thanks for taking the time to tell me on the phone. It's so much more personal. I'm glad you so carefully guarded that secret about how much your business charges for its one product. - the class requires prerequisite classes, from the age of 4. - the company has the word Austin in the title but in fact takes place in Circle C, Round Rock, Manor, Lakeway or Elgin. Or downtown Austin at 5:30 which is just as absurd. - It has the word Vaganova Technique on its curriculum (I don't know what that is but I don't want anyone teaching my daughters about it until college, AT LEAST) - the dance company has animation or music on its website that you can't turn off. I refuse to do business with anyone that would do that and I certainly won't trust the wellbeing of my child to them. We've done classes at the JCC before and that works okay except Rosh Hashanah is really early this year, like starts today? I think? And that means we've got Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah to get through in just the fall semester, not to mention Chanukah, all days when the J is closed for classes obviously, and that's a whole lot of missed ballet classes, you know? Blergh. I'm concentrating on this right now so I don't have to think about the looming deadline of next Monday when I start work, and Ben starts.... what exactly? Hanging out at our house for 5 hours solo? I think 'scrambling' is probably the best verb for what we're doing right now. We refer to our small gathering of childcare options by their most depressing qualifiers -- "Well Broccoli Cottage was closest to work, but they were eating greasy lettuce leaves about 2 feet away from the open door where that one kid was pooping..." Or "St. Waythefuckfaraway has such a nice playground! It'd be cool if the tuition was only slightly more than HALF my paycheck and not like 90% of it." BUT WHATEVER. Good problems to have, right? GOOD PROBLEMS. Looking for a dance class for my healthy, strong children with the requisite number of dancing legs among them, all functioning more or less to spec. Looking for childcare because I got a JOB! WOOO! Too blessed to be depressed. That's us. All the damn time. What is the racket with anything for kids? We're not there yet with activities and child care, but I experienced a similar issue when I started looking into having birthday parties somewhere other than our backyard since we're planning on having a 3 week old baby for Tate's birthday. Guess how much Chucky Cheese costs? About $500. That includes perks like "Evite invitations!" and "Rock Star Mention for Birthday Rock Star!" (???).

Biamp Expands Investment in European Region New Technology and Engineering Sales Roles to Provide Increased Expertise BEAVERTON, Oregon — July 10, 2018 — Biamp, a leading provider of innovative, networked media systems, announced the appointment of Brian Davies to the role of European technology architect. In addition, the company has promoted Dane Miller to field sales engineer. These new positions will strengthen Biamp’s global market leadership and provide additional resources for customers as the European AV market grows, with revenues expected to reach $43 billion by 2022, according to AVIXA’s AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA) report. “As a global company, Biamp continually seeks ways we can deepen our commitment to the market and set the bar ever higher for customer satisfaction,” said Stephen Patterson, sales development director for Europe at Biamp. “As European customers seek out exceptional collaborative AV experiences and increase their appetite for AVoIP systems, Biamp will be there to provide expertise, guidance, and solutions. Establishing these new positions will ensure we continue to deliver the resources needed for distributor and integrator success throughout this growing region.” As part of Biamp’s commitment to European customers, Davies will assist end-user customers and consultants in providing the right solutions to solve their business communication needs. A recognized industry expert, Davies has more than 24 years of advanced technical and sales experience with AV solutions. He previously held roles as development and technical director for several global companies and holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Kingston University as well as several industry programming and system design certifications. In his new position, Miller will play a pivotal role in pre-sales projects and field sales engineering in Europe leveraging his vast AV experience that spans 10 years with Biamp. Previously, he was the international paging vertical market and business development manager and an applications engineer for Biamp. His technical knowledge has proved critical for in-depth system design help, onsite visits, and interpreting tender documents. More information on Biamp’s full product portfolio is available at www.biamp.com. # # # About BiampBiamp Systems, LLC is a leading provider of innovative, networked media systems that power the world’s most sophisticated audio/video installations. The company is recognized worldwide for delivering high-quality products and backing each one with a commitment to exceptional customer service. Biamp is dedicated to creating products that drive the evolution of communication through sight and sound. The award-winning Biamp product suite includes: Tesira® media system for digital audio and video networking, Devio® collaboration tool for modern workplaces, Audia® digital audio platform, Nexia® digital signal processors, and Vocia® networked public address and voice evacuation system. Each has its own specific feature set that can be customized and integrated in a wide range of applications, including corporate boardrooms, conference centers, huddle rooms, performing arts venues, courtrooms, hospitals, transportation hubs, campuses and multi-building facilities. Founded in 1976, Biamp is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, USA, with additional engineering operations in Brisbane, Australia and Rochester, New York. For more information on Biamp, please visit www.biamp.com.

Welcome This is where we connect, share stories, and talk about arts, faith, culture and more. We will also share some how-tos from time to time. Let the conversation begin! About Chuck Neighbors A professional actor, storyteller and writer since 1974. Chuck's performances have been toured internationally to over 17 countries and to a wide variety of audiences including churches, theaters, universities, military installations and prisons.

Versuri What Do You Hear In These Sounds Words and music by Dar Williams I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak I go and I find the one and only answer every week And it's just me and all the memories to follow Down any course that fits within a fifty minute hour And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something, But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself... And she says Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, What do you hear in these sounds? And... Oooooooh,aaaaaaah What do you hear in these sounds????? I say I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believing And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving And she says Oh, I say What?...she says Exactly, I sayWhat, you think I'm angry Does that mean you think I'm angry? She says Look, you come here every week With jigsaw pieces of your past Its all on little soundbytes and voices out of photographs And that's all yours, that's the guide, that's the map So tell me, where does the arrow point to? WHO INVENTED ROSES? and....... Oooooooh,aaaaaaah What do you hear in these sounds? And...Oooooooh,aaaaaaah What do you hear in these sounds????? And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink But Oh how I loved everybody else When I finally got to talk so much about myself............ And I wake up and I ask myself what state I'm in And I say well I'm lucky, cause I am like East Berlin I had this wall and what I knew of the free world Was that I could see their fireworks And I could hear their radio And I thought that if we met, I would only start confessing And they'd know that I was scared They'd would know that I was guessing But the wall came down and there they stood before me With their stumbling and their mumbling And their calling out just like me...and... Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, The stories that nobody hears...and... Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, and I collect these sounds in my ears...and Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, that's what I hear in these sounds...and... Oooooooh,aaaaaaah, that's what I hear in these...... that's what I hear in these SOUU OUUUN NNNDS!

Hello and thank you for following The Quest Gaming Podcast! This is Evarwyn of the The Quest and I wanted to drop you and line and say that we appreciate you as a listener! I also see that you are a Skyrim fan! As you may have heard, we’re going gaga over the game on the show (and yes, I used gaga lol). Here’s a little secret…we’re debuting a Skyrim podcast next week called “Skyrim: Off the Record”! You can already find us on iTunes by searching for the show and I’d like to leave you this link to the new show’s webpage:

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Contact dealer for most current information. Vehicle availability is subject to prior sale and system update. Price includes $698.95 dealer handling fees. Dealer is a Colorado licensed motor vehicle dealer offering new and pre-owned automotive vehicles for sale in Colorado and New Mexico. Vehicle pricing is in accordance and complies with Federal guidelines and the requirements of the states of Colorado and New Mexico. This offer is intended to solicit sales transactions in Colorado and New Mexico in accordance with federal and state guidelines for motor vehicle sales. Vehicle mileage is based on EPA city and highway estimates and reflect new EPA methods beginning with 2008 models. Your actual mileage may vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle, vehicle equipped options, driving conditions, driving habits, and vehicles condition. Mileage estimates may be derived from previous year model. Vehicle dealer installed options are at retail. Pricing is not applicable in conjunction with special manufacturer purchase programs. Pricing may or may not be combined with other manufacturer or dealer offers. *These estimates reflect new EPA methods beginning with 2008 models. Your actual mileage will vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle. Actual mileage will vary with options, driving conditions, driving habits and vehicle's condition. Mileage estimates may be derived from previous year model. Drag and drop a widget underneath here to make it available on every page of the site and opened up as popup. Not Found We have detected that you are using an outdated version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 10 or lower) that is no longer supported.To access this website, please upgrade to the new Microsoft Edge browser or Internet Explorer version 11, or alternatively you can use the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Neil Gorsuch Is Already Acting Like He’s Been on the Supreme Court for Years In its new term beginning October 2, the Supreme Court will consider many pressing questions. Can a baker refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding? Can states redraw districts to help a political party? And, does Justice Neil Gorsuch talk too much? Gorsuch has proven himself to be a forceful and dynamic presence on the bench, a jurist who cements the Court’s conservative tilt, infuriates liberals—not least because of the circumstances by which he got there—and breaks custom with his uncommon assertiveness. Considering Gorsuch in his robes is to grapple with what legacy President Trump will leave on the highest court, and he is inciting unusually strong reactions from both Republicans who love what they see, and Democrats who hate it. It didn’t take long for the newest member to make his presence known on the Court. Gorsuch, a conservative judge nominated by President Trump and confirmed in April, had been sitting in his first oral argument last spring for just 10 minutes before he asked his first question. Over the next hour, he asked 21 more, posing more questions at his first oral argument than any of his eight colleagues did at theirs. He blew past Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s previous record of 15 questions at her first oral argument, according to Adam Feldman, who runs a blog tracking Supreme Court data. That’s rare for a freshman justice. By the Court’s unwritten rules, new members are often seen more they are heard. “I think he has ruffled some feathers on the Court,” Garrett Epps, a professor at University of Baltimore School of Law, says of the newest justice. In his first month, Gorsuch wrote as many separate opinions as Justice Elena Kagan, the last justice to join the Court, wrote in her first two terms. In one, a 7-2 decision about statutory interpretation in which he and Justice Clarence Thomas were the only dissenters, Gorsuch’s pointed writing style was on full display. “If a statute needs repair, there’s a constitutionally prescribed way to do it,” he chided. “It’s called legislation.” In a religious liberty case, Gorsuch took on conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion. In his concurrence, which argues for a broader reading of religious liberty, Gorsuch wrote that, “respectfully, [he] harbor[s] doubts” about an aspect of the chief’s opinion. “He has not been shy,” says John Malcolm, vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Sometimes you might expect a new justice to sit back for a while before wading in on significant issues, certainly in writing dissents and concurrences,” Malcolm adds. “But [Gorsuch] has shown none of that. He’s acting as if he’s been sitting on the high court for years.” Gorsuch is drawing criticism off the bench as well. Some court-watchers on the Left have complained about his appearances outside the stately halls of the Supreme Court. In September, the justice appeared with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at an event in Kentucky, McConnell’s home state. The following week, Gorsuch gave a speech at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the symbolic focal point of the president’s business entanglements. Progressive activists held a protest outside the hotel during his remarks. Justices often give speeches to liberal or conservative groups, but Democrats are upset by the optics of Gorsuch’s recent appearances. “Generally, Supreme Court justices, whether appointed by Democrats or Republicans, do their best to avoid any outward support for an administration,” says Nan Aron, president of liberal judicial advocacy group Alliance for Justice, who argues Gorsuch has “erased any possibility that he is anything other than a partisan.” The vastly different reviews on the new justice from conservative and liberal groups are evidence of the nasty political battle that led to him taking the seat in the first place. Gorsuch, who spent a decade as a judge on the Tenth Circuit in Colorado, occupies a spot on the court that sat vacant for more than a year after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. President Barack Obama nominated moderate liberal Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat. But instead of confirming a nominee during Obama’s final year in office, congressional Republicans refused to consider the nomination, stalling the process until Trump was inaugurated, and then quickly confirming Gorsuch over cries from Democrats. “He takes the seat under a cloud for a lot of people,” says Epps. “Not because they personally dislike him, but because of the circumstances under which he got it.” At just 50 years old, Gorsuch looks poised to cement a conservative majority on the Court for a generation. More immediately, he’ll affect the outcome of many of the significant cases the Court will hear this term. Gorsuch, whose judicial philosophy revolves around interpreting the text of the law as written, has already signaled that he’s sympathetic to religious liberty claims, which could put him on the side of the baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding in the case Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. And he recently was a deciding vote blocking a Texas court’s ruling that new districts drawn by the state legislature had to be redone, which may provide a clue to his thinking on the partisan gerrymandering case Gill v. Whitford, which will be argued before the court on Oct 3. So far, Gorsuch has proven to be most in the mold of Justice Thomas, agreeing with the conservative stalwart in each of the 15 cases he heard last term. That plants Gorsuch firmly to the right of his old boss, swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he clerked in the 1990s. Gorsuch has sided with Kennedy 73% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight. But while he has made a bold entrance to his new job, Gorsuch’s style on the bench may simply make him a natural heir to the voluble jurist he replaced. “From the get-go, Justice Scalia changed the tenor of the court dramatically because he was such an avid question–asker,” says Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network. “I know that some justices viewed that a little askance, like where’s this little upstart coming from?” “That doesn’t make [Gorsuch] unique,” she continues. “I think that’s always how the old guard reacts.”

Ways To Increase Revenue From Your Multifamily Leases, with Neal Bawa Founder of Grocapitus Investments and MultifamilyU, Neal Bawa, joins Jonathan on this episode of Real Estate Launchpad. Have you ever wanted to know how to increase revenue in your multifamily investments? Neal is a master of adding value to apartment communities by optimizing leasing revenue, using his L-A-S-A-L process! You don’t want to miss his explanation of his system and how to start applying it to your own multifamily investments today. Be sure to listen! The L-A-S-A-L systemNeal explains the L-A-S-A-L system is a free system of best practices and metrics. It incorporates the ecosystem of leasing. The most important thing an asset manager can do is not cutting expenses but driving top-line revenue. L-A-S-A-L teaches you how to increase revenue by managing ratios between each of the following below: L – eads A– ppointments S – howings A – pplications L – eases Be sure to listen to hear Neal give examples of how implementing this system can double leasing velocity in apartments! How these ratios increase revenueIn the L-A-S-A-L system, there are ways at each step to increase the ratio. Neal shares that the ratio increases from leads to appointments when the customer is contacted quickly. He goes so far as to say that call-backs within 5 minutes as gold leads, but a lead that has not been nurtured for a whole day is dead. Longer business hours and working during peak hours allow this contact to happen more! From the appointment to showing, the ratio increases based on the manager’s sales ability. From showing to application, the ratio depends on the cleanliness of a unit. Neal never shows a home that is not completely wiped down. This ratio is also dependent on how well the customer was screened on the phone. You don’t want a client to show up who simply cannot move forward. Lastly, the ratio between applications and leases is simply depending on processing time. The quicker the turn-around, the less time a client can get cold feet and walk away. Be sure to listen to hear Neal explain all of these ratios in more detail, and how increasing lease velocity can account for a 3 million difference in income in ONE year! How to add value to a property and increase revenueNeal turns to numbers to increase revenue and add value to a rental property. He is constantly measuring and benchmarking his own properties against one another to see what can be doing better. He believes in hiring the best photographer in the market to capture his properties because the difference in a cheap photographer and the best can be extremely different and result in more leases signed. Neal finds creative ways such as adding cameras not for security but to track whether tenants are not paying pet rent. This can account for an increase of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, so it is a simple way to increase revenue. Key factors to building a great real estate syndication businessNot only does Neal have processes to increase revenue in multifamily investments, but he also has a large team of investors that he works with. Neal believes that outreach is the best way to grow a syndication business, which is why he teaches a large number of free courses. He helps others learn which cities and neighborhoods are the best to invest in. He speaks at 25 conferences annually and teaches locally once a week. Through his MultifamilyU platform, he provides 100 free webinars a year that are simply educations – no pitch involved. Neal says his “secret sauce” to building a team of investors is by creating a vast education network. In This Episode Neal Bawa says…[1:51] Who he is and what he does[8:58] How he got into real estate[13:49] Problems real estate investors were having and how he helped solve them[18:33] The L-A-S-A-L system[20:30] How this system helps with property management[25:28] How leasing velocity adds to the top line[28:06] Reasons other ratios improve[39:24] What Neal does to add value to a property and increase returns[48:41] How he great his syndication business Resources Mentioned In The Episode Jonathan@MultifamilyLaunchpad.com – Learn to be an asset manager and InvestorBellwether Enterprise(sponsor) – contact Will Oldham will@bwecap.com Featured Course The purpose of Multifamily U is to provide education and networking opportunities for real estate investors in order to allow investors to make informed decisions. Multifamily U makes no endorsement, warranty or guaranty of any kind whatsoever with respect to the opinions, information, services or products mentioned or promoted by any of the speakers, presenters or sponsors of Multifamily U programs or events. Members, attendees and participants are expected to do their own individual due diligence before making any investment decisions, and are strongly encouraged to consult with their own legal and tax professionals. Neither Multifamily U nor its principals, employees, agents or volunteers are liable for any claims of damages or losses, direct or indirect, arising from any transactions of any kind involving members, attendees or any participant of a Multifamily U program or event. ENDS SUNDAY NIGHT MultifamilyU's sister company Grocapitus Investments offers investment opportunities for both Accredited and non-accredited (sophisticated) investors. We follow SEC guidelines, and we only post projects for Accredited investors to our website. If you are a non-accredited investor and would like to learn more about our investment projects, please fill out an investor application and we will contact you with information about available opportunities.

Sign in with MetaMask Beard About 39,760 kitties (6.294% of the population) express the beard cattribute. The average price paid for a kitty possessing this cattribute is 0.006 ETH which is about 7% lower than the current average of 0.074 ETH.

Obama's Mideast policies face their first test in Israel WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's promise to seek Middle East peace aggressively faces its first test Tuesday, not at the negotiating table or on the battlefield, but at the hands of Israeli voters. Israelis choose a new prime minister in elections for the Knesset, or parliament, that also will determine whether Obama has a willing Israeli partner in talks with the Palestinians or a reluctant one. One likely outcome, according to polls and analysts, is an unstable coalition government whose members could find it hard to strike the compromises necessary to reach agreement on sensitive issues such as the future of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Palestinian refugees. Final polls find the race tightening between the rightist Likud party, led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the centrist Kadima party, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. The campaign's biggest surprise, however, has been the rise of populist politician Avigdor Lieberman, who's questioned the loyalty of Israel's 1.4 million Arab citizens and called on all Israelis to sign oaths supporting Israel as a Jewish state or be stripped of their citizenship. Lieberman's Israel Is Our Home party could win 15 to 20 Knesset seats, making it a potent force in talks to form a governing coalition. Likud's Netanyahu is skeptical of moving swiftly to political agreement with the Palestinians, although it isn't known how he'd govern should his party win. Livni, while she's no dove, has been a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian talks that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice restarted 15 months ago. Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator in the 1990s, said that no party seemed likely to win even a quarter of the Knesset's 120 seats. "It will be a very unstable coalition, without a central, strong pillar," Levy, of the Washington-based research center the New America Foundation, said in an election eve telephone interview from Israel. That, he said, will put the onus on outside mediators, particularly the United States, to come up with a peace formula and press forward with it. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged from the outset to get involved more aggressively in Middle East diplomacy than President George W. Bush did. Obama appointed former Sen. George Mitchell as his special envoy on Jan. 22, and immediately dispatched him to the region. Obama and Clinton have given no clues to their plans, however. Nor is it clear how hard they'll press Israelis, Palestinians and Arab countries when the inevitable road blocks to progress arise. Netanyahu, whose lead in the polls has dwindled as Lieberman's has surged, opposes territorial concessions to the Palestinians anytime soon. Instead, he advocates focusing talks on strengthening the Palestinian economy, an approach that the Palestinian Authority, which rules in the West Bank, rejects. Yet Netanyahu also has shown a readiness to make tactical adjustments. As the prime minister beginning in 1996, his policies were a frequent source of friction with the Clinton administration. He was defeated for re-election in 1999. The lesson Netanyahu learned from those years "is that I can get tripped up domestically if I get on the wrong side of the White House," Levy said. "Bibi is an opportunist. Bibi is pressure-able," he said, using Netanyahu's nickname. Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote Sunday that Netanyahu had told colleagues privately that the Likud party "might get elected but we won't be able to govern." "Israel is liable to wake up on Wednesday morning with a crumbled, extortion-prone political arena that is filled with a lot of splinter parties but without a governing party," Barnea wrote. "Netanyahu's assessment is that within a year to 18 months we are going to have to hold elections again. He may be being optimistic." Join The Conversation McClatchy Washington Bureau is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

Car broke down? A CarFax app can help consumers find a mechanic Consumers have a new tool to help find a mechanic when their cars need repairs. CarFax Inc. has released an app for iOS and Android smartphones that enables consumers to view their vehicle service records, check maintenance requirements, obtain repair cost estimates and find local auto service shops. A motorist enters her vehicle identification or license plate numbers and letters into the app once she has registered an account with her e-mail address or Facebook log-in. The app then searches for service records from more than 25,000 automobile repair shops for their vehicles. The app also notifies consumers of any recalls. “The next owner can see the name and contact information of shops that worked on the car before,” a CarFax spokesman says. New owners tend to bring cars back to where the vehicle was previously serviced and mechanics are familiar with the car, he says. Vehicle service records are supplied by repair shops that are part of CarFax’s network. The records provide the date, mileage and a description of the work, such as an oil change or brake work. Multiple vehicles can be saved in the app. Consumers can add an image of their car or truck, edit the estimated mileage provided by CarFax and add service activity not reported to CarFax. CarFax developed the app internally, taking about a year. CarFax would not say how much the app cost to create. CarFax also offers apps for its CarFax Reports, which shows consumers vehicle history reports, and CarFax for Dealers, a business-to-business version dealers can use when buying vehicles for resale.

Introducing WorldStrides International Discovery Programs Casterbridge Tours is now WorldStrides International Discovery programs! Here, on our new website and program-specific micro-sites, you'll find an expansive lineup of exciting educational travel programs previously offered by the Casterbridge team. While the name and logo has changed, our commitment to quality, service, and uncompromising focus on education remain the same. To speak to a member of our team that you have worked with previously, just call 1-800-522-2398.

Indiana Democrats push their own road funding plan INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana House Democrats are pushing a road funding plan that they say won’t raise taxes on average motorists. GOP leaders in the House have proposed a 10-cent increase to the state’s 18-cents per gallon gasoline tax, as well as additional registration fees. Democrats say their alternative demonstrates there are other ways to pay for improvements. Under the plan shared Monday, House Democrats would freeze corporate and high-income tax cuts, put revenue from the existing sales tax on gasoline toward infrastructure and allow a trust fund to be used for local road loans. It also projects collecting $300 million annually in reversions through agencies cutting waste, fraud and abuse. 2 COMMENTS Our elected officials don’t use the current state tax that is charged per gallon of gasoline for Indiana roads. Why should we believe they will use a new tax for roads? Where is all of the money that is not being spent for snow removal thanks to climate change? What is the ridiculous amount of revenue from the Indiana Lottery used for??? I remember when that was going to be partially allocated for Indiana roads. They just want more money to squander on nothing as usual. No matter where they take it from. And the wheel tax and the Build Indiana Fund, when you criminal politicians can provide and accounting for all of the money already allocated for roads and infrastructure we can discuss a gas tax increase, not before. You people pi$$ me off. Public Inspection File Viewers with disabilities can get assistance accessing this station’s FCC Public Inspection File by contacting the station with the information listed below. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC’s online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, 888-835-5322 (TTY), or fccinfo@fcc.gov.

Disclaimer Black Dragon is MY Viewer, i decide which feature i want to add and which to remove, i share this Viewer to show the world that user base size is not important, i do rate quality by effort, thought and love put into the project, not some rough estimated numbers. I consider feature requests only if i you can name proper valid reasons i can agree on. It is my (unpaid) time i'm putting into this project, i'm not here to cater to every Joe's desires. Tuesday, November 27, 2012 NOTE: See instructions below for solutions on reverting settings!UPDATE: Added Mig´s Linux version , please read the "Linux" part of this Blog down below hai hai :| lots of changes due to 2 weeks without update Fixing reverting/non saving Settings: First of all , this is mostly my fault. The Viewer you unpack is a local copy of the freshly and most up-to-date version (at the moment of packing) you can get , its the version i am/was using , that means you will basically get everything packed up i do have aswell and when i packed the Viewer i forgot to delete my presets with which i tested the save/load preset functions. This function will save ALL your (and mine) settings into a file , one of these settings is a string (a text) that resembles the name of your video card , this string is used to determite what video card you use and therefor what features you can use and which you cant use. Everytime this string changes , you will get a notification on startup that the video card has been changed and therefor graphic settings have been reverted to a default that should be fine for that new card. This is an intended feature and existed for a very long time in ANY Viewer. Heres the problem: If YOU load any of my presets , this "GTX 460" string will be set in your current settings. When you´re finished building your settings on top of that preset you will most likely save it again , you will also save that "GTX 460" string into those settings. If you relog now , the Viewer will notice that your video card changed from GTX 460 to X (whatever you got) and will revert your settings , usually you will want your settings back , so you´ll just load them again , causing GTX 460 to be set as your video card AGAIN , reverting your graphic settings on next start AGAIN. Solution: To break this semi-endless revert issue you will have to delete all my presets (and yours just to be safe). You can find them in:C:\Program Files (x86)\Nirans Viewer\app_settings\graphic_presets in this folder you´ll have to delete ALL files (DO NOT DELETE THE FOLDER!!!). now go to:C:\Users\Niran\AppData\Roaming\Nirans Viewer delete the "user_settings" folder. This will completely terminate all your settings and clean everything that could still cause any issue like this. start the Viewer again , set everything you as you want it to be and then save it as a new preset. Loading this preset should not cause any issues anymore. Heres problem #2 (not saving settings): You as the User need write permissions for the graphic_preset folder located in:C:\Program Files (x86)\Nirans Viewer\app_settings\graphic_presets otherwise the Viewer will not be able to save its presets in there. Solution #1: Log in to Windows with your Administration User (Administrator) , not your normal User (if you created one) Solution #2 (Not confirmed): Right-click the Viewer exe and select Preferences , select the "Compatibility" tab at the top and tick the option "Run as Administrator" , select "Apply" and then "Ok" (if you got the rights to do this) Solution #3: Log in to Windows with your Administration User (Administrator). Right-click the graphic_presets folder and select Properties , select the "Security" tab , in the first list , select your current user and tick "Full Control" on the left side ("allowed" column) and make sure theres a tickbox in every right especially "Edit" , now click "Apply" and then "Ok" User Interface: Changes here , changes there , changes everywhere =D starting with chiclets now beeing able to go from far right to far left (see picture) ESC will now close Preferences as proposed and requested. Only works when Preferences is open , otherwise it will reset your camera. I fixed the hide/always hide/deselect options which enabled/disabled each other making some strange combinations hard or impossible to achieve. Preset saving and loading has been upgraded a bit , it will now save all your settings weither they are default or not and it will overwrite an existing file instead of always adding ".nv" to its name. A bug that was reported causing the "Set Voice Key" dialog not detecting your pressed keys has been fixed and should now work correctly again. The Inbox panel in your Inventory when opened became extremly small and was hardly usable , i made it bigger and user resizable. Inspectors have been revamped because they looked broken and ugly , they should look much cleaner and visually more appealing now! Misc: Lots of code and comments has been removed and or cleaned up aswell as alot of Debug Settings that werent used anymore were removed. A bug that was reintroduced with Beta merge causing the inability to move an object more than once into the same container was fixed (was also reported by a few people) Translation and Socks 5 both have been removed from preferences and out of my Viewer code as both seem to be absolutely unusable and/or obselete. For the other tiny changes please see the changelog at the bottom... Linux: Miguael gave me a link to his Linux version compiled from the source 7 days ago , that means that it is missing some fixes/features , those fixes/features are: tweaked SSAO shaders and settings for a slighty smoother and less grainy look enabled Quiet Snapshot to Disk by default fixed save presets adding ".nv" on already existing presets and made it save all settings fixed hide/deselect chat options logic fixed Sidebar appearing on Left side instead of right fixed IM chiclets not beeing able to move to far left of your UI removed FPSCounterAsText debug PLEASE DO NOT REPORT THOSE! THEY ARE FIXED IN WINDOWS You can find it below the usual Windows Download. Rendering: Heavily tweaked shadow detail and appearance, they should now look like if you´ve set resolution to something like 2.0 , without hitting on performance , blurring also has been reduced a bit and projected lights will now throw much better shadows that dont go all jerky and pixelated that fast anymore. Tuesday, November 20, 2012 Before i can release, there are a few "things" im not yet sure what to do, so i figured i could ask you what you think about it. Write your answers into a comment like this: #1. blablabla bla blabla bla #2. blabla blabla bla blablabla #3. ... NOTE: This post might be updated with new questions... so check back sometimesUpdated: I added the overall summary in which my own opinion is also included and what it means for you , no obviously means that it wont be done. Login & First Use: #1 Would you like to see a "how do you want your Viewer" screen on first start that will ask you lots of questions and set the Viewer depending on what you set as answer? No. #2 Should i rename/relabel "Login to SecondLife(tm)" to just "Login" (is that a more obvious login button for you)? No, instead make user aware of it beeing a button and not a title. Code: #3 Should i merge up all the latest development code (earlier than beta), which contains lots of Firestorm Crashfixes, the new HTTP Project (which i had in 1.49), some UI optimizations and other stuff? (Warning this might make the Viewer again extremly unstable, no guarantee here) Has to be done, but not yet, will wait until next or next-next Release. User Interface , Widgets & Labels #4 Should i re-check all options for better labeling and missing tooltips? I should re-check them when i come by and someday start a systematic overall check. #5 Are you happy with the new Preferences Panel or is there something that could be done better (i thought about centering the panels on the right so they dont start at the top and enabling Escape Key to close it)? Yes, pretty much everyone seems to be happy, ESC close has been implemented and the Preferences Panel is beeing investigated if theres something that could be finetuned. #6 Do you want Floaters (windows) to fade out on close (or fade in on opening) like toasts (system messages , IMs and chat) do? Probably not, maybe some day... #7 Would you like to see a re-design of the main UI (Navigationbar , Favoritesbar , Menubar , IM chiclets , Local chat , Toolbars etc) and what do you think could it look like (more MMO-ish? something completely new?)? No. #8 Do you think the FPS bar (not text , at the top right) is useless and could be replaced/forced to text style all the time? Yes, its useless and has been removed. #9 Do you like the default skin or could there be something way simplier (like LL style grey as example)? The default seems pretty ok, will delay any plans on doing a new skin infinitely until theres a reason to do a new one. #10 Does the Viewer have enough options to set your preferred graphics or do you know anything else thats missing or could be added? Yes. Blog: #11 Do you like the new layout and look of the Blog or was the old one better? The old one seems alot better to most people, however i liked the old one more because it was different. New one will remain however. #12 Should i shorten my blog posts (release posts)? Should i lengthen them (explain more)? No. Misc: #13 Did my shader fix help you enabling Vertex Shader and/or Deferred , Shadows and that stuff that didnt want to activate previously? Fixed for those that had problems enabling certain options, did not alter the experience for everyone else. Perfect. #14 What do you think about this song? could it be used for a new video? maybe for login? Monday, November 12, 2012 WARNING: My Viewer uses a Depth of Field Resolution of 1.0 by default! this can cause serious FPS drops (if you zoom so close that your camera would start mirroring itself) up to a freeze at which your drivers will "freeze" and Windows will automatically start the driver recovery (black screen for a few seconds), this can either be prevented by disabling driver recovery or by pulling Depth of Field Resolution to a lower value, it can also be "prevented" by lengthening the amount of time (2 seconds by default) after which the driver recovery should kick in, this will give you alot more time to just turn the camera around/zoom out or generally clear Depth of Field again without the drivers crashing and therefor your Viewer crashing (however this needs some registry hacks, please see a tutorial on how to do these and please only do them if you know what you are doing!) NOTE: To all you people having problems with always re-baking avatars and objects, THIS IS NOT ONLY MY VIEWERS FAULT! It happens in all other Viewers aswell, so far users on Singularity, Catznip, Linden Viewer, Phoenix and Firestorm confirmed its happening to them aswell! Not sure tho if its a widely spread Viewer issue or Server issue. Sourcecode: The Viewer again has undergone some heavy changes internally, i rebased my code on Linden Lab´s latest Beta again so it contains all its shinies and also not so shiny things (if there are any) , those shinies so far include a fix for rezzing friendlists/grouplists causing extreme FPS drops, reducing memory usage, some pathfinding changes and fixes, group handling code for groups with 10k people, localization of server messages and other stuff i havnt yet noticed... User Interface: A few fixes here, a few fixes there, add some salt everywhere... I fixed those pesky green ad-hoc conversation icons that plopped up behind avatar icons when having IM/Group toasts active. Also the invisible login button of connection overlapping the "close viewer" button is also gone now...well its not gone its just shortened more so even with opened preferences you should be able to click it normally. Pressing ESC with opened "Set Voice Key" floater will now close it, in next update i will also make ESC close Preferences without you having to click cccept or its menu entry (or shortcut). Graphics: Graphics havnt been touched, just "fixed" the anti shadow acne. Here are 2 examples of what i mean... I MIGHT have fixed an compatibility issue with Exodus´s Post Shaders (i should tell Geenz about that fix if it works) that caused some video cards with older OpenGL especially ATI and OpenGL 4.0 to be unable to enable Vertex Shader and all its options, the same fix might also fix the issue for some other people that cant enable Deferred Rendering or Shadows and so on. Performance: Performance should have been drastically increased in terms of its longlivity, before, in Deferred my Viewer went into "crawl" mode really quick due to 1-2 avatars already occupying all its memory, now that the memory usage has been reduced drastically to a point where i can go into a club with 35 people and still only use 1.0gb memory, it will take ALOT longer for the Viewer to break down into crawl mode. "Crawl" mode will also usually only engaged in Deferred Rendering and higher so for all windlighters theres nothing to fear, nothing should have changed for you anyway. BTW: Oh and... i got bored again so i recorded a super smooth 30 FPS video with active Deferred and Tone Mapping =D Tuesday, November 6, 2012 NOTE #2: You can do a settings preset before changing to the new version, it might come in handy to just load your settings in again. Yea we´re getting back into that weekly update routine and i encourage you to update , all previous versions werent listed for some reason... User Interface: I remade the loginscreen as the Group and SLU users may have seen already , i´ve also made a new Video for it to go with the new loginscreen , watch it here! well...or on Youtube... you know... the whole new thing pretty much looks like this in the Viewer... and comes with a basic preference panel to revert core options if you broke something inworld and it somehow got saved , causing you to freeze/crash to death... clicking "Settings" will open it. For those that asked about the small one-way-in street sign (xD) to the left of those preferences ... well thats the unnecessary "Close Viewer" button you basically wont need because you can just click the X , however if you should come across Space Magic and the menu should vanish and the X button of Windows not work anymore then you can click that little X button over there haha... also the Version information at the lower left corner is now the "About" button , just click on it and the About Nirans Viewer floater will pop up. As you may have noticed , without the preferences opened it looks alot more basic than before , only revealing very important stuff like the huge LOGIN TO SECONDLIFE button which is actually the login button you have to press in order to login (Captain obvious Renamon just stated the obvious again). I fixed a missing code line that prevented the "set group button" (wrench icon) in tools floater from becoming enabled asswel as corrected a little "mistake" i made somewhere in SLURL code preventing the "none" label from appearing when no group was selected. All Privacy and Personal related options like "send IM to my E-mail when im offline" , "only friends and groups know if im online" , "show me in search" and all that stuff didnt work until now because the internal message delivering your personal information that are needed to pin those options to your account wasnt coming through to my preferences panel. They should be fixed now. I made a dangerous change in my Featuretable´s that will "hopefully" allow everyone to enable all high end graphic options even tho they are not supported or may result in complete breakage of the Viewer, crashing your drivers or even damage your OS. Please be FUCKING carefull with that, i think i´ll find a way to display you some more informations about what your video card can do in "About" in later updates, so you can see what your video card can do. You can then decide easier if it might be dangerous for you to enable certain options. Some minor things again most of you wont notice, i updated the tips n tricks shown in the loadingscreen tips floater and translated them, aswell as the local texture selection panel and the navigation bar Pathfinding tooltips when hovering over those Pathfinding icons About Users , the Blog , my opinion and stuff: A fact is that im really pissed, pissed because of alot of things, not just that it looks like some/one/all TPV dev/s seem to see me as the new Kirsten asshole. No! , im also pissed that some people seem to boycot updates which makes me start building up rage. As if that wouldnt be enough theres also those kind of users that dont even have the balls to read atlast the blogpost of the version they are downloading, its sad and it makes me angry. In meantime while the viewer is unpacking/downloading you could have easily read half up to a complete post. This would ensure that you atlast know whats new in this version and whats going on, especially if theres bad stuff known like bugs , crashes or things in general you should know, but alltogether this is by far not the worst. Some people dont understand what im doing here, im literally doing a whole Viewer on my own with all kind of side projects, like support, people that think im an evil person because sometimes im going in INSANE MODE on my blog are the worst... you have to understand that im trying to support all my users even tho i basically dont care about them WHILE caring about them. Its paradox, i know and thats why i will try to explain it. You leave = i dont give a fuck. You give constructive feedback where i want it = i care. This is "my" Viewer, if i would be in mood, i could just stop it, right here, right now, right out of the sudden and for no reason. So if all users whould run away now, i wouldnt care because, hey, no users = no people having problems and i would just go private with the Viewer, taking it off the TPV list and im fine. The reason im not doing that is because i am enjoying more or less happy users, also people would beg me and ask me for a download link if i would teaser them with my stuff all the time. Thing is, im really pissed and when i am pissed, i will tell you, beeing a dev behind a Viewer doesnt prophibit me to act like i want, remember im not restrained in any way, in that case im just a normal user just like you, i have the rights to use my mouth to tell you when you´re pissing me off and i will do, thats for sure.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK I can't give more than 3 stars as the cover is 'one size fits all' ( and not specific to MX5) and it is a bit too big for the Mk1 so wind gets under and it flaps about . I'm concerned about paintwork damage from the cover itself and the straps

...this is try to be a fair question, so please understand that point; kind of curiosity. I wanna hear other voices regarding this. So, I just watched couple of runs (in USA) videos and noticed that almost all the bikes (except a few HD shovels) are somewhat "new". Almost all are HD and some Japs; in other there are some new Triumphs.. the question is: where s the Triumphs? where s the other HD s? I mean, here we have a forum with tons of these motorcycles...but seems that no body on the main runs (USA)? Yes, I know about very long runs and problems with very old machines or smaller cc ones, but what happened with the Bonnies? A T120 can do the run, better yet a T140 or Trident...and the shovels and panheads? that sport a very big engine that can handle long runs without hurting the engine. -Those runs are not super bikes runs so the speed is kind of normal road or freeway speed. -All that time we put on these bikes for what actually? kind of thinking in loud voice I'm just generalizing here, but I think allot of people think of Triumphs as around town bikes. I know that here in AZ, our freeway speeds are all marked at 75, but if your running under 80 or so your going to get run over. Just my .02 when I first bought my triumph thruxton in 2004 I rode with the rat pack a couple of times. I thought it was ok but none of those guys shared my passion for old bikes. I stopped riding with them and have since sold my Thruxton. I like riding alone or with 1-2 other people. Not a lot of old bike riders around here. Big charity rides and "bike night" crowds that would rather drink and ride home than tune and ride an old bike aren't my thing. Perhaps you need to watch different vids? One world studios puts out some good stuff with older bikes and cars in it. You're judging popular culture via viedo, never a good idea. In the US, for every vintage Triumph or Harley, there are 25 brand new Couch Glides (or Japanese copies thereof) ridden by accountant "bikers" who like to play dressup. Those are the people that overwhelmingly dominate the big events because they're the people that spend shitloads of money. ...today just watched EDR and Revenge runs last week I watched couple of smaller runs like Born free Oh, well forget what I said then, I assumed you meant more mainstream events. There have been old bikes at everything you mention, I know that for a fact, but some guys will pull out the newer iron to avoid potential problems. And yeah, what the guy said above, EVOs and twin cams aren't "new" anymore...unless you're riding a new one. Speaking from experience, I was on the Revenge Run II Last year (on my '73 Yamaha), and was surprised at the lack of old bikes (not one old Triumph). There were definitely some but not the amount that I've experienced on the Gypsy Run the last few years. That run has a majority of old bikes I think. Although doing 80 on the highway for an hour last year didn't help the vintage bikes! This year I'll be on a Triumph or Shovel- I would have been on the Triumph last year but couldn't get it done in time. The Brooklyn Invitational has had a good vintage turnout also. I guess it just depends on what run you see. I've had issues myself as president of a vintage bike club trying to get people to leave the new ones home on scheduled rides and use the oldies...I guess I must have made enough noise as most of the core group now show up on what we term as vintage bikes. I think it boiled down to laziness, it was just easier and more comfortable to hop on a new bike and push the little button than it was to use the old machines. We mostly ride the side roads, so we don't go far, but we do run 6-10 hour days...and get sore arses. don't know about the us but all my friends ride the oldies most pre evo hd's and a couple triumphs and indians also a couple are running aroynd on pre '85 xs650's or beemers non of them owns newer bikes !!!! and the HDC i'm a member of are running usa build bikes pre '66 every other weekend there's a run ,this weekend for example theres a weekend run through 3 country's -a distance of 490 miles roundtrip newer bikes than '66 are not allowed the oldest ones this weekend will be a VL and a knuckle whe have lots of new bikes around the crowded roads here as daily drivers ,like everywhere else but i can say that there are also loads of classic dailys overhere

Are liberals so desperate now they'll ignore murder and genocide as just being "radical?" A recent writer equated Obama to Jesus Christ. Amazing and shameful. Amazing that anyone, especially someone who professes to be Christian supports Obama based on so many known facts. Their faith alone should make it seriously impossible to trust his judgment, much less vote him to the highest office in the free world. The Bible I read is not "pro-choice." To imply that Obama's radical thinking is normal and acceptable because "Jesus talked to tax collectors and prostitutes" is shameful. Obama had so much more than contact with those whose character make prostitution and money laundering pale in comparison. I seriously pray that if elected, Obama re-consider meeting unconditionally with radicals and terrorists. His life is at risk. President Ahmadinejad of Iran has so much hate for Americans it's frightening. Has Obama forgotten this radical has vowed to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth" and that he meant it? If being radical is a comfort zone for you, consider this: You've worked for the last eight years and have income. New management says the old way isn't fair so we're reducing your wage because the new hire needs more income, "just to be fair." Take my income and give it to someone else. While you're at it, take one of my children too and give them to the childless couple, just to be fair. They can afford it, I just gave them a pay raise. Sen. McCain's understanding of radical extremists and terrorists is clear, as is his resolve to fight them. It's been his life's goal and he has the scars to prove it. He is the clear choice. John E. Frost Saginaw Township An embarrassment Editor, The News: With the election so near and the polls starting to show more of a lead for Barack Obama, the Republicans are becoming an embarrassment. Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota said all the Democrats in Congress should be investigated for being anti-American, while Mel Martinez of Florida said Obama is a communist. The Republican Party is saying if you are a Democrat you must be a liberal and if you are a liberal then you are anti-American. I know this presidential race is not over but the Republicans are way over the edge on these claims. It sure sounds like desperation to me. A recent letter to the editor said Obama is not JFK. Obviously not. He does sound like John and Bobby Kennedy however. Obama has said from Day 1 that we must unite this country, and yet the Republicans at every turn are trying to divide us. Bobby Kennedy said in a speech shortly after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King: "What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice for those who still suffer in our country whether they be white or whether they be black." This has been Obama's message from the beginning. We don't need the name calling or the accusations: We need a United States. Dave Fox Burt The end is near Editor, The News: Thank God this presidential election is nearing the end. In all my life I never experienced such corruption. The journalists of this country are certainly a very sad lot. They are so liberal and so hateful on this coverage, it's unreal. If a Republican even has a hangnail, it is covered as if it's the start of World War III. Yet time and again anything Democratic is treated as if nothing happened. If a serious accusation is made against any Democrat, it's swept under the rug. All the Democratic public says, "it's lies all lies." I often wondered how so many people could become brain-washed. Well, here is a whole country that's being brain-washed. People have such hate that they are not willing to listen to the truth. I realize when things go sour we want to blame someone or something for situations we would like to change. But, before blame is given, one should do a little research. We are headed down a very dangerous road. When one wants to be any kind of professional, they need years of education and then experience. Unfortunately, Obama was elected four years ago to the Senate. Only problem, he only spent 12 months at that position as he has been campaigning ever since. His associations with very unsavory people should scare the heck out of all of us. His rules of what is allowed to be talked about and what can't be talked about should send multi-red flags up. I was sitting on the fence until reality hit me. Obama is not ready to lead the greatest country in the world. I hate the statement that "I'm a Democrat so I am going to vote for Obama." I would like to hear instead, "I am a Democrat and I don't feel, at this time, Obama has the experience or the ability to lead us in the right direction." Karen Hildinger Caro Yes to health plan Editor, The News: Tuesday, voters decide the fate of a health care millage request and the future of the county's 25,000 uninsured. The Saginaw Health Plan would expand access to basic, affordable health care and focus on disease prevention and early treatment. Not only does this save all of us money, it saves lives. Through the Saginaw Health Plan's preventive care programs, Saginaw County voters have the chance to reduce the amount of uncompensated care that is costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every year. It is not welfare by any stretch of the imagination. It is also not a permanent solution to a national health care crisis that has been years in the making, but it is a step in the right direction. When workers lose health care benefits, it affects all of us in the wallet. These are individuals and families who have jobs, but no health care options and they represent a growing number of Michiganians. They are struggling in this economy to feed their children, pay the mortgage and put gas in the family vehicle. It is well documented that people without health insurance go without preventive care like mammograms, vaccinations for their children or screening for treatable diseases like diabetes -- care they would get access to if voters approve the proposal. It is only after something catastrophic happens to their health that they seek medical help, most showing up at area hospital emergency rooms as a last resort. Two years ago, voters in Genesee County approved a very similar proposal and they are now seeing very positive results: Emergency room visits by those participating in the program are down by 38 percent, asthma has improved in 48 percent of those patients, while chronic pain is down 31 percent. A healthier population that needs less medical care reduces the costs for all of us. Healthier people are more productive and can better care for their children and families. There is no downside to this proposal. Brenda M.W. Coughlin, M.D. Frankenmuth Who am I? Editor, The News: I find it rather odd that the only candidate that is really being questioned on their qualifications is the Republican vice presidential nominee -- Sarah Palin. In researching all the candidates and their positions, I found the following rather interesting. Is it because the Republican nominee is female and good looking that we question her qualifications to the extent that the media has done? Who am I? I am under 45 years old, I love the outdoors, I hunt, I am a Republican reformer, I have taken on the Republican Party establishment, I have many children, I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor's office. Did you guess? Sound familiar? I am Teddy Roosevelt in 1900. Enough said. Patricia Huch Freeland Vote pro-life Editor, The News: Just something to consider when electing law-makers: Are they pro-life or pro-choice, meaning if you want to murder the most vulnerable of the innocent. People who vote pro-choice will be guilty of their blood. You cannot pass on your guilt by claiming your union or party is suggesting how to vote. Each one of us will die, then will come our judgment. It's our choice. Bernard Jarabek Bridgeport Township Vote no on 2 Editor, The News: Please vote no on Proposal 2. Obama has been flooding Michigan with an ad that is a total lie. He states that McCain and Palin are against all stem cell research. They have only been against embryonic stem cell research, which is the use of cells from aborted babies. There have been some successes with adult and umbilical stem cells. However everything published regarding embryonic stem cells shows that they are unpredictable and volatile. Which other cells are volatile and unpredictable? Cancer cells. Is God telling us something? Obama also announced that if his daughter were to make a mistake, he wouldn't want to see her punished with a child. Evidently, it is better to do murder to a defenseless baby. He appears to be in favor of infanticide in the cases where a child lived through a botched abortion. America has a responsibility for the deaths of nearly 50 million babies, more than lost in all our wars. God says: Children are a blessing from him. How will he choose to punish a nation he has blessed for 230 years? Please vote no on Proposal 2. A yes vote is pro-abortion and anti-God. Mari Anne Dast Pigeon Good company? Editor, The News: Whatever happened to America's values? We used to be a nation united, backing our presidents. It is unbelievable we could elect a person, endorsed by The News, who associated with a domestic terrorist and radicals. This could have never happened 20 years ago. It would be scandalous. If elected, he would also team up with Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to run unchecked that could doom America. Under Obama's plan to tax the rich and redistribute income, what incentives would Americans have to work to achieve their own goals? This march toward socialism could stop American creativity and ingenuity. The changes made through liberal courts could leave this country with no real values as the courts will make them up as they go. What they will legislate will not be pretty. Look at Obama's views on partial birth abortion and abortion up to the day of delivery. It's just horrible. Shame on us. If journalism in this country did not have an agenda to elect a specific candidate, we actually might be voting for completely different candidates in this election, most likely Clinton and Romney. If the media could pin the current economic crisis on Republicans they would be doing it at full speed, but they can't because Acorn, Obama's pet community organization project. The News' endorsement of Obama has good company. The American Communist Party also supports him. Our enemies are also cheering him for his planned pullback or withdrawal of troops. I was amused by The News saying Obama has achieved so much. Oh really? The only budget he has ever balanced is probably his household. McCain's belief in a strong national security and his pledge to implement a spending freeze is what America needs. Someone in Washington has to take a breath and look where wasteful spending can be cut. The Democrats have no plan for spending cuts, just tax and spending increases. Elect John McCain. Duane Wortley Freeland Socialist nation? Editor, The News: Barack Obama denies having any ties with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Bill Ayers, and says that his 20-year long alliance with hate-mongering Rev. Jeremiah Wright is over. Why did it last 20 years? He has donated huge amounts of money to ACORN, one of his community organized groups. It has been convicted of voter fraud before and is currently being investigated by the FBI. These people ... bribe the registrants with money, cigarettes and even crack cocaine. This is something the mainstream, liberal media knows but doesn't share with the American people. One of his many "mistruths"? Obama joined several highly questionable groups in his early days in Illinois that jump-started his career. He was a friend and cohort of Bill Ayers, an avowed enemy of America who founded the radical Underground Weatherman organization and, along with his wife, has bombed federal buildings and have been responsible for deaths of Americans. As recently as 2001, Ayers said that he does not regret his earlier actions and "wished I had done more." Consider Obama's lack of experience and his ineptness in the Illinois Senate, where he did not pass one bill. Also, he voted "present" 130 times, indicating he had no idea how to vote. Why? There is his repeated comment about not raising taxes for 95 percent of the American people. This is devious math since he should know about 5 percent of Americans pay the majority of taxes and a large percentage pay none at all. How can someone have their taxes lowered or receive a rebate on them when they don't pay any? This guy is scary and America is in no position to be taking chances on him in this election. If he's elected, welcome to the Socialist Republic of America. John L. Weber Au Gres Vote for Mantey Editor, The News: We have two men running for Drain Commissioner of Tuscola County. I'm sure they are both good men and have an interest in improving our county drains. We still have time to check the resumes of these men before we vote one into office. I urge you to look over their qualifications. When you read Bob Mantey's resume you will know he is the man for the job. He already has experience working with flood estimates for dams, bridges and culverts. He worked for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources as a hydraulic engineer, assisting with training drain commissioners on the basics of hydrology and hydraulics. He also worked for the Soil Conservation District as a soil conservation engineer. And there is so much more. I'm just thankful to have someone with his knowledge and experience willing to be our drain commissioner. He will be a great addition to our county government. Vote for Robert Mantey for Drain Commissioner of Tuscola County. Ted Schunn Juniata Township Pelosi heartbeats Editor, The News: Someone wrote that if John McCain is elected president Gov. Palin would be "one heartbeat" away from the presidency. He seemed quite concerned about that. Well think about this -- whoever is elected president, Nancy Pelosi is only two heartbeats away from the presidency. Now that is really a scary thought. Judy Jagels Thomas Township Catastrophe ahead? Editor, The News: Catastrophic change is what our country's in for if Obama prevails. We'll lose our democracy to socialism and that's frightening. However, that's what Obama's all about. I've been exposed to this socialistic atmosphere on several occasions while out of our great country and I can tell you there are a lot of unhappy people. They don't have anything good to say about their socialized medicine. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, representing our House and Senate respectively, are supposed to be working for us, the people. However, they appear to have forgotten that with their sneaky, underhanded, hateful behavior, our President Bush is far from perfect and it's obvious they hate him. Every time he submits a request they trash him verbally and throw every obstacle at him. Pelosi has repeatedly said, "We'll do whatever it takes to take back the White House." In the meantime, they've done an outstanding job of dividing our country at this critical time. They don't know the meaning of "bipartisanship." There should be a total government overhaul. Obama is buying this election with his negative, daily ads, gutter politics and character assassinations. Having been exposed to government "clearance" procedures (secret top secret), he'd never, never be cleared due to the company he's kept and his affiliation with ACORN, which we haven't heard the last of. Also, he's got the "hate-America," crowd behind him and the far left, and biased news media. Let's hope and pray that truth and honesty prevails. L.A. Duclos Thomas Township The hatred cycle Editor, The News: My parents, who are of Aztec descent and Mexican-American, were born in Texas. They were agricultural migrant workers in their younger days. We lived in Florida they moved to Michigan for a better life. I was 5, and my parents, Max F. and Aurora M. Delgado, found jobs at the Caro Sugar Factory and settled in Caro. We later moved to Vassar where my parents worked at Eaton Foundry and United Plastics. Both parents were born in the U.S. and worked hard to give their children a better life in this country. My brothers and sister and I have also worked hard to have a good life. When you hear the name Delgado do you immediately think that I am an illegal alien? Would you think that I don't speak English? When you see my black hair and tan skin, would you think that I am part of a South American drug cartel? Barack Obama comes from a bi-racial background, as do I and my children and grandson. When people question Obama's patriotism because his father is from Kenya, it reminds me of the prejudice I experienced. When people make fun of Obama's name, calling him Obama bin Laden, it makes me think of the racism of the past. When people suggest that because Obama's middle name is Hussein that he is connected to terrorists, it hurts me. It bothers me that we continue to judge others because of their names, race, religion, age, origin, martial status, gender. What has happened to our country? What are we teaching our children? I would love to see parents, grandparent and family members stop teaching hatred and ignorance of the past. It has no place in this time. Our children and grandchildren are our future.

Archives for March 28, 2014 I am so excited to announce that I have been chosen as a 2014 Women’s Health Action Hero!!! I applied for this months ago and then forgot about it, so imagine how I felt when I heard from Women’s Health that I have been chosen as one of their most “influential readers turned leaders”. As an action hero I will have the opportunity try out new products, blog on the Women’s Health website and participate in the Run 10 Feed 10 race in NYC. As an Action Hero I will be one of many, leading ... Primary Sidebar Hi! I’m Toni My name is Toni and I am a mother, wife, runner, blogger and RN originally from Long Island. I now reside in Tampa Bay. I blog about running, health, fitness and my life. This year I am taking my training to a new level as I train to run a 1:45 half marathon in 2018 in Naples. Follow me as I run, love and live my life to the fullest! Run Often, Love Completely, Live Fully

AdidasJawpaw CF Retailers' Descriptions Here's what other sites are saying: The Adidas Men's Climacool Jawpaw CF Water Shoe readies you for river trips and quick kayaking sessions before work. Its Adidas Drainage System fuses a quick-drying mesh upper to a water-draining sole for quick-drying comfort. Adidas designed the Super High Traxion sole specifically for slippery stones underwater.

Exercise Changes Genes Within Minutes Even a short bout of exercise can change your genes in ways that may ultimately make you stronger, a new study suggests. The researchers studied genes in the muscles of men and women before and after they spent 20 minutes on an exercise machine. After exercise, there were chemical changes in genes within the muscle cells, and these same genes were increased in expression. In other words, exercise helped "turn on" these genes, according to the study. When the researchers made muscles contract in lab dishes, they saw similar changesto the DNA. These changes appear to happen soon after exercise, which ultimately reprograms our cells for stronger muscles and greater endurance. Our muscles adapt to what we do, said study researcher Juleen Zierath, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. "If you don't use it, you lose it, and this is one of the mechanisms that allows that to happen," Zierath said. For those who don't like to work up a sweat, there may be hope. When the researchers exposed muscle cells from rats to caffeine, they saw changes in genes that were similar to those seen during exercise. In some ways, caffeine mimics the effect of exercise by causing an increasing in calcium levels inside cells, the researchers said. However, the researchers don't recommend drinking coffee in place of exercise, Zierath said. Pass it on: Exercise causes chemical modifications to genes that may ultimately play a role in the body's adaptation to running and lifting weights. Editor's Recommendations Live Science Staff For the science geek in everyone, Live Science offers a fascinating window into the natural and technological world, delivering comprehensive and compelling news and analysis on everything from dinosaur discoveries, archaeological finds and amazing animals to health, innovation and wearable technology. We aim to empower and inspire our readers with the tools needed to understand the world and appreciate its everyday awe.

China to allow full foreign ownership in telecom services in Shanghai FTZ BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- China will open up seven telecom value-added services to foreign capital in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, with five allowing for full foreign ownership, a senior telecom official said Tuesday. Services with no cap for foreign ownership will include app stores, store and forward, domestic multi-party communication, call centers and home Internet access, according to Wen Ku, head of the telecom development department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Online data and dealing analysis services will allow a foreign ownership of no more than 55 percent, Wen said. The move is another step in opening up the country's telecom sector as China has already committed under the WTO to open information service, store-and-forward, and online data and dealing analysis services, with a 50-percent cap for foreign stake. Enterprises that apply for the services should register and base their infrastructure in the Shanghai FTZ, and all services may be available to the whole country, except home Internet access services, which will be confined within the FTZ, Wen said. Detailed application instructions will be released to facilitate investment in the services, Wen added.

Croatia plans the construction geothermal cogeneration power plant 21. May 2020. / SEE Energy News The authorities set up a company Geotermalni Izvori, which is in charge of the project. The authorities of Srijem-Vukovar County are planning to use EU funds to accelerate the project for the construction of geothermal cogeneration power plant in the village of Babina Greda near Zupanja. According to previous study, the site, which was discovered by oil company INA in 1980s, has a potential for the construction of cogeneration plant with 27 MW thermal energy output and 1 MW power output. The preparation of documentation for the project has started and is expected to be completed within 10 months, when exploratory drillings could commence. If additional exploratory drillings prove the existence of even hotter water at greater depths, the output of the electricity segment of the cogeneration plant could reach 15-20 MW. However, these additional drillings would require investment of up to 20 million euros. The budget for documentation preparation is around 300,000 euros and it will be mostly covered by the European Union’s Operational Program Competitiveness and Cohesion. Last year, Croatia launched its first geothermal power plant. The Velika Ciglena project, located near Bjelovar in northeastern Croatia, exploits geothermal steam and hot water at 170 degrees Celsius to produce electricity which is then delivered to national electricity network. Italian company Turboden delivered and commissioned an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbine system for the power plant, which successfully completed the nominal load test. The reservoir was discovered in 1990 by oil company INA, during an underground exploration for oil. The oil was never found, instead, a promising potential for geothermal energy was discovered. The installed capacity is expected to grow due to further similar projects. The plant has power output of 16.5 MW and Turkish MB Holding invested 43.7 million euros in its construction. Last September, MB Holding signed an agreement with local project design company Ekonerg on the design of the future 19.9 MW geothermal power plant in Legrad. The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power plant will be build in Legrad, near the city of Koprivnica in northern Croatia, and will produce some 165 GWh of electricity per year.

(Newser) – Munroe Bergdorf was L'Oreal's first transgender model to appear in a British advertising campaign, but she's been fired after a Facebook post from last month. In the Aug. 27 post, which appears to have now been deleted, Bergdorf reportedly said, "Honestly I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people." After the post started making headlines, the French cosmetics giant released a statement saying it was cutting ties with Bergdorf, Reuters reports: "L'Oreal champions diversity. Comments by Munroe Bergdorf are at odds with our values and so we have decided to end our partnership with her." Bergdorf herself, as well as a host of supporters, are hitting back. "When I stated that 'all white people are racist,' I was addressing that fact that western society as a whole, is a SYSTEM rooted in white supremacy," Bergdorf says. In a lengthy post on Facebook Friday, Bergdorf also slammed the Daily Mail, one of the first to report her original post (or, in its words, her original "rant"). That post was a response to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally and ensuing violence, she wrote, but more importantly, there's no denying the role white supremacy, slavery, and colonialism have played in "shaping the United Kingdom and much of the west, into the super power that it is today" or the fact that white people are afforded more privileges than people of color. Fader calls L'Oreal's firing of Bergdorf "unacceptable," while the New Statesman says this proves "brands want our brown skin but not our blackness" and Metro advises, "stop kidding yourself, white people are racist." Mic rounds up outraged reactions on Twitter and elsewhere, and the Huffington Post is pushing the hashtag #IStandWithMunroe. She wrote "Because most of ya'll don't even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism. From micro-aggressions to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this s***." She is blaming all whites for the racism and terrorism of the world. As if black people can`t be violent and racist against other black people. Does she really believe all black people are angels, unable to be violent? Had a white model written the same thing about black people, she would have been fired too. She is playing out the race card and it works.

Sciencing Beauty with Pat McGrath: Couture Fashion Week Spring 2019 The world’s most influential makeup artist, Pat McGrath MBE recently left her mark all over Couture fashion week. Her delicate touch has resulted in many arresting looks in fashion weeks the world over, several of which were created with products from the self-titled Pat McGrath Labs. In order to gain a deeper insight into McGrath’s transformative powers we’ve conducted an investigation into the science behind some of her latest looks. Extreme Eyelashes - Valentino Source: patmcgrathreal/Instagram Delicate feathers fluttered down the runway with every blink at Valentino’s Spring 2019 Couture show. To create the bold look, the intricate feather-lash extensions were glued to the model’s lashes and coated with McGrath’s new FetishEyes™ Mascara. So what does science say about this mesmerizing look? Our collectively admiration for longer eyelashes dates back thousands of years. Researchers Mulhern and colleagues found that enhancing the appearance of women’s eyes through the use of eyelashes and mascara significantly increased attractiveness as rated by both male and female observers. Eyelash growth is also said to have a positive psychological effect on women (Jones, 2011). Some researchers have reasoned that we find long eyelashes endearing because they are typically possessed by those who we are hardwired to find cute – babies! And as we have learnt from the Baby-Face Stereotype, adults are rated more favourably when they have features (such as long eyelashes) that draw similarity to infants. Glitter and Gloss - Givenchy and Margiela Source: patmcgrathreal/Instagram Source: patmcgrathreal/Instagram In a show that largely featured simple, minimalistic makeup looks, McGrath ensured that Cara Taylor took center stage. Following her third haute couture collection for Givenchy, Clare Waight Keller said “I tried to take the most modern approach possible with everything.” McGrath compliment the modernity of the garments by adding in this futuristic look that saw the top half of Taylor’s face covered entirely in glitter. Over at Margiela, the model’s faces were a playground for McGraths brushes. One look that particularly stood out were the smudged gradient fuchsia lips topped off with a glossy top coat worn by both male and female models. And the science behind all this glitter and gloss? Evolutionary psychologists claim that are attraction to shiny things is linked to our ingrained need for survival. For example, in a study on children, infants aged 7-12 months old were found to put their mouths to glossy plates much more than to dull ones. Children had also been seen lapping shiny toys on the ground, the way an animal might drink from a puddle. Researchers have concluded that the connection between drinking and shiny design was an evolutionary artifact–a sign that “our crush on glossy is rooted in a primitive desire for water as a vital resource” (Coss, Ruff & Simms, 2010). Flower Power - Valentino Back at Valentino, McGrath went to work to create an intricate floral makeup look to compliment the gorgeous floral gowns. While the petals were lightly dusted in glitter, McGrath used a small cluster of crystals for the flower’s pistil – a 3D element that helped bring the look to life. Studies on adornment have long highlighted the positive impact that flowers and floral motifs have on attraction and wealth. In a study on tipping behaviour, researchers found that diners left larger tips for waitresses who wore flowers in their hair compared to when the same waitresses served them minus the flowers (Jacob, Guéguen & Delfosse, 2012). To get these makeup looks and all of the psychological benefits that come with them, check out the stunning new collections over at Pat McGra Shakaila Forbes-Bell is a Fashion Psychologist and writer who has been featured in Marie Claire UK, i-D, Who What Wear, All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, Fashion Bomb Daily, The Voice Newspaper, Gal-Dem, Black Matters US and more.

Former Eel signs with ESL side Castleford He was a part of that stellar 2009 run for the Eels, and did several good things during that time, but since then, Weller Hauraki moved to the ESL, which has resulted in the back-rower signing a 2- year deal with Castleford. Limited to just 10 appearances at current club the Leeds Rhinos, however, a move was on the cards for Hauraki, with Castleford coach Ian Millward pouncing on the opportunity to sign the veteran back-rower. “I was on the lookout for a second rower with a strong presence both on and off the field, and I believe Weller offers the right qualities to fulfil this role,” Millward said. “His experience and exceptional attacking qualities will provide us with great stability and composure on the field, as well as a role model for the younger, less-experienced players on the team.” “He is a tough competitor and with his boxing background, I expect him to be a leading figure in training too. He ultimately gives us an overall package that is going to add a lot to the side next season. I look forward to working with him.”

BOCA RATON – Florida Atlantic didn’t begin Sun Belt Conference play the way they hoped to in a disappointing loss to South Alabama last Thursday. It was a different story on Saturday as the Owls defeated the Red Wolves 72-65 at the Burrow for their first Sun Belt victory of the season. “After a bad loss it usually isn’t as bad as you thought, and after a good win it’s usually not as great as you thought,” said Owls coach Mike Jarvis. The Owls (3-4, 1-1 Sun Belt) won a physical battle against the Red Wolves by playing two consistent halves of basketball and gelling at the right time. After trailing 33-30 at halftime, FAU went on an 11-3 run in the second half to build on its first big lead of the game. They led for most of the second half and were able to ward off runs by the Red Wolves and hold on for their first Sun Belt victory of the season. With about six minutes remaining, ASU regained a lead it hadn’t had since the early minutes of the second half. But the Owls responded with defensive pressure and some clutch shooting from leading scorer Greg Gantt. Gantt, who tied a career-high 29 points, scored 13 points in the final five minutes. Stefan Moody once again provided a spark off the bench for the Owls. The freshman guard scored 22 points, which tied a season-high set against Elon back on Nov. 18. He also showed off his dunking skills early in the second half to a chorus of cheers at the Burrow. “They were trying to take me away a lot and they forgot about (Moody),” Gantt said. Heading into Saturday’s game, ASU was second in the Sun Belt averaging 73.5 points per game, while the Owls were averaging 60.2 points. Red Wolves guard Ed Townsel, who came into the game averaging 17 points per game, was held to five points. FAU freshman guard Jackson Trapp continued to impress at the point. He had eight points, six assists and six rebounds for the Owls. GameBrowser: Owls 72, Red Wolves 65 Moving Forward: G Greg Gantt was 3-of4 from beyond the arc and 10-of-11 from the free-throw line. ...The victory was the 55th at FAU for coach Mike Jarvis, who passed former FAU coach Sidney Green as the coach with most victories since the Owls moved to Division I in 1994. ...The Owls are 4-0 vs. Arkansas State at The Burrow.

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Not only have the Rays been the victim in the last two perfect games thrown in the major leagues -- last year by Mark Buehrle, Sunday by Dallas Braden -- but both came in afternoon games on getaway day. In fact, St. Petersburg Times beat writer Marc Topkin suggested something less than coincidence when he speculated in his game story that Sunday's performance might have had something to do with "having Saturday night off in San Francisco." So you wonder, is that why five of the last nine perfect games thrown in the major leagues were on Sundays (in Oakland, New York (twice), Los Angeles and Texas) -- and that six of the last nine were in day games? And you wonder, what is it about lefties? Five of the last six perfect games have been thrown by left-handers: Braden, Buehrle, Randy Johnson, David Wells and Kenny Rogers (with David Cone the lone righty in the group). Maybe it's just coincidence. Or maybe not. Two more thoughts on the perfect game: Not surprisingly, the Rays had the best record (22-8) of any team to have a perfect game thrown against them. Only two teams that were victims of perfect games have gone made it to the postseason in the same year (excluding the 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers, who had a perfect game thrown against them in the World Series). The two? The 2004 Braves (Randy Johnson), who lost in the first round of the playoffs, and the 1988 Dodgers (Tom Browning), who won the World Series. And to echo what colleague Scott Miller wrote Sunday, what a great job by Comcast Sports Net California, and especially by announcers Glen Kuiper and Ray Fosse. Instead of adhering to the silly notion that they might jinx history by doing their job and mentioning it, Kuiper and Fosse set the scene perfectly -- and in doing so, proved once again that announcers don't jinx no-hitters (or perfect games). (And, on A's radio, Ken Korach and Vince Cotroneo also told listeners that Braden was working on a perfect game.) In fact, in the most famous perfect game call of all, Vin Scully began the ninth inning by saying right away that Sandy Koufax was pitching a perfect game. When Koufax got it by striking out Harvey Kuenn, Scully let the crowd reaction play for 38 seconds, then said, "On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California."

The revelation came directly after Trout launched a third-inning home run against New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom. Before Trout even returned to the dugout, Buck asked if Harper agreed that Trout was the best player in the league, to which Harper responded, “If you don’t think that, you must not be watching.” At the same time, millions watching at home surely nodded in agreement. Harper’s opinion is a valuable one. Since Harper and Trout’s careers began in 2010 and 2011 respectively, they’ve been constantly compared to one another as they’ve developed from the future to the present of MLB. It’s a conversation neither has been able to escape, even though both have tended to shy away from it. There was no shying away Tuesday night. Harper shared his opinion while standing in the outfield grass at Nationals Park, his home ballpark in Washington D.C., and in front of one of the largest television audiences MLB will have this season. Angels All-Star Mike Trout (left) is the best player in MLB according to Bryce Harper. (AP) Truth be told, it hasn’t been much of a debate among baseball fans and experts in recent years. While Harper and Trout were comparable during the early stages of their MLB careers, few would argue that Trout has surpassed everyone, including Harper, and has probably even lapped most of the MLB field. At age 26, Trout has already won two American League MVP awards (with three runner up finishes) and earned seven All-Star selections. He’s a lifetime .306 hitter with 226 home runs and 619 RBIs in just 1,022 career games. The numbers don’t lie, and neither does Bryce Harper. Mike Trout is the man in MLB.

UPDATE: The CWIF Semis Results Upset...Finals at 6pm!! by Mick Ryan - Senior Editor - UKC Mar/2011This news story has been read 6,103 times Brian McAlinden of The Climbing Works Reports What a Semi-Final!!! A big big crowd watched a major upset as the uber-Euro Wads Nalle Hukkataival & Kleman Becan failed to make the finals. The collection of weird and wonderful problems shut down some of the best in the World, but not the local Brits who showed some incredibly strength, and ingenuity, to take the top 4 places. Through to the Finals in the Mens are:

Renee Richards Speaks Out Against Transsexuals in Female Sports October 5, 2011 “These days, Richards does not think transsexual athletes should be allowed to compete professionally. “I don’t think it’s a level playing field, even though theInternational Olympic Committee,in its utter wisdom, has declared that it is,” she explained.” Ahh, frackking ESPN has you locked out. I’ll post a replacement version if one becomes available. “He is the one muzzling in on women’s golf, isn’t he?” Lord, no. Thats a retired swat team officer named Lana Lawless who started his professional sports career in women’s golf at the age of 57. Renee Richards is the first transsexual to win the “right” to compete in women’s sports, specifically tennis. By so doing, he was able to start a professional tennis career at the ripe old age of 40something. He went on to become a coach, most notably working with with Martina Navratilova. A documentary on Dr. Richards is being featured this month on ESPN. Here is a clip: Thanks, I watched the trailer, not exactly satisfying though, so I googled a bit and found this: The Lady Regrets BEFORE Dr. Renée Richards had a sex-change operation, when she was an up-and-coming eye doctor and one of the top-ranked amateur tennis players in the East, she could be, by her own estimation, an arrogant fellow, tough and demanding. Talking with her three decades later, one still has the uneasy sense, at times, of that impatient male surgeon trapped in her body trying to break out. Not that Dr. Richards, 72 and still practicing, is ever anything but polite. She comes outside in the rain, in sneakers, warm-up pants and a red sweater, to greet her visitor, reining in her enthusiastic, 140-pound Bernese mountain dog. She’s had her assistant, Arleen Larzelere, 60, prepare lunch. She provides a tour of her cozy three-bedroom cottage in the hamlet of Kent Cliffs, in Putnam County, an hour north of New York City: the faded chintz armchairs, the walk-in closet where a mink shares space with a golf bag that bears her name. But as the conversation prompted by Dr. Richards’s new memoir, “No Way Renée,” runs to two hours, she grows restless. Dr. Richards is 6’2”, with the rangy body of a lifelong athlete, and in maturity, her angular bone structure seems to be pushing its way to the fore. And as she wearies of the interview, her body language seems to become more traditionally male, suggesting an athlete who is wearying of the game. “You’re writing this book all over again,” she grouses. And, later, on another subject, “I can explain, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to follow it.” Time to talk about, uh … décor. Those antique tennis illustrations; the plaque marking your induction into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000. It appears, Dr. Richards, that there are no photos of you as a man. “I don’t like to have pictures of me as a guy in the dining room or living room,” says Dr. Richards, who was once Dr. Richard Raskind. “I threw away most of the pictures of Dick. In fact, pictures of Dick with a beard, I destroyed.” She leads the way to the bedroom, where there are photos of her as both a handsome young male Naval officer and a good-looking middle-aged woman. In one photo of herself, Renée stands with her father, who refused to acknowledge her sex change, even when she visited him in a skirt. He’s smiling at you, the reporter says. “Sure he’s smiling, you kidding?” Dr. Richards says. “The sun rose and set over me. Every clipping about me, Dick or Renée, he saved.” Dr. Richards never wanted to be a pioneer. But in 1976, while taking part in women’s amateur tennis competitions, she was revealed to have once been a man, setting off a media feeding frenzy. The next year, when the United States Tennis Association tried to prevent her from playing in the women’s events at the U.S. Open, Open, she went to court and won the right to play. “No Way Renée: The Second Half of My Notorious Life,” written with John Ames, deals with the long-term consequences of her surgery. Dr. Richards writes of life as a very young boy, when an older sister, “after pushing my penis into my body,” would say “Now you’re a little girl”; of their psychiatrist mother who occasionally dressed him in a slip. As an adult, there was off-and-on use of female hormones, which left Dr. Richard Raskind with breasts. He tried to compensate in the early years of his marriage by acting tough. “I swaggered like a macho man,” Dr. Richards writes, “but I jiggled when I did so.” The marriage, which produced a son, ended in divorce. Nor did Dr. Richards’s sex change bring her the great love affair with a man of which she dreamed, although there was affection and sex. Romance with a woman does not interest her. Though she has lived with Ms. Larzelere, her former office manager, for almost 25 years — she turns over her check each week and Ms. Larzelere handles the grocery shopping and cooking — their relationship is not romantic. Dr. Richards says there is a bond because both were scarred by their childhoods, Ms. Larzelere by an alcoholic father who beat her. Ms. Larzelere, a warm woman who is so insistent about being a caregiver that she calls the reporter three times with an offer to pick her up at the train station, explains it more simply. “I just take care of people,” she says, “that’s what I do.” Now divorced, Ms. Larzelere says she gave up on men in her mid-30s. Dr. Richards’s book also deals with the effects of her surgery on her son, Nick Raskind, now grown. Mr. Raskind was 3 years old at the time of the sex change, but was not told about it until he was 8. (When Dr. Richards saw her son during that period, she dressed as a man and wore a short gray wig.) Dr. Richards takes responsibility for her son’s problems: getting tossed out of prep schools; running away to Jamaica at 13. These days, Mr. Raskind is a New York City real estate broker specializing in lofts in the financial district, and Dr. Richards bunks at her son’s Park Avenue apartment when she works in Manhattan. Would Mr. Raskind be willing to talk about Dr. Richards? “If he thinks it would help him sell some lofts, he will,” she says. Mr. Raskind seems perfectly comfortable speaking about the woman who still considers herself his father — although he’s annoyed that his problems were always blamed on the sex change. He also refers to Dr. Richards as “he.” Why? “Because I have a mother that’s a woman,” he says. “My father could have an elephant change — he could be a dromedary — and he’d still be my father.” He has no memory of being told about his father’s change. “For a kid, it was a non-event,” he says. “I was a pretty fat little kid and I used to get teased about being fat a lot. Then between the time I was 10 and 13, kids at school did know about it and I used to get teased about it. That was the driving force behind me getting into martial arts very seriously later in life.” Back to Dr. Richards, who is surprisingly conservative. She calls the 2004 decision of the International Olympic Committee, which allows transsexuals to compete, “a particularly stupid decision,” explaining that when she sued to play at the U.S. Open, she was 40. “I wasn’t going to overwhelm Chris Evert and Tracy Austin, who were 20 years old.” And while she believes same-sex couples should receive the same benefits as those who are married, her idea of marriage demands a man and a woman. “It’s like a female plug and an electrical outlet,” she says. In Ms. Larzelere, she seems to have a wife, she is told. “How many famous actresses have said, ‘I want a wife,’ ” Dr. Richards says. “Katharine Hepburn had somebody like Arleen who lived with her for the final 30 years.” In her book, Dr. Richards never writes that she regrets having had her surgery, yet she lists so many regrets relating to her sex change that it is like someone who returns again and again to the edge of a great pit, but refuses to leap in. Those feelings were also evident in past interviews. “In 1999, you told People—” the reporter begins. Dr. Richards interrupts. “—I told People what I was feeling, which I still feel: Better to be an intact man functioning with 100 percent capacity for everything than to be a transsexual woman who is an imperfect woman.” In the same interview, Dr. Richards talked about wishing for something that could have prevented the surgery. “What I said was if there were a drug, some voodoo, any kind of mind-altering magic remedy to keep the man intact, that would have been preferable, but there wasn’t,” Dr. Richards says. “The pressure to change into a woman was so strong that if I had not been able to do it, I might have been a suicide.” Does she regret having the surgery? “The answer is no.” Dr. Richards’s game is no longer tennis; her knees are shot. Her great passion now is golf. “I swing a golf club four times a week, every chance I get, ” she says. “I try to cram in what I didn’t have until starting 12 years ago. And I can’t do it. No matter how excellent an athlete I was, maybe it’s like having a sex change, it’s something I can’t undo: I can’t undo the fact I didn’t play golf when I was a kid.” This interview is way more illuminating than the ESPN doc, which I watched while pacing and yelling at the tube. The documenatry is heavily weighted on the side of feeling sorry for good ‘ol Dick. The frustrating experience of re-living that asshole’s assault on women’s tennis was topped only by listening to interviews of the female tennis players of the era (Billie Jean King, Martina, etc.) saying how they empathized with him and supported him. Only John McEnroe gave any insight into how fucked up it was (and what a freaking sideshow). This interview shows just what a fucked up person he was and is. There’s your famous trans, folks, can’t decide whether he wants his dick or his privilege or his family, but we get a front row seat to his pathetic life anyway. He’s just an entitled, arrogant asshole who happened to have a fetish and enough of a giant ego to force that issue on everyone else. How in the holy fucking hell did everyone get deluded into ever thinking these men were any better than that? this is so true! my exact thoughts as i was reading the article. thanks Dave for that addition to the story… ugh, Noanodyne, so typical of them isn’t it, yes? cannot decide between the ol’ male privilege and their dream of being laydees. same old story, nothing new, lol… I give the author some points for not being afraid to say that RR isn’t completely convincing as a woman. But there are some astonishing WTF moments: “As an adult, there was off-and-on use of female hormones…” I’m going to ignore the dangling modifier and just go straight to the content. “Off-and-on use of female hormones.” What. The. Fuck…???!?!!!? What sane person does that to themself? Even most transitioners realize this is a Bad Idea. This guy doesn’t even have the excuse of ignorance — he went to medical school, for crying out loud. Then there’s the bizarre relationship with the assistant, a woman with a history of having been abused, and apparently no personal life outside her domestic servant duties for RR. “I just take care of people,” she says. Surprise, surprise, someone willing to take full advantage of that zeroed right in on her. ‘In Ms. Larzelere, she seems to have a wife, she is told. “How many famous actresses have said, ‘I want a wife,’ ” Dr. Richards says. “Katharine Hepburn had somebody like Arleen who lived with her for the final 30 years.” ‘ The WTFs in this one are layered, rather like a Russian doll. Can’t quite decide whether RR’s comparing himself to famous actresses in general is a) narcissism or b) a gay male, drag-queen sensibility showing through. Probably the answer is c) both of the above. Also, does he not realize that there have been persistent rumors that Katharine Hepburn was a lesbian? Then there’s this: “And while she believes same-sex couples should receive the same benefits as those who are married, her idea of marriage demands a man and a woman.” Of course — otherwise, all that mutilating surgery would seem kind of unnecessary. And of course, there’s the old household appliance/genitalia analogy so beloved of the less sophisticated homophobe: And this “—I told People what I was feeling, which I still feel: Better to be an intact man functioning with 100 percent capacity for everything than to be a transsexual woman who is an imperfect woman.” Better to remain intact, no problem, but describing himself as an “imperfect woman”? He’s not a woman, period. It’s also unutterably creepy that he has some notion that there’s such a thing as a “perfect woman.” As for M2Ts participating in women’s sports — I once came across an online discussion of this, in which some male transitioner was saying “After being on estrogen for years, I’m just as weak as any other woman.” He kept repeating that: “I’m just as weak as any other woman.” And there you have it, misogyny pure and simple. If he had had the slightest glimmering of respect for women, or for himself in what he imagined was his new, woman’s body, he would have said: “After years on estrogen, my physical strength falls within the standard range for most women,” or even, “After years on estrogen, I no longer have any male strength advantage.” But no, he kept harping on how weak he was, due to becoming a “woman.” Sounded kinda fetishistic, in fact. Then there’s the bizarre relationship with the assistant, a woman with a history of having been abused, and apparently no personal life outside her domestic servant duties for RR. “I just take care of people,” she says. Surprise, surprise, someone willing to take full advantage of that zeroed right in on her. Yeah, I thought that exact same thing. All those comments about ‘having a wife’ shows that his male entitlement remained intact, even after surgery. In hetworld, wife is codeword for ‘unpaid domestic/[reproductive/sexual] slave’. Basically most of what he has in Ms Larzelere, for a probable token wage and I gather living arrangement as part of the cheapskate deal. Good catch on the “I’m just as weak as any other woman.” It of course harks back to the view that females are defective males, and that males are the default of all to aspire to. You should see them side-by-side in the documentary if you really want a chill and a stomach lurch. The interviewer asks them about their relationship, which is just what you’re saying only worse and then RR waxes about all his sexual escapades. He’s a male through and through. It is my experience, from having done both paid domestic work, and advocacy for a Filipina “nanny” right’s group, that men view any woman working in their home as wife in some or all capacities, and act on their entitlement without fail. Renee is just proving that Renee is a man, and the protestations about other men stepping into his role of a castrated man who got away with it are mere jealousy, in my opinion. Katherine Hepburn was long suspected of being a closeted lesbian, so her relationship with Arlene was quite probably a lesbian one. Men always get confused about women who live together… he can only imagine his “live in” woman (wife) as a servant… how convenient to exploit this woman who like to “take care of” people. The interviewer should have asked about wages, social security benefits etc. But what I wanted to hear, was more about why he now thinks trans should not be able to play women’s sports… more on that, because that’s a final admission that the whole thing is a fraudulent way to interfer with women’s sports. And if you ask me, most men I know are emotional weaklings, and if you compared their emotional health to women’s you’d find them sadly wanting. Humpf! The other thing that RR admitted to in the documentary was that he wanted to be on the women’s tennis tour not because he expected to win (and he admitted that specifically multiple times), but that he wanted to “prove” or “show” or something similar that he was a woman. That’s something that Mag has helped us see over and over with these creeps — they’ll use whatever means to make their point that they really are what they say they are. What better way than for a shallow, selfish, arrogant prick to crow to the world: “I must be a woman, I play on the women’s tennis circuit.” As for the “weak on estrogen” trope and the documentary, Mary Carillo made the point strenuously how the poor, poor RR was just so impacted by all those hormones raging through RR’s body!! Oh my god, I could just hear trans nation wringing their hankies, verklempt and gasping at the drama of it all! The poor dear!! How sad!! What a tragedy!! What a brave fellow!! But, what is going on, when, as Noan says, McEnroe recognized this prick for what he was, while Lesbians Billie Jean King and Martina supported him? It’s all that misplaced identifying with the “freak” and outcast, while worshipping the maleness. This is the crux of the problem: Women and Lesbians must stop defending and supporting these men. Bev Jo… the day that lesbians finally defend their own best interests and reject these creeps… well it’s like hoping for the cow to jump over the moon. Amazing how McEnroe was on to this creep but Billie Jean King and Martina… yikes… lesbians would let a male with a shot gun into the house… hey he was starving and limping and needed help… we are suckers! Ugh. I know, not all of us are suckers, but I swear, if I have to hear about one more lesbian wanting us all to get along, I’m going to scream!! I hate how we coalition our needs out of existence, and then we wonder why our community still is so poor, so poor in resources. The one thing we need to change is loyalty to lesbian nation… even a desire for our space, and the guts to kick out the trans, get rid of creeps like Elliot… keep our spaces safe. If only we could all JUST DO THAT!!

Description Quran and Modern Science: This lecture describes the scientific nature contained in the Qur’an and other subjects to specialists from other disciplines. Astronomers, zoologists, geologists and specialists in the history of the earth would all have been struck, just as forcibly as medical doctors, by the presence in the Qur’an of highly accurate reflections on natural phenomena.

The Polar Bear Scientists "In the world there are probably fewer than 30 people who spend all or most of their effort working with polar bears. A veteran polar bear biologist, and the man in charge of Alaskan polar bear research for the past thirty years, Dr. Steven Amstrup has worked full time on polar bears since he joined the Polar Bear Project in 1980. The Polar Bear Project conducts ongoing research on polar bear populations and habitats in the Southern Beaufort Sea in Barrow, Alaska. Now under the leadership of George Durner, the Project has collected four decades of detailed, valuable data about how polar bears are responding to sea ice changes in the Arctic. This information has helped raised awareness about polar bears and their plight, and the same data may one day help scientists make new decisions for polar bear survival. Amstrup and Durner now spend most of their time 725 miles south of Barrow, Alaska at the University of Alaska, Anchorage campus, conducting research and drawing conclusions based on the discoveries that their team makes. Those scientists include polar bear biologists Kristin Simac and Mike Lockhart, based at times out of the abandoned Navy Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow. Every spring scientists like Kristin and Mike go out for six to eight weeks to capture bears on the Southern Beaufort Sea. By capture one means "tranquilize, take samples and measurements, tag, and release" -- The Polar Bear Scientists begins on the first day of capture season and follows Kristin, Mike, and their helicopter mechanic as they fly through the skies over Barrow, looking for polar bears, and finding more water and less ice than they've seen in the past. The process of capturing polar bears is an exciting and challenging one. The polar bears have to be properly tranquilized in a safe area -- so just because the team spots a polar bear, doesn't mean they automatically try to capture it. Tranquilizing a bear too close to water or thin ice might mean the polar bear could stumble in and drown. It's also a challenge to tranq a mom bear and her babies, but when the opportunity presents itself, the team does its best to get the job done. Once they are on the ground with a captured bear, the research begins. All sorts of information and measurements are taken, blood is drawn, tags are affixed. What does it all mean? Are the polar bears getting smaller and moving further to find food every year? Is there more water and less ice than there was before? What can be done?".

A sensitive microplate hemagglutination-inhibition technique has been used to ascertain the distributions of secreted blood group substances (BGS) in a population of 176 semen specimens and to characterize the stability of these substances in dried semen stains. The BGS concentrations in semen were found to vary throughout a wide range of titer. Despite this latitude of variation, the titers for the component BGS within the blood groups could be described by a lognormal distribution function. Studies of a number of sequential semen specimens obtained from the same donors revealed that the intraindividual variation in BGS titers was much more limited than the interindividual BGS titers. Attempts to correlate variations in titers between A and H in Group A semen or B and H in Group B semen indicated that the levels of these component substances vary independently. Studies of the stability of BGS in Groups A and O semen suggested that these substances were stable when the semen stains were stored at −20°C, 4°C, or at ambient laboratory temperature in a dry state. In contrast, stains stored at 37°C under hunmid conditions suffered a dramatic loss in BGS titer, with the half-life of the BGS being on the order of 30 days.

Cyber Security Audits LeoDigital leading Information Security Services protect your business from data breaches, negative publicity, damaged credibility and disruption of services. We deliver world-class offerings, security knowledge and experience to provide you with comprehensive information security. Our offerings combine unmatched technology, services, support and highly certified security experts. That means no more managing multiple vendors, no more juggling disparate services and no more worrying about the security of your data and your business. With our track record of success, it means more time for your organization to focus on other operational areas, while we focus on information security excellence for you and your organization. About Leo Digital is a company with a deeply-rooted entrepreneurial culture, creative innovation at its core. Our forte lies in as much as amalgamating innovations and innovators viz; strategists, creatives, storytellers, designers, technologists and producers to conceive and create Ideas Without Limits as in digital marketing. A diverse team, multi-disciplinary processes, and collaborative culture enables to unlock unlimited innovation potential for our clients.

In the late '90s my wife, Sheryl, and I were on a romantic ski vacation in Sun Valley, Idaho. We still felt like newlyweds, in spite of having two beautiful baby boys from whom we'd escaped for a rare evening out. Sun Valley is one of my favorite spots. It's old school (as the site of North America's first chair lift) and glamorous (the home of Hemingway and early Hollywood royalty), and boasts one of the greatest ski mountains in the country. I had been going there since the mid-'80s and always liked the mix of people you might encounter at any given time. One evening at a big holiday party, I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was John Jr. "How've you been, man?" he asked with a smile. I introduced him to Sheryl. He congratulated us on our marriage. After a while Sheryl went off on her own, leaving the two of us alone in the corner watching the party move on around us. Even in this more rarefied crowd, you could feel the occasional glare of curious observation. A ski instructor passed by, a movie star; a local ski bunny brushed by John and flipped her hair. "How did you do it?" he asked, so low against the buzz of the party that I couldn't quite hear. "I'm sorry?" "How did you do it?" he repeated. "I mean how did you settle down? You of all people." I looked at him and he was smiling, almost laughing, as if covering something else, some other emotion, something I couldn't quite discern. At first I thought he might be gently poking fun at me; up until my marriage, my life had been publicly marked by a fair number of romances, some covered with great interest in the papers. But I saw that his question was real, and that he seemed to be grappling with a sort of puzzle he could not solve. I realized he was looking across the room to a willowy blonde. She had fantastic blue eyes, and the kind of beauty and magnetism that was usually reserved for film stars. She was standing next to my wife, Sheryl, also a blue-eyed blonde with a beauty and presence that made her seem as if a spotlight and wind machine were constantly trained on her. I put two and two together. "Looks like you have a great girl. That's half the battle right there. She's obviously amazing and if she's your best friend, marry her. You can do it. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't, that you're not ready, or not capable. Come on in, man, the water's warm. I'm here to tell you it is; if she's your friend in addition to all of the other stuff, pull the trigger, don't let her get away. You never know what life will bring."

Share this: I got this sweater dress for Layla for Thanksgiving from Baby Gap. Initially she wore it as a dress with stockings but now it serves as a great sweater with leggings for our windy SoCal days. I love getting multiple uses out of Layla’s clothes because kids grow out of stuff so fast! Share this: Share this: I like to give Layla eggs at least every other day because its a good source of protein and the yolk is rich in iron. Usually I make scrambled because its easier for her to pick up the chunks. With every meal I give her a side of fruit as well. Share this: Share this: Layla and I had a busy week last week, so we took it easy this weekend. On Saturday we took a quick trip to Ikea…I am in the works of setting up a little kitchen corner for Layla and wanted to see what Ikea had (as soon as I get everything, I’ll make sure to post some pics). Layla basically turned Ikea in to her own little playground and whats an Ikea trip without some ice cream? This was Layla’s first time trying ice cream at Ikea. After we met up with some friends and got some amazing cake from Susie’s Cakes (if you live in SoCal you must go)!. Layla was a huge fan of all their colorful delicious looking cupcakes. On Sunday Layla hung out with her cousins while I did some grocery shopping and made her fruit pouches for the week. I promise to get the recipe up later this week. I use the Infantino Squeeze Station to make my own homemade pouches. After we went on a picnic with some friends…Layla ran around for three hours, burnt some energy and passed out! Share this: Share this: We are all about breakfast in our household…if you can tell! But with work and play date schedules we’re always on a time crunch so I’ve tried to find quick but hearty breakfasts I can make for the whole family! We all love French Toast and eggs and this recipe literally takes under two minutes to make. What you need: 3 eggs, 3 pieces of toast (any kind you like…we use multigrain, but some like cinnamon or other sweet breads), cinnamon, milk and maple syrup. I like to use all organic products.

WWRL Hosts Blog #RandiRhodes blog: The GOP is DOA by Randi Rhodesposted Mar 21 2013 5:07PM The GOP is DOA. LOL. I love that the Republican self-assessment immediately became known as an “autopsy.” Republicans used to have consultants. Now they have coroners. No more Frank Luntz for Republicans. Now they have Jack Klugman as “Quincy.” Conservatives say that changing the party’s message will alienate conservatives. So what? Where are they going to go—back to 1952? The autopsy is 97 pages long. It takes Republicans a lot of pages to say “We need to stop being idiots.” I guess it takes a long time to explain things to idiots. Here’s the conundrum: the Republicans need to attract other people into their party—and they despise everybody who is not already a Republican. One day after Reince Priebus called for Republicans to bring more minorities into the party, the Arkansas Republicans passed a bill to suppress the minority vote. Yes, the Republicans want your vote—and if they can’t get it, they want to take it. Hey Reince, if you really want Republicans to appeal to minority voters, maybe you should tell Republicans. At CPAC, Michele Bachmann gave a fact-free speech attacking Obama for the “lifestyle of excess” he supposedly lives at taxpayer’s expense. Bachmann claims that Obama’s lifestyle costs $1.4 billion a year to maintain. For the record, the Bush White House cost about $1.6 billion per year to maintain. Who knew that bicycle maintenance was so expensive? So the Bush White House cost $200 million more per year to run than the figure Bachmann cites for Obama—and George wasn’t even at the White House most of the time. A town in Connecticut seems to be trying to match the ugliness of the Steubenville, Ohio case of rape by high school football players and blaming the victim. But Torrington, Connecticut has upped the ante by making the victims 13 years old. In Torrington the accused high school football players are 18, and the victims are 13. This rape case is to the Ohio rape case what Newtown was to Aurora. The crime is just as horrific, and everything is made worse by the fact that the victims are children. The charges involve statutory rape, or as Todd Akin calls it, “non-legitimate rape.” Just like in Ohio, local students have flooded social media with support for the accused and further attacks on the victims. One person posted “If it takes two then why is only one in trouble?” Uh, murder takes at least two people as well, you know. Should we charge murder victims? Listen to The Randi Rhodes Show Monday through Friday 6 PM to 8 PM on WWRL AM 1600.

Trending: Why more and more experienced workers want a new career in cannabis A quick look at almost any news article on America’s cannabis industry will confirm its growth has been historic. In fact, a report earlier this year by New Frontier Data predicts the legal marijuana industry will create nearly 255,000 jobs by 2020 – with total market sales reaching more than $24 billion nationally by 2025. And testimony to that surging interest in the industry was on display at the recent Vangst Cannabis Career Summit in downtown Denver – where scores of job seekers shook hands and dropped off résumés with representatives from about 35 companies. Some of those firms were looking to fill up to 20 open positions. But one thing that did distinguish this fifth job fair for Vangst Talent Network, according to founder and president Karson Humiston, was the rising level of professionalism to be found among those looking for employment. “In 2015, working in the cannabis industry wasn’t exactly normal,” she said during an interview with The Cannabist. “And a lot of people with long-term professional careers, families (and) obligations weren’t willing to take the risk in joining an industry with a lot of uncertainty around it.” But now, Humiston noted, more people with established careers outside of cannabis are considering the leap into legal marijuana. “A lot of candidates with 20-plus years experience in another industry are looking to break in and apply their skills, knowledge, experiences to the cannabis industry,” she added. The Cannabist spoke with several dozen job-hunters making the rounds at the career fair. Here are some edited highlights from those conversations: Candice Tillery (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Candice Tillery Age 31. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska. Has lived in Denver 5 ½ years. Previous work experience: Currently in the cannabis industry, working in software on regulatory compliance and inventory management. Looking for: New work within the industry, either in compliance or something requiring new skills. Ambition: “I am open to a lot of avenues right now.” Quote: “I’m here to switch up my career and I’d like to broaden my horizons. I got into the cannabis industry about four years ago. I was here (in Denver) for a while, did documentation and titling at an automotive dealership. And I was literally sitting at my desk one day. And it was like, ‘Is this the end? Do I want something more?’ When I realized the cannabis industry was almost like a whole new avenue for this generation that can’t find jobs, I decided to jump into it.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “I’m from Omaha, Nebraska, and there’s really not a lot of pushback. I was actually surprised. They probably don’t tell all their friends and family members what I do, but from the people I know I actually had very positive reactions to it.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “I think they just think it’s a whole bunch of stoners being lazy, and there’s money laundering and all this craziness going on. But there really isn’t. Everything is very strict; everything is very regimented. They track everything. So there’s no way for things to get out of control. So it’s a very enclosed and safe system.” Quote: “I’ve been in a wheelchair 34 years. I was injured when I was 13 in a bicycling accident. I use medical cannabis. I worked in professional kitchens for about ten years, between Denver, Fort Collins and Telluride — and Aspen as well. These past four years have been at home with my daughter; I’ve started to reenter the work field. (Cannabis) seems like a burgeoning industry and I have a lot of cooking experience.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? No. They’ve encouraged me to pursue this field. What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “I think they think it’s a big party. I don’t think that they get our regulations and our professionalism with regard to it. I don’t think they truly understand the respect that is required with use and how to properly behave and remain professional. It can be a part of people’s lives in so many ways.” Shermirah Brachah (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Shemirah Brachah Age 69. Moved to Denver from New York State three years ago. Previous work experience: Office management, project management, research, government management liaison with local governments in upstate New York, recruiting and training. Looking for: Office management, administrative assistant positions. Ambition: Leaning towards edibles industry. Quote: “I’m in the job market and this seems like an interesting avenue to pursue. I didn’t know what to expect as far as the competition, but I did think that it’s not as steep as maybe the general job market, because it’s specialized. I’m fascinated; personally interested in (cannabis) for the past 42 years. And coming from a state where it’s been illegal into a state where it’s legal and you can use it, I’ve found it most helpful. I have a car accident injury from 20 years ago; I don’t like meds that zonk me out. But with CBD tinctures and topicals I’m just so thankful that there’s an alternative.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “We’re very supportive of the industry and hopeful for its continued success.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “The stigmas that have been applied to it are really based on fear and ignorance. Because we have a track record of its use now, we know that in states where it’s legal, Medicaid and Medicare costs have gone down, older people using it are less reliant on traditional medicines. And it doesn’t make people crazy, the way the “Reefer Madness” movie portrayed, which was more like a zombie apocalypse story.” Tasha Benally (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Tasha Benally Age 37. Moved to Colorado from New Mexico 2-plus years ago, to work in legal cannabis. Previous work experience: Hospitality and hotel industry. Looking for: Budtending work and more involvement in the “retail part of the industry.” Quote: “I look at it more for medicinal purposes than recreational. That’s what a lot of people have moved here for, the medicinal part of it. Getting in the industry was a little bit easy because I went through a temporary agency, which provided cannabis classes for me: budtending classes, the METRC system (Colorado’s seed-to-sale tracking program), harvesting and trimming. They also gave you experience in a grow house as well.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “As far as my immediate family, no.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “I think it’s more of the government side as far as just charging people, the criminal part of it. … A lot of the states are looking at it as a bad drug, and it really is not.” Paul Evans (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Paul Evans Age 52. From Colorado Springs, lives in Denver. Previous work experience: Retired U.S. Air Force, medical marijuana patient. Looking for: A position in the retail or business side of the industry. Ambition: Working with PTSD vets, to let them know there’s a way to feel better without opiates. Quote: “I’ve had several back surgeries. I was prescribed tons of opiates, and I credit cannabis with being able to get me off of opiates, so I’m a believer. I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for some years now. My youngest is getting close to pre-K age, so it’s time for me to rejoin the workforce again.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana: “No, I’m very open with my family and friends about my use and they’re very supportive.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “I think it’s still a young enough industry that they don’t see the adult in the room yet. And I think that when so much has been coming out positive about cannabis, I almost think that there’s a whole bunch of people outside of Colorado who say, ‘Well they’re calling it a miracle drug and that’s obviously not true.’ I think Colorado has established that it’s workable, the sky doesn’t fall and now other states are really – based on Colorado’s performance – gearing up for it.” Erica Haferkamp (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Erica Haferkamp Age 41. Lives in Cleburne, Texas. Previous work experience: U.S. Marine Corps veteran. Director of marketing for a digital agency. Looking for: A director of marketing or marketing manager position in a tech startup or a cannabis wholesale company. Ambition: High and happy in Colorado! Quote: “Cannabis is something I love and so is marketing, and I would like to marry the two together. I’ll have to do my homework a lot on the actual plant even though I imbibe. I need to further my education but I don’t think it’s going to be hard, because I’m going to love every minute of it. And I think it’s great that I can be here in my suit and look as professional as I do and be standing next to someone with blue hair, and that we’re both equally accepted and can communicate our professional abilities.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “My family already knows that I take it because I’m a disabled veteran. I was on narcotics through the VA and I really didn’t like it or how it made me feel. And when my mom was going through brain cancer we decided to switch (to cannabis). It eased her pain and it really helps me on a daily basis.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “I think they’re having to deal with bad propaganda that started in the early 1900s. Our forefathers grew the plant.” Jonathan Parker (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Jonathan Parker Age 37. Moved to Denver from Texas three years ago to join the cannabis industry. Quote: “I’ve been in (marketing and advertising) for about 15 years: account management, project management. But (the cannabis industry) is something that hits with me on all cylinders. I’ve budtended. When I first got here, nobody cared about 15 years in advertising and marketing and that I was a C-suite executive. No one cared at all when you’re changing industries. It’s like I was speaking Greek. But I wanted to be here, I just wanted to be in this industry. So they started me at a front desk position and so I learned everything from there. Recently I was a store manager at a dispensary. I’m just trying to find a right niche. I like educating people about the product.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “Oh, yeah. Friends and family. They say, ‘You’re stupid. it’s not the right industry for you to be in, they’ll never be able to pay you what you’re worth.’ I remember when Leafly had their first ad in the New York Times. I put that up in my office and that was not good.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “This is a legit business. There are real business people in it, thinking on real business terms. It’s not some back-alley operation. If you ask anybody on the illegal side if they could be on the legal side, they’d say yes, hands-down, every day.” Lyndsay Rogers (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Lyndsay Rogers Age 39. Moved to metro Denver from San Francisco three months ago. Previous work experience: Customer service, retail, call centers. Looking for: Entry-level work in the cannabis industry. Ambition: Cannabis dispensary manager Quote: “It’s a good opportunity to see a lot of places that are hiring, a lot of places that have a lot of different positions in the industry and just start getting in, which is what I’m looking for. I got my MED (Colorado marijuana certification) badge two weeks ago, which means I can start working now. I’m getting my start here and then, if I end up going back to California, I’ll have the industry experience. Customer service is a big deal. You want to get people to come back, in a dispensary or wherever.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “There’s been a little incredulity about it, some criticism, but for the most part people are getting used to it.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “I think recreational kinds of skews it, because the medical is very specific. Recreational (cannabis) isn’t giving it a bad name, but I don’t think most people know what that difference is. It something that should be acceptable and should be used. And to have that shut down just for stigmas or misunderstanding would be unfortunate.” Doug Grego (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Doug Grego Age 25. Moved to Denver from Pittsburgh two months ago. Previous work experience: Chemical engineer at a manufacturing company. Looking for: Work in the cannabis extraction/concentrates industry. Ambition: To bring professionalism and accountability to the legal cannabis industry. Quote: “I’m ready to follow my passion, ready to build a career doing what I love, every single day. As chemical engineers we’re trained to look at a process as a whole. So I look at it from start to end, how do we improve things here. Especially 10 years down the line, when you you’re going to have multi-million square foot facilities pumping out concentrates. As a chemical engineer what we’re trained to do is design those massive plants, run those massive plants, understand how to scale things up and down.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “No. Actually my family has been extremely supportive of it. They were kind of naysayers back in the day, but this is the first time they’ve seen me passionate about something. They’re happy that I’m happy.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “A lot more young, technical professionals should be entering this industry. They’re going to need trained professionals to do this.” Debbie Brock (Bruce Kennedy, The Cannabist) Debbie Brock Age 42. Moved to Denver from Dallas, 10 years ago. Previous work experience: Accountant for property management and cannabis companies. Looking for: Accounting positions in the cannabis industry Ambition: To be a controller for a cannabis company. Quote: “I moved out here for camping. I wasn’t happy at the place (where I was working) and found the (cannabis) job on Craigslist – I said this was something I could really get into. I was the accounting department; I loved it. I’ve been doing accounting for 25 years and there’s only so much automation that can be done with that. They need to have trustworthy people in those positions.” Any pushback from friends and family about working in marijuana? “I did when I first moved to Colorado, but not anymore.” What misconceptions do you think people have about the legal cannabis industry? “A lot more people are doing it than what they realize; I mean grandmothers and stuff like that.”

The last time we checked in with Patrick Priebe he'd crafted a replica of the Dead Space plasma cutter using a pair of 1.5-watt blue lasers. This time he's back with a ridiculous spinning gatling gun packing a total of six 1.4-watt blue lasers, and a less intense green laser used for targeting. Watch in awe and horror as a wall of 26 balloons gets wiped out by its intense blue glare. Want to build your own? The YouTube video's About section puts an abrupt end to that ridiculous idea. "NO PLANS, NO TUTORIALS. NOT for sale, its just a prototype." And that's probably the best safety advice you'll read all day. [YouTube via Gizmag]

10 January 2019 by Rachel Holey Working in partnership with Spacecraft, a strategic digital design agency, accessibility and total digital inclusion underpin everything we do. The same should apply to you and your website if you want to ensure no one gets left behind.

Interpretive Summary: Improving the processing quality of sugarbeet would enhance beet sugar’s competitiveness with cane sugar and alternative sweeteners. Amino-nitrogen is one of the naturally occurring constituents of sugarbeet, referred to as impurities, that interferes with the extraction of sugar during normal factory operations. Amino-nitrogen concentration is of special interest because of its direct relationship to nitrogen fertility management. This study examined the extent amino-nitrogen concentration could be altered by selection within a genetically diverse line and the impact selection for amino-nitrogen had on other components of processing quality. Four cycles of selection for low amino-nitrogen concentration resulted in a 29% reduction; whereas, selection for high amino-nitrogen concentration increased the concentration by 50%, compared to the parental source. The line selected for low amino-nitrogen concentration had higher concentrations of two other impurity components, sodium and potassium, and a lower sucrose loss to molasses than the line resulting from selection for high amino-nitrogen concentration. Selection for amino-nitrogen concentration, either high or low, did not have a detectable impact on sucrose concentration. However, root yield of the line selected for low amino-nitrogen was 9 Mg ha-1 greater than the root yield of the line selected for high concentration. Attempts to improve processing quality by selecting for individual impurity components will be complicated by interactions among the impurity components and environmental interactions. Technical Abstract: Improvements in sugarbeet (Beta vulgaris L.) processing quality, and therefore the cost-effectiveness of processing, will enhance beet sugar’s competitiveness with cane sugar and alternative sweeteners. Amino-nitrogen is one of the naturally occurring constituents of sugarbeet, referred to as impurities, that interferes with the extraction of crystallized sucrose during normal factory operations. Amino-nitrogen concentration is of special interest not only because of the relatively high weighting it receives in most formulas used to estimate the sucrose loss to molasses, but also because of its direct relationship to nitrogen fertility management. This study examined the extent amino-nitrogen concentration could be altered by selection within a broad-based germplasm line and the impact selection for amino-nitrogen had on other components of processing quality. Four cycles of mass selection for low amino-nitrogen concentration resulted in a 29% reduction; whereas, selection for high amino-nitrogen concentration increased the concentration by 50%, compared to the parental source. The line selected for low amino-nitrogen concentration had higher concentrations of two other impurity components, sodium and potassium, and a lower sucrose loss to molasses than the line resulting from selection for high amino-nitrogen concentration. Selection for amino-nitrogen concentration, either high or low, did not have a detectable impact on sucrose concentration. However, root yield of the line selected for low amino-nitrogen was 9 Mg ha-1 greater than the root yield of the line selected for high concentration. Attempts to improve processing quality by selecting for individual impurity components will be complicated by interactions among the impurity components and environmental interactions.

Nerfs Blizzard's latest Hearthstone nerfs try to tone down the power of Galakrond Shaman, but this deck won't even feel these changes. Have you played Hearthstone recently? The Descent of Dragons expansion came with some rather powerful cards. Now, we have seen cases of Shamanstone before. This class is either never played or it completely… Hearthstone players are all gleaming with joy now that one of the most brutally aggressive classes got a pretty important nerf. Rogue is always a problem in Hearthstone. No matter what cards they get in the new expansions, their… Giggling Inventor, Mana Wyrm, and Aviana have all been nerfed in the latest Hearthstone balance patch for being too powerful in the current meta. Giggling Inventor is a card that had a power level too great for one card. Absolutely… Why does my boy Ornn get nerfed all the time? Granted, when he first came out, he was a tanky CC machine that could kill pretty much anyone while disrupting the entire enemy team. He was also very hard to kill, but after a steady stream of… We talked about the latest nerfs that Blizzard announced for Hearthstone, and now they are here. Surprisingly, besides the changes to certain deck archetypes that needed a power adjustment, there were even changes to a card that is now only… Besides the new sessional event that we got in the form of the Overwatch Archives 2018, there's also a new patch. As you would expect from a patch, it's bringing lots of bugfixes, but also some changes to the heroes, most notably Reaper and…

One of my favorite tracks on the album. The video is awesome in some parts and sort of iffy in others. I would pre-order the shit out of that shirt if it didn't have a picture of a guy with ropes around his neck. Mehr

Search form Search form A pilot project called Better Together provided home-based palliative care in the U.K. and reduced hospital admissions for patients with advanced congestive heart failure and increased the likelihood they would die at home or in hospice. Researchers reported in BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care that the team-based program was designed to identify and manage patients who did not respond to treatment. Related Summaries Patients with hematologic cancers were least likely to die at home or in hospice, according to a study published in PloS Medicine. Patients who were divorced, widowed or single were less likely than married patients to die at home or in hospice. Baby boomers who become caregivers for parents can find it has serious financial consequences, especially if their retirement savings and other investments were reduced by the recession, Elizabeth O'Brien writes in her Retire Well column. Many caregivers do not have a long-term strategy and begin to look ahead only when a parent needs help. The first step is to start a family discussion, she writes. Patients and families need help coping with their feelings, hopes and fears along with symptoms of disease, and not just treatment for their illnesses, Dr. Ira Byock told MidMichigan Health's 12th Annual Spiritual Care Conference. A "shift of mindset" is needed for health care professionals because their training is so focused on medical aspects of care, he said. Advance directives help foster communication and counseling for families making stressful decisions, he said. Scripps Health asked a bankruptcy court for permission to acquire the assets of the San Diego Hospice, which said it would close in the aftermath of a Medicare audit of its enrollment policies. "I think there's a growing understanding of hospice care for society and it makes sense for us to have it within our system," said Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder, who added with court approval the company would be able to offer appropriate care based on patient preferences. Indiana University researchers surveyed primary care physicians about colon cancer screening using different patient examples and found 45% would test a 50-year-old with unresectable lung cancer, 37% would test a similar 65-year-old and 25% would test an 80-year-old person with that diagnosis. University of California at San Francisco geriatrics professor Dr. Ken Covinsky in GeriPal writes that it is difficult to envision physicians considering colon cancer tests for these patients "thinking clearly about the extensive range of palliative services their patient really needs."